Crafting Get-together

It was time for the monthly get-together for our little craft group on Saturday and this time it was hosted by Sarah whose home is in Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire. 


If you are a regular follower of my blog you will know that we love to do various crafts, eat and drink, natter and laugh and have a thoroughly good time. This time was no exception, we all had a super day and were introduced to Jeni, a new member of our group who is as mad as the rest of us so will fit in just fine!

Sarah and Colly, busy eating and i-padding but some crafting was carried out as well!

Tammy stitching up a meerkat that she had knitted

Pam working on the edging of her corner-2-corner blanket and Jeni making felted birds

Sarah working on her cross stitch

Our new member Jeni makes the most amazing felted birds and animals

Here is an amazing owl she sat and made for Colly

And here is Thumper, how cute is he?

And I am now the proud owner of this robin which Jeni made for me, how she makes these so quickly I have no idea!

The crafty gang!

I finished crocheting the squares for my first Sunshine blanket

Although this wasn't made on Saturday I just had to show you this amazing quilt that Colly made for a friend of mine

These days we spend together are so good, we all get along fine and it is good to take time out in our busy lives to enjoy each others company and work on our hobbies. It really motivates me to do more crafting when other people around me are doing the same thing.

My challenge this year is to complete 12 sunshine blankets of love which I am planning to donate to a local residential care home at the end of the year. These are lap size blankets and part of my aim is to reduce my wool stash pile but at the same time do something that I enjoy and which has a useful end product. There are so many ideas whizzing around in my head and this is an ideal way of trying out different designs.

I am waiting for my new toy to arrive so that I can block these squares before assembling them into a blanket. My new gadget is a blocking board made by @daisyboocreations. These squares really require blocking out so I cannot wait for the board to arrive and try it out, it should be here soon.


In the meantime I started on sunshine blanket no. 2 yesterday afternoon after our drive back from Cambridgeshire. I am calling this one Rose Garden and looking forward to seeing how this one looks when it is assembled. 

Well that is all for now, until my next post ......

November

Well here we are at the last day of November - I am not sure where this month has gone, it seems to have whizzed by so quickly and I still haven't done anything about getting ready for Christmas.


When I thought about blogging this morning I didn't think we had done much during November to blog about but when I looked through my November photos I realised there has been quite a bit going on.


As you know I have been going to Slimming World since the end of March this year and much to my surprise I was nominated for the Miss Slinky award at my group at the beginning of the month. I don't like speaking in front of people so I did umm and ahhh as to whether I should do it but decided to have a go. The evening started off well as it was my first weigh-in since my half term holiday and I lost an amazing 4.5 lbs bringing my total weight loss to 3 stone 9.5 lbs and gaining my 3.5 stone award. All the walking we achieved when we were away must have worked miracles. It was then time for the Miss Slinky part of the evening, there were four of us up for the award and we all had to give a little speech about our SW journey and why we were doing it and to my amazement (as I still have a lot of weight to lose) I won and was awarded Miss Slinky 2015. Here I am together with Mick, another member, who won the Mr Sleek award.

Unfortunately I have struggled for the rest of the month to lose more weight and maintained for a couple of weeks but hopefully after losing 2 lbs last week I am back on track. I really want to achieve 4 stone by Christmas.


We haven't managed too many walks this month for various reasons, mostly because of the horrible wet, windy, grey days we seem to have had for most of the month but we did achieve another lovely walk around St. Mary Bourne. Here are a few random photos I took that day, you can see that it was quite a grey day but it was good to get out and enjoy the countryside.

We have been trapped at home since the middle of the month as we had contractors in refurbishing our back garden. This was a long overdue project. We have found it increasingly difficult to manage the garden and to my shame it has been neglected for a couple of years now with very little being done to it so we decided to rip up the horrible grass (there was no way you could have ever called it a lawn) and have a patio and decking put in its place. Unfortunately the poor contractors struggled as the weather was not on their side and it is still not complete. You can just imagine the mud and mess as it started to rain heavily on day 2 and unfortunately as we have no back access they had to bring everything through the house to the skip on the front drive. They still have to come back and finish pointing in all the paving and lay a membrane and shingle/pebbles around the border but it has been too wet for them to do it. Hopefully we will have some dry days this week so they can return and finish the job and then I get on with the exciting task of buying pots and plants and patio furniture so we can enjoy the garden next year. 


Here are the before, during and now pictures, when it is all finished and I have it all planted up I will show you the end result but that could be after Christmas and into the New Year at the rate we are going.

All of this took us up to this last weekend and what an enjoyable weekend we had. On Saturday I hosted our little craft group that meet up at the end of each month, we usually go to Long Eaton to Colly's house but once a year they all come south and spend a day at my house and then in December we head to Coates, near Peterborough and spend a day at Tammy's house. We had a fun day and a little crafting was done between all the eating, drinking and laughing!

I love these days when we all get together and are inspired by what everyone is making. I chose to work on my Autumn Leaves corner to corner throw, I am over the half way point now and it will be good to start the decreasing soon and have shorter rows to crochet.

And finally, to round off the weekend, we were invited to my cousin's house yesterday to join in the celebrations for my Uncle's 91st birthday. My Uncle is incredible, he still walks miles and manages his allotment, I can only hope if I get to his age I will be half as fit as he is. It was so good to get together with family and my cousin and her husband produced a wonderful lunch and a good day was had by all.

We have another big birthday celebration to look forward to at the end of December, my Mum (pictured above with her brother-in-law) will be ninety on Boxing Day so another get-together with family and friends is planned. I am sure I will be showing you photos from that occasion after Christmas.


Well, this post has turned out to be rather long (especially as I didn't think we had been up to much during November). I am planning to catch up on my blog reading and commenting soon and hope it won't be too long before I am back with another blog post.