Draw Results and a Challenge Revealed

Thankyou for your blogoversary wishes. Eloise did the honours for me, and here you see her drawing a name from the "Teacup of Destiny".

And the winner is .......

Sally

I'll make a start on a little something for you soon Sally.

Note: the hand with the psychedelic nail polish is Eloise's not mine ;D

Its reveal day for the February Challenge on the Stitch and Stash forum. This month we stitched a Valentine design from Primitive Betty's . I stitched mine in Weeks Onyx and Lancaster Red, with metallic gold for the key motif, using a scrap of orphan linen and made it up into a little hanging pillow trimmed with a ribbon bow and a key charm. The album with the other finishes can be found here and is well worth a look.

Blogoversary Draw

Yes, little bloggie will be three tomorrow.

In honour of this momentous occassion, I am holding a draw.
Leave a comment on this post before midnight on Friday and I'll draw a name on Saturday and stitch a little something for the winner. Feel free to spread the word on your own blogs.

Good Luck!

Stash and Sh*te

We've had the Dung-Runners here today. I'd never heard of this before we moved here, but the Young Farmers bag up all the sh*te one morning, and then sell it door to door for charity, so The Cancer Research Fund now have some of my cash and I have a large sack of something looooovely to dig into my vegetable patch. I won't share a pic with you ;D

My other shopping this week is much more photogenic. I got a parcel from one of my favourite eBay sellers with beautiful hand-dyed linen, threads and other textile goodness. I feel one of my sea embroideries coming on...

Hearts and shells

Happy Valentines day!

Its been (relatively) warm and sunny here today so in between football watching we've been beachcombing at Port Gaverne. Quite a good haul of shells, driftwood, sea glass and sea pottery, and some long spirals of what I suspect are actually rusty bedsprings, but which look very artistic and will no doubt be converted into something interesting at some indeterminate point in the future. Didn't take the camera today, but here is a link to some of David's shots of Port Gaverne

February Ornament

Here is my February ornament for the Montly Ornament SAL. This one is a Birds of a Feather design from an old (2000) JCS Ornament issue. Well its based on it anyway, I missed off the border and all the little metallic gold confetti stitches that were scattered all over it, and I changed the text from green to red.

Its stitched in Rayon threads, which, in hindsight, was a mistake on 40ct fabric, but we live and learn...

Birds, and killing two with one stone...

Yesterday I took part in the RSPB's Birdwatch. My tally of birds included pied wagtails, a song thrush,bluetits,robins, and blackbirds. There were some starlings too, but they're horrible noisy greedy things so I'm not letting them on my blog! We sometimes get chaffinches, goldfinches and wrens too, but not yesterday.

As for killing two birds with one stone, don't panic my feathered friends are safe (even t

he starlings!). Its reveal da

y for the

Stitch and Stash Monthly

Challenge, for which I stitched these two birds - design adapted

from "Red Birds for Peace" by Blue Ribbon Designs - and I'm calling it my January

Ornament SAL as well.

And finally:

Its a hard life being a cat...

If the snow has gone it must be spring....

...at least the sun is shining, I can see the starts of daffodils poking through, and the frogs have started spawning. The pond only thawed out on Friday and there is a big mound of spawn in the middle of it already. Randy little buggers!

A couple of weeks back Polly posted a picture on her blog of some scarves she'd knitted using Rico's Pompon yarn, and it inspired me to grab the ball I'd bought out of curiosity and try knitting a scarf from it.

It was such fun to knit, and the resulting scarf was so soft and cosy, that I promptly went out and bought another ball in a different colour, and I am LOVING this new one. I can see me knitting a few of these as the girls have their eyes on them too.

Speaking of the girls we bought the fabric for Eloise's prom dress yesterday. How old does that make me feel? Eloise has her prom this year! Anyway its a kind of peacock blue colour ~ think Anchor 170, and we are planning to overlay the skirt with black chiffon and trim it with jet Swarowskis. Watch this space as they say.