Couldn’t resist the title of this post.. I’m not the first to blog this amazing satellite photo of Britain in the snow, but it’s just fab!

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

The amazing thing is the difference between the snow here and the complete lack of snow in town.. Didn’t stop me falling on my bum at Euston on Thursday! I’m pleased to report that I was helped up by a very kind man. It’s sad that that is the first question people have asked me, assuming that unfriendly Londoners would have left a pregnant woman abandoned on the floor.

While watching the snow I’m being spectacularly unproductive on the craft front, I’ve been sat here watching Gilmore girls (yes, still hooked) and playing free Tetris online all morning instead of the many things I’d like to get finished in the next few months.

I was however, very impressed with Rob’s girlfriend’s pre-Christmas handiwork.. She made him a Stuffed Reddit Alien Toy. Check out his post about it for how it was put together..

Cameron and her Reddit alien

Inspired by Cam’s handwork I’m off to get the ironing board out to do a bit more work on my baby quilt, photos to follow when I have something to share!

We celebrated our wedding anniversary the other weekend. Can’t believe it’s been a year already!

I’ve absolutely adored our first year of marriage and we really spoilt ourselves.

The Lions match in a sports bar on Saturday afternoon, followed by a stunning performance of Madam Butterfly at the ENO – which was beautifully done, very simple but striking set and costumes. We recognised some of the traditional Japanese Kabuki moves from a production of the Mikado we were both in a couple of years ago.. So something for each of us I guess!

I’m determined we’re going to stick to the traditional themes for anniversary gifts so year one was paper, so Duncan bought me a subscription to Sew magazine. A fantastic new magazine published in the UK .. which I appear to be the exact target market for! You might recognise a little someone in issue two.. which dropped onto my doormat today! There’s a feature on sewing bloggers with mini interviews with 5 of us – it’s quite exciting! I was really hoping to include some photos, but as neither of our cameras has battery, I’ll link to Lisa’s review of issue one for now instead! – I couldn’t resist posting straight away, Duncan’s out and I had to tell somebody!

Image from Joggles.com

I made a last minute decision to sign up for Sharon Boggon’s Studio Journals: A Designer’s Workhorse course through Joggles. It’s a course I’ve been meaning to take for a couple of years. It’s about using a journal to ‘catch your design ideas’ with a view to designing fiber projects – so embroidery and quilting. I have the list of the materials needed so will head out to the art shop on Saturday morning – first item on the list a journal

I’ve done a couple of other courses with Sharon before and have really enjoyed them. I have found it difficult to keep up though – I think the first one I had to stop the sewing part way through after hurting my wrist and I followed it up with a second course not long after recovering..

I’m going to have to make time this time to get the most out of it! Which will be a challenge for me! Especially with my new addiction to Springwatch and hopefully a house move this summer.. (still sitting with fingers crossed waiting for our buyer to have her mortgage approved).

I was at our local pub last night, The Earl Ferrers, it’s a fab local with a real community spirit. Last night we had a lavender bag workshop for us instead of our usual stitch and bitch session.

One of my neighbours is a costume designer and had a host of different materials and trimmings for us to play with. Please excuse the sewing on this – the lighting in the pub, the beer and the lateness of the hour did me no favours!! (the embroidery in the centre is cut from a lovely piece of embroidered silk – not my own work!)

We’re trying to sell our flat, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that here, but where I used to spend my Saturday mornings sewing or writing blog posts, we now clear out for viewings..

We bought these beautiful lilies for the viewings this weekend, hear’s hoping that between them and the sunshine we made an impression! I love the shading on these, they’d make a lovely embroidery..

One of the other benefits is the tidiest of flats, I’m not a neat freak by nature, but now I can’t leave for work without tweaking the duvet so it’s just so. When I get a call at work saying can we bring someone to view this afternoon I then flash back to did I put that pile of laundry away? Did I leave a glass on the work top? what mess have we left out!!

There are only two of us, but as we effectively have only Saturday to Sunday evening to wash everything and get it dried it it’s a bit of a focus! Today’s a bank holiday in the UK so no work and no viewings – I’ve got washing strung up all over the flat

It hasn’t all been laundry this weekend, we went out to Surrey to the area we’re hoping to move to. When we first put the flat on the market we went out house hunting, fell in love we a great place, which sold about a month ago.. with no news on our place I just can’t go look at any more until we actually can put an offer in, but we can still go and look round and enjoy the countryside that will hopefully soon be a lot closer!

We walked section 5 of the London loop, through the North Downs. The picture is of Happy Valley – you can’t go wrong with a place name like that!

Thanks for all your comments about reformatting the Big List of Sewing Blogs, I have that underway my lovely husband is working very hard to get it finished and if you’d like to be involved in testing the new list please let me know!

Since my last post – many moons ago the number of people to be added to the list has grown and grown so there will definitely be an add your blog section on the new and improved list of sewing blogs..

My discoveries since I last blogged include: Ravelry – a great resource for knitting – I found this scarf through it and just about figured it out..

On the subject of knitting, I discovered a knitting group literally under my nose. The ladies in question admitted snooping in our kitchen window which overlooks the local pub. They run an annual street party, a book club, film club, knitting group and I was invited to football training.. Obviously I knew there was a street party, but I’d no idea there was such a lovely community group right on our doorstep.. Which is a shame as we’re starting to look into moving further out of London

And the Kew image library - which I know already is going to be fab, I love the botanical embroideries of Trish Burr and have already found a beautiful image on there which I’d like to gave a try in silk shading

I received another of Trish’s books for Christmas – through strong hinting on my part, followed by a quick email with the amazon link to Duncan.. I already had the Redoute’s flowers book which is really lovely but the Long and Short Stitch Embroidery book has a fantastic introduction to the technique followed by some small projects to get used to the technique.

