Nutcracker and Crochet along

 It has been a mixed week.  I had to have some hefty dental work and it left me feeling really uncomfortable for several days.  Today has been the first day I've got up in the morning and not had to reach for the pain killers, so fingers crossed I'm on the mend!  So I have spent some time watching TV and putting more stitches into my Nutcracker Christmas stocking - 12 hours to be precise (total 17hrs 40 mins).  And this is what he looks like so far.

In between I've added some more rows to my version of the Attic 24 CAL.  

Tomorrow I will join in for some slow Sunday stitching over at Kathy's place.  Now I am off to join in with the Big Garden Birdwatch run every winter by the RSPB.  It involves watching and counting the number of birds that land in my garden (in one go, otherwise I could count the same Robin lots of times) for an hour and then registering the types and number on there website.  Its quite nice to just sit and watch for a change!

Have a good day!

Nutcracker Christmas stocking

 It has been a very busy two weeks and consequently I haven't had the energy to do my usual weekly stitching update.  But I am back on top of things now and have a couple of bits to show!  The fabric and DMC embroidery thread I was waiting for with four different projects has arrived.

The navy blue is for Faye to stitch Ambers Christmas stocking and the rest is for ME!  I have been itching to start Joshua's stocking on the red Aida so that's the one I prepped and mounted on the frame.

This is the Nutcracker stocking from Satsuma Street (her patterns can be bought via etsy) and anyone who has read my blog before will know I am a bit of a fan.  I know lots of people keep a note of how long they spend on a project, which I don't normally do but I thought it would be interesting to see how many hours a) its going to to take to complete it and b) how much time I spend every week stitching!  So far I have spent 7hours 40minutes over six days working on him.  You can see already that he is taking shape and I really like working on the red fabric!  It's not so easy on the eyes in the evening despite having a really good lamp to work by so I thought I would use up some of my yarn from previous Attic 24 projects and crochet another blanket.  Every January Lucy from Attic 24 starts a crochet a long and I really liked the pattern she has designed this year and better still she does a great pictorial tutorial (I'm not an experienced at crocheting but I do quite enjoy it).  And here is my effort so far!

I started out seeing how many of the colours Lucy is using in her blanket and then fill the gaps with what I have in my stash.

Tomorrow my beautiful granddaughter will be 3!  I really don't know where those three years have gone.  For her birthday Faye is hosting an afternoon tea for the family so I might not get the chance to link up with Kathy but hop on over to her blog for some slow Sunday stitching if you can!

March cross stitch and jigsaw bags

 Finishing my birdhouse tapestry last weekend made me really want to get on and finish more of my UFOs but I just couldn't motivate myself to choose one so I sat and twiddled my thumbs for a day or two and realised no I really wanted to start work on a new project (well why not!)  Faye and I have decided we are going to make the children Christmas stockings for this Christmas.  As far as Faye was concerned she realised she needed to start now to have any chance of achieving that goal.  So we have ordered two stocking patterns from Satsuma Street and I have ordered the fabric and DMC threads we don't have in our stash and all we are doing now is waiting for the delivery!

But I am not very good at having idle hands so have started to work on a little cross stitch pattern that has March on it.  This is a freebe pattern from The Snowflower Diaries called Joyful World.  I have done several months of the year already (random ones) and they are reasonable quick to make.

I visited a fabric shop this week and bought some fabric and a zip to finish off the birdhouse tapestry (just need to get a cushion) and some fabric to make a couple of bags for Ambers jigsaw puzzles.  They were hand me downs so the boxes had become a bit battered.

Not a great deal to show but hopefully by next week I will have made a start on the Christmas stocking.

In the mean time hop over to Kathys blog for some slow Sunday stitching.