Clara's completely addictive

I do love working on Clara, she's completely addictive. My first Hannah, and defintiely not my last, she's so lovely to stitch!

This is the 3rd page completed (well, the black completed anyway), I really want to carry on working on her, although I'm going to try and put her down and work on something else, even if it's only for a couple of hours, but I think I'll be back on her again pretty soon. If you want to see a more progressed verstion of her check out Megan's blog, she's absolutely flying through. She started after me and is already well ahead.

We're off out tomorrow cos Ben's taking me to Whitby, but other than that we don't really have much planned, so I'm hoping to have quite a productive stitching weekend, especially after having such a stitchless week. I put Clara down last Saturday and didn't get a chance to pick her up again until last night, I really missed her too!

It's been a busy week though. Our local football club had an opening of their new hospitality suite on Tuesday so I managed to get invited to that through work, then on Wednesday I won tickets to go and see Philippa Gregory give a talk as part of her book tour, she was really interesting, and much more entertaining than I expected her to be. I really like her books so I was quite chuffed to win the tickets, especially as I also week a set of her latest quartet of books

Latest International Hermit and Stitch

I didn't manage to finish my page like I was aiming for... Saturday went well and I was on track, Sunday I didn't get any stitching done at all, life got in the way instead... there's still enough progress for it to not be embarassing to show at least.

The Minx that is Miss Clara and the PR Mystery SAL

I've managed to do a bit more on the Passione Ricamo SAL. It's really odd stitching something when I don't know what it's going to look like.That little unstitched in the bottom corner that I thought was going to be wing is actually the moon, but I think the next page shows the start of her wing. I'm still behind, but I'm starting to catch up, and hopefully I'll be able to get a bit more done on her this week. The border is actually really glittery, but my camera hasn't managed to pick that up at all.



Clara started calling to me. She's developing a bit of a habit of doing that. It was stitching group on Thursday and she seemed like a nice project to take with them, and then I didn't want to put her down again yesterday.

It's International Hermit and Stitch this weekend, and I'm debating whether I'm going to be able to spend enough time stitching to finish this page. We haven't got much planned, so it is a possibility.

Happy Stitching!

Pride and Prejudice Kit by Serenity Design

I bought a lovely Pride and Prejudice kit from Serenity Designs recently, and as Anna's making and selling her own kits I thought I'd put a review up and try and get her name (and thus some of her gorgeous kits) out there.

You can either buy direct through her websitse - http://www.serenitydesigns.org.uk or her ebay store - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/serenitycrossstitchdesigns depending on which you prefer.

Her kits are fabulous, especially if you're a bit of a geek, but even if you're not I recommend going and having a look. She's got kits of CSI, Twilight, Buffy, Merlin (which I want!) Game of Thrones, Serenity, Lord of The Rings and so many other things - I was basically in geek heaven, there are so many that I wanted, it took me absolutely ages to narrow it down to just 1, and even now I'm wavering towards a couple of her others. She also does threads packs for HAEDs and also some HAED charts (authorised retailer, don't worry!).

I ordered through ebay, because I hadn't discovered her own site at the time and received excellent service. The kit was dispatched really quickly and I got message telling me that it had been dispatched, and it arrived I think 2 days later. The kit itself is great, comes with a front cover picture, a chart (obviously) over 6 pages in this case, all your threads pre-sorted and labelled (I photographed it the wrong way up, so you can't see the labelling, but it's all really clear!), a key and a needle. The chart's really clear, and I'm itching to start it (but seeing as I've got 7 on the go at the moment, I'm trying to resist for a while).

Service was great, excellent communication and arrived in great condition and good time. On an additional note on communication, Anna's also got a facebook page for Serenity Designs, making her even easier to contact, and it also means that you can see other progress pictures as well.

I love Anna's stuff so I hope a few people pop over and have a look, and hopefully are maybe even tempted by them! If you do make sure you post on your blog so I can see what pretties you've bought and I can stitch the others that I love vicariously through all of you!

I got distracted... again!

I was away last weekend to see the Olympic Football (we went out on penalties, oh what a surprise!) so I took Clara away with me because she's a bit more portable than Dragon Rider (Q-Snap versus massive roll frame), and having started working on her while I was away I couldn't put her down again, so I decided to finish the page, and I am completely in love with her!

I'm really tempted to carry on working on her, and move on to the next page, but I'm going to be good and go back to Dragon Rider. Finishing this page means that I've completed one of my Olympic goals, and and I'm going to make Dragon Rider a Paralympic goal instead.

Happy Stitching all!

Look, a starfish!

It's quite sad just how excited I am to see the starfish... I ought to have put some purple in really to make him look less like a starfish and more like a wizard, but he's then and you've no idea how happy I am to see him... I'm also seeing definite castle development, and that dark green streak in the top right corner is the tail with goes across this page, although it's not that obvious that that's what it is yet! However, I may have over strived on my Olympic ambitions, of finishing this page and the black on the next page of Clara might have been a mistake, so I'm thinking that I'll extend my deadline, and instead say that it's going to be my target for the Olympics and Paralympics instead.