Happy Easter!

It's been a lovely sunny day here today, and the snow is melting. Not fast enough for my liking - it's still quite deep where it drifted, but our spring bulbs are fighting through!

Today I started a new quilt, using a lovely set of 3" squares of vintage prints that my friend Jamie gave me about 2 years ago. I've only got 3 more blocks to make, then I can start putting it together. I'll probably spend much of tomorrow working out what order they should go in!

I never posted a TUSAL pic this month. Only 21 days late, but here it is. The layer of dark reds/pinks near the top are from the cherries.

My plan for this evening involves stitching, watching TV and eating some Easter eggs :)

Happy stitching folks xx

July Ort Report

I'm a couple of days late, but am doing much better than for the last full moon! This month I have collected ORTs from Peacock Firescreen (mostly greens and peaches), Bird in Hand (dusky pinks) and Pooh Birth Sampler (golden yellows):



I perched my ORT jar rather precariously on the edge of a plant pot for a bit of seasonal colour - I really love these white petunias, which we have scattered around the garden in pots, adding a splash of brightness.

As it is the start of July I really should set myself some goals, but first I'll review my June goals:

1) stitch on my WIPs yes, I mostly stitched on Peacock Firescreen, Bird in Hand and Pooh Birth Sampler
2) resist more new starts, apart from... managed this one
3) something from the lovely things Karin sent me! but not this one...

In July I would like to:
1) work on at least 2 WIPs
2) finish the xs on Pooh Birth Sampler
3) make some lace
4) do another type of crafting - either quilting or knitting
5) START SOMETHING WITH THE LOVELY STASH KARIN SENT ME. Can you see I MEAN it this month???

I've enjoyed the lovely warm weekend with a spot of gardening, eating the first potatoes from our garden, plus herbs, raspberries and strawberries, and stitching on Pooh Birth Sampler. Unusually for me I also did some housework... I'm sure that phase will pass ;)

My rose garden (before I did the dead heading though!!):




The first few potatoes - Anya and a red one I forget the name of:


Happy stitching everyone x

Loving this sunny spring!

Well the weather in the UK has been just amazing for the last few weeks, I swear that a couple of years ago we'd have been delighted with a bit of this in July and August! Sadly I've been busy at work (and getting back into the bad habit of working late), but I've made sure I've made the most of it at the weekends!

Last weekend it was my parents' Ruby Wedding anniversary, so we went back home to celebrate with them. I took the opportunity to take a couple of pieces in the be framed at my favourite framing shop in Lincoln. It'll be ages until I get back to pick them up, but I can't wait to see how they turn out. Patience is a virtue, I suppose...

On Saturday we had a party with close family and friends - 22 people in all - and took full advantage of the lovely sunny weather, spending most of the afternoon sat in the garden. My sister Michelle, Eddy and I organised the food allowing mum to chat to her guests - and everyone seemed to have a lovely time. I certainly did. On Sunday we ate delicious leftovers in the garden at lunchtime, and in the afternoon I caught up with one of my old school friends.

This weekend was also spent outside, busy sorting our garden. We tidied, weeded, trimmed and scattered new bark chippings in the front garden - I don't think it's ever looked this finished! I can't wait until my roses start to flower!



I also took some snaps of the flowers currently in bloom. I love primulas, and the apple blossom is just coming out.




Stitching wise I've been focusing on A New Beginning - and I've just got past the half way point. I took the photo outside, taking full advantage of the lovely sunlight!



I've also started two new pieces, but don't have photos of either, so I'll share those later in the week.

Happy Stitching x

Happy Christmas Jo!!

When we moved into our house (the move from rental land to mortgage joy), we had quite a blank canvas as a garden. It was lacking in plants, and really lacking in height, just one laburnum in the back left corner, and an elder in the back corner of our neighbours garden:



Summer 2008, we'd not done much to the back garden at this point

So we decided for our first Christmas in the house, we'd buy each other a tree... that was nearly 3 years ago (we moved in September 2007). Last summer I bought Eddy an apple tree, but we'd still not worked out exactly what tree I wanted, and more importantly where we'd put it. When our neighbours cut down the elder we realised we desparately needed some height... so we started to look at trees. I fancied something native, a silver birch or a rowan perhaps. Two weeks ago we were at our local nursery, which specialises in trees - and bought one of each!


Rowan tree
We planted the taller Rowan in the middle - and then replanted some montbretia around it - it really doesn't look like it was planted on Saturday!


Silver birch
The silver birch we bought was a much younger tree, so we planted it in the back corner, in a raised bed we are busy building. It's tucked in behind our raspberry canes (which are doing brilliantly this year), and will grow into the space well, we think.

