Calling Cross Stitchers, and Some Garden Life.

Hello Dear Readers,

Thank you for looking in, and an especial thank you for the comments on my previous post.

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Our replacement windows and door have taken much longer than the 3 days originally forecast - this is the third week!

Most of the work outstanding, is now external making good which won't be finished for some time yet, as we have had issues with the company on the standard of work. The original team has been moved away at our request.  We have been assured the work will be completed ASAP, as soon as more suitable labour is available from the company, as they are currently working elsewhere on other jobs.

However, we are feeling a little happier as this weekend we were able to put our curtains back up in our living room, giving us some much needed privacy again in the evenings, now that we need lights on from about 8pm.  And I'm really looking forward to getting the net curtains up tomorrow after our workman puts the finishing touches to the inside of our bedroom window.

As we were unable to connect to the web while our front door was being replaced I've not kept up to date with everyone's blogs.  I'm feeling a little left out at the moment!

I really hope to be able to get back to visiting and commenting on your blogs again this week.

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Calling Cross Stitchers!

Thanks to your encouraging remarks I have picked up my Cocoa Sampler, telling myself if I just do a few stitches every day it will soon be finished.

Where I left off stitching in 2004

So, whilst we couldn't go out anywhere, and were back to making coffees every hour for our workmen I had time to discover where I had gone astray with the picture of the house in the sunset.

Wouldn't you know it - it was only one row of about 8 stitches which had held me up!

I ripped out the row where the stitches were back to front, and happily carried on.

A little progress!

I felt I had stitched a lot, but when I saw these photos I realised it doesn't look much.

The owl is finished, bar the white stitches,
which I always do last.

Just starting on this scene, and, again, it has a lot of white stitches
 which will also be the last job.

But, I wonder, can anyone help me with the following:

This is a Sue Cook pattern, which was published in The World of Cross Stitching about 2004. I am working from a photocopy of the chart and sampler key (and don't know what happened to the original magazine with the colour picture of the pattern), and looking at my photocopy chart now I see I have a tiny problem.... There are 4 different coloured back stitches and looking at the black and white key it is very hard to tell one from the other.

Have you stitched this chart and, if so, do you have the colour copy of it?

Or do you have the picture itself?  If so, are you able to help me discover which backstitch lines are which colour?

I do hope you may have stitched this too!

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Some Garden Life

On Sunday we had a sudden warm burst of sunshine, and I was in our garden having a little photo shoot - taking close ups of my cross stitch. The sun was a real bonus because it brought out lots of beautiful wildlife, there were mating dragonflies and a mayfly, bees, wasps and something I hadn't seen before - a hummingbird type moth which I videoed but the picture was not good enough to show here sadly

I am afraid I cannot name these butterflies, but they look so pretty I wanted to show them.

A couple of mornings ago we opened our kitchen blinds to see that the night animals (which we assume to be badgers) had been busy, yet again.

Night animal action, outside our kitchen window.

And outside our kitchen window again, from a different angle.

Under our apple tree

All this ground is under our bird feeders and hubby tells me the soil is very good there due to the seeds dropping and growing and eventually fertilising the soil so that there must be lots of worms there for the night animals.  We don't mind too much, but we did have bulbs planted in both these spots, but it is hard to get anything to grow when they keep being dug up.

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I hope you have made it this far, and I'd like to thank you all for visiting today. 

It was really warming to read the lovely comments you made on my previous post, it helped bring a smile to our faces during a trying time, they were all very much appreciated!

Barbara xx

Hope to see you back here again!