How long did it take?

Diana has asked how long it took me in total to stitch the PR Fairy. It probably took me about 6 weeks in total, maybe a bit less.

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Sorry there's not been much news this week, all I've done is model stitch, and as it's an unpublished chart I can't show you a pic till it's finished. But it's coming along quite nicely you'll be pleased to know. This weekend hasn't been very exciting. Went to the new Homebase in Blyth on Friday and bought a new shelf unit for the landing, but the stuff I wanted to go on it, namely my DMC thread boxes, won't fit, so it's been relegated to our bedroom for the minute till I decide what I'm going to put on there. No plans for the Bank Holiday tomorrow, except stitch and supervise the clean up ready for Kathy and the twins to arrive on Tuesday. I have no idea what we're going to get up this visit, as they're only here till Thursday. I'm sure we'll think of something. I know she's bringing a big box of stash up that she no longer wants and she says it weighs a ton. I've told her that it's gonna be a helluva lot lighter when she leaves. I do have to leave some stuff for Karen though, which is a bit of a bugger. LOL. Just kidding Karen, of course I'll leave you something, don't want you to cry. ROFL. Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Problem solved

Passione Ricamo - Autumn Fairy Spirit

As promised, here is the photo. I found the driver that Craig sent me the other day and installed it and now my camera software works brilliantly. WOOHOO! It's not the best photo in the world, but it's better than nothing...right?

Grrrr...FIDDLESTICKS!

Well, I have finally finished Passione Ricamo's Autumn Fairy Spirit, beaded and everything. Took a couple of photos, but forgot that this bloody laptop doesn't like the software for the camera. Craig sent me a download link for a Vista upgrade but I can't find where it's downloaded to (complete technophobe here) and I can't find it on the Internet again. So...I can't upload my piccies. I COULD of course use Craig's laptop, which has all the software already on it, seeing as that is the laptop I've been using till now, but I don't want to have to keep chopping and changing machines. Too much like hard work. I've emailed Fuji in the hope that they can direct me to the site which has the download on it, but I bet it's too late in the day to get a reply today. SIGH!!! I'll just have to post photos when I can.

WELL!!!

I never would have guessed that Carl King killed his Dad. Oh and poor Len, but at least he died with a smile on his face.

I have a new laptop with a built in web cam that also takes photos. Here you go...one I took earlier. This is me at the front - obviously - and my darling daughter Kate. She is now after my old web cam cos she reckons hers is crap. LOL. I have most of the things installed on this new machine, but Vista doesn't like quite a few of them. It won't install Photoshop 7 and it took a while to install the Epson printer - the Brother one went straight on - the scanner is ok and the label printer, but need to configure my Palm with the computer once the battery has been recharged.

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I missed Eastenders last night so I missed the car crash. It's on now though so I can catch up a bit, and will probably catch up more on Sunday. Or watch the one I recorded last night, that should do it. Wonder if there's anything decent on telly tonight. I should really be stitching, but I want to play around with this a bit longer first.

Finished the wings

As you can see I managed to get the wings finished last night. I've now almost done the branches on the left hand side. Will post more piccies later on.

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And now I'm off to see who murdered Tom King!

Even more recent picture...LOL

I've just taken a more up to date photo of this so you can see how much I've actually done. And Kathy has just pointed out to me that I might have the PTB in among the threads for St Petersburg. So I looked...and sure enough there is a card of PB10 that I need to finish the wing. So I can get on and finish it tonight and put the thread back when I get the order from Sew & So. WOOHOO!

Autumn Fairy Spirit Update

This was taken last night, but I've done quite a bit more since then. The left hand wing is almost finished but I've run out of Petite Treasure Braid. I've ordered some from Sew & So and I'm hoping it'll come in the morning. Need to do a bit of gold beading down the outside of the left wing too then I can scroll it all back up and finish the bottom half.

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I met up with an old friend today, Helen, someone I've not seen for 9 years. We lost touch when I moved to Nottingham and I found her phone number when I found my old address book a couple of weeks ago. Luckily she's still on the same number, although I found out today that they've moved house. We had a good old chinwag and caught up with all our family gossip. Her oldest son and my youngest were best friends when we lived in the same village. It's great to be back in touch with her, and we're going to meet up regularly and keep in touch.

Changed my mind...

at 7am yesterday morning and ended up going down to Nuneaton for the GTG. Got there at about 11.15am and had a great time, chatting, meeting new people and catching up with gossip, oh and I even managed some stitching.

