It's been a busy week

At the start of the week I finished off the second of the two Christmas cards I was stitching for my parents and mother-in-law. The design is by Mary Hickmott from issue 164 of New Stitches. I decided to stitch them on some lurex evenweave that I had been given in a gift bag at the last Aion Forums meet up in Nuneaton. I really struggled for the first couple of days on the second one, my light was shining off the silver in the fabric which, after a while, did not make for easy stitching. Anyway by Wednesday I was stitching better and finished it off, all in all it only took me a couple of days to do. I always stitch the same design for both as there can be no arguments and I don't have to remember which I stitched for who.

On Sunday I decided to join the Stitching Bloggers webring in the hope of making new stitching friends around the World and maybe getting involved in some exchanges and SAL's. Having read Nicki's blog I discovered that she was organising a Christmas ornament SAL on the last weekend in the month starting in January. Now although I'm not the World's fastest stitcher and probably won't finish a complete ornament each time, I thought it would be a great way of getting a few done before next Christmas, so I joined the SAL. I'm really looking forward to it, and having joined the team blog I shall be able to post photos.

Thursday morning I was surprised by Keith having booked a couple of days off work in addition to the four that he has next week. We were able to get the Christmas cards mounted into cards and posted off that morning. Keith usually does the card mounting as he is much better at it than me. We spent that afternoon and Friday morning doing Christmas present and food shopping. In the afternoon we went up to Leek for tea and scones at our favourite tea room, Greystones. As tomorrow is my birthday, and in order to take advantage of Harvester Restaurant's Early Bird deal which is not available on Sundays, we decided to have lunch out today. We followed that by a visit to Trentham Gardens craft village to go to the Yankee Candle shop, and I managed to get the last Balsam and Cedar candle that they had. Next week now will be spent doing the housework and putting up our tree, and if I get the chance, some more stitching on the "Tea Room".