All Finished

 January always seems to be a good month for me for finishing things.  I think it must be the excitement of a new year and looking forward to all the things I want to make.  

I've finished my Waxing Moon Designs January Sampler

Well, after looking at the photos I realised I missed filling a section of a snowflake in the top border!  You can see what I mean from the first photo.  It has now been filled in but I didn't want to mess with taking more photos.  Good job I noticed, it's not the first time I thought I was all done then notice I wasn't ;-)

This one won't be fully finished until I decide if I want to frame in or make it into a hanging of some sort.  I was going to see if I could find a frame in a charity shop but as they are all closed at the moment that's not an option, I don't want to go to the expense of having it professional framed as it will only be out for four weeks of the year, but as it is now I have almost 12 months to decide as January is at an end.

My next stitching finish is my PS January ornament as part of the 12in21ornamentstitchalong that I mentioned in my last post.

This too will be put away for finishing at a later date as I want to finish them all the same way

I noticed on Instagram a Year of Dishcloths Pattern Club from The Kitchen Sink Shop.  If you sign up to their news letter you will be sent a dish cloth pattern at the beginning of each month, (but you can find the pattern on Ravelry even if you don't sign up, It's just published a little later in the month).

This is the Icicles Dishcloth

 I knitted this out of some left over Hobby Craft cotton.

I just had to share some more snow pictures to end this blog post, we don't get huge amounts of it here in the UK so it's a real novelty when we do.    The snow we had last week lasted until Tuesday and so I'm glad now that when Bonnie came on Monday we took a walk to the park.  It was so pretty everywhere you looked and It was so lovely to see the kids having fun sledding, and just look at that blue sky!

It was a very different picture after Tuesday when the rain came and washed it all away, now it's just wet, miserable and dull grey skies :-(

We were promised some more snow this weekend but it hasn't materialized, yet.

Not many people had tried to get off the estate, the main roads were ok as they had been gritted

I hope January has been a good month for you and wish you all the best for a lovely February 

See you soon

-X-

First post of 2021

 Hello, I'm still around, just gave myself a little break after blogging my way through December.

I hope you are all ok and if you are in the UK managing to keep sane through lockdown #3.  Not that we could venture very far even if we were allowed to at the moment as we are having some lovely seasonal weather just now.  We awoke to snow on Saturday morning, not too much but enough to make it difficult to get out of the estate, especially as it had frozen, once onto the main roads it wasn't too bad though as they had been gritted.  More snow arrived over night so the first thing I did this morning was to put on my wellies and go out to feed the birds.

I was rewarded by lots of visitors, I don't think we have ever had so many on the feeders at once.  I stood at the window for about a hour watching them come and go, it was lovely.  I managed to get a few photos but they are so quick

It was a nice way to waste an hour and put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.  Simple things eh?

My first knitted finish for this year is this little cowl I made for Bonnie.  I didn't follow a pattern but chose a nice stitch from a pattern library and went from there.  

I'm still stitching away on my January sampler.  Not much more to go now, obviously it will be too late to display for this January and in any case there is nowhere open to look for frames.

I'm joining in Carol's ornament SAL (#12in21ornamentstitchalong) on Instagram.  This is the perfect opportunity for me to stitch these PS Santas.  My daughter, Stevie bought me this booklet a couple of years ago and it has been kitted up for a while.  They are quite small so perfectly doable each month.

This is how far I'm along with my first one

I'm stitching them on 32 count Zweigart Murano.  32 count's not my favourite to work on. I find have to take more time to make my stitches neat, but I'm happy with how they look so far.  I won't be fully finishing them until they are all stitched as I want to do them the same.

I haven't made any resolutions for the year except not to start too many things, I would like to finish what I start in a reasonable time and I would like to go into next year with nothing carried over, if I can.  I have three cross stitch WIP's, (not including the ones shown here today), one of them is about seven years old, and I would like to get those finished this year.  I also have the Dandelion cardigan that I started back in the summer, (this one could be finished quite quickly if I put my mind to it) and a pair of socks that are about half done.  I think that's enough to keep me going for a while :-)

As well as not blogging I've not been visiting, reading or commenting on many blogs either this month.  Hopefully I will put that to rights this week.

I hope you all have a lovely week and enjoy the snow, if you have any.  Don't wish the Season's away, time goes by too quickly as it is and Spring will come soon enough :-)

Take care

-X-