June goals

A few days early but it will be really busy for the next couple of days!

1. Complete parts 4 and 5 of "How does your Garden Grow?"
2. Take part in the crossstitchcrazy SAT and get somewhere near last month's totals. I won't be able to stitch as much so I can't beat it!
3. Stitch some on the Bent Creek Snappers designs.
4. Complete the blackwork butterfly that is currently around 50% done.
5. Put 5 hours into another (don't mind which!) UFO/WISP.

Hopefully these should be fairly reasonable but with a week away, school fun day, birthday parties and whatever else crops up, it could be a completely disastrous month!! Watch this space..........

Luke's birthday or rather his present day

Today is what we call Luke's present day. This is because his birthday falls when we are away on our hols and as we can't take all his pressies with us we just take his small ones so he has a few things to open. He was thrilled with all his bigger presents today. He got (amongst others!) lego police station, Indiana Jones lego, Dr Who figures, Ben 10 omnitrix, radio control subaru, Man Utd football and some science experiments. He was thrilled with the football which Rachael gave him. This is his reaction to opening it.....................

It's not often he gives out hugs and kisses so I think Rachael was taken a bit by surprise there!

Colin and I were up until 1.30am making the lego police station. The instructions were really clear but there was just so much of it. We hid it behind the curtains and got Luke to open them after he opened all his presents...........he was VERY surprised and absolutely thrilled with it. The most exciting bit (apparently) is the fact that the prison cells have little toilets in them. Well, I suppose he is a 6 (almost 7) lad and anything to do with bodily functions is great!!

The cats are going to the vet this afternoon. Over the last couple of weeks they have both started spraying. We are hoping that getting them castrated will do the trick otherwise we may have to consider either one or both of them being rehomed - there is only so much cat pee we can put up with! As they have taken to doing it on the kids beds and toys it has become a bit of a health risk. Everyone is really upset that the cats may have to go although apparently the children are happy to have a hamster instead!

May update and How does your garden grow?

1. Complete Sunday Cricket and find a suitable mount for it. (Found frame) I have finished the design but struggling to find a mount.



2. Start "How does your garden grow" which is a mystery stitch from Papillon Creations. I would like to complete first 2 parts of this. Done and also finished part 3 too!!



3. Continue with Bothy Threads Cut Thru Garden Shed for the Crossstitchcrazy SAT in May and try to beat my total from last month. Done and my total in the end was 3396 stitches.



4. Stitch one cat from Cat's Alphabet which is my oldest WIP/UFO. Disaster struck. Where this has been a UFO for so long the fabbie has faded and the whole project needs to be ditched!

As mentioned above my target was to finish the first 2 parts of How does your garden grow? Yesterday my hubby let me sit and stitch almost all day and I managed to finish part 3 too. I am really pleased that hopefully I should be caught up with all the parts barring any disaster by the time part 6 comes out in the middle of June. I am really enjoying stitching this, although I NEARLY gave up part way through part 3 as I had unpicked bits so often.
I will start part 4 tonight hopefully. However, I suppose I ought to make the effort to help with the packing for the holiday too.

Beavers

Luke was invested at Beavers last Friday. I'm not sure he knew what he was doing particularly and rather than knowing the promise he just repeated it after the leader. He did however, come home with 4 badges for me to sew on his jumper. I have done 2 so far and pinned on one other. He looked dead smart coming back with his new scarf (is that what they are called?) and his woggle. I will post a picture next week of him when I have got all his badges sewn on.

Crossstitchcrazy stitchathon

This week has been the crossstitchcrazy stitchathon for the month. My totals for the week are:

Monday - 529 stitches

Tuesday - 201 stitches

Wednesday - 466 stitches

Thursday - 85 stitches

Friday - 546 stitches

Saturday - 870 stitches

Sunday - 699 stitches

Below is the progress I have made this week during the stitchathon. The first page is now completed and next month for the stitchathon I will be moving up to the top of the design. This page is actually the only page that is solid stitching. I decided to leave all the backstitch to the end so that it keeps the sharpness at the end. There is so much of it that it will be a real challenge to complete it.

Rachael has been on her pump for nearly 2 weeks now and is loving it. She has "missed" over 50 injections and is doing all of her own set change with the exception of actually inserting the needle herself. Last night we had a bit of a disaster. For some bizarre reason we couldn't reattach the tubing after her bath. Between me, her and her dad we spent about 20 minutes trying. Eventually we gave up and did a set change. This time there was blood all through the tubing and when we whipped off the set quickly there was a pool of blood on Rachael's leg. Considering how scary it was, Rachael was really good about it. We had a little chat about it afterwards and explained to her that a pump is similiar to injections in so much that sometimes things don't go as smoothly as we would like and that sometimes injections were painful for example. Rachael really is a superstar!!

Luke has been a bit poorly this week. Wednesday night/Thursday morning he was vomitting for England. He is ok now though I don't think he will be wanting baked beans for a while though!!

We had a lovely day today (well I'm not sure that the children would agree!) We have been clothes shopping for our holiday. We went to the big Asda Walmart at Eastlands, they had some great stuff for fab prices. Unfortunately, next door is a big Next with a clearnace shop in it. Although their stuff is really well made and wears well they are a lot more expensive than Asda. Still the children were pleased with all their bits and pieces.

