Ringing the changes.

  Hope everyone had a good Christmas . Ours was lovely . We had the day at home and visited family before hand as hubby was back to work Boxing Day . It does feel like Christmas was cut short and I am ready to tale down the decs , but will leave it until next week when the kids are back at school .
  The kids best Christmas presents were Minecraft for the X-box, google game play cards so they could put Minecraft on their tablets , and slush cups ,lol.

   I got no stitchy stash for Christmas , but I got money so will put that towards crafty stuff. Hoping to get one of my finishes framed with some of the money, I have been doing more charity stitching than anything else for the last few years and I got to thinking that maybe it's because I have finishes lying around and at least my squares are used and appreciated. Bearing this in mind,  my plan for this year is to do more personal stitching. I don't do resolutions , but I do have "plans" ,lol. I will still stitch for Love Quilts , but will be working on a lot more of my own projects.

 So , no new year start for me , instead I plan on finishing. I have two small (but big) projects on the go .
 This one is for my daughter.

 and this one is a LQ a/c square.

Both were started in October , but put away while I did the HAED challenge in November.
 I also have my two OFOs,
 Christmas Recipe

 and Three Little Maids

I will finish these early this year , as I want some new starts and I've promised myself no new starts until these are finished.
 And there is Rosita to work on .

  Some of my Christmas money is already gone as I placed an order for fabric and threads to kit up these .
 Play With Me

 and TT A Pale Comparison.

Other than LQ squares , these will be my first new starts this year . Can't wait .

 Picked this up from a charity shop on Tuesday when I took the kids out to spend their money and book tokens. I think I have it , but not sure and can't find it , so also plan to sort out my stash this year ,lol .

  Last years' orts, all squished in the jar

 and spread out a bit.

 And my new ort jar all ready to be filled through out the year .

Thanks for dropping by , and a Happy New Year to you all.
Cath

Stashing

Back again , told you there was a lot to catch up on ,lol .

As well as stitching , I have been gathering stash . I've bought a few "lots" of threads that people have been getting rid of , so last week I decided to sort them out . I also bought a few mixed bags from a charity shop in Skegness whilst on holiday . A lot were unbranded or had the bands missing. Those were sent to a friend for her school group to use when making their Christmas Cards. (Oh -oh , I said the C word) .

 Anyway , after winding over 500 bobbins , I then had to re-organise all my thread boxes .
 The end result.

 DMC boxes

 Anchor , I am a long way off having all of them , but trying ,lol.

 Anchor vari

 And a few oddments that had no number

 Winnie the Pooh threads and DMC vari .

 Now I just need to get the rest of my stash sorted.

 Fun times ahead ,lol.

 Thanks for reading ,
 Cath

Time flies

Whether you're having fun or not .
 The last few weeks have been pretty busy, so not as much stitching time as normal . Plus , with hubby being at home my routine has been shot , and lots of other things going off.
 No news on the job front , though an interesting proposition has been made . If it comes to anything , it will mean some fairly major changes to us all , but we need to learn a lot more .

 So , stitching , I finished Cinderella

 I have also stitched a wolf for my daughter , but strangely I don't seem to have a picture of that . will remedy it next time .

  Went to craft group at the beginning of the month and someone was giving away loads of chart books , so a lovely stash enhancement was made .

 Can't wait to make good use of these . Still plugging away on  butterfly square at the moment , it is taking much longer than anticipated , but as I said , busy , busy .

 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

It's my Birthday .

 Well ,strictly speaking it isn't my birthday , my birthday was on Friday  , but I have been too busy to post .
 I organised a thread exchange this year and so would like to show my lovely cards and threads that have arrived.

 From Sharon

 From Valerie

 From Gaynor

 From Donna

 From Mary Jane.

Thank you so much ladies , they are lovely and hopefully there are more to come .

  I also had a little stash enhancement from hubby. Love this design so much , I have been wanting it for over a year.

How can anyone not love that cute little face ?  I have two squares to finish for LQUK before the end of October , then I am planning some serious personal stitching time . Can't wait !

Thanks for dropping by ,

 Cath

Christmas in August .

I organised a Christmas in July exchange, but due to a few interruptions, Gaynor and I ended up exchanging in August . (Chemo brain on one side and PO closure for refurb. on the other ,lol ) .  Coincidentally we ended up posting and receiving on the exact same days , so it all worked well in the end .
 This is what I sent to Gaynor .

 Note book , to - do list and ribbons.

 LHN Sheep Virtues "Hope" , stitched using mostly recommended threads , apart from BS5200 instead of Ecru for the snow and snow flake and Wispa thread for the sheepie.

 The backing fabby.

Gaynor excelled once again , with a fantastic design and amazing finish .

  Love this design and what a great idea to fix it to a stash box.

 Wrapped goodies .

 Lots of treats

 Stash !

Thanks again Gaynor , for a great exchange. I love it all . The choccy is going down well with everyone ,lol .

Well , that's all for now , got to get ready for the girlys' swimming lesson, but have lots more bits to catch up on ,so should be back soon.
 Take care ,
 Cath x

HAED Sale !

