Exchanged ornaments

As promised, I'm back with pictures of the ornaments that I sent out in exchanges this Christmas. The first four I sent out in the Teresa Wenzler BB annual ornament exchange.

First up, 2 ornaments designed by Teresa Wentzler - Celtic inspirations and Lady of Shallot corner respectively.





Then a Jeanette Douglas design from one of JCS ornament issues. I adapted the colours in this one slightly to suit the threads that I had to hand.



A Norweigan reindeer ornament in red. I'm planning to stitch this one again for me.



Some UK stitching friends and I also had an ornament exchange this year. I stitched for Kate . The design is Santa's Christmas surprise by Dragon Dreams.




In return, Pat sent me a really pretty intial ornament which I think is from the Chatelaine 2007 advent calendar. I really need to get a better picture of this one - hopefully there will be more light later in the week when I've got a day off.

Happy Christmas everyone

Happy Christmas everyone. I was working night shift last night so I'm off to bed for a few hours sleep prior to going to my Aunt's house for Christmas dinner. I've not had a lot of spare time to blog the past two weeks with the Christmas preparation but I'll be back hopefully tomorrow with pictures of the ornaments I sent out in exchanges this Christmas plus some pictures of the gifts I've made for various friends and family.

Until then, I will leave you with a picture of my Christmas tree and the various stitched ornaments that I've made and also received in exchanges. I hope everyone has a good day and Santa leaves you lots of nice presents.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Christmas is fast approaching and I'm not quite ready. I still have a few gifts to buy, a few gifts to finish making, presents to wrap and cards to write. I'm not panicking just yet but I might be soon. Work is crazy busy too in the lead up to Christmas as all the doctors try to get as many patients' treatments finished before the end of the year.

On a much more pleasant note, one of my favourite things about this time of year is taking part in the Ornament exchange on the Teresa Wentzler BB. This year I've exchanged 4 ornaments. Not all the ornaments I've sent out have arrived at their destinations yet but I've received the ornaments from those who are sending to me.

First up two ornaments of a freebie chart from Teresa Wentzler - Father Winter ornament. These are from Sara and Penny respectively.





Then a lovely ornament from Anu in Finland, which has designs on each side and I think the designs are by Margaret Sherry.





And finally a lovely Christmas tree from Susan



Time to get back to finishing the Christmas preparations.

Catch up post

I've been procrastinating as usual so this post is going to be a little full of news and pictures. The past couple of weeks have mostly been a hum drum mix of work, various crafty stuff and sleep. There was the minor excitement of my knitting group appearing on a local TV news show - if you are in the UK, you can see it at this link for next few days. It features about 4 minutes in. I'm in the background in a purple shirt, knitting a sock. It was a quite bizarre but fun thing to do.

Since my last post I've heard that two exchanges I've sent have arrived at their destinations. One of the exchanges was very overdue so it was a big relief to find it had arrived. I stitched Tending the blooms for Carol as part of the SBEBB SB exchange. The picture isn't very good sadly.



I also heard that Becky had received the Halloween exchange that I sent her as part of a personal Halloween exchange. Rather appropriately as Becky sent me a lovely SB Halloween needleroll, I sent her a SB design in return - Halloween ABC pinkeep.



I have managed to have a couple of stitching finishes for myself in the past couple of weeks. Both are Shepherds bush designs. First up The Gobelins.



And then today I finished Scatter Christmas cheer.



I've also managed a couple of knitting finishes. First up a knitted jacket called Anise from Rowan/Simply Knitting magazine, which I mentioned that I had finished in my last post.



Secondly I finished a design called Matilda Jane by Ysolda Teague. Its knitted in Rowan Wool cotton and took exactly a month of knitting. Its knitted in one piece from the top down, which is a fabulous way to knit things with there being so little sewing involved.



The weather has been truly awful here this past week with absolutely no natural light for pictures, hence the dark pcitures. Autumn has hit with a typical series of rainy, stormy days with gale force winds and horizontal rain. There's even a possibility of snow next week which is just awful.

