Happy New Year

Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year

This and that and Christmas ;)

I saw the recipe for these "French Breakfast Puffs" on Paulette's blog, and decided they had to be tried, so Naomi baked them yesterday morning. They were gooood, although she pronounced them fiddly to make. That might be because she isn't used to American recipes with cup measures though.

A few of you asked about the design of the stag ornaments I showed you in my last post. Its a part of a design of my own based on the carol "The Holly and The Ivy", the chorus goes:-

O the rising of the sun

And the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ, Sweet singing of the choir

I didn't get it finished in time to release for this Christmas but watch this space ;D

Speaking of designs, I hope this works, it's just a little Christmas flower from me to you, Hopefully you can right-click and save itI'll leave you with a picture of the Nativity Scene by my front door, and my best wishes for a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all

Ornaments

Its reveal day for the Stitch and Stash Ornament Exchange. Here is the gorgeous ornament I got from Julie. Its a Cherished Stitches design and I love it. Julie says her husband wanted to keep it, I'm so glad she talked him out of it! It is three sided, Julie has pictures of the other sides on her blog and they are all equally stunning.

I also recieved this beauty from Valerie in the TGOSM exchange. Aren't those little squirrels just the most adorable little things.

These are the two ornaments I sent out. As you can see they are both the same design, but done in slightly different colours on different count fabrics. They are both backed with the rather fabulous fabric they're photographed on.

As it happens one went to Julie (I'm not sure if the exchange was designed that way or if it was a coincidence). I haven't heard that the other hasreached its destination yet (it had a bit further to travel), so I'm not saying who it was for.

Flowers

Regular readers will know that our local florist holds a Christmas flower arranging evening each year which I like to go to, and this year was no exception. These are the pretties we made this year:-
a star shaped arrangement and a pair of "bridged" arrangements.
I've got pictures of two beautiful exchange ornaments I've recieved to show, but it isn't reveal day till next week for one of the exchanges, so I'll save those till I can post them all.

DIY Door Wreath

I got the idea for this from a post a few months back on Heidi's blog, where she had made a lovely fabric wreath.

There are two parts to making this:

1) the indoor part

Get a pile of 5" squares of Christmas fabric, fold in half wrong sides together, sew along the long edge and one short edge, & turn right sides out.

Stuff them with polyester fibrefill, turn in the open edge and stitch closed to make little pillows. I made about 16 because that was when I ran out of fibrefill.

2) the outdoor part (because its messy)

Take a bag of straw , a wire wreath ring and a bundle of raffia.

Take handfuls of the straw, and working round the wreath base bind them in place with the raffia.

Make a loop of raffia at the top for hanging.

Don't worry about any long endy bits. Rustic is good.

Now take your little pillows and tie them tightly to the wreath using short lengths of raffia and tying little bows.

Finally add some little wired baubles to finish off and hang on your front door.

Ta da!

(Note to self: Front Door needs painting)

This and that

Its reveal day for The Monthly Challenge at the Stitch and Stash forum. This month we all stitched "Peace" by Elizabeth's Designs. Here is mine. I Christmassed the colours up a bit from the original and changed the flowers to snowflakes. The other finishes are in the album here.

Other than that I've finished and posted two ornaments for exchanges, that I can't show you yet, and recieved an absolutely exquisite one, that I also can't show you yet though I'm itching to.

What I can show you is this. They held a quiz night last week at the girls' school to raise money for prom (when did Eloise get old enough to be going to prom next year???) and "Team Wilkins" won!

By the way, my living room wall isn't really "inside of a submarine grey" its a nice soft antique sage colour, but it couldn't compete with the blinding glare from the trophy ;D

Is there a teenager in the house?

In point of fact there are now TWO
(be afraid, be very afraid),
because Naomi is 13 today.....
Yes, my baby is all grown up
It only seems yesterday when she looked like this!
A good post day too. I won a door prize from Arachne's Silken Web at the Online Needlwork Show, and it came today. Isn't it lovely? Sadly I fear there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of this one being done by Christmas...

I'm weak!

What can I say? Saw it, wanted it, bought it!
This is J'arrive from Tournicoton (available in the UK from HollieStitch) isn't it just gorgeous?
What do you think my chances are of having it done for Christmas?

Two scary things and a long awaited finish

Looking cute for Halloween is seriously uncool when you are 15 and nearly 13, so here are the two undead creatures that manifested themselves in our house last night.

