I have been quiet!!

Received a reminder from Nicole* today that I hadn't blogged in a while - she wondered if I was still stuck behind the ironing board - lol! No, ironing is pretty much up to date (thanks to our maid who caught it up for me while watching the kids one night a couple of weeks back). I've been a bit restless and just haven't been in the blogging frame of mind. Anyway, thanks for the push, Nic, I seem to be getting into the groove of things again now :)

Okay, so what have I been up to since I last posted? Well, let's see I've continued to read a lot. I discovered The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan, the Heather Wells mysteries by Meg Cabot and the first of JA Konrath's Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels mysteries, Whiskey Sour, all of which I've enjoyed. I've also started Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer, from DS's bookshelf, which is also looking to be a good read :)

I have also been stitching. There was a New Start SAL on the HAED BB at the beginning of the month which is all the encouragement I needed really :) I chose Ching Chou Kuik's Dream of Purple.

My progress ...

I also participated in September's edition of the Yearly Challenge SAL with Verdure and managed to complete the first page plus a little of the second page :)



This past weekend was the Background SAL on the HAED BB and I chose to work on Molly Harrison's Fairy of the Sea. I had moved over to the top right of the chart and started on the background there a little while ago.

Before:

After:

I'm way behind on my PhotoHunt entries, so much so that I think I will stop participating in it for now. Maybe I'll just do my own random pic of the month type of thing or as and when I take a memorable or amusing pic.

Like this one ...



DS was home sick a couple of days this week with pharyngitis. On Monday, his first day off school, he'd come downstairs to talk to me but I was outside hanging out a load of washing. This is what I came back inside to :) Tikki decided she needed her rest too - lol. Oh, and DS is fine now :)

Right, time to take DD to her tennis lesson!

~o00o~

*If you haven't done so before go and check out Nicole's awesome progress on her St Nick in his Study WIP. The detail is just amazing!

The things I do to avoid the ironing pile :)

After lunch yesterday afternoon, instead of catching up on the ironing, I decided to sit down and organise my duplicate skeins of DMC embroidery floss (which is what you see in the pic above). I'd made a vague attempt at trying to sort them out not long after we arrived here two years ago but most of them were still in the original shopping bags from where I'd purchased them. So I dumped them all onto the living room rug, ran down to the local shop and bought a couple of large boxes of sandwich size ziploc bags, came home and bagged them up. I then went and entered them into a spreadsheet on my computer so the next time I kit up something and the colours I need are not in my master set, I can then check there before I go out and buy any!! It took me all afternoon to sort that mess out but it's done now :)

Next on my list is to get my master set, which is stored in a series of large floss boxes, organised. I have a bunch of bobbins from projects that have been done or I've unkitted which need to be put away. After that I can see what needs replacing and either get them from my duplicates stash or put them on a shopping list.

Unfortunately, I cannot avoid the ironing pile any longer as the kids go back to school on Tuesday and I need to get new uniform items ironed and labelled, and I guess DH would probably like some shirts and trousers for work this week too :)! I'll have some stitchy pics next post hopefully!