Iknit, London, an exchange and other things

I've been back from London since Sunday evening but a combination of a bad cold, tiredness and a different job have kept me a little occupied.

When I got back on Sunday, I had a lovely exchange parcel waiting for me from Nicki. Its a Shepherds bush design called Pumpkin Hill and its beautifully finished.



My trip to London and Iknit was fantastic. The hotel I picked was about 10 minutes walk away from the Royal Horticultural halls where the Iknit day was being held. Readers in the UK might recognise the hall from some BBC channel idents from a few years ago. Its a nice and spacious venue even though I think they underestimated the catering a little. I'm not sure they thought that there would be as many attendees so the sandwiches ran out early on and there were fairly big queues for the catering generally.

Some of the charity knitting stalls



Lots of lace shawls to ooh over



Lots and lots of knitters





After a couple of hours of yarn buying, it was off to the other hall to see the Yarn Harlot, who was a fantastic speaker. It got off to a weird start with a little microphone misfunction.



And then it was on to the now traditional sock picture.



And finally the talk which lasted around 90 minutes and was followed by lots of questions. She is a great and funny speaker and I would love to hear her speak again in the future. She did say she would come back to the UK again so hopefully I will get the chance. This picture isn't the best.



It was then back to the main hall for some more shopping and chatting with fellow knitters. A combination of the Glasgow and Gourock knitters had laid claim to a table in the hall and we all popped in and out from the table to shop with breaks for chatting and eating. In a weird coincidence, someone in my group ended up in conversation with Jackie and Kate from the Crafty threads n yarns forum that I belong to and I was sitting chatting to Jackie when I realised that I knew her already from the forum and we were in an exchange together. I managed to meet up with a few people that I know though various places on the net, including the lovely Joy, who I recognised by her lovely shawl lol. I did miss quite a few people though but that was probably just as well for them as I had developed a pretty bad cold by Saturday and was gradually losing my voice through the day. Apologies to anyone at Iknit that I gave the cold to. By late in the afternoon, I was flagging badly so I decided against queuing for the Yarn harlot book signing. Stephanie was a real trooper as she signed books for several hours after her talk, which is very impressive.

Saturday night, the combined Gourock and Glasgow knitters went off for a lovely meal in a very nice restaurant somewhere in Kensington. My London geography is a little lacking but thankfully I was guided there and back by my fellow knitters.

Sunday morning, I managed to fit a little sightseeing in before my afternoon flight back. I was staying at Victoria so I decided to have a walk down towards the river. My walk took me by the Houses of Parliament



The streets were closed up for the start of the Tour of Britain so there were lots of men in shorts.





I then walked across Westminister bridge and being a little geeky, all I could think about was the first episode of the New Doctor Who series with the Doctor and Rose running across it towards the London Eye. Its an amazing sight, the London eye and the views from it must be amazing.



Opposite the Houses of Parliament, there is a small patch of Sunflowers which seem to be randomly planted at the riverside. Its a lovely contrast to the city surroundings.



All too soon, it was time for me to head back to Glasgow after a not particularly pleasant flight which the take off seem to be a little steep and the cabin pressure gave a lot of the passengers ear ache. I was really badly affected and it took several hours before it settled and a day or so before my hearing was back to normal. I had taken a decongestant before the flight but it didn't particularly help. I've only ever had some mild ear popping on a flight before so this was an unwelcome surprise which was related to the cold I have. I'm only really getting my voice back fully now.

This week I've been on my job trial this week. The job itself isn't particularly exciting but it does use a lot of the skills I've built up over the years. The people there are lovely also. Sadly there is a but coming as towards the end of the week, I noticed that my back was getting more painful than it has been. This job, whilst its not as heavy as a ward job, involves more standing and worst still, more standing on the same spot than the job I already have and my back is not coping with this. Its pretty disappointing to realise over this past weekend that its not going to work out but that's life I guess and so its back to the job hunting again. I've still got a further week of the trial to go so things might change but it seems unlikely.

