Crafts . . .

I finally got around to having my Swine Flu jab on Wednesday, after much research and deliberation. As a chronic asthmatic, really I didn't have a lot of choice. Flu DOES kill and on the principle that you're a long time dead, I stepped up to the mark. I was OK until lunchtime yesterday, when, having spent the morning baking a double-ginger Ginger cake, big apple crumble, cheese bread and Cornish Fairings (biscuits), I suddenly felt like I'd been pole-axed. I spent the afternoon on the sofa with my x-stitch, the wood burner lit, and jumps racing on tv. A couple of paracetamol took away the headache, neckache etc. The cake was much-appreciated by my husband (who loves ginger) and by whichever cat chose to use it as a bed last night! Just as well I thought to cover it with cling-film first . . .


Above and below - here are some of the hats I have been knitting for family "smalls" this Christmas.


Half an hour was well-spent sorting through my sewing things in the craft basket, though I couldn't for the life of me find the x-stitch project I wanted to work on - found the chart for it, and the threads, but not the started work . . . Instead I blew the dust off a very old half-done project and worked on that instead, but it's all in very muted "sparrow-like" colours so not very exciting to do. I will plod on with it anyway, as it's 3/4 done now.

Above - the project I worked on, and below, the one I can't find the started project for . . .

Lots of cat charts (who forgot the flash then?!!)

Which to do first? I have one of castles too . . .


This is another work in progress, and I want to get it finished for my middle daughter. The colours aren't anything like as pinky as they appear here, far more lilac of course, as it's the lilac fairy . . .

I have 7 or 8 half-finished projects, abandoned about 12 or more years ago when I was doing my degree course and subsequently. I had forgotten quite how much I enjoyed x-stitch, but hadn't realized how my eyes had changed in the intervening period. I am very glad that OH and I found a sewing light at the car boot sale a couple of years ago for £4.50. It's the sort you use with a daylight simulation bulb and it has a magnifier too. If you were to buy it new, it would be £50 cheapest (and it's about £80+ in town). It had a small electrical fault when we bought it, but nothing that OH couldn't fix and I couldn't sew without it now. Sewing on 27 count linen in off-white colours necessitated all the help I could get!


In the evening my brain had gone walkabouts again, so I spent the evening sorting through bags of DMC and Anchor threads and winding the DMC ones onto spools. I have all my original DMC threads threaded through holes in strips of cornflake packets, but have to admit the spools make for easier work finding colours, and keep it much tidier. I gave eldest daughter the original container for the spools to keep her beads in for jewellery-making, but OH had bought me this craft container (probably originally for screws or fishing odds and sods) in Lidls, and it is now in use.


And to settle an argument. Someone on a forum was saying there was no way you could sell your house unless you depersonalized it and painted all the walls beige. I took up issue with this and pointed out that not everyone was trying to sell a bog-standard estate semi (which this rule of thumb might apply to). Old Welsh farmhouses were a different animal. Now which would you prefer - WITHOUT china, or WITH china? I rest my case . . .





This needs slight decluttering, and the dried marjoram is going to replaced with some dried flowers, the spoons and bits putting somewhere else, but it would look NOTHING without all the favurite bits and bobs we've collected over the years.