Just a common-or-garden post

Truth be told, I'm in a bit of a stitchy slump at the moment, so I've no stitching to show. I did spend all day yesterday making Naomi's costume for Carnival, but more of that next week.

Anyway, Hazel asked for a better view of the "seaside garden", so I thought I'd give you a bit of a virtual tour.
If you imagine the plot our house is on as a rough square, with the point towards you, and the house crosswise towards the middle, you can visualise that as well as a front and a back garden we have two "side" gardens, which are more or less triangular. The one to the left of the house has the greenhouse and utility area, the "seaside garden" and decking, and the veg patch.

Moving around, here are a couple of pics of the back garden

The back garden and one edge of the right hand side one are against the field and are bordered by this traditional cornish wall. In more romantic moments I think of this as my "wild garden", or "A rather prettyish kind of a wilderness" as in Pride and Prejudice, but more realistically its just the area we haven't done much with yet.

No pictures of the last segment as it is just a bit of rough lawn/games area for the girls. Sometimes we stretch a net over it, so I could be pretentious and call it the badminton court, but that would be a total lie ;D.

Its Carnival Time!

Yes, Carnival season is here again, and last night was St Breward. Last year at St Breward it rained torrentially, this year was much nicer, and we were able to take the roof off the car

The girls took two second prizes, which was nice as it will be their last carnival as Royalty, Eloise officially "retires" as Queen in a fortnight when the 2009/10 Queen takes over. (Sorry this pic is a bit dark)
I'm looking forward to a year off from being "Queen Mother" though we will no doubt do something else for this year's Carnival.

And so she doesn't feel left out, here is Naomi last night (looking every inch the Scary Emo Kid) Finally I've been having a little play with some driftwood and shells. Naomi calls them "Mermaid's Gardens"

Pictures at an Exhibition

Here is a picture of the exhibition/sale yesterday. As you can see its a lovely hall. It went quite well, so we will probably do another before the end of summer.

Yesterday was reveal day for the Monthly Challenge. This month we all stitched Flowers of Olde by With my Needle. This is my version, the others are in the album here.

I played around with the design of the central flower on mine and changed the colours (I used GAST in Mountain Mist, Blueberry, SweetPea and Berry Cobbler, with a little DMC ecru) so it matched a length of William Morris print Liberty cotton I had, and made it up into a small project bag.

Jayne, the purple podded pea seed is from Mr Fothergills, do you want me to send you some?

Sorry I've been quiet

Not much stitching to show I'm afraid, everything I'm working on is hush hush at the moment and I've been spending quite a bit of time in the garden with all the lovely weather we've been having. This is my bit of a veg garden:-

The peas are a purple flowered/podded variety called Blauwschokker, and I think its pretty enough to grow even if you didn't get peas off it. The second picture is a little corner of my "seaside garden"

Got a busy weekend coming up, we've booked a hall in Tintagel and are having an exhibition/sale of my craftwork and jewellry, and David's photos on Sunday, so I'm off now to glue more bits of seaglass and driftwood to things (hopefully not my fingers), and make up some bags.

The strangest things grow in my garden!

Take this basket for example, what I planted was a beautiful dianthus and look what is growing instead:-

Cattus maleficus-quietus

Eagle-eyed readers will spot the remnants of my poor dianthus sticking out of the side!

Meanwhile, down the side of the shed is another thing I know I never planted.
I think its an early purple orchid, its definitely some kind of wild orchid anyway.

Go on, call it a weed, I dare you!

And now for something completely different...

This is a small panel I stitched and embroidered on canvas, using various threads, organza, ribbons, lace and beads, and incorporating pebbles and shells from the local beach.

I've done a few of these, but they are hard to photograph because of the three dimensional nature of the embroidery.

Oh, and check out Yuko's wonderful blog, where she is offering a giveaway of two gorgeous pinkeeps.

Merry May part 2 and Monthly challenge

You can stop nagging now ;D, here is my 2nd May ornament! This one is from the JCS 2007 Ornament Issue, and is by The Sunflower Seed. I fell in love with this the minute I saw it, and I'm really happy with how its come out, though its a tad larger than I'd normally do for an ornament.

Next up is the Monthly Challenge. This month the challenge was to stitch a biscornu. Regular readers will know I'm a sucker for biscornus (biscorni?) so I did 2, the first is from "les chroniques de frimousse", and the second is from The Victoria Sampler (join Thea's Yahoo group to access the free chart). The other finishes are in the album, and there are some beauties!