Exchange and update

I've received another exchange today. This is the first of a set of three that I've got coming up in the next month or so. I've sent off my half of the exchange to its recipient today a day late because I remembered late on Monday that I couldn't post it then in my town as it was a local holiday. I could have gone to the city post office if I'd remember early enough in the day as they have this holiday on a different day. Scotland has this weird summer bank holiday in July/August which is taken on different Mondays in different places and some businesses even now take the English bank holiday at the end of August instead to confuse everyone even more.

Anyway I was lucky enough to receive a lovely needle case and some other goodies from Tuula. I suspect she might have noticed my sock knitting habit given that she included some very pretty yarn.



Speaking of knitting, I've been keeping my needles busy since my last post. First up, I finished a cotton top - Tomato by Wendy Bernard (Ravelry link)



And then there were some more socks.

Plain stockinette socks in Regia yarn



Some Hedera socks in Yarn yard sock yarn (Ravelry link to pattern)



I must confess that I was so glad when I finished the Hedera socks. I love the way they look but I found them a bit tedious to knit by the end. The pattern reminds me of the lacy white socks I used to wear when I was a little girl.

That makes 5 finished pairs of socks for July which is pretty cool and certainly means I'm going to have plenty more socks to wear.

Stitching, knitting and exchanges

I have been meaning to post but just not getting around to it for the past few days. Given that I'm not really short on spare time at the moment, I'm not really sure where the time goes each day. Mostly it disappears into more sleep time, doing strange stretching exercises and general household stuff. I have been catching up on a lot of household tidying over the past 2 weeks as I seem to be further along the road to recovery than I was a few weeks ago. Returning to work soon is looking a lot more realistic just now and I should hopefully have a better idea after a round of different hospital/GP appointments this week.

Saturday I got a lovely surprise in the post. I took part in a Valentine's exchange on the SBEBB earlier in the year but something went wrong and I didn't receive an exchange. On Saturday, I got a lovely replacement stitched by Cathy B who stepped in so I got an exchange.

It is a lovely sweet LHN design finished as a little pillow and she also included some DMC threads and some sampler fabric which will be made into something soon.



A slightly better picture of the pillow



I've also finished some stitching. First up a little biscornu pincushion which I stitched to try out the finish as I've signed up for an Biscournu exchange.



The design is a freebie from Barbara Ana which I found via a link on her website. I also signed up for her newsletter which sends out some lovely freebies. I can see a few more biscornus in my future.

I also finished a Shepherds bush design On the haunt. The fabric is a lot more orangey in real life.



The sock knitting continues also. I've finished knitting the two pairs I was working on and cast on for some more.





I haven't actually finished any socks in the past week or so. I've been doing some secret knitting for someone and also knitting some squares in leftover sock yarn for a charity afghan that I'm taking part in the Who knits group on Ravelry. Speaking of knitting, this coming Saturday, the Guardian has a knitting supplement featuring designs from a knitter that had a Doctor Who related run in with the BBC

Thanks for the nice words about my baking. I do appreciate it and the biscuits and cake were lovely. I do agree with Lena-lou about the shape of the Dalek cake though. The Dalek cutter came from a kit that you can buy in a local supermarket and I've saved it for further use.

Exchange update

I can now share what I stitched for the Here's to Ewe exchange on the SBEBB as its now arrived with Carol.



Its A Lamb's egg by Shepherd's bush stitched on 40ct linen finished into a little ornament/fob. I must confess that I now quite like stitching on 40ct. I don't think I want to stitch a big project on it but I love stitching small things on it and smaller versions of things I've already stitched are really interesting to me.

The rest of this week has been a little trying for me. Sadly the back problem that I first experienced last year has flared up again and last weekend at work, I was really struggling. I've been to see my GP this week with some new symptoms - altered sensation and tingling in my left leg plus an increase in pain. The visit has resulted in some x rays being taken, me being signed off work for 2 weeks and some strong painkillers being prescribed. I've also been advised that I should change jobs in the long term, which is something I've been looking into anyway. The strong painkillers have codeine in them which have been helping me to sleep in comfort for the first time in a while but have the side effect of making me sleepy for a long time - around 12 hours at a time. So unusually for this night owl, I've been asleep before 1am the past couple of nights. Hopefully things will settle down more quickly this time as I don't think I could take another 3 months on sick leave as I went a bit loopy the last time.

