Our post is still recovering from the bad bad postal strike over here (I may have mentioned this!), so mail is still quite a rarity. I got home on Tuesday to:

Stitch magazine, full of lots of fab Christmas ideas for me to read about and never get round to!

A letter from Thameswater saying they owe us £40

and a lovely letter from a lady I sent a bookmark to in a recent swap and she sent me this lovely mini quilt as a thank you! Unfortunately I can’t read her blog address in the letter she sent.. so if it’s you, please leave a comment!!

Randomly in my favourite blue

So there you go a happy mail day!

Today I got a phone bill - I’ll open it tomorrow!

Hectic couple of weeks!

We’ve been waiting for a new white box to arrive before photographing anything new - so I have lots stored up to share! We currently have one of these which is great, but takes up lots of room - in a 1 bed flat space saving is essential!

I’ve been up in Barnsley wedding planning - under 7 months now!!

Rehearsing for Trial by Jury Supersized which is this Thursday!!

Had a very good guild meeting on Saturday - photos to follow when we get the tent thing!!

And I finally got my copy of amy butler’s In Stitches!

There is football on TV to occupy Duncan and I just discovered lots of eye candy over at the In Stitches Flickr group! Looks like a good night of drooling

Well I was a busy bee this week, making full use of my wrist feeling better! I did a bit more work on my Jacobean piece, I should finish this one pretty soon..

I finally made up a new bag for Duncan:

I’m really pleased with it - this is the first pattern I’ve made up from scratch, and after two days it’s still not fallen apart

I made cards - this is the one for my sister’s anniversary that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: A birthday card for Will, I find making cards for boys a bit harder - you can’t really get away with flowers and butterflies Luckily Will’s a big basketball fan, and I used my fool proof inspiration plan - Clip art!! I often do a quick inspiration search on a lunch time at work and email the results to Duncan for printing.. I had to ring Hev to find out the right colour shorts and number..

This card was for a sick friend - the flower is detachable and can be used as a brooch ..

and finally, some coasters from my nephew - he’s 4 next week, starting early! He made them for all the family.

A flower for me and a hockey stick and ball for Duncan..

Another Sunday recovering, this time from Will’s birthday drinks (happy birthday Will!). This morning D’s off coaching under 11’s hockey, so I have a cup of coffee and three hours to play

So here’s a couple of Halloween posts: Creative Kismet has some fab Halloween creatures - safely locked away in jars!

Feeling stitchy has a great video tutorial for a Halloween owl made from felt. If I had the stuffing it might be my plan for the morning, but the craft shop I go to is closed on Sundays!

Some funky mushrooms: I spotted the cutest mushrooms over at Bella Dia which are adorable in themselves, but it’s worth taking a look at the comments, the post mentions she’s suffering with a bit of Carpal Tunnel and there’s so much support and advice out there!

A swap Craft Dasies has a bookmark swap, as my current bookmark is a bit scruffy, it’s sounds like a great idea!

and a design tool.. Duncan had time to stumble upon a this design tool before he left this morning. I might try print off a couple and see what I can do with them!

Still catching up on all the blog posts I’ve not read and I spotted this great song over at Layers of meaning! I love old musicals - I might have to track this one down!!

I didn’t make it to the Knitting and Stitching show this weekend - the trains were so messed up, I was quite disappointed, but there’s always next year!

Given the physio gave me the all clear to sew again on thursday I’ve been remarkably restrained - I made a card for my sister’s wedding anniversary - given the timescale and not been sure how much I could do I went with just a simple heart.. I’ll try and get a photo online this weekend

Lazy Sundays are one of my favourite things! This morning we’re recovering from a great night out - celebrating England’s great win last night - I can’t believe we made the rugby world cup final! I was in trouble for booking us tickets for a reunion of the G&S group I was in at university, but they put the telly on for the second half so we got to watch most of the excitement and I was forgiven!! - Thankfully I didn’t make plans for next Saturday evening!!

We’re going to head round to my sister’s for Sunday lunch in a little while, but in the mean time I’m catching up with the week’s blogs! Lisa over at Craftboom has a great post on how to increase traffic to your craft business blog So I’ve had a busy half hour adding my blog to various directories including:

Technorati ProfileTechnorati

Only 5 minutes a day to begin with, but it’s a start!!

I was sooooo pleased when the physio suggested it! I’m to start introducing sewing and chopping back in to my life! In fact I just topped and tailed some carrots (I’m starting slowly!)

This is made even better as I’m off to the knitting and stitching show on Sunday - hopefully there’s a new stash post to follow next week!!

I’m also going to head over to the Autumn Sale at U-handbag..

I’m not normally a viewer of shopping channels but, I was off sick today and channel surfing and happened to spot one of the shopping channels was featuring a sewing machine. The make was Brother and it not only automatically threaded itself, but also had no pedal - you could set it going and go put the kettle on (if you’re doing straight lines), and I sat watching just thinking isn’t that cheating? I’m not quite sure why I felt like that or how much automation would be ok!? I’m not sure I’d feel the same if it was a machine to clean the kitchen floor(!) I guess it’s because I love the traditional feeling that I associate with sewing and producing my own skirt/bag..

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

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!!