Pre Christmas update.

Despite not posting for nearly a fortnight I have been stitching. I've now finished ten of the Festive Fifteen squares. Here they all are.

I've made a start on one of the last five squares. There seems to be less work on these so I'm hoping for a Christmas Eve finish, fingers crossed.

Be Jolly By Golly arrived back from the framers.

On Saturday morning we woke up to 17cm of snow! This is the photographic proof.

 As a result of this snow fall I was prompted to finish Icy Hill by Just Nan. I started and finished the stitching on this one in the first week of January, the last time we had any significant snow.  I finished it as a bell pull. The pull ware is made by Framecraft. This picture is not too good but it gives you an idea.

This week I'm stitching White Nights during the day and carrying on with Christmas stitching in the evening, but I'll say more about the later, after the weekend.

Happy stitching!

Totally Useless SAL, some decent photos and maths!

Firstly here is my Totally Useless SAL photo for this month. For some reason standing it upside down makes it look less full than it actually is.


My camera came back from repair today, hooray! No more out of focus phone photos. This camera is able to take better close up shots than my previous one so there will be some experimenting along the way. If I manage to take photos half as good as Jane at Miss Jane's Stitching I will be happy.

So these are two in focus shots of my recent finishes.




So far this week progress on White Nights has been slow. At this rate it is going to take a week for each of the buildings in part 5. There are eight of them. This means that I might get on to part 6 by September if I stick to doing White Nights one week a month. So if each subsequent part takes half a year to complete and there are six part left, that will be three years. So estimated completion date 2013. Now that is scarey. Having depressed myself I had better get back to it, one more evening to go. Let's hope I finish the building or I might have to adjust my calculations.

Maybe it's best not to do the maths in the first place.

Happy stitching

Another finish!

I'm pleased to report another finish. The final stitch was put into Icy Hill on Saturday afternoon. However, the camera is still not back so here is yet another really bad phone photo.


This would not have been a finish last week if were not for the fact that school was closed, three extra stitching days was a bonus!

I stuck to my New Year plans and also stitched my Timeless Elegance Christmas decoration on Saturday. I had done quite a bit when I realised that I had made a major counting error. Despite best efforts at fixing it I ended frogging the whole of the dark blue border, some of which was done before Christmas, this almost hit the UFO pile I can tell you.


I'm putting this down to the frogs that normally live in my pond being homeless as a result of the two to three inches of ice that are on its surface. Anyway I managed to stitch to beyond where the frogs arrived.

Sunday really was a blue day. I did a bit on Mary Wigham, finishing two complete motifs. By this time I was fed up with her so went back to the Christmas decoration. I then got fed up of stitching in blue so started another ornament. I have worked out that Mary Wigham should take about nine more days to complete and then I am left with the problem of what to do with her. I do not want to get her framed as this will be very expensive as a result of the size. I might have enough fabric to handkerchief hem it. Those of you who have followed my progress on Mary from the start will remember that I made a massive error with the positioning. But then what do I do? Any ideas?

This is a photo of progress to date. Heaven only knows why it has come out yellow!


This week it is White Nights, a slight alteration to the original plan, as this weekend coming is not a Railway Weekend, meaning that I am at home on Friday so I get five evenings stitching, not four.

Fingers crossed the camera gets returned this week as I have made this purchase I would like to show you, it should arrive tomorrow. The Other Half thinks I'm mad but I think my Just Nan Humbugs, when I stitch them, will look great displayed on this.

Here's hoping the frogs stay away from all of us!

Icy Hill

On Monday morning it was back to work after the Christmas break. On the way the thermometer in the car registered the outside temperature at -6 degrees C. I don't think I have ever seen it so low. By the time I arrived at school the temperature had risen to -5! Inside the building you might have expected the temperature to be a lot higher, and in fairness it probably was, but did it feel it? No. As per usual after the Christmas break, there was a problem with the heating, something hadn't come on and the place was FREEZING. To make matters worse what little heat that was getting to my lab was switched off at 11.00 as the air handling unit in the ceiling blew a gasket and was shooting steam into the atmosphere. One of the joys of teaching in a science lab is that you can use Bunsen burners to supplement what little heat the main heating system is producing! However, despite this I wore my coat all day as did lots of others, staff that is, the pupils don't do coats and wear only their blazers to school, whatever the weather, and then moan that they are cold. Maybe they should follow the example of Margaret Sherry's Snowman and wrap up warm.


Little did I know when I started my latest Just Nan project, 'Icy Hill' that evening how appropriate it would be!

On Tuesday morning I awoke to snow, about 1.5" and it was still falling. This would not have been too bad if the roads had been treated, and I'm not sure they had been. So I set off to school. At one stage I nearly turned back, the state of the roads and the fact that the snow had started to fall really heavily made driving very difficult. My journey took 15 minutes longer than normal, some members of staff took over two hours to do a 45 minute journey! But guess what? At school, 19 miles away from where I live, there was next to no snow at all! This situation was to change during the morning and at lunchtime the decision was taken to close the school over an hour early at 2.30. Later that evening I got a phone call saying that school would be closed on Wednesday and yesterday teatime I got another one to say that school would be closed today (Thursday) too! So with two unexpected days off I have managed to do more on 'Icy Hill' than I would have hoped.

Here it is, another mobile phone photo I'm afraid.


Now I know that if you are reading this in a country where thick snow is the norm you will wonder what all the fuss is about. The last time I was sent home from school because of snow was 15 years ago, and that was for half a day. The pupils always complain that it never snows where they live, and being on the west coast of Britain it rarely does, so this is the first 'real' snow fall the majority of them have seen in their lives. However, I think they will be very lucky indeed to get another day off tomorrow.

Added at 18.30 well I take it all back, we are closed tomorrow!