Updates

Last week was my Santa's Village week and between being busy and being sick I didn't quite get it finished but I'm happy with my progress and it'll get finished next week.

And of course my weekend progress on Legends of the Dragons.

Between still being sick and it being a Bank Holiday weekend so having an extra I made quite a lot of progress on it.

I've not been fully well for 2 1/2 weeks now, Friday I went to the Doc's who confirmed that I do indeed have a chest infection and she gave me antibiotics.  They have helped but I'm still not right and in fact I think I'm starting to get a little worse again so I'll be back there this Friday asking for a stronger dose.

Cheshire Show results

I knew we'd done well at the Cheshire Show but I wasn't prepared for just how well we did!!

Out of the 3 classes we entered as an institute one didn't do so well.  We went with a Persian theme as one of our member is from Persia, all the items are authentic inc the sugar!

I won a first place with my Post Box

We won a trophy with out Corner shop, my ball scored 19 and I think had we noted that the fabric was hand dyed it would of been 20

The score card

But with out third class we scored a total of 77 and walked off with 2 trophies!!!!!!!

The poppy vase is the work of yours truely

The score card

And a close up pic of one of the pieces of silver 

The other 2 are shared with other institutes so I don't have pics of those.

I've been bouncing all day long and can't quite believe that of the 3 items I contributed (2 combined and my individual) and a possible max 60 points I scored 59, that as an institute we did so well and all the hard work by everyone involved payed off so well 

Now that I have the ball and vase home I'll get pics posted in the next day or so

Busy

I'm still about just very busy after moving house last week so I'm still finding homes for things and as yet I don't have internet.  But I have been doing a bit of stitching :) 

New Neighbours

I have some new and unusual neighbours for the week.

A circus arrived yesterday evening and within 30 minutes I saw the horses.

The camel was a surprise this morning, the zebra was a surprise this evening and when I went to take pics the buffalo was another surprise!!

Sofa Fixing

Mel sat on the sofa this morning and as she did some of the stitches along a seam decided that they had after 4+ years of use had enough and they ripped so after borrowing a small curved needle and some extra strong thread off Mum along with a little help off DBF to get the sofa apart I set to work.

Dan (Mel's BF in case you were wondering) took a sneeky pic of me hard at it and then informed me he'd be checking my blog to make sure I posted it

Apparently a close up of my hands was also needed 

My finger and thumb are still sore but that's what you get for stitching a leather sofa together 

Progress reports

The last couple of weeks have been ones with lots of little things going wrong.

It all started when the door hinge on the washer broke but it was only on the bottom so it was still usable, enter Mel who managed to break it off completely.

DBF comes along and fixes that and in the process discovers that the dampers have gone (suspension for the non technical folks) so after some searching round and a visit to the local market stall that stocks everything you can think of for washers, dryers, hoovers etc we got a new set of those and he fitted them.

Next the drum decided it wasn't going to spin, so out comes the washer again and after reading the book borrowed from ExH (Haynes Washing machine manual Saves you a fortune let me tell you ) DBF concludes it's the motor so he takes it apart thinking I need new brushes again but thank goodness after a good clean all was well.

Next it decides to leak when I use it, thankfully another easy fix with a cable tie, the outlet pipe had dropped to low to drain properly.

Now it's making the most awful noise cause the bearing has gone, the noise I can just about live with as it only does it on the final spin out what I can't live with is the grease spots it's putting on the clean washing so no more washing till it's fixed again. 

And in the midst of that the clutch has gone on my car so I've been trying to find a clutch kit for less than £100 so DBF and his brother can fix it (normally a job for Dad but he's had an op on his foot and can't do anything yet for at least another month.

But at least I've had my stitching to keep me sane until I had to frog over one that is

I was quite happily working away on 4 Seasons Sampler and started the tulips in the centre, thinking that before the weekend arrived and I switched to Scary Book I'd be able to get them done.

I'd done 2 of the blue bits and sat there wondering why there was the right size gap on the left and a huge one on the right.  Turns out I'd stitched Train in the wrong place so out it had to come along with the 2 blue bits and after that I couldn't face it any more till next month.

