Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

The amazing thing is the difference between the snow here and the complete lack of snow in town.. Didn’t stop me falling on my bum at Euston on Thursday! I’m pleased to report that I was helped up by a very kind man. It’s sad that that is the first question people have asked me, assuming that unfriendly Londoners would have left a pregnant woman abandoned on the floor.

While watching the snow I’m being spectacularly unproductive on the craft front, I’ve been sat here watching Gilmore girls (yes, still hooked) and playing free Tetris online all morning instead of the many things I’d like to get finished in the next few months.

I was however, very impressed with Rob’s girlfriend’s pre-Christmas handiwork.. She made him a Stuffed Reddit Alien Toy. Check out his post about it for how it was put together..

Cameron and her Reddit alien

Inspired by Cam’s handwork I’m off to get the ironing board out to do a bit more work on my baby quilt, photos to follow when I have something to share!

We moved to a real peach of a house in Caterham Valley and so that’s where I’ve been, exploring the area, decorating and generally settling in.

We’ve got a new addition:

This is Scooby a lovely 2 year old cat we got from the Cats Protection, they have a couple of kittens listed on their website with broken legs – I can’t get over how cruel people can be! But Scooby seems to be settling in well and hopefully will be very happy with us!

We have another new arrival on the way, due in April which is another reason for the lack of blog posts – I’ve been pretty exhausted for the first few months of my pregnancy, but I’ve at least started knitting again – nearly finished a hoody cardigan for my friend’s baby, Isabel (I’ll post a photo if it turns out OK!).

I’m going to try my hand at quilting over the next few months (/years) and am going to make the quilt below.. it’s a bit of a challenge, but it should keep me and Scooby busy!

I’ve absolutely adored our first year of marriage and we really spoilt ourselves.

The Lions match in a sports bar on Saturday afternoon, followed by a stunning performance of Madam Butterfly at the ENO – which was beautifully done, very simple but striking set and costumes. We recognised some of the traditional Japanese Kabuki moves from a production of the Mikado we were both in a couple of years ago.. So something for each of us I guess!

I’m determined we’re going to stick to the traditional themes for anniversary gifts so year one was paper, so Duncan bought me a subscription to Sew magazine. A fantastic new magazine published in the UK .. which I appear to be the exact target market for! You might recognise a little someone in issue two.. which dropped onto my doormat today! There’s a feature on sewing bloggers with mini interviews with 5 of us – it’s quite exciting! I was really hoping to include some photos, but as neither of our cameras has battery, I’ll link to Lisa’s review of issue one for now instead! – I couldn’t resist posting straight away, Duncan’s out and I had to tell somebody!

Image from Joggles.com

I made a last minute decision to sign up for Sharon Boggon’s Studio Journals: A Designer’s Workhorse course through Joggles. It’s a course I’ve been meaning to take for a couple of years. It’s about using a journal to ‘catch your design ideas’ with a view to designing fiber projects – so embroidery and quilting. I have the list of the materials needed so will head out to the art shop on Saturday morning – first item on the list a journal

I’ve done a couple of other courses with Sharon before and have really enjoyed them. I have found it difficult to keep up though – I think the first one I had to stop the sewing part way through after hurting my wrist and I followed it up with a second course not long after recovering..

I’m going to have to make time this time to get the most out of it! Which will be a challenge for me! Especially with my new addiction to Springwatch and hopefully a house move this summer.. (still sitting with fingers crossed waiting for our buyer to have her mortgage approved).

I was at our local pub last night, The Earl Ferrers, it’s a fab local with a real community spirit. Last night we had a lavender bag workshop for us instead of our usual stitch and bitch session.

One of my neighbours is a costume designer and had a host of different materials and trimmings for us to play with. Please excuse the sewing on this – the lighting in the pub, the beer and the lateness of the hour did me no favours!! (the embroidery in the centre is cut from a lovely piece of embroidered silk – not my own work!)

Richard is both a big Schubert fan and difficult to buy for so this year we decided that an embroidery of Schubert was a good option.

I took this image:

Traced the outline and simplified the detail a little. I used split stitch for most of the design and fly stitch to shape the curly stitches on the hair. I’ve run the picture by a few of my musical friends and they assure me that it is a recognisable likeness! What do you think??

While he was there they visited Archie McPhee a store who’s tag line is ’slightly less disappointing than other companies!’ The store sells Yodelling Pickles – I can’t wait to go visit myself at some point! Geraldine bought a jar of fake eyeballs.. which I wish Duncan had photographed! Not least because we decided that it would make the perfect thank you card!

The photo’s not great, but the iris is done using buttonhole stitch, the pupil a french knot and the red blood-shotness is fly stitch.

Since making my own eyeballs I found some kits over at Creative Kismet who would have thought there’d be so much call for embroidered eyeballs!

One of my favourite stories as a child was the Princess and the Pea, so I’ve been really excited by some of the projects I’ve seen around recently.

This embroidery is just so lovely, it looks so simple, which I find are often the hardest projects to do!

Over at Soulemama this amazing project really captured my imagination and I’ll be saving this one up for the future

Just realised how ambiguous this is and that I didn’t properly reference the embroidery – just to clarify it’s not my work! It’s by the very talented Georgia McDonald! Also after a bit of digging I’ve found the pattern for it over at etsy – very reasonable at $5!

The flowers obviously did the trick

We accepted an offer on our flat on Thursday and there’s now a lovely Sold sign outside. Not counting chickens, touching wood and looking out for pairs of magpies! We’re also booking appointments to go and view places out in Surrey.

Knitting

After more than a couple of false starts, a bit of a strop and a lovely afternoon with a good knitting friend (that’s both good friend and a friend who’s good at knitting!), I am proud to present the half finished back of my gilet-to-be…

My initial problems stemmed from not understanding the pattern properly and having to count 82 stitches.. yep – I have a PhD and struggled counting to 82(!)

But now I’m underway so far so good! The tricky bit is not dropping the cable needle – any advice on that would be very welcome!

We bought these beautiful lilies for the viewings this weekend, hear’s hoping that between them and the sunshine we made an impression! I love the shading on these, they’d make a lovely embroidery..

One of the other benefits is the tidiest of flats, I’m not a neat freak by nature, but now I can’t leave for work without tweaking the duvet so it’s just so. When I get a call at work saying can we bring someone to view this afternoon I then flash back to did I put that pile of laundry away? Did I leave a glass on the work top? what mess have we left out!!

There are only two of us, but as we effectively have only Saturday to Sunday evening to wash everything and get it dried it it’s a bit of a focus! Today’s a bank holiday in the UK so no work and no viewings – I’ve got washing strung up all over the flat

It hasn’t all been laundry this weekend, we went out to Surrey to the area we’re hoping to move to. When we first put the flat on the market we went out house hunting, fell in love we a great place, which sold about a month ago.. with no news on our place I just can’t go look at any more until we actually can put an offer in, but we can still go and look round and enjoy the countryside that will hopefully soon be a lot closer!

We walked section 5 of the London loop, through the North Downs. The picture is of Happy Valley – you can’t go wrong with a place name like that!

We’re traveling up to Yorkshire tomorrow for my sister-in-law’s wedding on Monday, so I’ll have another bash at starting knitting my shrug. I started it a few weeks ago, but haven’t quite got the hang of the ribbing, I’m hoping my Mother-in-law will have chance to help me out this weekend! Though I imagine it will be a pretty hectic weekend!

In fact I’ve just come across a site with quite comprehensive instructional videos on knitting, I think I might have to try ribbing on a practice piece before attempting it in a garment!

A friend sent this video through to me – it’s fabulous, watch through to the end, it just gets funnier!

Mary over at Needle’nThread has a 10% off deal for the month of April with The French Needle, they have some beautiful surface embroidery kits I love this bird but between the exchange rate and the duty payable for shipping into the UK it works out quite expensive!

While I quite like being awake while everyone else is asleep, it’s so quiet outside and there’s no pressure to be doing anything, I know I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow so I should try and grab a bit of sleep.

Goodnight all!