Back Row L-R: Jan, Darren, Hayley, Nichola, Tammy, Wendy, Moll, Tanya, Clare, Lynn, Chris, Jacqui, Nicola and Sarah

Behind front row L to R: Mel and Hannah

Front Row Seated L to R: Angie, ME, Colly

We went to a pub afterwards, where I had a passable fish and chips, and made a complaint to the bar staff about the fact that there were two work vans parked in the only two disabled parking spots, one of which was needed by me. Needless to say, nothing was done about it. Oh well. I stayed the night at Colette's house. She offered me her spare bed so I took her up on it, saved me driving 200 miles home again. Her hubby Richard is a great bloke, and we had a right laugh watching the results of the Eurovision Song Contest. I didn't see any of the singing but actually the scoring is usually more hilarious than the rest of the show anyway, especially Terry Wogan's sarky comments. And as usual, we did crap!

I left Colly's at 10am this morning and after filling up with petrol, headed for home, stopping once at Scotch Corner to have a pee...oh the relief! I finally got home by 1.30pm. I managed to get some stitching done at the GTG yesterday but haven't done any since I got back. I have a RR to try and finish tomorrow but it could be a day or two late in being posted. Then back to the model stitching I think. Hope everyone else had a good weekend.

Off to the framers

I took Mistletoe (Loopylou Designs) to Jayne's the other day to be framed. I expect it'll be back in a couple of weeks, possibly longer as the framer is off on his holidays...AGAIN! He must make a good living doing framing, he's always on bloody holiday! Anyway, it's there and I can't wait to get it back, though I have no idea where I'm gonna hang it when it comes back.

I've been sewing needlecases the last couple of days. I was going to go down to Nuneaton tomorrow to the Aion bi-annual get-together, but I'm not feeling too well. It's that time of the month and I always feel crap. It doesn't help that I usually have a major flood and I don't like going anywhere cos I always feel so self-conscious. BLEUCH!

So instead, I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend working on the model for Jayne and hopefully get it finished by next weekend. Will have to work like the clappers, so the title of this blog will probably be totally apt. I have half the wings to do and the bottom half of the dress, tree branches and border. I need to get it finished ready to start another model for Jo at Polstitches.

PMSL! Mollie has just come in from the pouring rain, shook herself all over Craig and proceeded to dry herself on his trousers. Sensible dog.

WIP Progress

I've been working on a few things this weekend and have taken some up-to-date photos to show you all my progress.

First up is the Ozark Sampler SAL 2007.

April's section was the first 4 letters of the alphabet.

Next, Miss Mary Mack by La-D-Da. The chart calls for the whole thing to be done in black, but I

chose to do it in SSS Rummed Raisin instead. Or it could be Concord!

Lastly, for now anyway, is Elizabeth Designs In The Garden Of My Heart.

I've had to adapt some of the WDW in this as I didn't have them and I think it's working out ok.

That's it for now. I'm going to be doing some of 'The Earth...' next and then possibly Celtic Autumn. Will post more progress pics later on. Thanks for looking. Oh, and for those of you who leave comments, however cheeky some of them are (Helen and Kathy!), I really appreciate them. :o)

Seal Sanctuary

Karen wanted to know if the seal place was still at Gweek, and as far as I know it's still there. There's a seal sanctuary somewhere down there anyway, but I didn't actually look at the leaflet that closely to see where exactly it is.

Helen - I'm so glad you approve of the colour. It's called Aquarius Blue, and it looks really vibrant and bright in real life.

I&UKR Needleroll Exchange

We've been doing a needleroll exchange on International & UK Robins and as you know I already sent Andrea the one I made for her, which she loved. On our way down to Cornwall we stopped off at Kathy's, who was my other exchange partner, and I received the one she made for me. It's lovely - thanks Sis! It's done a tour of the south west and has done a fair few miles since I got it. But it's come home safe and sound and has been unpacked. I now have two rolls in my collection and nowhere to keep them yet. Might have to have a trip to Au Naturale - in my new car naturally (you're gonna get sick of hearing about it by the way!) - and get a nice basket for them.

I got some nice stash from the Attic this morning. Some Needle Necessities threads, some Ozark Sampler threads and April's section of the SAL, two new L*K Flipits (June & July), and eight new pieces of material - 1 x Count On Me - June; 3 x Polstitches - Ripples of Rose, Silversage & Spring; 2 x Sugar Maple - Treetops & Morning Meadow; 2 x Sassy's - Stars & Celery.

And specially for Kathy, a couple of photos of the car. LOL. And I bet you thought I'd forget.

It's actually more royal blue than it looks in these photos.

WOOHOO! New Car Alert!

Well I've been and got it. I finally have my new car. The change over was fairly painless, all done over the computer in the Ford dealership. All I had to do was enter a PIN number and sign a couple of bits of paper and that was it. Job done. So now I have a shiney royal blue car, no scratches or dints (yet) and with very sensitive brake and clutch pedals, which will take some getting used to. But at least it doesn't rattle and squeal like the old one did. Bliss. I will try and get a photo sometime soon. I don't want to stand out at the front of the house taking a photo cos I'll look like a complete prat. Might get Craig to do it, or wait till we're out and about somewhere.