We do spend a lot of our time (and money!!) in the garden - this year we have been busy cutting down the ivy growing in the laburnum tree (it now sways in the wind - compare it with the congested mass in the top photo!!), have dug and extra bed into the lawn and planted it up, started to de-turf on the other side - we are adding an archway half way up the lawn to divide the garden a bit. Oh, and our veggie patch (created last Easter) is doing great things this year!!



And that is why I never get as much stitching done as I'd hope at the weekend. But best of all, although Eddy does pretty much all of the hard work (de-turfing, heavy digging, construction etc), it's all activity points for me with weight watchers, which has really helped with my weight loss!

We've not really decided if the rowan or the birch is my tree - but they are both in our garden, so that doesn't really matter!!

Summer stitching, summer gardens

I can't believe it's 2 1/2 weeks since I last posted! Well I can, I've been very busy, but all the same...

Thankfully it's not just work that has kept me occupied, I've also taken some leave - it's proving pretty difficult squeezing my holidays in to a busy summer, but if I don't take them before term starts in late September I'll probably lose them! So I've been working long hours to be able to fit the holidays in!

I've also found some time for stitching, but not as much as I would have liked. I usually stitch every day, but there's been a few recently where my bum has hit the sofa and I've barely had the energy to channel hop...

Anyway, I took these pics before my last break, in the hopes I'd have chance to share them before I went away:




I've actually done a little more on both since I took these - I took you were hatched away with me, and spent about an hour or so working on the border one evening. I picked up waiting for ships again last night, and have had some quality stitching time today, listening to the test match (I'm still in shock that we got so many runs...) - cricket for the non-Brits out there! I'm hoping to hare another progress pic tomorrow, when I've got a little more done.

As for August travels... the weekend after I went to Edinburgh Eddy and I decided to take the Friday off work, and visit RHS Harlow Carr, just outside Harrogate. Given how much we love gardening it's a bit shocking we'd not been, given we've been living 45 mins away from Harrogate for 5 years! Here are some photos:









We had lunch at Betty's (very traditional English tea shop with excellent cakes), had a good meander, and on a whim bought another apple tree when we left... not that we know where to plant it yet. It's in a very big pot getting lots of water for the time being! When we went apple tree shopping at Easter we really wanted a bramley apple, but having a small garden we wanted M27 (dwarf) root stock. After lots of searching we read in a book that you don't get M27 bramleys, so got another apple tree instead (bountiful - another cooker, but a little sweeter, apparently). Anyway, we should have known that the Royal Horticultural Society would have M27 bramleys... and there it was with 20% off. Sadly we had to pick the smallest tree (we only have a small car) and it was the only one without apples on, so we'll have to wait until next year to get fruit!!

We've been eating lots of veggies out of the garden recently - potatoes, onions, carrots, broccoli, artichokes and green beans have all done brilliantly. The peas didn't produce much, and we got tomato blight. We have picked the unaffected green tomotoes and plan on making a chutney, using my friend's 'not mango chutney' recepie. My rose garden has been looking fabulous too, this photo was taken a couple of months ago, I don't have a recent one as I only ever think of taking a photo just after I've dead-headed and there aren't many blooms!



Happy stitching!

How does your garden grow???

Well, with all the rain we've had recently, very well indeed!! Here are some photos of our veggie garden. If you remember we only built the raised beds at Easter:


The raised beds...


Front to back: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, fennel and purple sprouting broccoli


Artichokes.. I counted 30 heads today, but some are smaller than my finger nail!

We are eating our favourite artichoke dish - artichokes and peas (it sounds better in Greek) for tea tonight, the first of the artichoke harvest. Sadly we've not grown enough peas!

Life has been very busy over the last few weeks, especially at work. Last weekend my old school friend, Leanne, came to stay. Given we first met when we were five, it's amazing we still have stuff to talk about! We went shopping, had a lovely dinner cooked by Eddy, then the next day went to Harrogate - and had afternoon tea at Betty's. Yum!

This week I was in Norwhich for 2 days, then worked late Thursday, and last night I went out for Pizza and to see Harry Potter to celebrate Nivien's birthday... so I've not done much stitching. But last Sunday I did start You Were Hatched:



I'm missing a couple of colours (HOW????), but will buy them when my next credit card bill is issued!

Here's a photo of Waiting for Ships, which I was working on the week before:



Last time I posted a photo of her it was May!! I've made quite a bit of progress since then.

Happy stitching x

A weekend of sunshine

It's been so lovely this weekend that I had to spend as much time outside as possible! We spent most of the time in the garden, either doing some general maintenance, trying to reduce the number of pots on the patio by planting a few things (getting better but we have a long way to go) and drinking endless glasses of water and cups of tea. And the ice cream van conveniently passed by each days - I think we age ice cream van regulars! As we didn't do anything major I don't have any photos of big changes, so I thought I'd share this lovely bearded iris. We didn't even know it was there - although we probably had leaves last year it certainly didn't flower!



