Collections

I like to hoard junk  collect things.

Its incurable. 

Earlier this week I decided to arrange my collection of sea glass, sea pottery, driftwood and other beachy bits and pieces into a kind of coastal vignette. I thought it was very chic and proudly showed it to "himself".
Do you know what he said?

"What am I supposed to be looking at?"

Men!

Here is another of my collections; my three pairs of premax scissors in their new home, a glass frog, which I found in a charity shop.

His quote on the day I brought it home "What on earth are you going to do with that horrible thing?" 
Men!
Again!
I'm not convinced about the bowl its sitting in, but it will do until I find a better one.

Spring, Stash and a winner

Spring appears to have sprung!
My miniature azalea has made itself all pretty,

and the beach is getting busy again (but we found a quiet corner yesterday).

The postman brought me my order from Karen at Wasatch Needlework. Raise the Roof's "Official Crazy Cat Lady"
Have they met me?
I love this design, it has come straight in at number one on the must-stitch list! The only thing I'm not totally sure about is it lists some threads on the back as CCT. I'm thinking that must be Crescent Colours?

And finally the Dandy Dreams chart. There was quite a lot of interest so I drew a name and the winner is Sally! If you could just let me have your address Sally, I'll pop it in the post to you.

A finish!

You might recall Karan very kindly sending me Dandy Dreams by Silver Creek Samplers as a gift. Well here it is finished.

It is stitched on Cashel in Confederate Grey, using the Anchor conversions of the recommended colours (except for the pink, which I brightened up a bit  because I thought the original was too browny).

I love the way the brown colour for the letters has come out the same colour that dandelions stain your hands!

The girls were very quick to point out the irony of me loving this design when I used to threaten them with  dire  and obscure punishments if they even thought about blowing dandelion clocks in the same postcode as the garden...
Anyway I thought I'd pay Karan's generosity forward, so if any of you fancy stitching this beauty just add a comment to this post (if there is more than one taker I'll pull a name out of a hat next weekend)

Hooking and snapping

I did it! I mastered the two colour thing :-

I know the colour combination is revolting, but I was using up oddments to practice. It is, however, official. There is now no stopping me. Blanket here I come.

I've bought this wool for the purpose. It's Stylecraft and the colours are, clockwise from the left :-Cream, Camel, Copper, Mocha, Khaki, and Sunshine.
I'm not 100% sure if the Sunshine isn't a little too strident. What do you think?


At the weekend I decided to practice my photography and try and get used to David's fancy-schmancy camera using the girls as victims models.

These were my favourite shots of each of them :-

Eloise, whose tights are meant to look like that apparently.

Naomi looking pensive (Damn! I was going for thoughtful)

And these are a couple of  more arty type ones :-Glitter!                                                                          

Lollipop!

and the winner is....

There were 20 entries for my blogoversary draw. I put the numbers in a random number generator (which I have tried and failed to copy and paste here), and the winning comment was no. 11, which was from Kate.

Thank you all for entering, I'll run another one when I hit 100 followers.

Kate, can you drop me an email with your postal address, don't hold your breath though, I'm planning on stitching you something as part of your prize so you won't get it right away.