Time to kill

I can't pick my new car up till after noon so I thought I'd get on and give you the run down on our holiday. We left home at 3am on Monday morning and had a fairly uneventful drive down to Kathy's house. We were a bit early and I needed to buy a couple of birthday cards so when we stopped for petrol just round the corner from Kathy's I got a couple and put some money inside them for the twins. We got to the house at about 9am and I could see Kathy was trying to have a mad clear up through the window. LOL. We stayed for a couple of hours and helped with some of the food for the birthday party later on that day. Kathy was going to be having 12 kids there after school - rather her than me. We came away with four ham and cheese muffins that I definitely want the recipe for. (We had them when we got to the caravan and they were scrumptious!). Sun just starting to go down.


We arrived at Perran Sands Haven holiday park at about 2.15 - and check in started at 2.30pm so we timed it really well. Luckily our caravan - 516 - wasn't too far away from all the facilities and it was really lovely inside. There was a small dining area, a large-ish lounge, small kitchen but big enough for us as we weren't really planning on doing much cooking in there, small toilet, a twin bedroom with really small single beds in it, lots of cupboards, a bigger bathroom with loo, sink and double shower, and the main bedroom, which had a door from it to the bathroom, kinda like en suite. Craig did our unpacking and made the bed up. Kate and Matty did their own. Once stuff was sorted in the van we drove down into Perranporth itself and people watched for a bit while sitting overlooking the beach. There were lots of surfers bobbing about in the sea, looking like a whole load of seals. We decided we were hungry by now and we walked over the beach to the Watering Hole pub where we had a lovely meal, sitting outside on the beach. I took some great photos of the sun going down over the water.

View from the bar

The sun was to our left and as it set it cast a lovely light over the water

We were all pretty much knackered by the time we'd finished eating. Kate and Matty walked back over the beach to the car park while Craig and I had another pint before gearing ourselves up to do the same. There is no easy access to this pub, no road. You HAVE to walk across the beach. But we thought it was well worth the visit and the French lad who served us was a bit of alright too. Kate asked him where he was from when she heard his accent and when he said he was from France she said a couple of words to him, which he replied to in French and which totally stumped her. ROFL! She only really knows the basics.

On Tuesday morning we were up bright and early. Kate and Matty wanted to go to a fun park so we dropped them off at Holywell Bay fun park and we carried on to Port Isaac, which is where they film Doc Martin for TV. We parked in the harbour on the beach as the tide was out and went to find somewhere to have something to eat. We ended up having a toasted tea cake in a little cafe but we were still hungry and there was a pasty shop next door. Can't go to Cornwall without eating Cornish pasties now can you! They weren't actually all that nice to be honest with you but we ate them anyway.

We parked on this part of the beach in the harbour in Port Isaac

Another view of the harbour

Canon overlooking the harbour

Floats and lobster pots on the harbour wall

After a look round some of the nearby shops we decided to carry on up the coast a little way before heading back to pick Kate and Matty up. However, I got a text message from Kate to tell me that they'd got on a bus back to the park and we didn't need to hurry back for them. So we just had a slow drive back down the coast. When I say slow I don't really mean it. Craig loves winding country lanes, and so do I when he is driving like a sedate spinster. This, unfortunately, doesn't happen very often, and he's more likely to drive like a demented trainee rally driver...on speed! Talk about taking your life in your hands! JEEZE! Oh and another thing that drove me mad - last week before we went away the car had to go back to the garage for the wheel bearings to be fixed and while they were at it they changed the brake pads or something. Well, they obviously didn't put something back or tighten something up properly, cos we rattled and squealed all over bloody Cornwall and it was very annoying. Roll on this afternoon. It took most of the rest of the afternoon to get back to the park, stopping lots on the way to soak up the views.

We ate at a pub in Perranporth that night but I can't say I was all that impressed with the food. We sat at the beach for an hour when we were finished before heading back to the park. We found a great place to get shots of the sunset, but I won't bore you with all seven of the photos. Here's one though that shows you what a great sight it was. You don't get to see sunsets like this on our side of the country and I'm not up in time to see the sun rise in the mornings.