Speaking of Scary Book here's my progress from the weekend and touch wood nothing else will go wrong this week or I'll have to break out the hair dye to hide the grey hairs!!

Oh dear!!!

Last Tuesday while out running a few errands I was rear ended at a junction :(

I'm ok but my car isn't even though it was only at about 10mph at most but it was a huge van that did the damage 

That's one heck of a cracked bumper

I didn't realise until later in the day when I to show DBF the damage that he'd pushed in the panel under the light pod

And on Wednesday morning when I went to empty the boot ready for it being picked up I saw this.

That gap runs all the way to the stud in the centre getting narrower all the way

And that gap shouldn't be there either

There also a tiny crack in the centre of the bumper and a couple of cosmetic things inside the boot on the lining.

I'm still waiting to hear when I'll get mine back but until then I get to drive round in a red one of these 

Weekend Stitching

First of all here's the one I forgot in my last post, February's challenge freebie from the The Stitcherhood and I gave it to DBF for Valentine's Day.

Friday was Mary Wigham day and I finished the white motif but you can't see it in the big pic :(

So to prove it's done :)  it does show IRL but for some reason not in pics.

This weekend's progress on Celtic Banner

And I spent some time at DBF's so Celtic Griffin got worked on a little.

Sunday afternoon DBF and I went to one of those antique places that has lots of small stalls under one roof and I went with searching for a flower frog in mind.   I did find a few but none of them really spoke to me and none of them had a pot to match so I left them on the shelf.

DBF was on the lookout for them as well and pointed out a posy pot as a poss alternative and after wandering round all afternoon and not finding one that wanted to come home with me I went back and got the posy pot.

I've tried my scissors in it and they fit but because there's no support in the bottom they tend to fall over so I'm going to get some of those glass pebbles to fill the pot up with so they don't.

Playing catch up

The last week has been so busy I've barely had to sneeze let alone post anything so I'm going to pack a fair bit into this one.

First of all last week was the Cheshire Show and I entered my bag. I scored 19 out of 20 and came away with a second place :)

Early Friday morning I drove up to Cumbria for Woolfest and of course a few things followed me home

I was really good this year and only bought 2 skeins of yarn, both out of bargin buckets and both for patterns I bought while there.

This year I mostly went for patterns although I did buy a couple of charts from Fobbles and a tea towel but I have good reason for that. Cheshire WI's office needs to have the heating system replaced so they sent £10 to every institute with the instructions to at least double it and send back half of the money raised and my institute decided to have a tea towel auction/raffle so when ever we go out and about over the summer we buy one and hand it.

Mels' minature rose has bloomed in the last few days As have Frederick and Bob the lilies we planted our first summer here (Mel and Sheena decided they had to have names and those are the ones they came up with)

Bank Holiday Monday

We woke up this morning to a beautiful sunny morning and made plans to go to a local Mere for a walk round and so the Caleb could feed the ducks

In the end we didn't see that many ducks but we did see this guy

And this was the largest family of geese we saw

At the opposite end of the mere from where we parked and started our walk round there is a bench carved from a single tree trunk

Caleb & Auntie Mel posed for a pic

And just because there is such skill in the carving a few pics

Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza

Mel, Sheena and I went off to Llandudno for the Extravaganza today (you can last year's report here ) and the day started off the same with a ride on the Ashley's Gallopers and the Chair-a-planes but not pics because they look the same as they did last year and I will be seeing them again at some point in the year.

At noon every day a procession starts at the station, works it way around the town and finishes in the centre. We missed most of it but we did see these guys

This guy so so close I could of touched him if I wasn't taking a pic and he did threaten to exterminate me :)

I couldn't not take a pic of the Chinese Dragon now could I?

We headed over to the pier and on the prom at the end of the pier was Chitty!


Batala was there again and I managed to catch them playing twice but I was back in the crowd so no pics this time.

All in all we had a really good day and I did take more pics but most of them are pretty much the same as last year and given the crowds there today you really won't think there's a credit crunch going on and if anything I would say it was more crowed than last year but we did go on a different day.