Come and meet my first Grandchild

Caleb he made his entry into the world at 11.43am March 30 2008

He's weights in a very heathly 8lbs 6oz and measured 51cm.

Because DD wanted me there for his arrival I've now been up for 21 hours on 4 hours sleep from the night before so I'm off to bed now and I'll come back in the next day or so with more pics

Book Meme

Seen this on a few blogs but I've taken it on permanant loan from Suz

Look at the list of (100) books below. Bold the ones you’ve read.Italicize the ones you want to read. Leave blank the ones that you aren’tinterested in. (Movies don’t count.)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) (just about my all time favourite)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96.The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98.A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Going by this list I'm not well read at all although I can easily get through a couple of books a week sometimes but one is normal for me.
Some I've never heard of and others I've started and they either bored me so much I feel asleep or I couldn't get into them so gave up after a couple of chapters.
As I said on the list The Hobbit is just about my all time favourite book and is pretty much responsibile for my love of reading now (along with Mrs Garnet who read it to us in storytime during my last year of primary school, for those in the US that's age 10-11, something I think no longer happens but not having primary aged kids I'm not sure), thinking about it it's been a while since I last read it and I do have to visit the library tomorrow so may just see if they have a copy on the shelf

Bits and pieces

I spent Easter Weekend with both my DD's at DD#1 house in Northampton as she was due on Easter Sunday but rather unsurprisingly for a first baby he's not as yet put in an apperance so I'm expecting a phone call anytime in the next week/ 10 days to say she's gone into labour and knowing my luck it's going to be in the early hours of the morning, oh well at least the motorway will be quieter then.
We didn't really do much while there so I don't have much to tell you about so I'll show what I started and finished while there.

First is Tiny Little Quaker from Papillion Creations
And second is Spring Flowers from Debbie Draper designs although this one I only finished a little while ago

I also made progress on Home of a Needleworker (too!) and watched both DD's along with DD#1 fella play Grandia on the PS along with Hugh Jackman in leather (where's the drooling smilie when you need it!)

Mum is doing really well in her recovery and as of yesterday is down to one crutch, much faster than last year although she forgot to ask the physio bod if she thought she'd be OK trying to drive yet.

There's now less than a week to go to the WI Dart's match and as there was 8 of there today for practise we went into 2 teams and played few proper matches.

My team won the first two and I was responsibile for both of them, keep your fingers crossed I can play as well on the night.

We did nothing but laugh for the couple of hours we were there and our hostess told us about her neighbour who after she'd had WI ladies there for something else and had done alot of laughing asked her if she'd had 'one of those knicker parties', made all the funnier because our hostess is 73!! (I was totally gobsmacked by that, she certainly doesn't look her age)

I came back from my weekend to find that I had sprung a leak in the airing cupboard while I was away, yuck

I've had to wash every towel I own and throw out all my spare pillows and now have a bucket on the shelf while I wait for my Landlord to get it sorted but if I don't hear off him by the end of tomorrow I'll be on the phone again first thing Friday morning.

Woo hooo my chair is done

The putting together was finished yesterday afternoon but by the time I'd been to pick Mel up from school and been into town it was dark out by the time I got home.
This pic is the one I took then under my daylight lamp and it shows up the sparklie fabric a little
This second pic is one I took not long ago outside in the yard cause my order for Sun arrived :) I can't decide which one I like most so you get both

I have to thank my Mum without her it would still be in pieces, I couldn't figure out how to pin the arm rolls but she did.

The cord under the seat is an added extra, there was a gap between the edge of it and the box so we made a cord with the left over ribbon and it runs round under the arms as well.

The scissor keeper isn't made up yet, I can't sew on my machine in a straight line and Mum can't use her machine right now with her knee so that will be added later

Happy Birthday Gran

My Gran would of been 81 today so I thought I'd share a few memories of her

Years ago when I was maybe 8/9 we were on a day trip to Llandudno and as we walked over a crossing her shoe fell apart so she walked into the shoe shop at the end of the crossing and asked if they sold shoes!

My brother used to call her the old witch and one year he gave her a witches broom for her birthday along with a poem he'd written, he held the broom at arms length to give to her and then ran down her garden path.
My gran was to busy laughing to tell him off, she held on to that broom for 20 odd years until it fell apart and when we were clearing her house out I came across the poem.

In the last couple of years of her life she lost most of her sight and I used to take her to the hospital for her appointments, because she couldn't see she always said that she'd follow me because she could see me as a shape (and because I always made sure I wore a bright top).
I kept threating to buy one of those extending dog leads to tie on to her walker, the last time I said it she replyed with ' well it's my birthday soon'

My Gran was the type of person that could take a joke and gave as good as she got, we frequently insulted each other knowing full well that nither of us meant it as an insult.
She hated that her memory was going as well and would often ask the same question several times in the space of a few minutes, it got so bad that at times I would time how long it took for her to ask it again and tell her, I sure that at times she did it on purpose!

I miss her dearly

Peacock Chair

I've finished the stitching part of it, I'm sorry the pics not that good but it's a little cloudy today
All the pieces are cut out and pressed now, the card parts are stuck together and whileI'm at Mum's today we're going to make a start on putting it together

Needle felting

Yesterday was Spinning guild day and after a very quick AGM, an hour or so of chatting over coffee and lunch we were shown how to do Needle felting by a couple of other members.
Some folks went off and did 3D things and others went with the flat, me being one of them.
This is my effort

The base is Needle felted dyed Merino that was pre done and the edge is Wensleydale curls dyed with natural dyes rather than acid ones.
By far the least imaginative one of the bunch (other members efforts included a Seagull, a landscape and a Polar Bear that started out life as a Yorkshire Terrier but the fleece decided otherwise and wanted to be a bear) but I'm quite pleased with it

The good, the bad and a WIP

First of all the WIP, Enchanting Lair's Cookie Dragon.
He was my Birthday start last year and I aim to have him finished by my birthday this year

The fabric is a Sparklies Solitaire and the reason I'm telling you that is because it brings me onto the good :)

Sparklies is one today and all year Kate has been taking submissions for the Gallery to do a prize draw, the winner get's a half metre of fabric in total or 36 skeins of her hand dyed floss or a combination of both and I'm the lucky winner of the draw this year. After the pain filled day I've had finding out I'd won really made my day all I have to do now is decide what I'd like

So the bad, as I said above I've had a pain filled day today. It started off with aching knees when I woke up this morning, as I was leaving to go to Mum's I remembered I needed my book to read while I took her car for it's MOT (it passed, yay) so I turned and twisted my ankle a little. Next up was a small cut as I made lunch followed a couple of hours later by the car door being blown onto my ear as I got stuff off the back seat, last but not least I dropped a pair of scissors on the foot that's swollen from twisting my ankle earlier in the day! I was suppossed to go to a Haflah this evening but decided it much was safer for me to stay home with my foot up besides I'm going to visit my framed Riddle on Friday at the NEC so I need it to be feeling better by then

Feb progress & March goals

For Feb I said
Finish The Riddle Done
Finish one of the small new starts Done
Maybe do an ornie Never gave it another thought
Make some more progress on the Birth Sampler Done
UFORR Done
Work on my Peacock Chair Done

For March I'd like to
Finish the Peacock Chair
Make progress on the Birth Sampler
UFORR
Become a Gran

I had a pretty good month really considering how busy it was, I stitched for 89hrs 21mins, made 2 new starts and had 4 finishes and only one day with no stitching (the day I helped DD move)