Saturday 29 October 2011

feeling very sad tonight

Sometime between 9 and 9:30 this evening my 3 year old cat Gizmo was run over after running into the road scared by some incredibly loud fireworks being set off in the car park opposite my house. As far as we know he was killed instantly and didn't suffer. We will be burying him tomorrow morning.
Although Gizmo wasn't the most loveable character as he was forever bringing home live mice and then letting them go inside the house, he was pretty unique, he was run over a few years ago which resulted in a broken tail which had to be amputated to nothing more than a stump but it never bothered him and he spent most of his time outdoors even when it was raining.

All in all Gizmo was my cat and I loved him, right now I still can't believe he's really gone, he'd spent the whole day asleep on my bed and now I just can't stop crying.
Gizmo asleep on my bed, taken earlier this year

Rest In Peace little guy and know that no matter what you did I will always love you.

Sorry it's such a sad post today, I will be back tomorrow with a more positive update on exchanges.

xX Fiona Xx

Wednesday 26 October 2011

October TUSAL

Hello everyone, here is my October TUSAL, only 2 new moons left to go this year! Where on earth has the time gone?!


Judging by the fact that my jar is now getting very full I guess I've done more stitching than I realise this year, mostly for exchanges which is probably why it doesn't really feel like I've done alot, this months threads were all from Halloween exchanges, which will be shown off on my next post

Till then
Happy Stitching!

xX Fiona Xx

Tuesday 25 October 2011

best day of my life so far

and it's not even stitching related!!! It's taken a couple of days waiting to post this cos I had to wait for a photo to get uploaded to the internet.

On Saturday (22nd October) I saw one of my favourite bands ever live for the 1st time, not only that but because my friend Simon is lovely he bought the VIP tickets not the normal ones so we got to enjoy a bunch of extra stuff as well as the gig. ( I say we but Si actually missed the VIP stuff cos he had to work and only just made it in time for the actual gig!)  

VIP's got to go in about an hour earlier than everyone else, we got a signed poster of the band, a special 4 song acoustic set with Jaret & Eric ( I know they did Belgium & Stacy's mom but I forget what the other two were...)
& we got to get our pictures taken with the band!! I've hugged every member of BFS!!!
So here is my official meet & greet photo with Bowling For Soup at the O2 Acadamy in Oxford!


Pics of the show itself will be uploaded probably on Friday :)

Sunday 16 October 2011

breast cancer awareness

well i don't know how it happened but I'm back down to 49 followers...boo..... giveaway is still happening though only now it's because it's breast cancer awareness month.

Almost everything included in this giveaway prize will have donated money to breast cancer research but I'm not going to tell you what the winner is receiving until the winner is revealed!! So to be in with a chance of winning this supprise giveaway please sign up on my original post here.

Winner will be drawn on Halloween & announced shortly afterwards!

Good luck & happy stitching
xX Fiona Xx

Saturday 15 October 2011

woo hoo finally time for a giveaway!

just spotted I finally made it to 50 followers!! Greeting and thank you to all :)

To say thank you I am going to have a giveaway, not quite sure what it will be yet but I will figure that out soon enough, so to enter my suprise giveaway you must simply be a follower of my blog and leave a comment on this post only.

Name will be drawn on Halloween and announched shortly afterwards :)

Thanks again & tillnext time

Happy Stitching!!!

xX Fiona Xx

Thursday 13 October 2011

bug disappeared....

Has anyone spotted my stitchy bug lately? I seem to have lost my stitching mojo....

Hopefully it will come back soon!!!

Saturday 8 October 2011

Exchanges, passing the torch & halloween displays

Ok well I said there would be more exchanges and I wasn't lying!! Only 4 today so we should wizz through them pretty quickly!

First up the All Our Yesterdays exchange, I sent a stitched bokmark & a papercrafted card using one of the new Faye Whitaker decoupage designs (only the backing image as I didn't want to decoupage it)
My partner in this exchange has recently had shoulder surgery and was unable to stitch anything but I still received this lovely kit & yummy chocolate (always goes down well!)


Next up the Assisi Card exchange I sent this:

And received:


Then we had a butterfly exchange, this one I actually struggled with, the gift could be shopbought rather than stitched so I sent a 2012 diary with a butterfly print & a stitched card:


I received these lovely coasters, stitched on sparkly aida :)


Lastly for the exchanges today is the ABC exchange, probably the funniest exchange I've had all year so far. We had to choose either modern or traditional to stitch and we would be sent something from the catagory we chose, I chose traditional and stitched this design from Joan Elliott's latest book 'Cross Stitched Greeting Cards' and finished it as a pillow using the fabric pictured as the backing.

