Santa's Flight finished

And only just in time - I finished it up just after 10pm last night and I'm off to the stitching show this morning LOL.  I'm not sure if my framer will take them today or if I'll wait and send all three pieces together when the others are done so I took this pictures in the gloomy light this morning just in case it's the only chance I have:

I'm hoping to get them framed in a similar way to the original model but we'll see how discussions go today.

Another WIP down!

March WIPocalypse

Well don't tell anyone but I pretty much threw my rotation out of the window this month in order to focus on Cirque.  There is a reason for this - I'm going to a craft show next Saturday and one of the stands is someone who I want to do some framing for me.  I want her to frame Cirque, Santa's Flight and Witchy Washy so I want to get them in a respectable state so I can discuss the framing with her.

She does have a bricks and mortar shop but it's about 4 hours drive from my house and I go there just once a year on the way up to my weekend away with my stitching friends so if I can organise the framing choices, finish the pieces and then post them to her I can pick up the finished items in June.

Anyway, that's the reason why I've not done much on the Be Attitudes Afghan but I have had some progress (Be Sweet and Be Nice are new progress):

I've also had progress on the first of the three pieces from Santa's Flight:

Plus I did have a new start which is 'Scissors by Any Other Name' from Cat's Whiskers:

And last but not least, here's Cirque:

So hopefully by the time the next WIPocalypse is due Cirque will be a finish as will Santa's Flight...

This month I have mostly been...

...reading!

I've found my inner bookworm again and have been curled up with a book for an awful lot of my spare time, so much so I've managed to read 12 books since the end of Jan!  Admittedly 7 of those were Aunt Dimity books and they're very quick reads, but still, it's brought my total for 2012 up to 17 and we're only just in March.

I've loved the Aunt Dimity series and have now read them all apart from the latest release which arrived here three days ago from Amazon.  I so want to read it but I also want to get other books finished up so I've decided to be good and finish all the books I have already started before I pick it up.  That's 9 books to finish before I treat myself LOL.  I'm sure that horrifies some of you out there but I've always got at least five books on the go at any one time - my reading is totally dictated by my mood.

Of the other books I read there was another Agatha Raisin - again a quick read but I find more than a couple at a time and they become very 'samey' and I don't enjoy them as much so I space them out - and then four very different novels although I think all of them would come under the banner of chick lit. 

Of all of them I think I enjoyed Me Before You the best.  I'd definitely recommend it - I even found myself welling up at the end and that's totally not me!  By the middle of the book it's quite obvious how the end is going to be but it's so well written that it still managed to surprise me.

I've read most of Freya North's previous novels but it's been quite some time since I picked up her work and I did enjoy this one - Love Rules - pretty standard relationship stuff although it does have a thought provoking relationship issue that is a little away from the norm.

Which leaves The London Train and The End of Everything.  Both were good reads, I didn't get distracted and put them down which is always a good sign, but I have to say they weren't novels I would go out of my way to recommend.

The full list with authors is at the bottom of this post.

In other book related news I now have a Kindle.  I used the money my office gave me as a leaving gift because, despite my determination never to have one (I LOVE REAL BOOKS! LOL) I was bowled over when I saw a friends and I immediately saw a use for it which is this: all those 'classics' I've never read or haven't read since school that I'd like to try.  Lots of them are free for the Kindle and others are of minimum cost and I can load them up on the Kindle and dip in when I choose.  There are so many books I have never read that I would like to and this is a way of having them available to me without filling up house space with them.

It also helped that once I got the Kindle I found DH had 2102 ebooks stored on our network that he'd got from a friend for his iPad...

So I'm slowly sorting them out and loading up the Kindle.

I've never read and Agatha Christie novel, or a John Grisham or Ernest Hemmingway.  I've not read Austen, a Bronte sister or Thomas Hardy since school and there are several Dickens novels I'd like to try.  I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel either.  So many books I need to try but of course with the Kindle I'm in danger of spending more time organising them than actually reading LOL.

If any of you have an recommendations please shout - I picked up the first Aunt Dimity novel thanks to another blog and I'm always on the look out for good reads.

2012 Reads

4th Mar -  Love Rules - Freya North
28th Feb -  Me Before You - Jojo Moyes
23rd Feb - The End of Everything - Megan Abbott
21st Feb - Aunt Dimity Down Under- Nancy Atherton
21st Feb - Aunt Dimity Vampire Hunter- Nancy Atherton
15th Feb - Aunt Dimity Goes West - Nancy Atherton
13th Feb - The London Train - Tessa Hadley
6th Feb - Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea - Nancy Atherton
5th Feb - Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate - M.C. Beaton
3rd Feb - Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin - Nancy Atherton
31st Jan - Aunt Dimity Snowbound - Nancy Atherton
29th Jan - Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday - Nancy Atherton

Previously recorded 2012 reads:

25th Jan - Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came - M.C. Beaton
23rd Jan - Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell - M.C. Beaton
20th Jan - Starter for Ten by David Nicholls 
7th Jan - Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley
6th Jan - The Magic of Christmas by Trisha Ashley

Lent

I don't usually give anything up for Lent but this year it's a bit different because today I'm giving up work.

I guess you could argue that actually work is giving up me given today is my last official day at work due to redundancy but the decision to take the redundancy and not fight the gits that I worked for was my own so I am now a stay at home Mum by choice.