Heaven and Earth have a 50% off sale at the moment.

I decided to take advantage and treat myself. Haven't bought any charts from them for over a year as the styles they were producing weren't to my taste , but a few of the newer lovelies have caught my eye .

 These pretties have come to be stored and eventually stitched ,lol .

The bottom one has been on my wish list for longer than the others ,and there are plenty left on it , I aim to live for a very long time ,lol.
 Cath x

A tale of two thread orders .

Most of my stash is bought using money that I get for my birthday or for Christmas .
   Last year , I bought a couple of LK charts that I wanted to kit up , so I checked out a few ONS' to find out the best prices of the threads (GAST AND WDW) . It turned out that two different stores were cheapest for the threads ,so I ordered one from one store and the other from the other. Even with two lots of postage , it was more economical.
 The GAST I ordered from the Patchwork Rabbit. Very fast turnaround , no problems at all and I was very happy.
 I placed both orders on the same date , 27th December last year. Within a week I had received the GAST .

The WDW I ordered from Thread Bear. Now, I have ordered from them before and always been totally happy.I knew that the store had been taken over by new people, but as the website and everything had stayed the same , I assumed that the service would be the same.

WRONG!

I placed my order on the 27th , got a confirmation back straight away which said (as usual) that they would be in touch in a couple of days to let me know what was what. I know that they don't carry everything in stock so I might have to wait , but as nothing was desperate , it wasn't a problem. By 5th Jan , I still hadn't heard anything so sent an e-mail to check if there was a problem.
 Got an e-mail back on the 7th stating that as it said on their site they had been off for Christmas until the 4th. OK, they would have to order a lot of the threads , but had a few in stock if I wanted them sent out straight away.
 I got right back to them and asked how long it would take for the threads to come. Two days later , they reply that it takes 10-15 working days.
 So , I replied that it was OK to wait and send all together.

Fast forward to 18th Feb, still not heard anything and I was going to give them until the end of that week and tell them not to bother.
 On the 20th , I got an e-mail to say it was being sent out that day . I had to e-mail back and ask what the postage cost would be as their site adds a huge charge on , but they do not take the money until the order is processed and then just add what the postage costs.
 The reply said £3.50 , which I thought was a bit much , but wait and see.
Two days later the envelope arrives and the postage cost was 90p .

 Unimpressed does not even begin to cover it. I sent an e-mail asking how they justified it and to be fair , I got a reply very quickly saying that they had charged as a package when it actually got through as a large envelope. I know the post is tricky to calculate now , but they didn't then go back and sort it out.
 They have agreed to refund all the postage , so just got to wait and check if that has been sorted.

 The whole thing has left a bad taste , and really put a downer on a stash acquisition ,which should be a fun thing, right ?
 In fact , until today I haven't even looked at the threads ,at the time ,I just stuffed them back in the envelope in case I decided to send them back and tell them to stuff it.

 So , they have lost a customer. Even if they are cheaper than anywhere else , I will not use them again.

Anyway , here are the threads .

Just hope it doesn't put a downer on using them.

 My latest finishes for LQUK

 And a couple of scarves I made over the weekend.

In other news , the bully has been at it again , but had a go at my daughter this time , so I had to have a word with a teacher , again. Getting pretty fed up of it now.
 A lovely day today , dry and sunny . Let's hope it stays that way .
 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

Threads storage .

 First off ,a big Thank you to everyone for the lovely comments on my last post. I tried to reply to everyone , but some were no-reply comments and one kept bouncing back.
  Your comments really helped and made it a bit easier for me.

I took the opportunity at Open Evening to have a word with my sons' teacher. She discreetly had a word with the kid ,who came and asked if he wanted to play the following day. It was only for a short while before she wandered off ,and I'm sure it won't last , but we'll see. It makes it very hard as we have known this girl since she and my Daughter were at nursery together , so going on 6 years. I cannot understand how kids can be like that , but still. All's well that ends well, for the time being at least .
 
 Half term this week , and my son is glued to the Winter Olympics ,lol .

Remember I had to wind all those threads onto bobbins?
 Well, this is what they look like done .

  I wasn't sure if I'd have enough space in all my boxes ,as I didn't really want to use the ones that have broken hinges for the lids, so I picked up a couple of these from Home Bargains.

 They were a ridiculous price of around £1.49 I think , and the little dividers come out . They are a little shallow for the bobbins , but with a squeeze will close and keep everything safe.

 So ,this is almost my entire collection of DMC threads. I have left spaces as some threads are in use and obviously, there will be more added at times.

 This is my Anchor box with a few unbranded threads  at the end . The paper at the top has the Anchor-DMC conversion numbers of the threads I have , to make life a bit easier .

 WIP box for Rosita.

  And "others" WIP boxes , usually my charity squares and there are the threads that the kids are using for their Pokemon they have started.

There are still some other threads out in another box for my Christmas UFO/WIP.

Lots of lovely threads in gorgeous colours, to brighten the days a little .

  Thanks for dropping by ,
Cath