I'm lucky I survived the night with my brains uneaten!



A couple of weeks ago Heidi posted a picture of a cushion she'd just made from something she'd stitched years before, and suggested we hunt out something similarly old and finish it.

Well I immediately thought of a piece from an old TGOSM that was languishing in the bottom of my stitching basket, and on Friday I dug it out.
At this point you need to take a pause and fully understand the scope of that statement. This was not merely a case of looking underneath a couple of charts, this was a major logistical excercise involving the painstaking movement of multiple teetering piles of magzines, fabrics, wool, patterns and books, the temporary loss of the study carpet, and a lot of very pithy words. Anyway, I got there in the end, and I now have a lovely new knitting bag to show for it.

Insert Happy Dance here ;D

Go on, find something old and finish it, you know you want to....

Spooky, piratey, crafty fun

Is "piratey" a word? It is now!

I was expecting to be doing something else today (long story) but it got postponed, and I found myself at a loose end. I'd seen instructions on the web for making skull beads from polymer clay, so a Mum and daughters craft afternoon seemed called for.


Spooky little crania duly modelled, cooked and painted, and strung into very piratey/emo bracelets. Aren't they the cutest most adorable little skullies you've ever seen?

Yet more October ornaments

Two this time, the first is the Monthly Challenge from the Jayne's Attic Forum (Gaynor, Jayne's shop has closed, but the forum is still active here). This month we chose a complimentary design from The Drawn Thread. I changed mine slightly from the original to "anglicise" my birdies a little bit, so I've got two robins, a blackbird, a wood pigeon and a bluetit, (but not a partridge because its not a pear tree). It doesn't show too well in the photo but the fabric is a remnant from a grey and white hand dye with an irridescent finish. I think it came from Silkweaver in the first place.

When I came to finishing this one every trimming I put on it looked top heavy and overdone, so I ended up just pinning a very plain organza bow to the bottom.

The other finishes are in the album here

The second one is a design from Heidi's blog. The only change I made to this one was to put the pudding onto a blue plate. I wanted a very naive, primitive finish on this so I made it up as a little cushion, then very roughly buttonhole stitched the edges and added some little buttons.

Off now to see if I can squeeze in another ornie by the end of the month!

Another October Ornament

...for the Monthly Ornament SAL at Jaynes Attic. This one is a complimentary design by Midnight Stitching.
I seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment, so I'm making the most of it, you never know how long it might last!

A little gift

I made this small gift for one of the teachers at school, who has just had a baby girl. No prizes for guessing baby's name ;)


The fabric it is lying on is what I used to back it.

Fudge and Buttons

Sounds like a bad children's cartoon show doesn't it?
This is the fudge. Naomi has been nagging me for ages to teach her how to make it and here is her first batch.

And the buttons? We were out and about on Saturday and I saw some wonderful heart shaped button ornaments in a shop. They wanted silly money for them, and I thought to myself "I could do that", so I came home and did...

I'll have to make some red and green ones at Christmas.

October Ornie already

Speedy or what? This one is by Miss Crescent's Crowne from this year's JCS Ornament Edition, though I changed the colours to use what I had in the house.

I finished this one a little differently to my usual style. I padded the front, which I don't normally do (Shh, don't tell anyone, but it was to disguise the rather uneven job I made of cutting out my mountboard ovals), and sandwiched some pretty dark red and silver ric rac between the two sides when I stitched them together, and overall I'm quite pleased with the result so I might do it that way again (plus it avoided the use of glue which is always a bonus)

Suddenly feels like Autumn

There is a crispness in the air and the leaves are starting to turn.
Here are a few of the last summer flowers arranged in some of my collection of jugs on the kitchen windowsill.

Phew, that was close...

...just managed to finish my September Ornament for the Stitch and Stash SAL in time this month. This one is by The Sunflower Seed, from the 2008 JCS Ornament edition.
I changed the colours round a bit. The original had gold metallic splashes coming from the sea, which didn't seem right to me, so I did mine in silver, and once I'd done that the red didn't really work for the border so I switched it for the blue green.
I did the star one from the same series a few months back (here) so I finished this one the same way, and even though they are totally different colours, I think they go quite well together.
Ah well, off to find one to do for October now (or more than one, I really need to catch up on this)

Look who has come to stay...

