A weekend in June ...

... in photos

Friday

• A day spent in Ashbourne with a very old friend and a trip to the wool shop to buy her daughter some yarny gifts for her birthday (oo, such fun, her daughter will be 12 and it is great to have the chance to encourage a young budding knitter)

• While I was in the shop I spotted these balls of DMC Natura cotton, a yarn I love, and as they were reduced to £2 a ball I bought 3. Oops, when I got home I realised I already had  the coral and blue but I bravely did not let it dampen the joy of my purchase!

• In an effort to lose a little bit of weight gained over the last few sedentary months in my new job I am trying to make sure I do at least 10,000 steps a day, this often means a walk up to the woods every evening. This was the view we had on Friday - stunning!

Saturday

• Early morning coffee: we do love going in to town early and treating ourselves to a coffee and croissant in Caffe Nero. The cafe is in the centre of town and on a Saturday morning you have the added bonus of watching the market come to life - a very relaxed start to the weekend.

• Finished this little dress for my office colleague who is expecting a little girl in September. 

• the colour is actually more of a denim blue. It's quite a pretty pattern but I'm a bit concerned that the neck hole is a bit small for a baby's head - they might end up wrestling it over her head!

Sunday

• Sunday morning cycle ride: this is such a restorative to me. When I set off I thought I would do a short half hour ride but ended up cycling for almost 2 hours - covering about 18 miles.

• Looking towards Bradgate Park and Old John. 

• Views from Cropston reservoir to Bradgate Park. 

• Feeling so good to be outside in the country. 

• Letting my thoughts wander - mainly on how to deal with my job which I'm finding far too stressful. 

• Slightly apprehensive this week as last Sunday I came the closest ever to being knocked off my bike. Thankfully I am very aware of traffic and make every effort to make eye contact with drivers to ensure I know they have seen me. However this particular driver slowed down as she came towards the junction and then proceeded to speed up straight towards me as I cycled up a main road. She did stop, to her credit, but her excuse for not seeing me was that she was tired (it was 9.30am Sunday morning) and it had been raining! I wear a bright yellow fluorescent jacket - how can she not have seen me? 

•  A lovely open road to cycle along....

• And a tunnel of trees to cycle through....

• I finally blocked this table runner, but now I've finished it I think it looks too wintery so I'm not sure how long it will stay on the table 

• And a final walk up to the Outwoods on Sunday evening, my photos are testament to the number of beautiful clear sunny evenings we have had over the last few weeks. 

Thanks for getting to the end of this post - as you can see, nothing very exciting happened with me!!

I hope you had a great weekend. 

Wishing you a good week!

xXx

Weekend pleasures

Hello,

We all know this but sometimes it's good to remind ourselves....

'the simple things in life can give so much pleasure'

a line, full of washing in the sun... 

(oops, I might have to search a little deeper for the pleasure to be 

found in the resulting chaotic pile of ironing)

home baking: toss in cake

 home baking: quiche

 home baking: cheese straws

home baking = good things for the family to eat

   colour on the kitchen table...

  daughter's skateboard, residing in the kitchen.... 

Have a good week!

xXx

A bit of flitting...

Hello,

Well another week/weekend has flown past  - and I can't even blame a busy schedule on 

the speed at which the week passed. I spent much of it lying on the sofa trying to recover 

from a cold/cough that has been hanging around for 4 weeks now. Still, looking on the 

bright side, a mum at football told me she had had a cold this winter that lasted 8 weeks, so 

at least I'm half way!!

I don't know about you but when I'm not feeling well I struggle to concentrate on

 anything - I guess most people feel the same. However, I did manage to read Pompeii by 

Richard Harris which I enjoyed.

I made some slight headway on my Me to You Tatty Ted cross stitch. As you can see from this earlier post I have been stitching this teddy for some time. I have finished all the main

 stitches and I am now onto the outline  - but oh boy it does take some concentration 

and I just didn't feel up to more than a couple of hours on this.

So I decided to flit to another cross stitch project

 (yes, I confess to having many, if not countless WIPs!).

This is an extra special project as younger son bought this for me for Christmas 2013 - 

he and a friend visited our local yarn/craft store and chose this kit especially because he 

knows how much I love the sea.

