Christmas, Thank yous and The year ahead

Well as today is my first day off since Christmas and I have the house to myself as the family have all gone for a last look at the Pre-January sales I thought I’d better spend some time writing on my blog!

Christmas was a small intimate affair spend at home with my parents & my brother, his girlfriend joined us mid-morning to swap presents before heading to her parent’s house for Christmas lunch. I was given so many lovely things this year, rather than list them all I’ll just share the pictures.

 From my friends Dave & Toni : monsters uni socks, mug & Nintendo e-shop voucher

From my aunt & uncle:

From Kath

From my next door neighbor Margaret & her friend Joan (friends of the family)

From Michelle

From Elaine, Jacqui & Barbara from my Needles knitting group

From the parents :)

From my brother & his Girlfriend

From Karen, Tracy, Donna, Clare, Laura & Conor at work

One present I have to talk about is my new yarn tote-bag from my parents;

within minutes of being opened it was put to use storing the yarn for my rainbow granny stripe blanket. Progress on this is slow going as you can see from the picture below but I hope to get this finished next year!

Thank you so much to Michelle and Kath for your Christmas presents!  Your continued friendship means so much to me and I hope we can meet up sometime in 2014 J Thank you also to my followers both old & new this year, I know I haven’t posted as much in recent months and I certainly haven’t stitched/crafted anywhere near as much as I would have liked this year-console gaming seems to have taken over my free time this year so I’m hoping 2014 will be a little more balanced, I would really like to get some long term projects finished off and get back to reading books again!

I started this year with several projects incomplete and I’m sad to say that although I finished several in January, the rest remain. Super Mario remains a WIP to my dismay as I was so hoping to have it completed by today but I am determined to complete it in 2014 as my shift patterns at work are finally back to normal.

I am setting no resolutions for 2014 as I rarely stick to them for more than a week.  I am setting no targets either, it’s always so disheartening if I miss a target one month that it often ripples into the following month, I am simply going to try and finish my current WIP’s and then try to stitch some of the other designs I have in my stash.

For this reason I have decided to  join the stitchfrom stash 2014 (SFS) SAL. I have bought/downloaded so many lovely & wonderful charts & series over the last few years that I see no need to buy more as I've yet to stitch any of them! I will also be following along with WIPocolyse, TUSAL & IHSW as these are all easy to keep up with along with SFS.

I think that’s it from me this time round, May you’re New Year ’s Eve be spent however you will most enjoy it, I will be spending it in the cinema with my family watching the subtitled screening of The Hobbit: the desolation of Smaug.

Wishing you all a prosperous 2014 & Happy Stitching!!

xX Fiona Xx