Exchanging and knitting

Most of my stitching time this past week has gone into stitching an exchange - the Here's to ewe exchange from the SBEBB. I can't share any pictures yet as its not reached its destination.

I have however received my exchange from Simone



On the knitting front, I've finished my second ever full size adult cardigan. I've mostly just knitted socks so far.



I'm fairly pleased with it. It does gape a little at the front and I think it would sit better if the buttons were smaller with more of them too. Now I just need to get stuck into my Central park hoodie which has been neglected of late.

I finished another pair of Cranford mitts last night after I got home from my knitting group. This pair have the same colours as the first pair but in reverse.



Finally I have finished stitching something that I can share since my last post.



Its a Country companions design by DMC. I haven't stitched many of these designs lately but this range was thing that started me stitching in the first place in 1990. I've stitched 66 of the designs within this range over the years and I own almost all of the Country companions ever released. So I guess thats a little obsessive but I doubt I'll run out of things to stitch.

I'm off now to watch more Doctor Who. I am so happy to see it back again. The first episode was really fantastic and its going to interesting to see where the story will go. The second series of Torchwood has just finished and it came to such an amazing sad ending. I cried so much with the last episode but then again I do tend to be a bit of cry baby with sad films/tv shows.

Where I'm at

Time has raced by during the past few weeks and I'm afraid my blog has fallen by the wayside. The combination of work, my sister's wedding, general life and the fact that my Ravelry invite arrived has taken up all my time. For the non knitting readers, Ravelry is a very cool social site for knitters, where you can chat to others and browse countless projects and yarns. Its a bit of a time sucker but lots of fun. My user name there is pjmck so if you are a member, please stop by and visit my projects.


The bigggest thing that happened since my last post is that my little sister got married. If you've read my blog for a while, you will know that the wedding had to be postponed as the groom's father became very suddenly and seriously ill. A few days before the new wedding date, we got some superb news as the liver cancer he was diagnosed with, has been successfully removed with no signs of cancer still remaining and his liver is functioning normally. Everyone was so very relieved and happy.

However the day of the wedding was not without drama. The groom's mother had to be rushed to hospital by ambulance on the morning of the wedding and after tests, was found to have had a stroke. Sadly it meant she could not attend the wedding and the groom's father missed the ceremony. He did join us for most of the reception. The registrar gave special permission to film the ceremony and after the ceremony and pictures, the bride and groom took a short trip to the local hospital to see her. My sister said it was a very surreal experience. Its not often you see a bride with a groom in a kilt in the middle of a hospital.


Here are the happy couple plus best man and bridesmaids just after the ceremony. I'm the middle bridesmaid with the dark hair.



And here is the happy couple cutting the cake.



My sister along with my parents on the right and my dad's cousin and his wife with me at the front.


Inspite of the drama, which also included the 4th bridesmaid pulling out of the wedding at the last minute, the day was lovely and lots of fun. My mum made the wedding dress and the bridesmaids dresses and she was thrilled to hear lots of compliments. I applied the beads to the dresses as my mum can not hand sew due to arthritis. Everyone seemed to have a great time and the groom's dad managed to enjoy himself inspite of his wife's illness. She is now thankfully back at home and well on the road to recovery.

At the weekend, I received a lovely halloween exchange from Suzanne.



I've been managing to do a little stitching. I stitched a fob design that I got at the Shepherd's bush retreat last year.





And I managed to stitch a little scissor case design.



I've also been knitting away at more socks









Apologies if there are any spelling mistakes in this post. I finished night shift this morning and I haven't been to bed yet. I'm trying to stay up as last week I completed mucked up my sleep patterns and ended up sleeping during the day on my days off. Which is not so good when you have things to do when you are not working. Plus its a little antisocial when the rest of the world is awake.