Another busy Sunday.

Once again very little crafting took place in my house on Sunday.

As has become habit I started the day in the kitchen. I made chicken soup with left overs from Saturday evening. While that was bubbling away I also made two rather large fish pies. As I always work until 8 pm on a Friday evening, it is up to Tony to cook our Fishy Friday meal. While he makes a great pan fried fish and oven chips, I do like to vary things a little. He has tried out a couple of recipes successfully but didn't want to try my fish pie recipe. There are now two resting in the freezer awaiting their turn, all I have to do is defrost them, all he has to do is reheat them. Yum.

Once I was done there and the menfolks war games had come to a conclusion, we headed out into the garden. We had our first frost yesterday! It's very early this year. By the time we went out there things had warmed up beautifully and we set to work, clearing out four of the veg beds, the only thing left in one corner of one is some spring onions. I may have to pull and freeze them, I'll see how they go. In the long bed alongside the house the beans are still producing a good handful every day, the butternut squash has not done so well, with six ripe fruit and three still green on the vine, I've been researching what to do about that and was happy to find I could bring them indoors and ripen them in a sunny room. A job for this morning, or maybe tomorrow, perhaps next week we will finish clearing that bed out and mulch the garden for the winter months.

After lunch things slowed down a little. We went out to collect a book case I won in an online auction. I tucked it in under the kitchen bar and filled it with recipe books.

I had books in the kitchen, books in the hall cupboard and books in the big book case in the hall too. Now they are all together, and I have room for more! 

There was one more job to do before we sat down for a rest. I spread my latest crochet blanket out over our bed so that I could see how much progress I've made and get an idea of how much more yarn I might need. I think I'm about half way there.

Of course it grew a little after this picture was taken. I'll be off to the shop tomorrow for more yarn.

Of course with the end of this one on the horizon, I have been planning another crochet project, something not quite so huge.

I've been a reader of Lucy at Attic 24 for a while now and have recently spent quite a bit of time browsing her many patterns and tutorials. I'm fairly certain my next project will be one of hers, but there are so many to choose from and so many different colour combinations too. 

Decisions, decisions.

No progress has been made on Spring Queen or block 4 of Down in the Garden, maybe on my days off.

And there's more!

 Remember Sleepy?

I first introduced her to you back in August of 2014. I promised not to bore you with her as she is a large piece.  A few days later I showed the very first progress shot.  

Then I must have kept my promise as I have only about 18 progress images in my records here on the PC, but she wasn't completed until 25th January 2016.

On Wednesday, after hanging in the cupboard for three years, I finally mounted her onto an acid free canvas.

I added a trim of pretty flesh pink tape that looks sew much better in real life than it does here.

and now she is hanging on the wall in our hall way, in a position of Tonys choosing!

I was going for the bedroom, well, she is asleep, but Tony insisted on the hall.

So here is in, slumbering in her bower.

Flash photography, sorry it's rather overcast and dark today.

At 19 x 17 inches she is the largest piece I have ever cross stitched. Would I do it again?

Probably. Small pieces are fun and, as you know I've stitched plenty of them, but I love a challenge.

Speaking of larger projects, I have an hour before I have to think about getting ready for work, so I'm off to play with my latest stitchy challenge. Spring Queen here I come. She is progressing v.e.r.y. slowly.

Picture this.

No crafting took place on Sunday sadly. In the morning while Tony and my brother played war games on the play station, (They do this every weekend, one here and one on the Isle of Man) I was busy else where as usual. First I made a bacon and egg pie and then moved on to having a sort out in the big hall cupboard. There are boxes of pictures and photos in there and someone was bugging me and saying I needed to make some additions to the rogues gallery in my hall way. 

After much sorting I discovered and added four new pictures to the wall.

I came across some other treasures while I was in there, and some of them now have new homes.

 I cross stitched these two pieces a long time ago! I'm not certain of the date except to say pre 2000! I had done a pretty amateurish job of framing them back then, so before they went onto a wall, I opened them up and did a better job of it. They are now hanging in the WC.  

 Mr Fisher Mouse, like the previous two is not dated, but I do have a record of him on the PC in a file named pre 2004.  That sadly is the best I can do. He also needs some attention and will be reframed sometime soon. Meanwhile he is hanging in the hall. 

This next piece is dated. I stitched and signed it in 2004!

 However, I have no record of it anywhere on the PC, which is a surprise.

It was professionally framed and I remember gifting it to mum it hung in the corner of her lounge. Now it's in my hallway. 

I know that this next piece has popped up on  my blog more than once.

 I stitched it for Tony for Christmas 2013. It has been up on the wall in this house, but was taken down to make room for a quilt. Said quilt now has a new home and the black kitty cat is back where he should be outside Tony's cave. 

 Obviously this next piece was stitched in 1997. LOL  For my daughter Kay, who was born in 1988!

Why then do I have it?  It's not the only one, I have another piece I stitched for Kay here with me too!

