OK it's been a while since I last posted anything, but I have my reasons and the excuses are :-

1. We all have had colds, some us worse than than others.

2. Husband has been on holiday for two weeks and he takes the computer over, he has a game and eBay addiction.

3. Eldest daughter has been on half term break.

4. Youngest daughter has been as destructive as usual!

5. And to top it all husband had food poisoning last weekend.

But I have been busy, I have finally (yes finally) finished a cross stitch at last and it feels good! To finish one completely I'm not going to put it behind glass I'm going to stretch it round a wooden frame, I found in a charity shop when I get the time and I'm not been pestered.

 

On the knitting front, on my last visit under the stairs I found 2 balls of Sirdar crofter DK yarn so I decided to start knitting a scarf as a side project (I have a lot of  those on the go, hence the UFO pile).

Which was going well until I realised I hadn't got  enough yarn, always the same mistake I make every time. Back to square one, at least this time it wasn't destroyed for me. So I went and got some more yarn, black yarn! Don't know why, but I always seem to go for black, I must be a closet goth!!! So I started knitting again, but soon realised I was going to have to visit square one again! This time the pattern wasn't working out, it just didn't look right.

So instead of sending all the yarn off  to the black hole under the stairs I put the knitting needles away and got a crochet hook out instead. Right let me get this straight now I am not the worlds best crocheter, for a start I'm left handed and it has taken me years to learn how not to end up with a giant knot, but some thing you can actually call crochet. But with my crochet skills, scarfs and baby blankets are my limit. So there ain't going to be anything fancy there.  I started to crochet the scarf, which is looking ok but I'm not sure, so I've put it away until I have a flash of inspiration.

 

 Instead I decided to crochet a baby blanket, just to use up some pale green baby yarn that had been residing under the stairs for quite a while. It is going quite well, it is actually working out how I want it to look and I might finsh it so it will be one less thing under the stairs.

On wednesday evening I decided to do a quick project to cure a problem which has been bugging me for a while. I decided to make a draught excluder (or cat excluder which my eldest daughter calls them) from a skirt I bought from a charity shop months ago which I was going to recycle into something else but changed my mind.

So it now has become a flowery draught excluder and because the door is a inward opening (it's the downstairs bathroom door) I have attached it to the door by using stick and sew velcro so no one is going to break their neck on it, also it can't be taken for a walk by youngest daughter very easily.

I was feeling very proud of my quick creation which I managed to do in under 24 hrs, until my dear husband told me it looked like a giant flowery tampon attached to the door, but I don't care what he thinks because it has cured the draught problem.

 

 

 

 

 

Not a very successful week, I decided on Monday night that I was going to take a break from my cross stitch for a few days why? I had got a busy week of other things to do and its the start of the birthday party season! From now til March there is at least one party a month, there's two this month!

I wasn't going to break my UFO clearing promise I decided to pick up on the sock knitting front. But by Friday I was back to square one, it had been destroyed by my youngest daughter again! I don't know why she likes destroying my knitting, but she has been in a funny mood this week. I think it might be the weather, it has been a bit on the wet side because we have had the toilet tissue around the house incident, dancing in the nappy sacks and a trip to A&E after eating tip-ex along with putting it in her eye as well, I'm sure she is trying to send me mad.

So Friday afternoon I decided after the sock destroying session I'm going to stick to no more than two needles for a while. But my fingers are twitchy! I don't want to go back to the poppy cross stitch yet because there is still a lot of work to be done on that one and I want something I can finish to make me feel like I'm getting somewhere. So I got brave and decided to venture under the stairs! which proved to be to be quite a success, I found a cross stitch which needs finishing.

This one is a DMC kit which is over 15 years old called Vera's cottage, I think it was either a birthday or a Christmas present because I don't remember buying this one. All that needs finishing on it is all the back stitch and five stitches. I know it hasn't been touched for a long time because the needle which has been left in it has started to go rusty and mark the Aida. But I know why it ended up becoming a UFO, the chart is very hard to follow and when it comes to the back stitch its almost impossible to see where the back stitch is on the chart. No wonder I gave up on this one, it was most probably giving me a headache.

 



"ouch" rusty needle!

 

 

only five stitches and all the back stitch!

 

 

I have quite forgotten how relaxing cross stitch can be, it has been such long since I have done any. I just sat down and started stitching and all my troubles just seem to melt away around me. I became so relaxed that I could of been surrounded by chaos and I couldn't of cared less.

 

But one thing I realised is that it is still very addictive and I just don't want to put it down, I just want to take my cross stitch everywhere, if I could push the pram and stitch at the same time I would be very happy!

I just wish I had re-discovered this "addiction" a few weeks ago when I spent the day at the hospital with my husband. This would of been a lot better to do than reading trashy magazines and watching daytime TV which are my pet hates.

 

On other things nothing has happened on the sock knitting front this week, but then again I have been too involved with my cross stitch, I'm on a roll to get this finished.

I have decided that the first UFO that I am going to make an attempt to finish is a cross stitch.

 

The cross stitch in question is one I started about four years ago! it is a poppy design which was featured in cross stitcher magazine (issue no.204 October 2008) what attracted me to it was the bright colours lots of reds, oranges and pinks.

It was going to be a new challenge for me bacause it had bead work on and I have never done a cross stitch with beads on before.

Why it got abandoned - I bought the beads and only realised when I got home that the bugle beads were the WRONG colour they should be purple, I had gone and got black! I had got alot of the threads already from previous projects, so I didn't need to buy as many, but I soon started to run out of threads and I don't always have the time or the money to buy more, along with other things getting in the way as well.

So I'm now writing a shopping list for what I need to complete this UFO. Purple bugle beads are top of the list!

P.S I'm also knitting a pair of  socks for my eldest daughter, which were going quite well until my youngest daughter decided to "help" me in own little way. So by the time she had finished helping me it was a case of starting again.

I have decided that my UFO pile is seriously getting out of control and something needs to be done about it, why?

 

1. I can't get into my under stairs cupboard.

 

2. It's slowly taking the dinning room table over, along with the rest of  the dinning room as well.

 

3. It's also starting to take the kitchen over.

 

4. At the last count there was about 16+ UFOs, that's an estimate by the way, there could be alot more hidden away in my stash!

 

I love starting new projects but I'm not very good at finishing things, I either get bored or distracted. some of my UFOs only need a few hours work to finish them, while others may take a little longer to finish.

This is some of my UFO pile in September last year, but it has grown since then with the addition of other projects