Only Friday to go...

...and then I'm officially on holiday!! Woohoo!!

And looking at the state of the garden after recent tropical conditions, I'd say it was about time...I have a feeling I'm going to be begging to return to work after a few days taming the triffids & trying to get things back into some semblance of order. Daisy thinks it's wonderful - the lawn has sprouted several inches in the last few days so she's been busy pretending she's a tiger prowling in the steamy Bengal jungles. Unfortunately, the frogs have also found the overgrown conditions rather interesting so A & I have spent more time than we'd like separating frog and cat...

We've both been very tired recently & really in need of our time off. It's been a really busy few months for us both, at work and home, but there's so much to do & only one lifetime to do it in! The recent hot weather hasn't helped - we're both typically British pink & white so we tend to wilt, and the humidity has been pretty horrible at night. A was considering getting a portable air conditioner for the bedroom and then he saw the prices...doh...think we'll stick with the fan until that lottery win comes round!!

Luckily stitching and designing are best done in the shade and don't require much movement so I'm rather pleased with my progress in the last couple of weeks :-)

The Christmas Elf Fairy is finished, I stitched up the Friendship Sampler from last year's UKSBB get-together in Derbyshire, I've made a little more progress with the Huswif and I'm back to working on the sampler having defeated the over-one frogs! See pics below...

The Christmas Elf Fairy by Mirabilia

Copyright Nora Corbett 2005 All rights reserved

Friendship Sampler by Kate of UKSBB

Copyright 2005 All rights reserved

House & Garden Huswif - 2005 TSG Challenge

See previous entries for copyright info!

I had a flash of inspiration the other week for a new Blue Coppice design and I'm keen to get started on this once the sampler's done, so I've had to be pretty strict with my BC goals for the rest of the summer:

1) Finish the sampler!
2) Put a box together (the one I had a Eureka moment with the other week)
3) Finish the people and the winter tree on the huswif - and make a couple of decisions regarding the summer and autumn sections
4) Finalise construction details for the new design and start stitching - this one is going to take a little thought. It's a simple concept but exact measurements are going to be pretty crucial...

I'm sure I've missed out a couple of things but that'll do for the moment :-)

Onto other pieces, I couldn't resist the lure of Mirabilia's new Halloween Fairy but I'm planning to make a couple of changes...I think the fairy is looking at something so I'm going to add a small cat and I think transform the bag into a handful of blue spiders... ;-) I'm not going to be stitching her just yet (too many other things are screaming at me) but she might creep into my winter plans...

This space should contain the picture of the Halloween Fairy but for some reason Blogger's decided to give up on the idea of importing images at the moment, so it'll have to wait!

I've taken to working on smaller things at lunchtimes at work - I don't seem to have enough time to go out but I need a break from the computer so I've found that 30mins stitching really helps me keep going through the afternoon :-) The Christmas Elf Fairy has been ideal for this as it was small enough to be portable and it gave me a break from over-thinking on the BC designs - now she's done, I'm taking the time to work more on the Huswif as the wedding sampler is too big to lug around, definitely a home only project!

Initially, I wasn't too sure how my colleagues would take to my desk being covered with "string", but to my surprise the reactions have been rather positive! Lots of oohing & aahing, even more of the usual "You've got more patience than me", "I could never do that" and "How's your knitting coming along?"...saints preserve us...

My boss has been particularly keen. We were all out at one of the local bars having a couple of drinks in the sunshine on a beautiful Friday evening, and to my surprise, she told A that if she's had a tough, stressful morning and walks into the office to see me happily stitching away, she instantly feels better! Apparently it's very theraputic to watch - everything must be under control or I wouldn't have the mental energy to spare...or something like that...

Speaking of mental energy, mine's running out now! Time to go... :-)