Some updates!

Anyone need any books covered - LOL?!! I spent all day in the school library on Wednesday helping to cover books - going to be an expert by the time we are done with them all :)

In other news, the mailman has been very kind to me this week!



On Saturday I received the above from Karen at Dragonfly Dreams - one of many parcels I have received from Karen since moving to Dubai! The threads and beads are for a couple of Chatelaine designs I am in the process of kitting up - Watergarden and Mini Mandalas II. The charts are M Designs - Merry Christmas and Rose Mosaic Needle Rolls. I don't usually stitch gifts for people but I thought these might come in handy to make up for teacher gifts this year.

On Sunday I received the chart and treasures pack for Mirabilia's Mermaids of the Deep from Naomi at Stitches & Spice :



This is a beautiful design and I have plans to start this next year (if I can hold out that long) or after I finish Emerald Mermaid ... whichever occurs first :) I have a piece of Ocean Custom Sparkles from Linda at Country Stitch set aside for this project. I also have a piece of Ocean Waves from Stitches & Spice which I could use for this design as well, but I have allocated that to Mirabilia's Shimmering Mermaid already :)

Speaking of Linda and Country Stitch, on Wednesday I received two packages from her (again a couple of many I have received from her since moving here!). One had three Kiwi Pearls that I'd ordered and the other contained a piece that Linda very kindly custom dyed for me for an Heaven & Earth Designs chart that I'm planning to start next month.



Aren't they yummy?! The fabric on top of the pile to the right is the custom dyed one. The design planned for this is Nouveau Mermaid Earth, one of a series of four, by Selina Fenech.

(Blogger photos is not being co-operative today so I've had to host these images at Photobucket)

I still have one more order to come in from Wyndham Needleworks but that will probably be another week or two. I ordered An Open Heart from Drawn Thread plus the silks, two Long Dog Samplers - Rosemarkie and St Georges, and a couple of the Tree Ornaments from M Designs, oh and a couple of the ornament issues of Just Cross Stitch magazine. I'm not really into Christmas designs but they may be useful to have on hand just in case :)

I have been happily stitching away on Merrick - I'm not sure that I'm going to get the dolphin finished by the end of October but I still have a few more days yet :). I still have not yet worked on QS Snowflake or Egyptian Garden though as I'd hoped to this month. Maybe I should just put a few stitches in on each of them and at least that way they will have seen some action this month!

The kids get an extra day off this weekend and have tomorrow off because of Parent/Teacher conferences. Back home we scheduled these appointments before or after school but here they close the school down for the day and you just turn up at your allotted time. I hear they do this in the States as well? I guess it gets them all over and done with pretty quickly this way :)

Ramadan is almost over as well which means half term break which coincides with the Eid Al Fitr holiday from 4th November. If DH can manage to get a few days off we are hoping to go away for a few days - not far - maybe to Fujairah or perhaps Muscat. The kids get just over a week off and I think it will do them good to have a break. I kept DS home an extra day earlier this week as his throat was still quite painful. He seems to have made a full recovery now though.

Wednesday nights are movie nights in our house :) This week we had home made pizzas for tea and then the kids chose a movie. This week it was Jumanji :) Last night DH and I watched Kung Fu Hustle - let's just say it was very weird - funny, but very weird - lol!

Well, that's pretty much all for today - have been on this machine for a fair portion of the day so I'm going to gather the family and go for a walk!

Just for fun :)

I'm just playing around today and seeing what else I can do with this blog - came across this and given that both my children have Gaelic names it intrigued me to see what mine would be. Here it is :)

Your Irish Name Is...

Duvessa McLoughlin

What's" your Irish Name?

Medieval Town Mandala Part 1 HD!

Not the world's best photo - it was late at night when I took the pic and there's too much flash so the colours look a bit washed out. I'll try to get a better one in the daylight. This is a Chatelaine online class project. It goes for 12 months and we get a part a month. I'm stitching this on 32 count antique white Belfast linen with the recommended silks. Part 1 took me longer to stitch than I anticipated - I started this just before midnight on 30 September 2005 and completed it on 19 October 2005. I was actually hoping to have it done in the first week but I didn't have as much stitching time as I thought I would.

I have now moved on to Black Swan's Merrick, Wizard of the Sea. I really want to finish this project this year but I have several other WIPs I want to work on as well. I decided to try a goal based rotation each month and so far I'm sticking to it :)

My rotation this month is:

• Complete Part 1 of MTM
• Complete the dolphin on Merrick
• Complete the centre square on Egyptian Garden (Chatelaine)
• Finish the wording on the top border of Fragile Miracles (Joan Elliott)
• Finish page 1 of Snowflake QS (HAED)
• Try to finish mermaid's tail on Emerald Mermaid (Mirabilia)

Looking at my goals now I think I may have been slightly over-ambitious ... either that or I was planning on getting in more stitching time than I did! I still have 10 more days before October is over so anything is possible - LOL!

The weekend is almost over for us here (Thursday/Friday since Friday is the holy day here) so I'm going to stitch for a couple of hours this afternoon before starting on dinner.

On the family front, DS is sick today with tonsilitis :( It was our first dealings with the medical centres here and it was a positive experience. Liam will have the day off school tomorrow so he can rest up and give the medication a chance to do it's job. I guess I will just have to sit and keep him company, with stitching in hand of course :)

DH and DD have gone off to one of the shopping malls nearby to check out the book store. Caitlin "needs" some things for a project - not sure if the teacher set it or whether it's something her and her friends have come up with :) Either way, it doesn't matter, as she is being creative and I am all for that! No doubt they will come home with a few extras!

I'm off to check on my patient and then stitch!

My first muttering :)

Well, here it is! I have finally managed to set one of these up!

I mostly plan to chat about my stitching but as we have also moved from Australia to Dubai recently, there will be some chat about our life here too.

We arrived here in early August, just in time for the real summer heat - ugh! Our plan was to get here at least a month before school started so the kids could settle into their new surroundings, I could get the villa set up, start to find my way around and organise school uniforms etc.

The first few weeks was mainly spent furniture shopping as we didn't bring any furniture out with us. DH has great taste and he had done well with equipping the kitchen and laundry and buying beds and stuff but knew I'd want to be involved with choosing a lounge suite and dining table etc :) We also had to get curtains and blinds and crockery etc ... basically set up the place from scratch. It was fun but also frustrating as I had some idea of what I wanted but not necessarily able to find it so we had to compromise on a couple of things. Of course now, I'm finding what I had envisioned!! Never mind, whilst we have the basics covered there are still a few things like coffee tables and pictures and the like to get, which we'll add over time :)

The kids are attending an international school here about 10 minutes away and have settled in really well. When the weather starts to cool down we will be able to walk there and back some days. It's a brand new school - construction of the lower and middle schools was completed just before school started mid September. The next phase of construction is not too far away from being finished. There is lots of construction happening here and things tend to go up pretty quickly.

I will have to continue this later as I need to head off to the school to help cover books for the library. There are loads of books to cover before the library officially opens after the half term holidays in November. I love libraries and I love books so I was more than happy to answer the call for help :)

Till next time!