But I was shocked by my untidy mess of threads - it's a good job

 this isn't a big project with lots of threads. 

So a bit of cardboard (from an empty packet of dish washer tablets) was sought 

and order soon restored - ahhhh....................

BUT..

 then I realised the blue thread for the sky was missing, served me right for being so 

disorganized with my threads in the first place!

And then I found it, safely stored on Tatty Ted's thread holder!

and I was properly organised! 

I'm delighted to say I made great progress with this project....

..and finished it on Saturday. I love the colours. 

I haven't quite decided what I am going to do with it - I might make 

a little wall hanging or I may get it framed properly as it is extra special.

Elder son has been home this weekend - always a great treat. 

We had a lovely walk on Friday in Bradgate Park - one of my favourite parks particularly

 on  a quiet day, and I thought a bit of fresh air would do me some good. This park can

 be heaving with people on high days and holidays and is definitely to be avoided

 on Boxing Day!

Of course our walk was rewarded with a light lunch for me and a 'not quite 

so light' lunch for son at the tea shop. 

And just to finish off my photo flitting - look at these delicious 

cupcakes my daughter's friend made - aren't they fantastic?

Wishing you a great week, and possibly half term!

xXx

Week One!

Hello

Well I have survived "Week One" back at work, just about! 

It was far busier than I was hoping: we had two members of staff off sick

 all week and given that we are a small unit this has a huge impact on our workload. 

I have to admit that I woke up on Tuesday morning (just "Day Two" of "Week One") and 

checked with my husband that it was only Tuesday - oh boy, I was convinced/hoping it 

was Thursday - it certainly felt like it. 

But somehow I seemed to pick up as the week progressed and in the end I had quite a

 busy and productive home and social life.

Baking and cooking has occurred aplenty. Mince pies ...

 millionaire short bread (note the small piece top left, this is where I tried

 to be good and cut myself "just half")...

 (I never seem to be able to make 'pretty' millionaire shortbread, my 

pieces always end up different sizes and crumby)

 and son and I preparing fajitas for dinner.

I sent a very belated Christmas present to my friend overseas so decided to make

 it a Happy New Year present instead and trimmed my gift with a crochet flower and ribbon.

On other matters, I am always quite happy to take the Christmas decorations down and restore some sort of order to our house but you may remember I blogged at the beginning of December and January about a couple of little decorations I had made...

in particular the snowman on the right above...

 

and the little sheep in his scarf and hat!

I was reluctant to pack these away and decided they weren't so Christmassy that they 

needed to go away until next Christmas, but thought they probably need another decoration to 

keep them company - two isn't many is it?

So I decided to go with a distinctively winter theme for a third decoration!

I had seen this gorgeous little decoration on the blog of Le Chalet des Pérelles.

Isn't it delightful? But as I wanted a smaller decoration I decided to adapt it a little

 to cross stitch just the white tree and snowman. 

 This was an easy pattern as there were no half stitches or outlining to stitch...

 

so I made good progress during the week. 

And I finished the cross stitching this afternoon. I just need now to get my sewing 

machine out and complete the decoration ... as you can see below, backing fabric, 

ribbon and buttons have been chosen!

I can't wait to complete it!

 

 And on a completely different topic...

 - son's shoes - which as you can see were filthy! 

They needed plenty of elbow grease and shoe cream to restore them to something 

wearable and in order to give me an incentive to continue with the task and to 

help me realise quite what a good job I'd done with them, I concentrated on 

one shoe only to begin with - here's my 'before and after' comparison - looking 

at the photo I reckon I have done a pretty good job so far! 

One down, one to go!

And much of this home activity was undertaken in front of 

our stove.

We had this multifuel stove installed this summer and absolutely LOVE IT! 

It makes the room so warm and cosy and throws out a lovely golden glow. 

It encourages us all to sit together in the lounge while doing our various activities. 

NOTE: we also love the light shed by the fairy lights so decided not to put them 

away after Christmas. 

 Good job I'm not superstitious!

Have a good week

xXx 

P.S. And daughter's football team won their match today 3-2, onwards in the cup competition!