Its Woolie Sock Weather

One of life's great mysteries .... February is the shortest month, yet it seems to last longer than the others! Judging by the weather here in the south of England, it has been really cold, and definitely calls for thick woolie socks, hat, gloves and staying cosy indoors. Today was the first day for a week when the thermometer did not dip well below freezing-point. We had a bit of milky sunshine at lunchtime so it ended up being pleasant to look at, but still so cold.

Everyone seems to be getting into romance mode, especially us Crafting girls as we always think 4 weeks ahead of everyone else :-) Well, I guess the card and gift shops also think ahead too, as everywhere I shop, it is full of pink hearts, fluffy cards, cute teddies - what an excellent time of year.

In view of this air of romance, I thought I would reveal what I have bought for DH this year - there is no danger of him reading this message, as he uses the Internet less frequently than most (although Amazon seems to be in his favourites at the moment!). So here goes ...

- 2 cards, one romantic (it's in my blog entry about a week ago, in case you did not see it before) and one funny cartoon one of Purple Ronnie

- A mini-box of chocolates which spell out " I heart Y-O-U " - substitute the heart with a red heart-shaped chocolate
- A bee coloured stripped purple and red, carrying a heart which says "Bee Mine" on it.
- A book called "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" - its one of those fascinating scientific fact books with questions you always wondered about like the one in the title and "Is Britain getting lower in the South, and Higher in the North?" - giving books like this to a DH like mine makes you an instant hit and his v. v. best friend :-).

Update on the Wedding Sampler - FINISHED, Happy Dances all round :-)

I managed to finish Matthew and Trudy's Wedding Sampler by Saturday lunchtime which I was so pleased and relieved about - phew, a week ahead of schedule! All that remains now, is to pick up the mount and backing board from my friendly frame-shop on Friday. Then I will stretch and lace the sampler and put it into the Frame on Saturday. I managed to find a fabulous frame, just what I was looking for - its a dark mahogany coloured wood, very old-fashioned looking and the most important thing of all, it is 10 inches x 10 inches square. It is soooo difficult finding nice square frames - there are loads of 10 x 8, 9 x 7, 10 x 14 etc, but so few with equal sides.

Here is a detail photo to show the beads that I added (they were not in the original chart, but its nice to adapt, isn't it). They are ivory pearl Mill Hill seed beads. Sorry for the poor quality photo, the light quality was poor when I took the photo and I was trying to stop the camera using a flash as that normally means the beads disappear!.

So, now its back to my Welsh Sampler project that had to wait in the craft room for a few weeks! I managed to do some more of the border lines - there is probably only about 4 hours more to do before it is completed. My frame-shop get used to my little flurries of activity - suddenly I will be in and out of their shop for a few weeks with some goodies to show off, before disappearing again to work on the next 'assignment'.

After I finish the Welsh Sampler, it definitely calls for a "cute-n-cuddly" project, with a bit of back-stitch in it - I feel as if I need to give the samplers a rest for a while, but not too long, because I am addicted to them :-)