It’s quite strange – who would have thought I use ‘Just Lovely’ quite so often!

Last Sunday Duncan and I packed some sandwiches and headed off to Hampton Court. It was the annual exhibition of work by the apprentices of the Royal School of Needlework. The apprenticeship is 3 years, the first two learning different embroidery techniques and the final year is more business based with work placements in the RSN’s studio as well as externally..

This year’s exhibition was a little disappointing in 2 ways, as the course is being phased out, there was only work from the final year students – so it was smaller than when we’ve been before and probably because of this it was in a room outside the palace, when we went before it was in the Queen’s chambers – a big imposing room with wooden panelling – just the kind of room where you’d imagine some of the techniques were developed..

The work we did see was by no means disappointing – I’ve said it before, but there are some very clever women out there.. Unfortunately not all the graduates had websites, but this one showcases one of my favourite pieces of the exhibition this lily in silk shading. There was also an amazing dragon in goldwork, but photography wasn’t allowed and I can’t find any photographs..

This afternoon we went into Wimbledon to buy silly hats and other necessities for our honeymoon. I can’t believe it’s only 2 weeks away! We’re going on a safari in Tanzania, hence the silly hats, I have a feeling there will be quite a lot of khaki!

Thank you so much to Lisa at The Hem Line for this award!

The rules of the award mean I have to nominate a further 7 blogs, so congratulations guys (in no particular order): angry chicken, Bella Dia, Feeling stitchy, U-handblog, I have to say…, Blissed out and Kimono Reincarnate.

Here’s what the winners need to do:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog

2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4) Add links to those blogs on your blog

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

My friend spotted this blog post about dating a startup company owner, she was thinking this sounds familiar as she realised she was wearing an ironic search engine optimisation tshirt.. Our partners are business partners so we are united in this weird world! The boys just got iphones and I’m not sure if Hev is also experiencing iphone widowhood?? but everytime I turn round D’s looking something up or checking his email! The upside is I get his old phone as a replacement for my old brick, I can finally take photos on my camera

Exciting news over on U-handblog, Amy butler is in London next week. She’ll be at Liberty on tuesday. I’m hoping I can move some meetings at work, though at the moment the people involved are still on holiday..

Check out this giveaway over at Funky and Delightful, congratulations on 100 posts!!

It’s weird how easy it is to get out of the habit of blogging and sewing in fact and how difiicult it is to get back in the habit again! I’ve been waiting for something earth shattering to blog about and then I realised this week, one of the things I like to read is the more personal stuff – the details not just what people are making but how they fit it in around the rest of their lives.. Lisa has a good post over on Craftboom about how she lays out her day, she’s lucky enough to do this for a living, so has all day to play with (around the admin of course!) – how do the rest of you find the time and the energy??

As promised, this post is going to be a celebration of my clever friends and family. I was so amazed by the thought and creativity that went in the gifts we received for our wedding, but here I would like to highlight the homemade.

Most particular, from my sister of who it could previously have been said wouldn’t know how to thread a needle! She sewed every stitch herself and I am so pleased with it!

From my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law another beautiful sampler – I love the colours in the piece!

My husband’s employee Leonie not only designed our invitations, but also made us this book, it’s embroidered with our initials: DM on the front and SM on the back

Another of Duncan’s employees, Emily is a very clever artist, she gave us this lovely screen print. My photo doesn’t do it justice, I couldn’t get rid of the reflection – there’s some stitch work on this as well..

We also got some lovely homemade cards – I was using a borrowed camera and not all the photos turned out well, but here’s a photo of most of the cards – there are more out of shot..

and in particular ones from my old flat mate Hannah: hannah.jpg

and last but not in the least least a card from my parent’s neighbour, Christine – this is a waterfall card. I hadn’t come across one before, but I’ve just had a quick google and found a tutorial for how to make this type of card.

So many thanks to all!!

A photo that not only shows my lovely new husband, my beautiful dress (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that but I loved my dress!) and THE cake! My mum made the cake for us – the flowers and everything.. I’m so proud of her, I have to admit she took some persuading and really didn’t want the responsibility but I knew she’d do such a wonderful job and it means so much more.. in fact here’s another photo of the cake!

There are more photos over on flickr, so I won’t post any more here – until the official ones come through

We just had the best day – our friends sang beautifully in church, they were really amazing and if I’d known whether the mascara I was wearing was waterproof I’d have been in floods throughout!! Just thinking now I keep thinking of all the little things that happened to make it so special, I guess the main thing was sharing it with friends and family who were just so lovely and supportive.

We also got an amazing selection of homemade gifts and cards which I will be photographing and blogging about – including a surprise sampler from my sister who we jokingly say can’t sew on a button – she certainly proved us all wrong!

Last week we had a few days in the Peak District at a lovely Inn, which did great pub food, lots of good beers and was really well placed for me to go check out a sewing shop in Bakewell They have an online store, Wye needlecraft which I haven’t checked out yet, but if it’s anything like the shop it should be pretty good – they had a great selection of embroidery threads.

Followed by a few days in Madrid, in another lovely hotel right by the Retiro Park.. which is well worth a visit if you’re in Madrid.

Unfortunately, I came home with an ear infection – so normal service won’t resume quite so quickly, I know I have a backlog of blogs built up to add to the list, but I’ll get there eventually!

I hope you all had a happy month of June,

Suzi Morris