Mum`s Easter chicks

Another quick post as I don`t want to be rude and sit here for hours while the whole house is in Easter fever - I just wanted to share this photo. My Mum might not be a needleworker per se, but she can definitely create all sorts of magic in the kitchen: this morning, for example, she made this breakfast for us! :)

Easter decorations

Today my Mum and I finished the Easter decorations for the table - hurrah! They are uber-expensive styrofoam eggs (a pound for a dozen), over which we - and when I say "we", I mean "she" - stretched the little cross stitched patches I made (I found the patterns in Cross Stitcher 250). Aren`t they cute?

Sorry for the picture quality but professional photographer I ain`t...

a couple of new(ish) publications

Just a quick update this time (I`m still busy with the cushion for Gold plus Easter plus sickness plus my Mum`s here). By the way, she loved the hedgehog and last night she asked me for a wee bag for her camera so I knitted this for her:

I`m pretty chuffed with this: first time I`ve knitted eyelets so my I-cord sits snuggly... all in all, a neat-looking little bag :)

Anyway, I`m just updating here cause I bought issue 221 of Cross Stitch Collection today and I love the tea cosy + tea towel + coaster set they made with my stitching on linen:

Also, although I posted my own pics a few days (weeks?) ago, here`s a link to the official photos of the cheery Easter cards that appeared in the previous issue of Collection. 

If I don`t "see" you before next weekend, Happy Easter everyone!

knitted hedgehog

I have realised something today: hedgehogs are like buses. You don`t see any for ages, then two come along at once. After the Ed Hedgehog I stitched the other week, I couldn`t resist knitting this little critter when I saw the pattern here. 

How sweet is that nose? And the ears? I just love it! Needless to say, Gregory has already claimed it - oh, I almost forgot to mention: he`s home again, this time with a sore ear but luckily the Nurofen is already kicking in, so he feels well enough to watch endless episodes of Garfield (yes, you guessed it, I have to either knit or crochet him one...) and demand `healing` biscuits (???) on a regular basis.

If my updates are a bit less frequent in the next few weeks, it is because model stitching jobs are like buses too: at the moment, I`m working on some Angela Poole cards for Cross Stitch Collection and this morning I got my next assignment for Cross Stitch Gold, a mammoth mandala-type design by Durene Jones, it`s going to be gorgeous, a 180x180 circular cushion cover. Can`t wait to start but first I wanted to finish this hedgehog, plus I`ve got a reindeer to make (have I told you I`ve enrolled in a free Craftsy class? I have 2 days left to learn a bit more about crocheting). I have finished the two Mothers` Day cards for my Mum and Gran - I can`t show you the photos yet but they were WOCS freebies, both from the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady series. Oh, and talking about magazines: on Saturday I picked up about 25 issues of Cross Stitcher from a charity shop for the hefty sum of £2 - yay! So if I have a spare minute (haha!), I have those to go through too. Hope y`all are busy doing your favourite things too, happy stitching!

mastering crochet :)

Another busy day, another late night, another finish and another short post: I had a lovely morning chatting at Jo`s and she liked the bunny - yay! Then I came home, enrolled in a Craftsy class and spent the afternoon learning to crochet: as it turns out, I already knew all the basics, I just kept miscounting, hence the crooked end results. But now, as suggested, I started to use a stitch marker and lo and behold, all my problems are solved (it was really a revelation, can`t believe that a tiny wee thing can make such a big difference!). And the first thing I made? Naturally, the long-awaited angry bird for the Little Man! :))

I found the original pattern here but due to changing the hook halfway through and tweaking with practically every bit, this being sort of a trial run, I could almost call it my own design

Easter bunny

This will be a very quick post - it`s way past my bedtime but I wanted to share this cute little bunny with you. Earlier today I spoke to my friend, Jo, whom I`m going to visit tomorrow morning. A few hours after we spoke, I found out that a payment I`ve been waiting for for a while is not likely to clear in my account before Friday. 

But just when I thought, `Bummer! Now I have to go empty-handed, I can`t even get a pack of biscuits, how embarrassing!`, somebody shared on my FB page a picture tutorial of a little knitted bunny - which, needless to say, I had to make straight away. I made an effort of finding the original site for the pictures so that I can give credit to the creator of the pattern (it`s a Polish blog so thank you, Google Translate - although the photos are quite self-explanatory anyway). You can see the original here.

And here`s my little Fluffy, a wee early Easter present for Jo:

this week`s finishes

I can hardly believe how long this week`s been and that we only reached Sunday just now! I don`t even remember where I left off the Snotty Saga - probably at Wednesday, when my poor, still sick Hubby went back to work, and Gregory and I almost made it to the door of the school but then we had to turn back, he had such a bad coughing fit (lol, first I typed "fitting cough" - I`m a bit distracted, watching Blues Brothers 2000 while I`m writing this). So anyway, I took him to the doctor`s and it turned out he had a chest infection and promptly got the miracle cure, antibiotics. I kept him home for the rest of the week (maybe that`s why it felt extra long?) but I`m happy to report that, judging by the star jumps and break-dancing routine I`m witnessing just now, he`s definitely going to school tomorrow.

I`ve got a few more finishes - so much so that I think very soon I can get back to my abandoned La Scapigliata!! I only have two more cards to make for Mothers` Day (the Hungarian one, which is in May, but I have to finish the cards before my Mum gets here in 3 weeks` time, so she can take them back for herself and my Gran and store them until the first Sunday in May. I`ve had so many things lost in the post that I`d rather give whatever I make to her in person). So those `ll be the gifts I have to make in advance and here`s what I made "looking back"... I have to be cunning here because my Mum sometimes checks this blog and I don`t want her to see any pictures that she`s not supposed to see yet - however, her command of the English language is not great enough to actually read all this blah-blah, so I`ll attach a photo of the magazine I stitched from:

Issue 150 of WOCS

It was her birthday a couple of weeks ago and I just finished stitching Ed Hedgehog and put it in a small white frame so I can give it to her as a belated prezzie when she`s here. 

I also knitted another two hats for the charity appeal:

I went a bit wilder with the colours this time: traffic cone orange with navy blue stripes and a pink one for a little girl

So that`s a grand total of six hats and I think I`ll stop here cause I was thinking, if everybody hands in half-a-dozen hats, the poor woman who organises this thing will end up going with a suitcaseful of hats to Uganda.

Friday afternoon I finally got to some shops but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn`t find Scooby brown yarn anywhere, so that project is still halted. On the other hand, I got some purple potatoes in ASDA - you should have seen the boys` faces when I served up dinner tonight! :))

Now I`m asking you: what`s wrong with my haggis, neeps and tatties?