Let The People Choose - Penguins

Let The People Choose is a SAL organised by Jo of Serendipitous Stitching, with a different theme each month. This month it's penguins! It can't have escaped your notice that I am fond of penguins. I have a lot of penguin related crafting to show.
Here we go:-

This New Year Penguin is a free design from Aliolka

I made this cuddly felt penguin from a kit from House of Zandra

Here is a silk scarf I block printed

and a little knitted penguin - pattern in 20 to Knit - Tiny Christmas Toys

bought the whole book for that pattern

A penguin Christmas Ornament (design by Cthulu Crochet)

A penguin in a Jayne Cobb hat!

Penguin walks down the street in that hat, you know he's not afraid of anything.

and this is a mixed stitch penguin sampler I designed for Stitch Magazine, many years ago.

And finally, not penguin related, but here is the February page from the subversive calendar the girls designed for me

IHSW January

I'm going to try and do an IHSW post every month this year. Try. No promises, especially in the summer when I work pretty much all weekends. The reason I want to try and keep up with it is to keep me motivated with the "Alice" SAL being run in CrossStitcher Magazine.
The first installment was the individual motif frames and the border. The rest of the year will be a motif a month to drop into them.
Already behind as I've only done about a quarter of the frames/border motifs and the next magazine arrived today, but here is my progress so far.

Wish me luck!

Gifted Gorgeousness January 2020

Welcome to my January 20220 Gifted Gorgeousness Post. If you don't already know, Gifted Gorgeousness is a SAL devised by Jo, which allows us to show off pretty much anything that we can describe in a sentence using the words gift and craft. For full details see Jo's blog here.

Kicking off the Gifted Gorgeousness Year is always the easy post because of  Christmas. I already posted about all the wonderful craft related gifts I received in my Happy New Year post, so this post will be about various things that I made for other people.

Lets see... I knitted the girls a hat each. Pattern is "Head Sock" from The Purl Bug. Here is Eloise wearing hers on Christmas Day at the beach. 

I forgot to get a picture of Naomi's hat, but here she is wearing a little devore velvet slip dress I made her. 

The pattern is New Look 6347. Double GG points on this project as I was gifted the fabric by Minerva

I also made them a silver necklace each, (it's just the lighting that makes them look gold)

I made some of these star shaped fabric mats in a variety of colours and patterns for a few of my friends. 

And finally, a little Year of the Rat ornament I made Naomi for her Chinese Zodiac collection

First Finish of 2020

My Temperature SAL

Design by Hetti of Stitches in Blue

Stitched on Crafty Kitten 32 count Oatmeal Murano

using DMC and Finca variegated threads

Happy New Year

A Very Happy and Healthy New Year to you all.

I'd like to share just a few of the Christmas gifts I received this year.

Thank you to Barb for the lovely felted robin and holly wreath, to Karan for the pretty violet hand dyed evenweave, and to Clare for the Christmas print fabric and DMC threads.

Thank you to Julie for the very useful folding mat/bag, and to Robbin for the gorgeous hand-loomed scarf and handy travelling scissors.
And here are just a couple of the things I got from my girls

My Little Cthulhu!!!!!! Isn't he adorable? Look at his little tentacles!
They also made me a calendar. This is the cover.

You might be forgiven for thinking it was both up-lifting and life-affirming.
Until you open it and see January

I'll share the other months throughout the year.
And finally, my round up of 2019. The final total was 73 finishes, 41 books read, and 12 pairs of shoes bought, and the nearest guess was Clare with 74, 47 and 11. I'll get some sort of little prize in the post to you in the next few weeks Clare.
I've reset the counter, so if anyone wants to try and guess at the 2020 total just pop your answer in a comment on this post.

December's Gifted Gorgeousness

Here it is, the last GG post of the year (for more details about the GG blog hop please see Jo's blog)
I've just taken part in the annual Needlecraft Haven Ornament Exchange, which I'm pretty sure counts as Double GG (sounds like a bra size!)
Here is the wonderful ornament and other goodies that I received from Clare

And here is the ornament I sent to Mary

Design from this year's JCS Ornaments Issue. The red and lime are the new DMC Etoile threads. It's the first time I've used them. I wasn't sure at first as they looked as though they wouldn't give very good coverage, but actually they've worked really well and the glimmer from them is lovely and subtle.

Online Advent Calendar Blog Hop Day 1

Hello and welcome to Day 1 of this year's Advent Calendar Blog Hop. For the list of participating blogs please see the Advent Calendar page on Jo's blog.

I thought you might like to see this embroidery that I finished a couple of days ago. The design came as a printed outline on fabric from Anne Brooke (H-Anne Made) here. Such a pretty design and  I love that you can use your own threads and stitches and make it completely unique to you. As you can see I made mine look like a Winter Robin and it's very different from the one on Anne's website

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For the second part of the Advent Blog Hop Jo has asked us to talk about our favourite Christmas film. Well I don't know about anyone else but Christmas doesn't start properly in our house until we've sat down with some Gluhwein and watched Love Actually.
There are so many priceless moments in that film that it is hard to choose a favourite to share with you, but here is Billy Mack singing "Christmas Is All Around"

So if you really love Christmas, come on and let it snow