Part 14 – I MAY NOT BE CRAFTY BUT I TRY

Just for something different this post is not about books. It’s about patchwork and cross stitch, although I’m sure there are heaps of books on the subject. I wish I could say that I’m an expert at arts and crafts but I’m not. I can’t even sew a straight seam! Last year I enrolled in a class to make a quilt. The class was for 5 hours and was called “Slash and Sew”. Optimistically I was expecting to sew the entire top of a quilt in five hours. Here is a picture of what I achieved in that time:

and that was with a fair bit of assistance from the tutor. Needless to say I came home from the class, stuffed my part made quilt into the wardrobe in what used to be my younger son’s bedroom and haven’t done any more since.

Lately, however, I have been following a blogger whose enthusiasm for quilt making and other crafts has made me actually want to get going and do some more. Here is an example of one of her beautiful  quilts:

One of GnomeAngel’s lovely quilts

GnomeAngel has even inspired me to start on a new piece of cross stitch. It’s been quite a few years since I did any cross stitching and I have another confession to make. I have had a work in progress (WIP) which has been languishing in the linen press for more years than I care to remember. So many years in fact that the needle I left in the fabric had begun to rust. I can now proudly announce that my WIP is now complete!!! Now all it needs is framing, plus a little clean up beforehand.

My eyesight, I’m afraid, isn’t what it used to be, and I have had to resort to using one of those magnifying thingies. It’s a bit awkward to use but I’m getting used to it.

Now that I’ve finished my “Welcome” cross stitch I have given myself permission to begin my next project, even though the quilt is still a WIP. This will be a cross stitch sampler called “The 2013 Monthly Woodland Sampler”, from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. Since it’s February already and I haven’t started January yet, I’d better get a move on!

I hope to be back soon.

Part 13 – THURSDAY WAS BOOK GROUP DAY

I can’t believe I started writing this post last June!!! Consequently it’s extremely out of date and basically needs to be rewritten. I even had to alter the title. Both the book groups I belong to used to meet on Wednesdays, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening. The day group now meets on Thursday afternoon once a month. Last week we discussed A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote The Kite Runner. Set in Afghanistan over the past forty years it is a novel focusing on the lives of two women, Mariam and Laila, and their struggle for survial during the most horrendous of times. I would highly recommend this one.

We finally have our own library in the town where I live. After sitting there almost ready for quite some time it opened on the first Saturday last May. I have to say I don’t really like the external look but the inside is really lovely. Very light and airy. Having our own library also gives our book groups a place to meet.

Happy reading!

Part 12 – IT’S CONFESSION TIME OR BLOGAHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Time to ‘fess up. I have an obsession. I just can’t help it. Nearly every time I go to a blog and it looks interesting I have to sign up, just in case I’m missing out on something that everyone else in the world knows about and they haven’t told me. There are a few that I read regularly but quite a lot of  emails pop into my inbox every day and sit there until there are so many they get deleted en masse. In my search for sites to help my business or keep my motivation levels up I have allowed myself to be swamped. I Google, I jump from page to page, from link to link.  But how does one select the best? That’s the twenty million dollar question. If anyone out there has the answer please let me know! That is all.

Until next time.