May update

1. Complete Sunday Cricket and find a suitable mount for it. (Found frame) I have finished the design but struggling to find a mount.


2. Start "How does your garden grow" which is a mystery stitch from Papillon Creations. I would like to complete first 2 parts of this. Done


3. Continue with Bothy Threads Cut Thru Garden Shed for the Crossstitchcrazy SAT in May and try to beat my total from last month.


4. Stitch one cat from Cat's Alphabet which is my oldest WIP/UFO. Disaster struck. Where this has been a UFO for so long the fabbie has faded and the whole project needs to be ditched!
   

That's my May update so far - some good some very bad!

Here is a pic of "How does your garden grow?" with part 1 and 2 completed. I am so pleased with how this looks so far and I am finding some of the speciality stitches much easier than I thought they would be. I can't wait to get started on part 3. I submitted it to the Papillon website so you can see it there too!

Rachael was given a cross stitch kit for her birthday and we started it today. She has picked it up really quickly so I am pleased with that. I had visions of me tearing my hair out with her or it. I have posted a pic below of her progress so far.

With the nice weather we have been having we have been playing cricket out on the front. Well a version of it anyway! Luke is really good at hitting the ball and is pretty good at catching too. Rachael needs a bit of practice yet. It has been great fun getting out after such a miserable spring. Luke would now like to join a cricket team so we will have to have a look around for one although it may be a bit late for this season.

Rachael's pump start is going well. Her levels have been much more level on the whole and we are loving being able to give tiny corrections when she is only slightly out of range. Set changes are proving to be ok apart from removing the old set. Easing it of in the bath seems to be working ok. I asked Rachael how she was finding not having injections all the time and she was really enthusiatic about the pump.

Part 1 finished

I have finished part 1 of 'How does your garden grow?' It looks amazing! I hummed and hahed over whether to add the beads now or at the end like I normally would. In the end I decided to bead as I went along. Here is a pic of it with all of part 1 done. Hopefully I can do most of part 2 tonight after I have done some of the ironing.

Rachael went live today with insulin in her pump instead of saline. It is great to be able to give her little corrections to stop her going to high where necessary rather than leaving it so she doesn't end up with an injection for 1 unit. There will be a lot of fine tuning to do over the next few weeks but hopefully it should give her much more freedom both with what she eats and keeping her sugar levels within range. This in turn should stop her from going from feeling great to rough and swinging wildly with the highs and lows!

Arrrgggghhhhhhh

When I got up this morning, Colin mentioned that something had been spilled on my cross stitch. When we examined it we realised that what it actually was where the wiped had been left open on the sofa it had soaked through the fabric. As it's on rollers I whipped it off and started to wash it. When I was washing it I noticed that the fabric had faded where it had been stored. Arrggghhh! On the plus side as it now needs restarting it is no longer a WIP. Really it was lucky that it had got wet otherwise I would have stitched downwards and then gone up and would have been really upset to find it after that!

Progress has continued on "How does your garden grow?" and part 1 is very nearly complete now. I will post a progress pic later on tonight.

Tea tonight

Tea tonight was made by Rachael and Luke. They made sausage rolls from skinless sausages and shortcrust pastry. They were really scrummy. They also made more pizzas but also some for me and their dad which we also had for tea. There was a little bit of pastry left over so we got 6 jam tarts out of it as well.

Here is progress on "How does your garden grow" after one day of stitching. As I have never stitched some of the speciality stitches before, it is proving a bit of a challenge. I love the colours that I have chosen for this one. I hope to stitch at least 2 parts this month. I wish I had seen this one when it first came out.

The second part of this looks like it should be a speedy stitch so that should help.

Rachael's pump

So far Rachael's pump has been going well. We have managed to do the set changes each time with no problems. We have discovered that it is easier to remove the old set when she is in the bath and soak off the adhesive. Unfortunately we have ran out of saline so Rachael is disconnected from her pump until Tuesday when we go live with insulin. It's hard to imagine not having to give Rachael injections much anymore. I worked out the other day that she has approximately 1500 injections a year and even more finger pricks to test her blood sugars. It's really scary when you think about things like that! We have received all the other pump pouches and luckily Rachael was pleased with them all. She now has one with dogs on, a Winnie the Pooh one, a purple camoflage one and a wispy purple one. At least she can have a bit of choice now with which one she wears. They all seem to be well made so I would recommend all 3 companies that we bought them from. If you want details, just ask.

I made a start with "How does your Garden Grow" tonight. This is a mystery stitch by Papillon Creations. Currently 4 out of 13 parts have been released so I am a little behind. Some of the parts are quite small so I should hopefully be able to catch up more or less by the time part 5 is released.

Sunday Cricket is done!!

A few weeks ago at Girls Brigade, Rachael made little pizzas with oven bottom muffins. I promised the children that they could do this one might for tea. Rachael chose to make cheese and tomato whilst Luke used brown sauce for the sauce, pepperami and cheese for his. Judging by the way they both wolfed them down, they were a great hit. There is a photo below of their pizzas.

Sunday Cricket is finally completed and a picture is added below. It's funny but I never get a buzz from finishing a design. I think it is more of a journey with cross stitch. Colin seems pleased with it. Now the search continues for a suitable mount ready for framing. A lot of the online stores seem to charge the earth for postage for mounts.