If you read Julie's blog, you will know that Julie often knits bunnies, and generously sends them as gifts to people. Well, a while ago Julie made a present of a boy bunny named Seymour to Barb (no blog), and more recently, on hearing that Seymour lacked female company, provided him with a bride of the more matronly persuasion, arguing that he wasn't ready for a young and trendy companion. Anyway, I joked with Julie about what a young and trendy knitted bunny might look like, and as of today I have found out.
Meet Miss Blossom Bunny, who is as young and trendy as they come, and, dare I say it, even a teensy bit emo.
Check out her earring and necklace, and her little shoulder bag (because every hip young bunny needs somewhere to keep those essentials like lippy, mobile & mp3). Her short skirt over black leggings look is very up-to-the-minute don't you think.
As you can see she has already discovered the disco ball (left over from Naomi's float when she was Fairy Queen) and is demanding that we throw a party ;D
Thank you Julie, she's "kewl".

Eventful Day!!!

So, today was the Village Football Club's annual "Funday Sunday", which comprises craft stalls, demonstrations, games, bbq, beer tent, entertainment and demonstrations in the village playing fields. Anyway we borrowed our neighbours' gazebo and went down and set up a stall with David's photos and my jewellery, including this new range of Pride and Prejudice jewellery

It was a beautiful day, as you can see from this general scene, taken from the front of our stall and looking across the field:-

Around 1pm we had a flyover from a Royal navy Sea King helicopter, here you see it coming in over the church:-
and here it is hovering overhead:- and about 15 seconds after I took this picture the downdraft caught our (borowed) gazebo, lifted it up, poles and all, ripped it clean off the guy ropes (which remained in the ground throughout) and carried it about 20 yards up the field, to the Slate Quarry truck and fire engine you can see in the first picture; assorted postcards, photos and earrings flying everywhere; before David and I, the entire football team and half the fire crew managed to catch up with it and wrestle the thing to the ground!!!

Poor gazebo is quite wrecked. Fortunately, we managed to pick everything else up and our neighbours are very nice people and were quite understanding about it. So that was my Sunday. How was yours?

A day out

Today was the last day of the Summer holidays (for me anyway, David and the girls don't go back until next week), so we had a day out and visited Prideaux Place near Padstow. I think I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves, they show the view across the deer park towards Rock, (the deer were there when we arrived, but had run off before I took the picture), the house and the formal garden. Enjoy!

Still here...

...just been busy. It was the Village Show last weekend, and as I'm secretary the couple of weeks leading up to it tend to be pretty hectic, with the last couple of days seeing me descend into panic mode trying to get everything ready. Anyway it all went well and we had over 650 entries in the end. I forgot to take the camera down so I haven't got any photos of the show itself, (though there are some nice ones on the village website here) but fret not Dear Readers, I took some pictures of the girls' entries to bore you rigid with when we got home:-

First is Eloise's "Floral arrangement using 1 flower & foliage" for which she won a cup,

Next Naomi's first prize "Floral arrangement in an unusual container", and her 1 flower arrangement.

Naomi also won the cup for best photo by a child (again!) with this picture of a hibiscus. She got a first for her bluberry and white chocolate cheesecake too, but we ate it before I got a picture ;D

Oh and I got Best in Show Handicraft for one of my embroidered seashell pictures

Tintagel Carnival...

...last Saturday and the girls and some of their friends went as "The Belles of St Trinians".

Guess who went as the Emo kid? Check out the black lipstick...

Didn't manage to get a nice shot of Eloise unfortunately.

An Exchange and a Funky new haircut

Look at this! Isn't it lovely? I recieved it in an exchange from Robbin (no blog). I love this box and look how well the scissor fob matches my favourite Premax scissors! Sorry about the reflections- glass table!


And a funky new haircut? No, not me, here is Naomi, with her new "Alice Cullen" inspired hairdo. Wow! Look who grew up

Carnival!!!

Well, it was misty and damp but it was still great fun. Naomi entered as a Geisha Girl. Eagle eyed viewers will spot Ian McNiece (alias Bert the Plumber from Doc Martin, who crowned the Royalty, and presented prizes) in the background of the shot.

(Smart Mum, coming up with a costume that included an umbrella LOL)

And here she is recieving first prize for "Walkers under 16" from the Fairy Queen