A post over on Uhandbag alerted me to this great day in celebration of blogs. The directions are here, but basically all you have to do is find 5 new blogs you’re interested in, let them know you’re recommending them and post links to them and the blogday website.. sounds easy so far!!

Now for the difficult bit, in no particular order…

1. Pink chalk studio I discovered this site earlier in the week - there are some lovely tutorials and these fab mice which are just adorable!!

2. Faffing about The name of this blog attracted me in itself, but there’s also some great work on the Take a stitch Tuesday challenge and some lovely ATCs - I’m looking forward to making some of these myself, when my arm’s back to full strength.

3. LAM’s blog A fellow student in the sumptuous surfaces class, I only discovered this blog towards the end of the class and in particular I just loved the seashore piece - definitely worth checking out!!

4. My half of the brain Tutorials galore!! I stumbled upon this blog earlier in the week and there are lots of links to free tutorial for various sewing projects - a great source of inspiration!

5. twelve22 The photographs on this site are just incredible! There’s a lot of yummy food, so don’t browse on an empty stomach!

There you have it 5 blogs I discovered this week (slightly bending the rules there!) I think the final instruction was to add the BlogDay tag and wish you all a Happy BlogDay!

Suzi xx

Injury My final push to start this blog was hurting my arm, which mean I haven’t been able to sew for 3 weeks! (Unheard of for me!). I’m pleased to say that after a lovely long weekend here in the UK, my arm is a lot better. I’m not pain free or back to full strength yet, but there’s improvement

In a minute ago A great resource for ideas and links to other crafters and a wonderful teacher! Sharon also has a really great stitch dictionary.

Also, we have a friend from the States literally in the air on her way to visit right now! We lived in Halls together at Uni and I haven’t seen her since we visited Boston 6 years ago!! .. Blimey! So m writing might be a little erratic for the next few days..

Suzi

Hog roast I get married in just 10 months .. eek! and we’re having a hog roast buffet as the wedding breakfast - I’m very excited about it!

Hearth Growing up we always had an open fire in the winter and I still love curling up in front of the fire! We recently stayed in a cottage in Wales - my parents and sister stayed there for a week and we went just for a weekend and slept in front of the fire in the living room..

In other news Sharon Boggon’s In a minute ago blog has moved to here so update your feed reader! Suzi

Ginger I guess this is the first thing most people think of when asked to describe me! and we ginger people are quite rare - or so I thought, until I started working in the same unit as 2 other girls with red curly hair!! Considering less that 1% of the human population has red hair, 3 in a team of 16’s not bad going!!

Goldwork

I did this piece of Gold work on a two day course at the Royal School of Needlework last summer. It was a really amazing course - the setting itself is just incredible.. they’re based at Hampton Court Palace and the workroom we were based in over looked the gardens .. This was my first real use of metal threads so I’m quite pleased with the result - though it could have been neater! One of the best lessons I learned was that mistakes can be covered - see the extra swirl of pearl purl at the bottom on the stem! - and it really doesn’t matter what the back looks like as long as it doesn’t show on the front - a great relief!!

GLOC this is getting to be a long post, but I couldn’t do G without mentioning Grosvenor Light Opera Company - I’ve been singing with them for 6 years now (I think) and the standard just keeps getting higher, which is great as we’re learning more and more each year. I met my fiance and many good friends through the company and I can’t wait to get back to rehearsals in a couple of weeks time! Something I can do without using my hand!

Friends Both the real kind and the series! I am addicted to reruns of Friends on E4 - they’ve just come full circle back to the early episodes again! Obviously the real kind are much better which leads me on to..

Facebook A great way of keeping up with the friends I don’t tend to see as often as I might!

Fish I have this lovely fish in my bathroom.

I just love the colours. I really love the idea of using this as inspiration for a piece. I also adore this fish by Marci a fellow student on the Sumptuous Surfaces course. She posted the link on the class forum under the title Just For Fun and you can see that it would be just a real fun piece to work!

England I was hoping that I could blog about a stunning performance in last night’s England match against Germany.. but not so much.. so that’s probably enough on that subject.

Embroiderer’s Guild I’ve only been to 2 guild meetings so far, but it’s great to meet up with fellow stitchers and share experiences - especially for the less experienced!

Exploring I’m loving exploring the network of craftsters online! This is a similar thing to the embroiderer’s guild, it’s great to see what other people are doing and it’s amazing how many free tutorials and resources are out there!

Drawing Not one of my strong subjects at school - art was mainly drawing and painting but I might do better with these tips in the Guardian.

Duncan and Distilled My very lovely fiancee who was incredibly brave in giving up a good job in the City to set up a business with his best friend from school, Will. 2 years later, and they have employees and offices and I’m so proud (I have a big cheesy grin!!)

Today is the last day of Sharon Boggon’s Sumptuous surfaces course I’ve been doing through Joggles. It’s been such a fantastic course, Sharon is a really great teacher and I’m hoping to sign up for her next course, Personal library of stitches, which starts in October - wrist permitting!! I was really upset that I couldn’t sew for the second half of the course, but following my classmates progress on the forum made it worthwhile.

Cake I had such hopes of being sophisticated when writing this blog - but quite frankly who doesn’t like cake! There’s a lovely cake shop round the corner from D’s office, a friend and I once skipped dinner and went straight onto cake from there.. that was a good tea!!

Chinese embroidery I should really have put books under B - I love books and am never without one in my handbag. Last year some good friends bought me Chinese Embroidery Traditional techniques by Josiane Bertin-Guest which is a beautiful book which covers the history of Chinese embroidery as well as giving some great projects and inspiration!

Curly I was discussing my list of C’s with D on the train this morning and his first suggestion was curly! I have very curly ginger hair, only controllable (on a good day) with John Frieda’s Frizzease products!!

Bags I love handbags! Lisa over at U-handblog has some serious bag eye candy and some great tutorials! Also I saw this bag over at CraftyGinger and I really love it - they do it in a green that matches my wallet.. I think it might be meant to be!

Brace a bit tenuous but the doctor gave me a hand brace/splint (which I should be wearing to type this!) to help my arm while it gets better. The x-ray didn’t show up anything serious - I just need more time!!

Beading I love the necklaces I made and I can’t wait to get started with some more beading projects - like this tutorial .

I just stumbled across a great idea from Bella Dia. An A-Z of me.. she started working through the alphabet at the beginning of August - so I’m a bit behind now, but hey ho, you’ve got to start somewhere!

So I guess I’ll start with

A is for…. Accident prone

After falling off a horse and injuring my wrist 4 years ago, I then got the same wrist hit by a lift at work last week, I’m in lots of pain and can no longer sew - so not a happy me!

A is for…. Apple

and the shiny laptop I’m typing this on It’s great to use but gets a bit confusing switching back to Microsoft set up for the day job!