I'm Behind

I'm behind at posting on my blog and I'm behind at reading other blogs so I thought I'd do something about it this evening.

Something else I've been behind at is walking, I hurt my leg a couple of weeks ago when I was out walking and on my way home my leg was hurting so much I had to ring Neil to come and fetch me. My leg was very red, swollen and extremely painful. I saw the doc and although he couldn't find a bite mark he was certain I'd been bitten and reacted to it. He prescribed some antibiotics, told me to take the rest of the week off work 

(this was on a Thursday) keep the leg up, and I could go back to work on the Monday. Anyway I didn't take time off work but I did try and keep the leg up as much as possible and rest and take the antibiotics which made me feel even worse. But by the Monday it really wasn't that much better, it wasn't quite as red or swollen but it was still very painful. So I went back to see the doctor as the antibiotics obviously weren't doing any good. It turned out that I'd got a shin splint, this is when the muscle comes away from the bone and when it was red and swollen it was actually bleeding internally.Thankfully it is much better now which is a really good thing as next Tuesday I'm doing the Race for Life. I'm slowly getting back into my walking routine but I haven't been to Zumba for over two weeks, I think I'll give that a little bit more time.

I have finished Freddie's jumper. 

I've started a sleeveless tunic for Eva in pretty delicate colours, she is our little dolly unlike Ellie.

Granny squares have been on the go again. I'm teaching them next month and two methods of  joining them.

I couldn't resist making a mariners compass block. Pam is teaching this next month and It's been something I wanted to make for a long time so I thought I'd make another sample for the class. I was going to make just the one block and turn it into a cushion cover but I like it so much that I'm going to make another two and turn them into a table runner.
  

Wednesday was the last meeting of Spectrum before the summer break. I have to say it was a lovely meeting and Gina made the most gorgeous chocolate cake, thank you Gina. We had to take our finished round robin pieces with us. I was the last person to work on this piece but there really wasn't anything left to do except mount it. I had two attempts at mounting it, the first time I stitched it all the way around after carefully measuring and levelling it up. Guess what, it had moved whilst I was stitching so it had to be unpicked and done again. It is now just stitched at the four corners..

Gina has given us some homework for the summer, we are going to do another round robin as we all enjoyed the first one so much. The theme is festivals/ summer, so something else to start at least I don't have to worry about finishing it.

The weather looks promising for the weekend so I hope you all get a chance to enjoy it whatever you may be doing.

Keeping Busy

I've had a very busy week. At last I have managed to finish the shawl. Silly as it sounds but even though I only had two rows left to do it was finding the time to do them. There was over 700 stitches on the needle and it took about 45 minutes to do a row and it's not one of the nicest things to leave mid row. Anyway I decided Sunday was the day to finish. So when I sat down to watch the F1 I just got on with it.

I'm very pleased with it and I've decided to give it to Steph. I'm not as keen on the colour as I was when it was in a ball. It looked different then.

I also finished this scarf and I'm now half way through another one.

Last Wednesday was the monthly meeting of Spectrum and again I managed to stay out of trouble although I was told I needed a tutorial.  Gina gave us a demo using Markel sticks, this is something we had to do for our City and Guilds but it's always good to have a play and we all enjoyed it. This is my piece of paper that I worked on and I am going to develop it some more. I did do some work on fabric but I didn't like it so it went in the bin.

We are continuing with our round robin. I passed the piece I was working on, to Sue and Caterina passed this piece onto me. 

Isn't it a fabulous piece, I'm really struggling to work out what do with it. The only thing I can come up with is to decorate the flower centres............... in red.

I've Done It

Remember this? It's my piece of fabric for the round robin we are doing in Spectrum. It was such a small piece of fabric that I felt it needed to be made bigger. It took some courage to actually take the rotary cutter to it and cut up someone else's work.

But I finally managed it. I'm still tempted to add some stitching to it but I'm going to leave that to the next person.

I have been doing quite a bit of baking lately, these are Hazelnut Praline muffins that I made for the social stitchers yesterday.

For Neil's birthday I made some Millionaires' Shortbread but I wasn't happy with it. I found another recipe and made some so that we can have a taste test today, so fingers crossed.

I'm still walking in the mornings and who wouldn't when they are as beautiful as they have been. Don't the swans look graceful.

There is one nesting swan.

I finally managed to get a photo of the heron. He's just there in the middle of the picture.

Spectrum

Last Wednesday was the monthly meeting of Spectrum. We are doing a Round Robin within the group. We       

all had to produce a piece of work in black and white. The work is then going to passed on 3 times. We can use any media/style of our choice.

This is my piece which was passed onto Anne.

This is Janet's that was passed onto me. I think I'm going to concentrate on making the piece bigger rather than adding any more decoration as was my first thought.

The first of this week's baking is Apple and Sultana muffins. I made them with normal flour so I shan't be eating any but they smelt so nice when they were cooking that I wished I'd used gluten free flour. Never mind there's always next time.

I went to Zumba class last night with Nicki and my legs were aching so much afterwards that I thought they would be achey today but surprisingly they aren't. It's a good laugh and everyone has a great time while getting some some exercise. Roll on next week because there isn't any on Wednesday.