I'll send them back to her one day. But for now, they are both hanging in my quilting room.

Along with a collection of Mothers day and birthday cards that I had stitched over the years and given to my Mum.

I found another one on Sunday, this piece is dated inside, it says Mothers Day 1997. 

And 1996. This one has been professionally framed.

Next up, another piece with no date. But there are two names!

 I have no record of this piece anywhere on the PC, not even in the pre 2004 file! So I'm really not sure how old it is. I do remember that my youngest sister wanted to stitch something for mum. 

I helped her find a pattern in one of my magazines and provided aida fabric and threads. I really don't recall how far she got before she ran out of steam, or maybe school work became more important, but eventually it came back to me, I finished it and signed both our names. 

Mum loved it and it hung in her homes for many years. 

This was another amateur framing job which I repaired it before adding it to the growing gallery in my quilting room.

And Finally another piece that has featured on this blog previously. I found these pretty poppies in an op shop and couldn't leave them there.

They didn't find a home on a wall yet. They have been professionally framed, but for some reason I can't figure, they do not hang nicely. I may take them to a framers and see what can be done, the frame itself is pretty beaten up and tired, so I may get it replaced. I wish I knew who had stitched them. Maybe there is something hidden inside the frame.

That's it!

The only cross stitch pieces left hiding in the big hall cupboard are the Christmas pieces.

They will all get a turn in December.

As you know however, there are several finished pieces waiting to be framed all hanging out in the cupboard in my sewing room. 

Their day will come.

I haven't yet decided what to do with myself over my two days off.

Maybe....

Start block 4 of Down in the Garden.

Do some cross stitch on M'Lady.

Quilt a quilt!

Take Claire out for her birthday lunch.

?????

I'll let you know soon.

A finished block

Block 3 of Down in the Garden is complete. As I thought it took only just over an hour to finish it on Wednesday. 

I'm very happy with it and pleased to have it done before the end of the month.

I know I'm doing this one several years after it was released, but it was a BOM and therefore to my mind, nice to have each block completed within a month!

I have two days to spare this month and hope that I'll manage to get in at least an hour of stitching on Spring Queen today. Sadly, that's all the time she will get this month.

If I was still getting school reports, the page for needlework would possibly say, 

"Must apply more time for hand crafts"

LOL

Mind you, each evening I hook a little on the big blanket.

It's growing slowly.

before finding time to sit and stitch on Wednesday I made tomato pasta sauce for the freezer, using the last of the red and almost red tomatoes. Leek and potato soup and a lamb and barley broth also for the freezer. (Making soups I find is a great way to preserve excess and left over foods and I have a ready supply of quick lunches throughout the year.)  And while all of that and the stitching was going on, the slow cooker was making beef curry for lunch boxes, some of which ended up in the freezer! LOL

I did the usual round of domestics and had a tidy up in my sewing room. The off cuts from block three were put away and the package containing the fabrics and instructions for block four were pulled out. I'll look at those next week. 

I noticed during the day that Noah, our neighbours cat was keeping cool in the shade on our deck.

Isn't he a handsome boy? He is a very friendly boy and will follow me around the garden as I pull weeds, collect produce and peg out laundry. 

He visits most days and looks for Belle through the window.

Sometimes they watch each other through the glass, sometimes she ignores him!

Which is rather rude, but she is an indoor cat and has not physically met another cat since we brought her home when she was 12 - 13 weeks old. 

If I want to stitch before work I have to go do a few jobs, if I stay here I'll end up on pinterest. 

Framed

Tony took the day off work yesterday, to spend time with me. So I didn't settle with my stitchery and in fact struggled to settle with anything. We cleared the tomatoes out off the green house as they were getting leggy and tired, with many fruit dropping before they could ripen. We left the chilli peppers though, as they are still doing well. Then we pottered in the garden doing one or two smaller jobs.

We went out for lunch and a look around the shops. I've been needing a new whizzy stick thing for the kitchen for a while and we found one at a very special price and also purchased some new tubs for the freezer. Once home again we pottered about doing various jobs together and separately and late in the afternoon I found myself in my little room with a picture frame in one hand and a cross stitched piece in the other.

Do you remember the Endangered Species Collage?

I Started stitching it just about the time I started blogging, way back in 2007

Almost a year later after discovering patchwork and quilting I revisited it in May of 2008.

Then I must have worked on it quietly for a while, without blogging about it, before putting it away for what ever reason, as I have no record of it until August 2013 when I pulled it out of it's hidey hole almost completed. Then right at the end of August in the same year I showed the image below and celebrated it's completion.

Since then it has languished , first in my portfolio then in the wardrobe awaiting it's turn.

 And here it is, framed and hanging in the quilting room.

It's in good company, hanging with two other smaller cross stitched pieces.

Finally my endangered babies are completed and have a home.

I see the beginnings of an ego wall here. maybe I'll get some more pieces framed.....

It was interesting going back through my blog and linking up to old posts. You could click on the links and see what else I was up to back then and how much things have changed.