There's another one coming in to bud at the end of the garden - I'm curious to see what colour that one will be!

I did manage a little stitching, finishing the back of my top secret project, and also back stitching Elliot and Buttons Wedding Day. I was hoping to finish this in May, maybe if I do nothing but watch TV and bs this afternoon I'll make it, but I doubt it! It's an anchor kit, which means the bs NEVER seems to go in at a corner of a stitch. The finished effect is lovely, but it's a PITA to do... Anyway, here's a (terrible) photo of where I'm up to so far:



Happy stitching!

Fantasy Triptych has a border!

Well it's taken me FAR longer than I anticipated, but I finished the border of FT last night (less the beading and the bs I need to do after I have stitched the maid and knight panels!):



This is the first time I've done a plaited cross stitch, I think they turned out OK! (as always, Teresa's wonderful stitching diagrams were perfectly clear):




I'm enjoying the long weekend here, we had got plans for a friend to visit but I was feeling ill on Friday (well, most of last week really), so we cancelled. I had taken Friday off work anyway, to get the house sorted (2 trips for work - to London and York, meant I spent 1 night at my sister's, then the next 2 nights I got home at 10.30pm - I knew I couldn't manage work on the Friday after that!!). So on Friday I slept, on Saturday I did very little other than watch TV and stitch. Yesterday I felt much better and poddled around the garden a little (Eddy spent most of Saturday and Sunday building ANOTHER raised bad - dry stone wall this time!!). I plan on helping in the garden again today, but not too much, just in case. Hopefully I'll get plenty of time to stitch... not sure what to pick up yet!!

Thanks for your lovely comments about the lace heart - I learnt such a lot on this tiny piece - Christine is a very thorough teacher! Theresa asked about how I got the leaves so tight - here's a Christine Springett tip: work the leaves (or tallys) so they are 1/3 longer than the patten suggests, put up the pin, tension the passive threads and voila, a lovely tight leaf.. it really does work.

Gardening extravaganza!!

Well this Easter break has been pretty busy! Many UK Universities give us extra holidays (Good Friday, Easter Monday AND Tuesday), so Eddy and I decided to take the rest of this week off. We thought if the weather held we'd be able to do some gardening, our main aim was to sort our veggie patch. Of course being us, we decided on an elaborate plan which took much longer than we thought, all week basically!

Friday started with clearing the area we wanted to work in, mostly weeding, but also potting on some strawberry suckers which spread from last years strawberries (we had 9 plants... which produced over 100 baby plants between them. We chuched the small ones, potted on 90 plants, and worryingly we haven't tackled those that have set themselves in the original bed!

We then set about de-turfing some lawn to make more room. Of course we didn't want to throw the turfs away, but are using them as the base for another raised bed - so we dug a trench to save some topsoil, which we'll use to bury the turfs. Then Eddy de-turfed while I moved the turfs away. Then we dug the entire area over to one spade's depth. Not easy on clay... Then we had to break up the clods of earth more. Then build the raised bed frames and put them in place, fill the 5 beds (we bought lots of bags of topsoil - as we don't have a wheelbarrow it was much easier than getting a ton or so delivered to our drive - we could just carry the bags to the right place and open them out. Then we covered the paths with a thick mulch od bark chippings, planted Eddy's apple tree (my birthday present to him 15 months ago, but only bought yesterday - my tree will arrive later on this year.. after more major gardening). We also planted a few part-grown veggies as we haven't started many seeds yet... Overall we spent 7 days and a ton of money (mostly birthday and Christmas presents in the form of cash and garden vouchers), and we did 8 trips to garden centres/DIY places to get materials and have a good look around... I'm shattered, looking forward to work on Monday for a rest, but boy, what an achievement!


Area as it was early last summer


Dug over...


Bed frames in place and filled with soil


planted up!!

Our herb garden which we built last year is doing well, we just bought some more herbs to plant in it...



I've been doing a little stitching on Elliot and Buttons in the evenings, but less stitching than I planned to do this week! I'd share a photo but the camera battery is charging.

We are off to see family this weekend, hopefully I'll share photos early next week. My mum just rung to say I've been sent a voucher for 25% of framing at my favourite framers in April, so we'll go tomorrow, I've pulled out a pile of backlog framing that needs doing - may as well take advantage!!

A Happy week

Well, this week I have lots to be happy about!!

First, thank you to Lindsay (Caring Stitcher) for giving me this award:



It's the first time I've ever had a blog award, and it really made me smile! Thank you Lindsay!