I can't believe this day is finally here (it was obvious last April that redundancy was on the cards) but I couldn't be happier.  Yes, the future is unknown but isn't it for everyone?  I just know that I'm happier now than I have been for the past 12 months and that must mean the right decisions have been made.

The last 12 months have been pretty horrible for me one way or another. My work environment sucked (to coin a phrase) and if it hadn't been for some of the people I shared an office with I don't know what I would have done.  I won't bore you with the details but I've been working one way or another since I was 15 and this last 12 months was officially the worst working year of the 25 I've had.

Also, the affair that 'friends' of ours had at the beginning of last year blew our social circle apart and caused me no end of stress.  Thankfully both parties have moved away now - he to make a 'new start' (yeah right, he'll be back fooling around soon enough, he can't help himself) and her leaving her husband and moving half an hour away.  I don't think the saga is fully over - both cheated on spouses still don't know but the information is out in the public domain and these things never stay secret forever.  The aftershocks are still booming away too but thankfully we don't feel the force of them that much.

Money was a constant worry last year too but, although I'm no longer bringing in a salary, we're in a better financial situation now I've stopped working thanks to the extortionate cost of childcare for Connor so I can stop worrying about the next unexpected bill for a while.

To top off the year we lost two close friends, one who took his own life and one who lost a battle with cancer.  Both our age and both totally devastating.

To quote the Queen, it's been an annus horribilis in many ways.

Don't get me wrong, me, DH and the kids have been fine and in the grand scheme of things that's what is important but the world around us has been particularly trying to say the least.  I don't think it helped that we didn't have a holiday or really spend time together as a family, we just lurched through the weeks dealing with whatever came up.

So, even though New Year is officially long gone, today is the first day of the rest of my life and giving up work (for a short while) is the first of many positive changes that will hopefully make the rest of 2012 a much better year than 2011 was.

Rotation Revision

So I've been thinking and I've decided to change my rotation plans.  Originally I'd planned to focus on one BAP a month for 12 months so that each of my 12 biggest WIPs got some attention this year but the problem with that is none of them will get finished this way and I'd REALLY like to get some of them finished.

So I'm thinking of dropping down to a six month rotation which would go like this:

Jan - Cirque des Cercles
Feb - Be Attitudes Afghan
Mar - Murky Manor
Apr - Christmas by the Letter
May - Heaven Above
Jun - Small WIPs and any of the above

And then repeat for the second six months of the year.

This means that the rest of my BAPs - Cut Thru Fairy Hill, Wild Ones Alphabet, Tradewinds, Noah's Sub, Witches Hollow, Dragon Virtues Afghan and Sleigh Ride - won't get touched this year but I might have at least three of the above completed.

I'm also thinking that Cut Thru Fairy Hill might have to be discarded.  I started it so long ago and it was supposed to be for Lia but I'm sure by the time I get it finished she'll be long out of fairies and I wasn't really enjoying stitching on it.  I have made quite a chunk of progress on it though so I can't decide what to do with it - it seems a shame to rip it out but I know I won't pick it up again so, if any of you readers would like to give it a home then please shout.  It's the full kit but I didn't stitch it on the aida included, it's on evenweave.

I thought I had a WIP pic of it but I can't find one.  If you're interested but want to see a pic first give me a shout and I can post one.  I don't want anything for it, I just can't quite bring myself to frog or throw it.

Having said all that my biggest issue is that I'm burning to get back to Cirque sooner than July and I may well pick it up for March instead of Murky Manor.  In fact I'm wondering why I'm even bothering saying I'll have a rotation at all now but guess it will at least keep me vaguely focussed on my goals.

And if I do pick Cirque up again I can just substitue Murky Manor in twice in the second half of the year...

February WIPocalypse

Wow, WIPocalypse post number two already.

I've posted my Cirque progress in a previous post but I'll repost the current WIP pic now just for continuity.  Here is where I am after it had it's month as my focus BAP:

I should have said last time I'm stitching it on 28ct black murano and the floss is 'Aurora's Flame' from The Thread Gatherers Silk 'n Colours.

It's now been put aside in honour of my February BAP which is the Shepherds Bush Be Attitudes series stitched on an afghan.  When I picked this up it looked like this:

You can see close ups of the blocks in this post.

Since then it's had a weeks worth of attention and the Be Strong block is done as is the next one, Be Sweet, and I've made a start on the fifth block, Be Nice.  Once I've done block five I'll go back and finish up Be Warm.  I'm hoping that I'll get the sixth block done as well this month so it's at least half way through when I put it down.

Here's a pic of the Be Sweet block (sorry it's a bit dark but it's a gloomy day here):

And here's how the whole thing is looking:

Snow Day!

I can't begin to describe the excitement that took hold of Lia on Saturday night when the snow started falling and continued to do so for the next six hours.  By the time she was heading for bed there was more than an inch of the white stuff and by the time I headed off there was an awful lot more.

So, of course, Sunday was for snow play although it was starting to melt by the time I got up around 10am (it was my lie in day).  It was Connor's first real snow experience and he loved it - he was out for almost an hour until the cold got too much for him.  I chose to enjoy everything from the inside so here are the pics from through the patio doors:

Firstly, the snow before it got attacked!

The three intrepid adventurers:

Making a snow throne for the fairies:

Exploring:

Futile snowballs:

Unfortunately for Lia the thaw continued through the night and this morning so now there's not much left so she's very disappointed.  This is, of course, a good thing for us adults as roads and pavements are clear.