My kids are NOT weird

I keep telling myself that. 
I came home a couple of days ago to find this giant game of Space Invaders all over my patio doors. 
How totally awesome is that? 
We won't mention the large lego model of a skull that appeared on the mantelpiece, or the bottle garden graveyard in the kitchen. No, we'll just pretend that is the perfectly rational behaviour of perfectly well adjusted teenagers...

I've been doing a bit of making myself. Some teeny tiny button bouquets (the buckets are thimbles). These now have chains added to make them into pendants.

The cuttlebug attacked last year's Christmas cards, and now I have some new ones for this year

And here we see Eloise in her new spats that she asked me to knit for her. I wouldn't have worn them over boots myself, seems to defeat the object. 
No, not weird at all!

Winner!

I numbered your comments and popped over to Random.org and the random number generator picked Julie.
Congratulations Julie! Keep an eye out for the postie :)

Apples and Pears and a Giveaway

So, the latest issue of Mollie Makes plopped through the letter box last week, and on the front cover were these wonderful cuddly toy fabric apples and pears, well I just had to make some of those so I had a rummage through my fabric scrap bag.
Result: Lots of greens - bright greens, muted greens, soft greens, vintage greens, more green fabric, in fact, than you could shake a stick at. Not so much with the reds. All my red scraps were Christmas fabrics. Now I'm definitely planning some lovely Christmas apples, but I needed Autumn apples right now!

Fast forward to Thursday. I'm passing my local knitting and fabric shop on the way home from work, and spot my friend inside, so I pop in for a natter, thinking I can pick up a fat quarter of a nice red print while I'm there.
Oh no, not so simple, instead I find myself buying an entire Jelly Roll. Honestly, I have no idea how these things happen...

Well, now that I've got my lovely Jelly Roll it'd be a pity to waste it right? Yes, that's what I thought, so this is what I've spent the last couple of days making.

Now, I'm not one of life's natural quilters, so I'm not showing you the reverse side, but I'm pretty chuffed with it.
Oh, and I've hit the hundred followers mark, so I'm thinking "Giveaway".
I'll make a cuddly pear (more green fabric than red, remember) for the winner, and perhaps include some other bits and pieces too.
No fancy hoops to jump through to enter, just join as a follower (or already be one) and comment on this post. I'll draw a winner next Sunday.

Definitely a bit on the autumn side

Last week it was summer, this week its not, almost like someone got up on Monday morning and remembered to turn the autumn switch on.

See, autumn :-

I've been busy doing autumnal things like pickling beetroot and making sloe gin and blackberry jam. One of the jars of sloe gin has had a slight leakage issue in the garage. Smells like a brewery in there!

Craftwise I've been doing a bit of knitting, here is a little jumper I knitted for a friends baby grandson, and making felt Christmassy things inspired by the book in my previous post. Pictures of those to follow.
Up to 98 followers now, I feel a bit of a giveaway coming on when I reach 100...

A stash happy post

I haven't done too much stitching the last few weeks, in fact I was beginning to think about filing a missing persons report for my mojo, but my inner squirrel has been merrily aquiring stash ready for the winter, and every post seems to bring more exciting goodies.

Exciting postal delivery #1
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to win a gift certifciate on Missy's blog. The certificate was for Down Sunshine Lane, a shop I'd never used before, but will definitely be using again, they have a great range of stock, and fast and friendly service. Here are some of the goodies I got :-
Live Laugh Love by La D Da. I'm not normally a huge fan of quaker style designs, but this one definitely called to me.
A huge bundle of threads, the ones pulled to the left are for the La D Da.
And a couple of round finishing forms. I Haven't ever tried these before but I figure it's got to be easier/neater than messing around with cardboard circles, and they will come in handy with...

Exciting postal delivery #2
The 2011 JCS Ornament Edition. The only problem is deciding which ones to stitch first. Its nearly October already you know.
And on the subject of stitching for Christmas...
Exciting postal delivery #3

This wonderful book

If anyone heard me squealing out loud with delight recently, this book is entirely the reason why.