On Wednesday we all piled into the car for a day long trip. First off we went to the Cornish Cyder Farm, and we were looking around we realised we'd actually been there before. So we bought a 5 litre flagon of Scrumpy Jack for Dene as his reward for dog sitting all week then headed off to Falmouth and picked up some proper Cornish pasties from Rowes pasty shop. We've had them from there before and they're really scrummy. After that we went up to Pendennis Point where there is an ice cream van. He does gorgeous Cornish ice cream with clotted cream on the top - very fattening but sod it, we were on holiday. After that we carried on down the coast and round the bottom and on to Land's End, where we ate our pasties overlooking the sea, near the famous sign. We were 507 miles from home at this point. We had a bit of a wander round and perused the shops, bought a couple of small gifts for people. Actually, mostly for me! LOL. We went back to the caravan park via St Ives, Hayle and Redruth. I know these place names aren't strange, but there are certainly some really weird place names in Cornwall. Let me see, there was Goonhavern, Sticker, Fiddlers Green, oh, and Cocks. I kid you not, there is a place in Cornwall called Cocks. I was in stitches.

On Thursday we went to Cornwall Gold and Treasure Park. This place has loads of little shops and a huge hall that sells everything to do with jewellery imaginable. Craig bought me a lovely gold and blue topaz bracelet and I bought him a bracelet too. He's wanted one for ages and there was 25% off so he got it. He also bought me a pearl that I chose myself - or rather I chose the oyster that it was in. I didn't have it set because there was nothing I really fancied. And they didn't have a drill anyway! Kate went to the bear factory and made herself a bear, which came with a birth certificate and everything. When we left there we had a bit of a drive around then went back to the van. We started packing up some of our stuff ready for in the morning. Kate and Matty stayed on site for something to eat, but Craig and I went to the Plume of Feathers, not far away, and had a lovely meal.

Friday was time to head for home. We left the park after loading the car up at about 8.15am and it took us till 2pm to get to Lynn's house. We had a pee break and cuppa to revive before setting out once more to come home. We dropped Matty off at his house near the Metro Centre and we were home for 8pm. It was a long day. Mollie was pleased to see us and so was Dene when he saw his cider! We were all starving so we sent out for Chinese to be delivered. Once I'd eaten I caught up on my emails and the message boards I visit and I've caught up with all my blog reading this morning, seeing as I was up at 6.30am.

Well that's it for now, hope I haven't bored you stupid. Should have probably warned you it's a long post. LOL. If you've made it all the way to the bottom you deserve a medal. There are more pics in my Webshots album if you're interested, link to the right.

Spotted this when I was playing catch-up

1. Explain what ended your last relationship? He was a lazy git!
2. When was the last time you shaved? Can't remember - trousers hide a multitude of sins.
3. What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.? It's only 7am.
4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Reading someone else's blog.

5. Are you any good at math? It depends on what it is, better at addition than subtraction.
6. Your prom night? Don't have proms in the UK.
7. Do you have any famous ancestors? Sir Walter Scott (apparently).
8. Have you had to take a loan out for school? Yes when I was in my 30's.

9. Do you know the words to the song on your myspace profile? Don't have a myspace profile.

10. What is your myspace profile? N/A
11. Last thing received in the mail? Bills.
12. How many different beverages have you had today? Nothing yet, only been up half an hour.
13. Do you ever leave messages on people’s answering machines? Not always.
14. Who did you lose your CONCERT virginity to? Lindisfarne at Newcastle City Hall.

15. What’s the most painful dental procedure you’ve had? Had wisdom teeth removed.
16. What is out your back door? Quite a large garden.
17. Any plans for Friday night? Last night I came home from Cornwall. Next Friday I'll be deciding what to take to a Get-together in Nuneaton.
18. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair? I don't go in the sea - people would mistake me for a whale.
19. Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different popcorns? No
20. Have you ever been to a planetarium? No.
21. Do you re-use towels after you shower? Yes.
22. Some things you are excited about? Getting my new car this afternoon and the Nuneaton GTG.
23. What is your favorite flavor of JELLO? Strawberry.
24. Describe your keychain(s)? A charity fake pound coin for shopping trollies, a cross stitched J that a friend made and three keys. Later on today the car key will be different and I'll have a new fob that has Jacqueline engraved on it. I wish someone would do one with Jacqui!

25. When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people? Probably when I was back at college doing presentations in front of the class.
26. What kind of winter coat do you own? A waterproof thing with a fleece lining.
27. What was the weather like on your graduation day? Don't have graduation days in the UK.
28. Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed? Open, the dog needs to be able to get in and out otherwise she'd scratch the door to bits.

We're ba-ack!

Surf's Up! A lonely surfer walks across the beach at sunset. There were

lots more surfers in the sea that didn't get caught in this picture.

With sunburn and lots of photos. Here's one to be going on with, but it's late and I need to get a good nights sleep ready to pick up my new car tomorrow afternoon. WOOHOO! I've uploaded all the photos from the digital camera and will put them on here and bring my blog up to date over the weekend. I have 3 or 4 proper films to get developed too, if I remember, and hopefully there'll be some decent ones in that lot that I can scan in and upload.