Bye bye 2014

Was it really just last week that I was excitedly running about buying and wrapping last minute gifts, organising bedrooms, cooking food and adding decorative Christmas touches to the house?  Now that the extra chairs have gone back into storage and the plates and cutlery sorted and put away once again, I was beginning to wonder if I had imagined the delightful company of seven family members including three youngsters here last week, until my doubts dissipated this morning when I trod on a solitary plastic wheel from a dismembered toy car.  Where did everyone go?  Where did the days go?

Today is the December Smalls check-in.  I didn´t have much time this month for stitching but I did sew up this little design which I had discarded to the UFO drawer.

This is The Lavender Girl, a free pattern from The Snowflower Diaries.

I discarded the design because I wasn´t pleased with my choice of fabric as the arms and legs are barely visable.  She is barefoot in the original pattern but I added shoes so you can at least distinguish where her legs end.

Heather at Stitching Lotus hosts the Smalls SAL which will continue in 2015.  So if you would like to join this group and stitch a little something each month, just click on my sidebar button and get yourself signed up.

TUSAL

The check-in for the Totally Useless SAL was last week when I had so little time to get to my computer, so I´m really late in showing my ORTs jar, but here it is.

You can find out more about this SAL which will also continue next year, by visiting Sharon at It´s Daffycat - just click on my sidebar button.

Wishing all my blogging friends and visitors a very Happy New Year.

The Advent Calendar Blog Hop

Welcome to day 20 of the Advent Calendar Blog Hop which is hosted each year by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching  I am so pleased to be participating for the first time this year and am enjoying visiting the other participants each day.  We have to share some festive stitching, so here is the table topper which I have been working on for the last month.

My initial enthusiasm started to wane with so many tiny windows and doors and I was tempted to abandon it, but as it was being made as a gift for a friend, I kept on stitching.

  Last year I made a couple of snowmen placemats as gifts.

and some ornaments.

Yet another table runner, this time I liked it so much I kept it for myself.

I have also made some  Christmas cutlery holders which can be seen on my previous post.  Jo also asked us to comment on the best gift ever received.............

Well, he appeared  one cold January morning, meandering up our driveway to investigate the new neighbours he had seen unpacking.  He wandered about the garden sweeping the wind scattered leaves with his vastly overgrown dirty smelly matted coat of hair, which like an enormous fringe, reached the ground and impeded a normal gait.  His vision was also impaired by so much hair but he spied a couple of empty boxes and crates to which he stealthily returned at nightfall to take refuge from the cold winter elements.

The next morning on seeing us, he speechlessly inquired if we would be interested in giving him a home as his nonagenarian owner had left the village to live in town and he was tired of custodying an empty house and roaming about solitarily.  He had come to the right house and we adopted him immediately, and loved, spoilt and cared for him during the rest of his life.  A noble, faithful, loving companion who unknowingly helped me overcome the solitude of living in the country, who is now sorely missed and who will always be in our hearts,   Mori.

Thank you for visiting me today.  If you wish to see where the Advent Calendar hop takes you tomorrow and to visit all the other participants, just click here
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Wishing you and your loved ones a very  Happy Christmas

Gifts

Our local patchwork shop had lots of Christmas goodies in the window, so I decided to enter and just say hello to the young shop assistant while nonchalantly eying the fabrics. So tempting ... ages since I bought any .... well last Christmas to be exact ... but just in time I recapitulated, thought of my overflowing stash, bought a marker pen and went home.  I looked through my stash and found oddments to make a few cutlery holders as gifts.

The tiny cross stitch pattern I chose of a reindeer with boots, is from the magazine Labores and it stitched up in no time and I made five, one for each member of the family in question.

I made a simple pocket and added a green lining - you can just about see the lining in the photo here ...

And as always I added a smattering of beads or sequins, in this case, tiny red sequins.

I´m pleased I used up fabric from my stash and would like to make more of these time permitting but I am finishing off another Christmas project for my next post which will be on the 20th for the Advent calendar Blog Hop - hope you will pass by.

My first Christmas gift arrived this week.  A beautiful Aneela Hoey journal which I so luckily won in a giveaway hosted by Jackie at Jackie´s Stitches

The pages are either blank or graph paper, very useful for patterns and doodling etc.

Thank you Jackie for having offered such a generous giveaway - and can you believe that the journal took just six days from USA to Spain! amazing especially with the extra Christmas mail.

                                           
                                   See you next week.

Sheryl

Lizzie Kate

Already a week into December and I can see that this month is just going to disappear and I am not going to have time to do all that I want to do.  I have been trying to get a few small UFO´s sewn up into Christmas gifts and also sort out my odds and ends of work scattered around the house before the beginning of the new year.

Checking back over old posts, I realise that I never posted a progress update or a final photo of the design A Good Marriage by Lizzie Kate, which I started many months ago and on having seen the framed result in the house of the young lady for whom it was made. I haste to amend.

I bought the pattern last year and started stitching in January.

....... looks a really easy design but I made lots of small errors, I suppose that is what comes of trying to watch episodes of Downton Abbey on the TV and stitching at the same time and I had to do quite a bit of unpicking.

We chose a blue frame as it is one of the dominating colours and also complements the room where it is at the moment hanging.

I see that most blogger buddies already have their homes decorated for Christmas and their trees adorned whilst my sad forlorn tree is still waiting in the basement  to be rescued ..........must get moving. 

                           Thank you for passing by.

Sheryl

November Smalls SAL check in

Having had very little time this month for any stitching apart from a couple of Christmas projects, I turned to my overflowing UFO drawer and found a half finished hardanger pattern which I made into this little needle book.

From my stash I chose my favourite pinks and greens.

The tiny hardanger design I had already stitched so I´m not sure where the original pattern came from. I just added an extra beaded surround.

and a bit of trim and felt to the inside.

I´m pleased that I got an UFO completed which will make a nice small Christmas gift.

Heather at Stitching Lotus hosts the Smalls SAL  and if you would like more information about this group, just click on my sidebar button.

Linking this post to Super Mom - No cape stitchery party.

                                                              Until next week.

Sheryl

Last Roses

I´m a bit late with my post this week due to having visitors, planning a scavenger hunt, making a birthday cake and so forth.  However, I managed to take photos a few days ago, when glancing out of the window on a gloomy dark cloudy afternoon,  I spied two forlorn pink roses struggling against the sudden downpour of rain and went out to rescue them.  Couldn´t let the heavy rain spoil such beauty, so I found some odds and ends of my crochet work to offset the very last of this year´s roses.

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I haven´t done much crochet work lately but in past years have made several borders for sheets and pillowcases. 

Here is a different edging found in the magazine Labores. 

These borders are quick to make and easy to take with you when out and about in case you have five minutes to add a few rows and they make such a difference added to sheets.

I added a few beads to the above pillowcase not very practical but pretty.

It is also time for November´s Tusal check-in

Here is my ORT´s jar, now overflowing due to lots of threads from my Christmas sewing projects which I can´t as yet show and also lots of threads from the Randje Per Week SAL, which in October I understood had stopped until the new year, only to learn that there has been no pause in their weekly patterns at all and now I´m weeks behind.

Sharon hosts the Totally Useless Stitch A Long and all information can be found by clicking on my sidebar button which will take you to It´s Daffycat.    Thank you for visiting.

Sheryl