Here are just a couple of my favourite projects from it:

Another Haitus

This one at the hands of TalkTalk, who apparently don't ListenListen. As you may know, my mother in law has been staying with us for a while as she was between houses, having moved out of her old house before her new flat was available. Anyway a couple of weeks ago she contacted TalkTalk to disconnect her old phone and set up a new line in the new flat. Obviously she called from our house and therefore from our number. Next morning I get up - no internet, half an hour later we realise no phone either, so we ring TalkTalk from a mobile.
Yes, you've guessed it, at some point they must have asked MIL what number she was calling from and she'd quoted ours so; on the authority of someone whose account wasn't registered at our address, and whose account was for a totally different phone number and area code, and who doesn't even share our surname; they disconnected our phone!

We were on the phone to them for nearly two $*&#! hours. The conversation went something like this:-
Them: How can we help?
Us: Our phone's been disconnected
Them: You asked us to disconnect it
Us: No we didn't, you've made a mistake. Can you reconnect us?
Them: You need to order a new line, it will take 7-10 days
Us: We don't want a new line, we want our line back
Them: Oh I can't do that, that number is no longer available. You will need a new number. I'll transfer you to Dept X.
several minutes of annoying music
Them: How can we help?
Us: Our phone's been disconnected
Them: You asked us to disconnect it
Us: No we didn't, you've made a mistake. Can you reconnect us?
Them: You need to order a new line, it will take 7-10 days
Us: We don't want a new line, we want our line back
Them: Oh I can't do that, that number is no longer available. You will need a new number. I'll transfer you to Dept Y.
several minutes of annoying music
Them: How can we help?
Us: Our phone's been disconnected
Them: You asked us to disconnect it
Us: No we didn't, you've made a mistake. Can you reconnect us?
Them: You need to order a new line, it will take 7-10 days
Us: We don't want a new line, we want our line back
Them: Oh I can't do that, that number is no longer available. You will need a new number. I'll transfer you to Dept Z.
several minutes of annoying music
and so on and on and on. They were adamant it was impossible to reconnect us to our existing number, it was "gone" and couldn't be retrieved. We were not very happy as you can imagine. At one point I actually threw the mobile across the room (at a pile of fluffy cushions, I'm not completely barking mad).
Anyway to cut a long story short, we are now with Orange.  They got us reconnected, got us our old number back (perfectly possible, you just have to contact BT, I suspect talkTalk employees are not permitted to say anything to you which would send you to a competitor), they did it quicly, easily and efficiently, and we even got faster broadband into the bargain. Orange are lovely. Yay Orange.

Anyway having been offline for a while I've got hopelessly behind on blog reading so please don't think I've been ignoring you.

On a stitching note, last Sunday was reveal day for the Monthly Challenge at Needlcraft Haven. We stitched this pretty little design of a bluebird with cherries from Le Chalet Des Perelles. Mine is stitched in Anchor threads on a hand dyed fabric from The Crafty Kitten, with a fairly boring sort of a finish as a little stuffed ornament. The album went up a bit late (see paragraph 1 above), but it is available here.

Back to work on Monday, here's hoping Autumn will be a bit less eventful than summer turned out to be.

Long time no blog...

Did you miss me? No, thought not. The summer seems to have mostly escaped me, I'm not sure where it went.

Since I last posted I've been busy dealing with various family issues that I won't bore you with, we've been away on holiday, had our silver wedding anniversary, and I've just not found the time to blog, so this is a bit of a a catch up post.

Lets start with the holiday. We went to the Lake District and stayed near Windermere.

The scenery was stunning and I could post pictures for hours, but I'll stick to just a couple. This is is Blea Tarn.

And here we see the mist rolling atmospherically over the hills (ie the weather was a bit iffy at times).

This is part of a large standing stone circle that dates back to Druidic times.

On a crafty note, when I got home from holiday I found this stunning pillow waiting for me as an exchange gift from Donna (no blog that I am aware of). It is completely gorgeous and almost all stitched over 1.

And here is a little project I made following a tutorial I found here via The Graphics Fairy. One slightly boring old plant pot transformed; by the miracle of a squirt of mod podge and a French typography image from The Graphics Fairy; into a little bit of vintage chic.