And therefore a round up of the wips that a currently sitting out there that may need daylight to help me out (because try as you might, daylight simulation bulbs are never the same really are they?)

Anyway, I’ve been dabbling recently with the Anchor kit for “Queen Nefertiti”, and not done too badly, but gotten a bit bored. Searching through my WIPs it seems I got a little bit further with the equivalent for “King Tut” before abandoning, so I’ll have to finish that at some point.

I did a status review of “The quiltmaker“(lots of dark blue, and black, and in looking only to remember why I hadn’t completed it…..quick drop into www.sewandso.co.uk to order some DMC (cos the local shops dont stock), and onto the next pattern.

Celtic Christmas is almost done, but still needs some work, especially around the beading.

Have decided to work on the Mary Hickmott pattern “Pride of the peacocks” which is coming along nicely.  Somewhere (I dont know where!) is the “Beautiful Balloons” which is nearly done too.  Is that not enough?

well I’ve just looked at the date, and it seems I’ve not been posting here a lot since the new year. Other things have been occupying my time that has meant that I have had little interest or energy in sewing, photography, cooking or blogging! In fact I seem to have spent the last 3 weeks surviving on adrenalin and sugar, and all else has suffered. Hopefully things will have turned the corner and will change.

The dark nights have prevented me from doing much photography, but I have tried to keep my hand in on my cross stitch. I spent several weeks working on Lavender & Laces’s “Celtic Christmas”, then got bogged down in doing the beading, so left that to one side. I’ve gone back to L&L’s “The Quiltmaker” which seems to be coming along quite nicely but I have the sneaking suspicion that I left it down before for a reason (I usually leave WIPs because I’ve stitched something wrong), and I’m going to put in a lot more energy and find I’m going to have to unstitch a large swatch of effort.

I still have “Beautiful Balloons” as an item to finish, but that’s on the back burner for the momen.

I did finish off a quick item off “Tantes Zolder, which gave me a break from working on one of the bigger projects. I must get around to making these items up, I just dont want to get the sewing machine out for just one or two small items. I have plenty of Lavender that will be good for lavender bags, and I also have some Rosemary, which should also be good for lining linen closets with to fragrance my bedlinen with

me a bad blogger.

I’ve been busy doing other things the last few weeks, which has resulted in me not feeling in the mood to post here. I’ve still been doing some stitching, when I get some time to put my feet up, and have been mainly working on the L&L “Celtic Christmas”. Whilst the kit does include the Metallic Blending filament, I decided not to use it as I hate working with it. I decided to use some left over gold DMC, but ran out half way through. Didn’t want to send off over the internet for just 1 or 2 skeins (and certainly didn’t want to spend money doing a full Stash shop), so went looking in town. Could *not* find anywhere that stocked DMC, but the local House of Frasier does have a limited Haberdashery and they did have Anchor, with a conversion chart nearby. You cant tell the difference in these 2 particular shades.

It does worry me to a certain extent about how badly Stitchers are served by Bricks and Mortar shops. There are none I know of dedicated to Sewing in the city centre, and there are only small concessions in one or two of the bigger department stores. Since we lost our Beatties, I think we’re down to HoF only. I believe there are other shops dotted in the suburbs, but that means me traveling for an hour or more to pick up one or two skiens that I could spend minutes getting off the internet. Shop owners would say “we’re being forced out by the internet shops, so it’s no longer viable to exist” (a certain amount of this is true I have no doubt – it must be a tough business to keep afloat), but likewise stitchers could say “we only buy on the internet because we cant find a local shop to service our needs”.