Now I'm a big fan of Joan Elliott and planned to stitch this again for myself in the new year after all these exchanges are over so you can imagine my surpprise when I received this in the post!

It's almost identical, I omitted the fractional stitches & french knots in my version (the diamonds above the houses and the leaves in the corners/between the houses) purely because time was running out to get it posted but the fact that I received the exact design I posted & it was finished in exactly the same way still baffles me, goes to show that stitchers really do think alike!!

After thinking long and hard about it, I gave up stitching my Krabby/Kingler pokemon quilt patch for the patchwork gym, I simply have to many other comitments right now and I knew there was no way I was going to make the deadline to get it finished, however all is not lost, I have sent my incomplete patch to another member of the patchwork gym to finish for me as she very kindly offered too so massive thanks to Blackmageheart (forum name) for doing that, hopefully it won't take her as long to complete as it would me! :) I'll be sure to post up the finished pic when she's finished it!

Lastly I wanted to leave you with a few pictures of my new (well it is to me) singer machine, all dressed up for Halloween.


And a few close ups of some of my new halloween/autumn bits this year (I try to buy one or two things every year as well as make some)
i love this wooden sign, it has fixtures at the back to hang in on the wall but I plan on getting some thick cord and stringing it up that way.
This pumpkin reminds me of Nightmare before Christmas (fave film) or something out of Halloweentown from the Disney Channel, so wish they would release the dvd's over here in the UK as me and my mum loved watching them on the Disney Channel every year!!
Finally I'll leave you with my spidey candle holder complete with orange cobweb candle, I hate spiders bit this little guy was too cute to say no too!!!

Till next time happy stitching!!!

xX Fiona Xx

Thursday 6 October 2011

Argh!!!!!!

After all that waiting it didn't record properly!!! The ending's been cut off?! As far as I can tell it's not being repeated again and it doesn't seem to be available on DVD although I have emailed the BBC shop to make sure. So annoyed cos I've basically stayed up for nothing!!!

Really beginning to wish I had sky+...

It's 2:30 in the morning and i'm having to force myself to stay awake so I can record a program on BBC4 about Jane Austin, I was watching it earlier bit only caught the last few minutes so I'm recording it to watch tomorrow at a reasonable time. Only downside is I have to stay up to finish the recording after the show ends just over an hour later... I've been stitching a biscornu for an exchange but now I'm worried I'll make too many mistakes!!

Only 20 mins till the show starts, might just have a snooze while it's on and set my alarm for 4 or something...

Sunday 2 October 2011

Hello Autumn :)

well I've given my blog an autumn facelift depite the unseasonable heatwave we are experencing here in sunny old England!!

Its been a lovely weekend for me, not only was I not at work this weekend but I also had a lovely present from my parents.

I have always wanted a vintage singer sewing machine and my parents bought me a really really lovely one, not only is it a vintage machine but it's a vintage treadle machine!!! It's in need of a little TLC, the whole thing could do with a really good clean and the treadle belt has sadly broken but a replacement has already been ordered. I'll post photos up next time as hopefully the belt will have shown up by then but yay so happy!!!

I also made my inner geek very happy today as I picked up an Atari 2600 complete with 2 joysticks, 2 paddle controls & around 30 games for £35 in the boot sale this morning.

Right now I'm off to finish watching Star Trek followed by Big Bang Theory Season 4!!
Coming soon to the stitching corner....Zombies!

Happy Stitching
xX Fiona Xx

Saturday 1 October 2011

New additions to the stitching corner

So i mentioned a few posts ago that I went to the stitching show in Epsom (Sandown Park Racecourse) and although it was a fun day out stitching wise it was a bit of a wash out compared to previous years... The only stand there selling kits was The Black Sheep and the only fabric stall was Sew-it-All.  That said I still enjoyed my day and managed to come home with most of the stuff I wanted, along with a few 'just because' extras (namely fat quarters!)


DMC box, Gorjuss kit & bobbins from The black sheep
lots of Aida from Sew it all
Fat Quarters froma fabric stall called StitchWitch
Scissors from Coleshill Accessories
The ribbon & buttons were from a papercrafting stall and I forget the name of the book stall there.

If I had stuck to the things on my 'need' list I would have bought the book, bobbins & aida....oh well, I already have plans from most of the fabrics and the buttons.

I do have more stash to show but I don't have pictures from them yet and I'm waiting on one exchange to show up before I do another exchange download but hopefully that will be here tomorrow

Till next time,
Happy Stitching!!

xX Fiona Xx