The last few weeks have been horrible. Our darling Sidney passed away very suddenly at just 6 years old. We are devastated and miss him so much. Here are some of my favourite pictures. He has left a big hole in our hearts.
"You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us."
Finished "The Needlewoman" - this was a very quick stitch. Although the chart was quite poor quality, I love the design from Holbein Embroideries and I substituted the Aida for 28 count Zweigart Jazzlyn in dusky pink which I think suits the dark brown and metallic thread very well.
Also a few cards which I stitch between larger projects, so I always have something ready to send when a birthday crops up.
While out shopping today I went into a charity/thrift shop and found this lovely Candamar Sunflower kit for just 2.69 GB pounds so I just had to buy it. Don't you just love to find a bargain.?
My mother-in-law loves "The Boys", refers to them as her grandsons and never forgets their birthdays and Christmas presents/cards as well as treats when she visits, so I decided to make her this calendar with their photographs. I made all the outfits and bandanas they are wearing in the pictures and the papers came from Papercrafts Inspirations magazine.
I have just started some new stitching after finishing The Village. It is a blackwork design that has been in my stash for years. When I unpacked it the needle had rusted into the Aida and snapped off. That is how old it is. I saw Jazzlyn fabric in dusky pink used on a recent blackwork design in The World of Cross Stitching magazine so decided to stitch it on that. It doesn't look much at the moment but it is easy to guess what it is.
I was having a clear up in one of the outbuildings the other day, dragging things out to take to the local tip, when I found a bag containing cross stitch pictures. I think these were some of the first cross stitch I ever made and I had completely forgotten about them. They are not really to my taste these days and the frames are not very nice but in the interest of recording all my craft work I have taken snaps of them and am including them here for posterity!
I have mentioned before that I love Wallace and Gromit and have all their adventures on video and dvd. So it is not surprising that they occasionally crop up in my craft projects. After I won a Wallace toy on one of those fairground crane games I decided to knit Grommit to keep him company. The pattern was in a back issue of Woman's Weekly magazine.
I have already shown my DS case which I knitted earlier this year. The pattern was in the January 2010 issue of Simply Knitting magazine and I knitted him with oddments from my stash and lined it with a scrap of pink check cotton.
All the Wallace and Grommit cross stitch pictures I made some years ago but as I am trying to photograph and record all my work over the years, here they are. 
There is nothing "The Boys" like more than a birthday party and I have commemorated some of them by scrapbooking the photos. The first two page layout shows Higgins' 1st birthday party. I love the picture where he is looking worried as Sid takes a crafty bite of his cake. I always send the rescue centre an update and photos at Christmas so this one was an obvious choice to send.+TC.jpg)
I also scrapped Archie's fourth birthday photos. He often sleeps with his paws over his eyes so I am glad I managed to capture a picture of him like that. This photo always makes me smile.
I don't know why I love Christmas so much as I am a sun lover and hate the snow and cold weather. Perhaps I should move to Australia where Christmas comes in the summertime. Anyway, I love Christmas craft projects and here are just a few of the hundreds I seem to have completed. The village scene is a Dimensions kit and I have been destashing by making up some of the cross stitch kits that come free with stitching magazines.
I have also been busying papercrafting, my latest finish is the Card of Wilberforce in the snow which is ready to go to his grandparents at Christmas and finally the musical instrument ornie which was a free kit with Cross Stitch Collection.
