I met a good friend of mine for a cup of tea last night after work. We had a lovely half hour wondering round the foodhall at Fortnum and Mason Then tea and biscuits in the cafe and a browse around the big Waterstones near Picadilly circus and more excitingly she gave me a fab Christmas present:

buttons, which she got from the couture exhibition at the V&A, sewing related things to embellish with, some Christmas decorations and a Morrocan scarf..

A belated happy New Year!

The 9th of January and I’ve only just sat down to blog! There’s one New Year’s resolution I failed with already

My Big List of Sewing Blogs has grown to 96! It’s been great - people have started emailing with their blogs and putting my button on their site (Ta!) - it just has to be sewing related and active to get in, so if you think your blog fits the bill do leave a comment/send me an email!

The best part for me is exploring the new blogs, I particularly enjoyed finding Kimono Reincarnate and Travel, Fibre and Thread - who’s doing some great work on this month’s Take it Further Challenge. (I will be blogging my contribution to this month’s challenge over the weekend!)

I finished my first card of the year yesterday! It’s a birthday card for a friend who played Pitti-Sing in our production of the Mikado this summer:

Click on the thumbnail to read the line of music! I’m not sure how easy it would be to do without the thread showing through from the back - maybe it’s the material I used!?

Thanks Jo !

HAppy Christmas one and all!

The build up to Christmas got just too hectic - and I’m afraid once again it was the blog that fell by the wayside - I feel a New Years’ resolution coming on there! Has anyone else thought that far ahead yet??

We went down to Eastbourne, on the South coast, for a very festive wedding on Saturday and then a long haul up to Harrogate on Sunday for Christmas with Duncan’s parents. I love Christmas and I adore hearing about family traditions - no two families are the same are they? I just got time to sit down with the computer and spotted this post over at Busywork about their family traditions and it struck me that breakfast was actually a big one for Christmas day - my family has always had bacon sandwiches, Duncan’s have porkpie and mustard and when we have Delaney Christmas (a second Christmas day with D’s old flatmates) we have scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and bucks fizz.

We off to my parents tomorrow and will stay there until New Years Day - so I’ll be without internet access for another week.

So have a Happy New Year and I’ll be back in 2008!

I can’t believe I’ve got 86 blogs on my list now!

I know it would be very easy to Google sewing blogs and just spend a few hours adding them - but I made a bit of a personal rule to add blogs that I have either stumbled across or someone’s recommended/sent to me - partly to make it more of a challenge and mainly so I can have a good browse around them all as I add them!

One of my latest additions is iHanna’’s blog. Hanna sent me a gorgeous bookmark for the Bookmark swap organised by Crafty Daisy - here are photos of other bookmarks in the swap - there’s some great eye candy and it’s a fabulously diverse group!

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!

I’m still playing catch up, but I had a productive afternoon in front of Harrogate Railway vs. Mansfield in the FA cup - as well as spotting my future father-in-law in the crowd (not a huge crowd I have to say!), I also worked my way through lesson two.

I wanted to try all of the stitches Sharon listed, so design wasn’t really a priority - I like the idea of keeping the sampler in my sewing box for inspiration!

I worked my way through the list of stitches:

starting with triple chain stitch butterflies at the bottom

A little pattern with double fly stitch and french knots over on the right

A crown stitch pattern on the left

I played about with some detached chain flowers up at the top

A circle of detached chain in the middle

A whipped long armed chain top right

Tulip stitch up at the top - I made a little man which I think is quite cute!

there’s also some moss and berry stitch on there somewhere

And finally a woven picoult flower which I’m also rather proud of!

I’ll try and get week three’s lesson started this week!

I’ve finally finished my first week of Sharon Boggon’s Personal library of Stitches course!

Inspired by a post oncrafting in public I took some materials with me on a train journey last week. I sat and sewed all the way back to London. It made the journey pass very quickly and I was probably the only one glad it was delayed by half an hour as it allowed me to finish my piece! I also had an interesting conversation with the woman sat next to me, she wanted to learn to knit - I told her about Stitch n Bitch and I hope she gives it a try!!

So onto my sampler - I packed quickly so had to make do with limited resources, but I had a lovely green piece of felt! To begin with I thought I’d just go through the stitches Sharon had detailed in the notes (I didn’t have a stitch dictionary with me) in straight rows - as you can see with the Guilloche stitch and the Portuguese stem stitch - which I’m still not sure I’ve got right! - If anyone can give me some pointers as to why it looks so messy?? I got a bit carried away with the feather stitch and decided it reminded me of a snail and my original plan was to use a chained bar to finish it off, but it just didn’t look right - which is why I just left the long stitches..

It’s not when you actually look at it a huge amount of sewing, but I enjoyed working on felt and I incorporated stranded cotton and 4 different sizes of perle…

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

A themed round up today…

Patchwork pincushion over at Creative Kismet.

Rubblework Scarf tutorial to be bought at Pink Chalk Studio, more patchwork scarves at funky and delightful

Patchwork coasters and a new blog for my list! Thanks SewMammaSew!.

Inchies for swaps and general cuteness

After being really busy last week, I’ve had a bit of a quiet one this week. I haven’t been feeling great - I have one of those half colds that won’t fully develop, but has still wiped me out!

It’s the first week of Sharron Boggon’s Personal Library of stitches course, I’ve not managed to produce anything yet but there’ve been some great things created by others in the group here, here and here.

Elsewhere, I love these faces embroidered on pillowcases over at Needle N Thread!

I’m looking forward to the arrival of my copy of Amy Butler’s In Stitches even more since I saw these trousers. Our sorting office in Streatham was apparently the worst effected place in the country - and we’re still feeling the effects of the strike - since seeing those trousers I’m getting more impatient!!

I’m addicted to free rice a fun game, that feeds people - for every right answer they donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations.. Check it out I’ve already expanded my vocabulary and fed people! - The only problem it’s addictive and it’s easy to convince yourself you have to keep playing as it’s doing good!