New Faces

 Yep, I've gone and done it again. I succumbed to the charms of the Heaven and Earth Sale. Shame on me!
 The worst thing is , it means four charts have come off my wish list , but about five more have gone on .
  I am doomed.

But , you have to admit , they are pretty gorgeous.

Cath x

Bug days .

First of all ,a big Thank you to everyone who made such nice comments about the quilts. For me , it is an honour and a pleasure to be a part of something so worthwhile. Stitching the squares is the easy part in my mind ,the making up of the quilts is much more work , and I am in awe of the talented ladies who put their time and effort into doing it.

 So , it is supposed to be spring ,though with the temps around here at the moment , it would be hard to guess. We have a lot of flies in the house though . I spray every couple of days , and yet they never seem to decrease in numbers ,despite the bodies littering the window sills ( I do clean them up) . But , on the nicer side , it's time for the prettier creepy crawlies to come out .
 My boy found this little friend the other day , and both kids spent an entertaining hour or two watching it closely and giggling as it tickled their hands .

 As today is an inse(c)t day from school ,they wanted to keep it , but were persuaded to put it back in the garden, though we did have some tears .
 So , with days off and half term , not much stitching will be happening here over the next week or so , so I will leave you with a current pic of Butterflies .

 I am guesstimating that there is about 1500 - 2000 more stitches left to do. I am hoping for a June/July finish , but we will see.
 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

Butterflies and snails (not in the garden).

After finishing Hello Kitty , I needed a small project again, but instead of looking for a new chart I decided I needed to get some of those old WIP's out of the way . I aim to have no old WIP's or UFO's hanging around after this year, hmmm.
 Anyway, it's about time I got my sons' snails finished , so I have been working on that .

 So far , I've done the leaves on the top right hand side and the lower branch. It shouldn't take too long to be finished, but I have been a little distracted with Butterflies.

I have got back into it big time. A couple of afternoons last week and some time yesterday have left me here. Some more green added and lots of the darker outlines . My plan is to do all of the dark blue and then fill in the other brighter colours. I am hoping that when all the blocks are done , I will be so close to a finish that I won't mind doing all the confetti and annoying odd stitches ,lol. Yes, that is the bottom of the chart .
 I am loving it again , and want to just pick it up now , but alas, I have to enter the pigsty of my daughters' bedroom and clean and tidy, which I am expecting to take all day , so maybe tomorrow.

 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath.

New HAEDs

How very lax of me , sorry Sally ,lol.
 My new charts are shown below .

QS Genevieve

QS Rae

And QS April Fairy

And , there are yet more on my wish list. I must stop looking at the HAED site . Yeah , like that's really going to happen ,lol.

Cath

All three.

Finish , start and progress .

 First , I finished the last of my dragonfly charity squares .

 And here are the three together . I love how they have turned out, and it amazes me the difference it makes just by changing the colours used.

  A little bit of progress on Butterflies , but not as much as I would like. I spent ages wanting to get back to her , and when I got the chance , I didn't really enjoy it. I think the stitching ADD is still in force a bit,lol .

 I intend to do more next week as I  really want it finished so I can start a new one . And HAED have got a sale on at the moment ,so I have bought a couple of new charts .
 And this is the new start ,

  and also another finish .

This will probably be a charity square as well , not totally decided yet , but my daughter is not a big fan of Hello Kitty. I just fancied stitching it .
 Now I need to find another small to work on when I don't have time for the big projects ,lol .
 thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

This and that .

Hi everyone , sorry I've not been around for a while .Lots going on , and hence I have had a bit of stitching ADD lately.
 Not really been able to concentrate on butterflies, though I realised that I haven't shown a truly up to date pic , so here it is . This has not been touched for a few weeks , and won't be for at least another week as the kids are on holiday , so not enough peace ,lol .

  I started a Honey Pots Bears design and got the balloons completed before I received my ordered fabric for some charity squares .

 This is for a charity quilt . The design is a freebie by Kirsten Schmidt and can be found here .

She has some totally gorgeous designs on the site . I have two more of these to do , but will choose different colours for each one .
 Hopefully things will settle down in a few weeks , until then , I will try and get more done to show , lol .

 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

Brrrr ,it's cold !!!

And I have been made up with cold for over a week now. It is just not funny. I've had enough. With last week being half term too , it made for a pretty boring week for the kids. Most of the time , it was too cold/wet /miserable to do anything. though on one of the finer days ,we went for a (muddy) walk around the local park . I was pleased with a couple of my photos .

  Love this one of the gull flying, it was pure luck as I've got lots of other shots that are all fuzzy or missing bits ,lol .

  Some idiot had thrown prawn crackers in for the water birds to eat.

  And i realised that I haven't shown any recent pics of my boys. It has been so cold ,they have had to resort to snuggling up together, lol .

 I've made a fair bit of progress on Butterflies . This is where I got to before moving the fabric up on the frame .

  Here's the before :

And the after .

 This is where I am now . Not done any for a few days with having this rotten cold and the kids being off. Got the shopping done today , so hopefully tomorrow will be a stitch day .

 So , last week I managed to finish of this cat . It was started in 2011, and was originally meant to be a charity square for a quilt , but the quilt got made earlier than the deadline and so this got left  .

 I quite like it , and think it may well end up going in my sons' direction ,lol.

 I like to have a small easy to pick up project on the go as well. At the moment I'm stitching a small All Our Yesterdays cover kit , but it should be done fairly quickly.
 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

Three cheers .