I now need to nominate 7 blogs, here are the rules:

1. The winner can put the logo on their Blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other Blogs.
4. Put the links to those Blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the Blogs of those you've nominated.

It's taken me a while to think about who to nominate, especially as some of my favourite blogs already seem to have been awarded this! So, in no particular order, I nominate:

Michelle
Sara
Gio
Melissa
Shalini
Jack/Amanda

My other favourtie blog is Dani's - she inspied me to join needle and thread BB and to start a blog, so is definitely at the top of my list. She's already had this award twice now though....

I also have a happy dance to share with you:



It took me a while to finish, as I'd forgotten Amelie's birthweight! Helene, Guy and Amelie are in France, so they took a while to answer my text! I can't wait to give this to them when they return.

We had a great weekend last weekend, and started to crop our veggies:




Everything we ate over the weened had something home grown in - mostly onions, but Ed made a brilliant leek and mushroom tart, using our leeks, and I baked berry miuffins, with a combination of bought blueberries, bought blackberries, and grown blackberries. Yum! We also used our own herbs a lot. We don't have enough room to be self sufficient, but it's great fun growing, and more importantly eating, your own veggies!!

Gardening Frenzy

If you've been wondering why I've not posted for a while, it's because I've been busy gardening! (and at work too, but I try and not worry about the mayhem there..). We've had almost 2 weeks without rain (until Saturday, when I got soaked on a trip to the local shop to but potatoes), and a good week of solid sunshine - chances are that's this summer over with now...

This is the front of our house on the day we bought it - as you can see, the front garden was a mass of ivy and overgrown plants, and we spent most of last autumn clearing the ground and digging it over... and then most of the early spring digging it over - we found enough rocks to build a rockery!! The front garden is going to be my rose garden (I've wanted one for years, and Ed keept buying me roses, which we planted in pots, ready for when we could plant our rose garden - some of them have been in pots for over 4 years!)

Over May bank holiday, Ed and I spent hours in the garden - we finally planted some of the roses in my rose garden, clearing all but 2 of the pots (one is still to be planted, but I'm not sure where, and the second is very happy in a beautiful pot, and therefore it's staying put!)

We also went to a garden centre and came home with lots of baby veggie plants, and then planted out our veggie patch - this year (our first in this house) we are *trying* to grow artichokes (because I can't get enough of them), courgettes (2/5 have already been munched by slugs and snails though), onions and leeks. Growing onions from sets and the rest from baby plants may seem like cheating to purists, and is way more expensive than growing from seed, but I have a bad track record with seeds... We also got some raspberry canes, which are planted in a sunny corner of the garden, and I got a standard rose called "ruby wedding" - but only because it was a nice rose, we aren't even married :)

We spent Monday In Newark with a friend and I stayed overnight in the flat in Nottingham, having decided to take Tuesday off work for a much needed hair cut and root-dying visit to Sheffield (I tried to find a great local hairdresser, but I still prefer the one in Shffield, so after 2.5 years of hunting I just went back - as have friends who live in Manchester and London - he's that good!). I stopped by at a nice garden centre on the way to Sheffield and bought another 4 rose bushes - as the front garden is much bigger then we initially thought, we need LOTS more roses (oh, the hardship)! Luckily I parked in a multi-storey car park in Sheffield, and all 4 roses survived the trip. My hair looked great too...

Last weekend I spent Saturday at Sheffield Lace Makers (I didn't make much lace though - a peril of being on the committee). On Sunday we went out in the garden again, this time we built a raised bed using log rolls. It's got 2 tiers to it, and we have planted it up with herbs, adding a row of strawberry plants at the front. Luckily most if these plants were in pots, transported from our old house, so the planting at least was fairly cheap. The plants seem much happier with space for their roots to spread. The basil plant, which was from Morrisons and slowly dying of neglect in the kitchen, didn't make it though.

This weekend we were slightly hampered by the fact Eddy nearly cut the tip of his thumb off on Monday - it's best not to ask, but the phone call I got on Monday initially reported a major catastrophe, a kind-of man-flu version of finger slicing - but luckily he didn't even need stitches! Anyway, he couldn't do much in case he got the wound dirty, but I needed to plant the last (latest?) 5 roses... which we did, and they look great. There's still lots of room for more roses, but I think we need to spend a little less money on the garden for a few weeks, maybe we need to start de-turfing the area for the border in the back. We have a fair few plants in pots that will fill it cheaply....

The good news on the stitching front was that, as we spent less time in the garden, I actually got some stitching time in this weekend, and have made great progress with Assisi Knot Garden - but I'll share a photo of that later.