Winners!

Sports Day...

… and a fistful of 1st and 2nd places and a gallon of suntan lotion.

Afterwards, seeing that even after an hour of airing the conservatory it was still over 30 degrees, I gave up the idea of getting out the sewing machine!

Love summer x

Where did the time go!?

Anyone with Ballamory-aged offspring will know my state of mind!

So back to Wednesday; spots of the non-blanching kind, two trips to the doctors, yes you power-crazed receptionist, I DO think my daughter needs to see the doctor!  All OK though, phew.

Thursday; parent's induction evening at son's middle school as of September, so much information to try and retain; going on the theory that if it isn't on the website, it isn't worth knowing!

Friday - my birthday!  Pressies, cake, shopping and time with my true love; more time than we had hoped for in a new John Lewis/Waitrose cafe, but we ended up with a free lunch, so no hard feelings!

Saturday, back up to my parent's, a side trip to IKEA, a mile of Nummer and about £50 of 'stuff' we never knew we needed.

Sunday, kids' homework and a little bit of secret making…

After work today I was at the school swimming gala, tomorrow is the joy of Sport's Day, so that's my morning, at least.

Wednesday dear son is off for his induction day and on to a friend's for tea, and the girls get to play at being in Year 4.  I get to work.

Thursday there's a parent's evening about the KS2 Sex Ed video, cue lots of giggling, and that's just the mums and on Friday we have an Inset Day.

Unfortunately the momentum does not slow from then on, but that's more than enough sharing for now!

So if I go stealth again, you pretty much know the where, when and why xxx

Two more, makes four...

Slowly, slowly stitching my flowers…

I am at work tomorrow, and busy Thursday and Friday, so I am not putting money on any major sewing breakthroughs this week; good job I am happy plodding eh!

Just Keep Stitching!

Although I am feeling down in the dumps with so much on my plate at the moment, I pulled myself together a little over the weekend, and it felt good.

On Saturday there was a quick visit to my parent's to drop off the She Loves You cushion, a success, and then on to Bluewater.  We hadn't taken the kids there since the girls were babies, we wanted to postpone the continual begging to go to The Disney Store, The Lego Shop, Build A Bear, Claire's Accessories, Hawkin's Bazaar et al for as long as possible!

We had a lovely lunch in GBK, I got to spend an early birthday White Stuff voucher from my parents, and grab a few more bits and pieces, including a little home dec from John Lewis to make a summer bag.  Hubby got to do some birthday shopping too, (I hope!).

Sunday was a quiet Father's Day, but there was cake and ice-cream along with the school project work and grass-cutting, so a smiling Daddy here nonetheless.

Today I failed to dodge the rain showers, but just now I happily managed to sew up the cushion pieces I prepped last week…

This is to be my blogiversary giveaway prize in a couple of weeks, giving me enough time to finish it off without adding to the stress!  Bonus.

It isn't all bad!

Today, my car decided to start flashing up all sorts of failure messages and warning lights, killing the radio and dashboard display; then having coaxed it all the way to the office car park, it died completely.  Splendid RAC man to the rescue, and an hour later I was back at work, in a courtesy car, that my work's security men laughed at, and come 4pm it was fixed, new alternator installed, and I will collect it on my way to work tomorrow, unfortunately with a bank balance £275 emptier.  Gah!!!

Still, I am looking on the bright side, it was sunny, I made it to work, didn't cause a 10 mile tailback at the side of the road, and it wasn't at the weekend, on the M25, with poor hubby and kids in tow.

Having to then pick up a post-swim sickly child, who had swallowed too much water, and get embroiled in a Facebook squabble has just about tipped me over the edge.

Fortunately I was able to pick up the ma-hoosive feather cushion insert for my Dad's present on my way home…

I consoled myself with a little chain-stitching of half-rectangle triangles, and making a pretty layout of maybe a giveaway prize for the not too distant future…

Tonight I will be putting last Thursday's relaxation exercises into practice for sure!

I meant to blog, honest!

My days have kind of crashed into a sofa-coma as soon as the kids have hit the hay this week.  I have been sewing; drilling a nice big hole into my middle finger with all the hand-stitching and binding I have been doing.  I'm not too happy about that, so I'll be on machine duty for a few days.

I took photos along the way, to prove how productive I've been though…

This is a Father's Day cushion for my Dad.  I spent most of Sunday pulling and cutting fabrics, over-thinking some of the fussy-cut text and generally trying make my super-sized She Loves You block from Jen Kingwell's Quilt Lovely, perfect.

I managed to get a couple of flower heads onto my Amitié BOM over the weekend too, and today I had a good go at the sky of my #mysmallworld…

I am starting to have palpitations about the end of year teacher gifts, with dear son moving up to middle school, I have to go large!  And I have a couple of must-do projects to get off the ground too, so no time for slacking.

So that's where I am at.  If I go silent again, I am likely to be stitching sleeping xxx

Progress…

I love being able to see my Amitié BOM quilt progressing; I took this during the torrential rain this afternoon…

… and now I only have 2 more leaves to appliqué.

I am hoping that over the weekend I will be able to top those stalks with flower heads!  I have swapped out the very curvy flowers from the pattern; check instagram for amitiemysteybom2014 to get an idea, and will be using the, what I call, double Jen Kingwell flower ovals, which I can cope with!  After the hash-up I made with my claw-like centre leaves, I won't be making the same mistake again!

It did amuse me when I did all that cutting on Wednesday, how, when the BOM began, I was picking the exact fabric as shown in the monthly photo guide, too scared to deviate, but now… what the heck!  Confident?  Over-confident?  Time will tell.

So have a great weekend everyone; I am hoping for a mix of sunshine and showers sewing xxx

We'll Meet Again...

Dear son was doing the evacuee and songs from the war effort type things today…

Fortunately we couldn't locate a nice wooly tank top, otherwise he would probably have passed out in the heat, (got to love a sudden Summer!).

I, on the other hand took part in our work's Wellbeing Awareness Day, sampling some raw chocolate delights, and then a relaxation half hour, before coming home, to some lovely fabric mail from Justine & Lisa…

Pretty good for a Thursday x

I did it, I did it!

All 22 blocks made…

Woo Hoo!!!

I also cut all the remaining pieces for Months 2-5 that had been awaiting extra fabrics from future months or that I had generally slacked on!

It's a bloody good feeling to be at this stage - cutting and marking up for hand-stitching is such a long-winded affair, and definitely not my favourite part, BUT getting so much done in one go is great.  I am good for about 6 months solid hand sewing now!

More prep...

I am on some sort of quilt-nesting mission right now.  Today I have prepped the whole of month seven of the Amitié Mystery BOM, having prepped the hexies for month 8 already.

I am going to machine-piece these, in-set seams 'n all, and in my head they will be perfect!!  And I am going to get all 22 little blocks made tomorrow.  That's if I am not distracted by the sunshine, my new book or some other shiny.  Tesco are also meant to be delivering back the Hudl, so we'll see how that goes, eh! xxx

Getting caught up...

I hope you all had a lovely weekend; we had a kid-free couple of hours on Saturday, which is always good, and managed to have our first BBQ of the summer yesterday, woo hoo.

I cut another 96 hexes for another Amitié Mystery BOM border, each from a different fabric…

I am planning on saving the two hexie borders for my holibobs, to appliqué on if/when the mood takes me, but I will baste these at my leisure and look forward to finishing them off.

I also finished the book I have not been reading since about September!  I have about a dozen books piled up ready to read, and I am loving being able to lounge in the sun and see what is in front of my face, so happy!

This evening I made my Stitch Tease Bee blocks for Di.  These, from an Ashley - Film In The Fridge tute were super easy and nice to make; thanks Di!

I now have to just get the Inbox under control, well you can't have everything!

Purple Friday...

Over breakfast the girls remembered that they had forgotten to bring a party invite home.  The party is tomorrow!

So this evening I did the swift pulling, cutting, sewing thing.

I midi-sized Svetlana's Lola pouch pattern for the 8th birthday girl…

I managed to get this all done whilst the girls were at Brownies, having stitched on 10 more badges before they went.  When they came home, they had Thank You flowers for my help at the Pack Holiday.  They are just schmoozing me for next year no doubt!

So another week done, and a busy weekend ahead, I hope you have a good one too xxx

Finishing touches...

Just the binding to stitch down, and my Instagram #1000flyingfollowers giveaway prize will be finished…

Please don't feel too neglected if you are not on Instagram, in a month I will be celebrating my 5 year blogiversary, so I'm sure I will be whipping up something for yous then.

PS. The Hudl was collected at the second attempt, after yesterday's cock-up, a teeny consolation x

Good with the Bad...

I topped 1000 followers over on Instagram today!!!!  I am obviously celebrating with a giveaway, so if you haven't ventured to the dark side, now may be the time.  I am @mrsflyingblind in case you didn't know.

Last night I cut all the pieces, and today I pieced and hand quilted a Small Wonders cushion top from Jen Kingwell's gorgeous Quilt Lovely.  I loved making this…

I also spent the day waiting for a DPD driver to come and collect a faulty hudl (tablet), note to the driver, THIS IS NOT MY HOUSE!!!

And Tesco, you then wasted another 2 hours of my life being unable to comprehend that I could possibly need to go to work, do the school run, yes, twice a day and not be able to be home 24/7!

The freezer door being left open, and the whole contents now residing in the dustbin were the perfect end to the day.

I'm going to bed xxx

May Mojo...

Well you would be forgiven for thinking that my mojo has returned!  In May I started on the awesome #mysmallworld QAL and this in turn, along with my new super-duper x-ray specs, has got me back into my Amitié BOM stitching, which I am loving completely!

I didn't realise quite how much I was in denial about my eyesight, because what I was fearing was becoming a 'chore' has become a joy again; the frustration of not being able to thread a needle is a thing of the past!!

June will include a bit of ageing, and what feels like a million kids' activities, events and meetings, so we'll see how the stitching goes in the 5 minutes I might get to myself.

Linking up with the other stitchy folks at Fresh Sewing Day.