Happy Valentines Day everyone , especially if you are doing something special .  We don't do Valentines. We say "I love you" pretty much every day , so no need to make a special day for it . It has been very sweet though , as my six year old son has made two lovely pictures with hand written messages for his sweetheart at school , and he brought home two pictures from her , which has made his day ,lol .

 Anyway , on to other things. The other day saw the arrival of the last of my stash .

 This had somehow gotten missed from my order from Anita, so I e-mailed her and she very kindly sent it on. Looking forward to stitching these later in the year .

 I had a little finish last week . Whilst sorting out some stuff I came across this just started cover kit and decided to finish it. It's nice to have something that is easy to pick up and put down as well as a main project.

 Not sure what I'm going to do with him yet, though I'm maybe thinking of making up a little dolly bag , we shall see .

 And , I am up to 200 followers - yahoo!!!, so that means a give away is coming up . I am going to leave it until next month , as it's half term next week and there are things going on etc, plus I would like to know what people would like to win , so I'm going to put a poll up on the sidebar .Please either vote in the poll or leave a comment with what you think would be a good give away prize .

The other big news , is my progress on Butterflies Galore. The face is done !
 The confetti was a pain in the derry , and to be honest , I'm not totally sure a lot of it was necessary. That said , I am loving stitching her and already looking forward to the next one ,lol .
 So , I'm hoping you want to see pics .

  I have done a little bit more since taking these photos , but you get the idea. I am really pleased with how she is turning out .
 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

A Snowman

Last Friday ,  I finished up this little stitch

 It is one of Nancys' designs (Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe). When Nancy had her Christmas give away , which was massive , she offered to send out a set of charts to anyone who hadn't won  one of her other prizes. There are more charts in the set that I will stitch as and when I fancy .
 Anyway, as I finished ,I was sitting watching the snowflakes falling , and thinking that I ought to be stitching a snowman . Then I remembered that I had won a kit in a giveaway quite a while ago so rummaged through my bag and found it .

This is Cromwell The Snowman by The Trilogy , I have just finished him .

  I stitched one or two lengths of the white than did a bit of colour to break it up a little. I haven't had much chance to stitch this week really, the kids had a snow day on Monday, then the car has had to go for the MOT and various other things have kept me busy, but I enjoyed stitching him .
 Now , can you spot the difference with the chart ?

 Look a little closer .

  On the cover picture, his right hand is stitched to look as though he is holding the tree, yet on the chart , he is waving with the tree behind him . I stuck to the chart as I couldn't see why he would be holding a tree ,lol .

 The main problem with looking out this kit , I came across my stash of other charts that I've kitted up , like Bent Creeks' Winter Row ,  and it made me want to get them out . So far , I have resisted ,lol .

 Here is where I've got to with Butterflies , a little more definition to the face shape . Still loving this one .

  I can't wait to get further down , and I'm already planning my next one . I've got it bad .

 Last night brought a few more inches of snow , but it has been melting today, so hopefully it won't be around for much longer .
 I have been playing with one of the fox photos. This is my favourite one.

Isn't that little face gorgeous. BTW , they have been on the front garden again , we had tracks in the snow this morning .

Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

Heaven and Earth Designs

Yep , I'm back and much sooner than I expected .
 The laptop needed a new hard drive , and luckily they had one in and got it fitted pretty quickly. I was most fortunate that it wasn't totally wrecked , just dry in places , so they were able to clone all the info on it ,so no charts , photos or other important stuff was lost . Thank goodness for people who know what they're doing.

 So , HAED , well if you remember , my planned first start of the year was to be one of their charts , and it happened. I started SK Butterflies Galore on the 1st of Jan, and this is my progress so far .

  This gives a better idea of the colours. I did all of the dark blue in five days , which I was pleased with as I expected it to take longer .

 Starting and working on this did make me have a re-think of my plans for the year etc . I had intended to stitch SK The Key for my nieces' 21st birthday, and when I started this one I also got that chart printed out to check things . I figured that to have it finished in time for the date , I would have to commit to at least 100 stitches a day ,every day from now until some time in September , and as I don't always stitch every day , it would probably have to be more , which would mean all of my stitching time for basically three quarters of a year would be signed away on something to be given away .

 I just couldn't do it.

I just knew that I would really end up resenting the commitment ,hating every stitch and not completing it , so decided not to start it . I will stitch it at some point ,and I may even give it to my niece , but I can't give up most of a years stitching time like that .

 It also made me realise that I am pretty much unlikely to ever complete a full HAED design, so I have reviewed my wish list and removed some charts so now I just have QS and SK charts on there , and maybe a few minis ,lol .
 These are the charts I bought in the New Year Sale ,

QS Marna

 Mini Autumn Owl Trio

 Mini Payton

 And Faces of Faery 177

 I still have a pretty big wish list and I'm sure I will add to it ,lol .

 So , this has also made me review my stitching plans for the year . I probably won't do The Key this year,but I plan to finish Butterflies Galore and then start another HAED. After finishing up my WIPs. I will have one HAED, one other medium-large design and a few smalls on the go. Other than that , I'm making no real decisions . I have loads of fantastic charts and kits I want to stitch , but I'm going to enjoy the stitching and just do whatever I want to do, with no pressure .

 I was also the very lucky winner of a gift certificate on Catheys' blog and I have had great fun shopping. With the pc problems taking all of my Christmas money , at least I will be getting some new stash this year , so a big Thank you to Cathey and also to Anita of Little Stitches, who has been fantastic to deal with .

Well ,that's all for now . Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath