Summer

I heard from Becky last week that she had received the gift I stitched for her as a thank you for the wonderful trimmings she sent me earlier this year.

Knowing how much Becky likes bees as soon as I saw this design

by Gazette 94 I knew I had to stitch it for her.

I adapted it slightly and turned it into a pin cushion and used

some of the details from the pattern for the edges of it.

Even though Becky isn't blogging right now she was kind enough to email me to say she had received it and loved it. As with many of the people I 'know' through blogging I often think about her and hope she is OK, so it was really nice to hear from her.

Sneak Preview

I was taking some shots of something that I will be putting in the post later today. Hopefully I will be showing you that soon but whilst I had the camera out I also took a couple of close-ups of my first design.

Hopefully you will get to see the finished piece and pattern over the weekend. In the meantime here are the close-ups.

As you might have guessed the first design has a wildlife theme.

Silver Lining

One or two people have been kind enough to ask how I'm getting on, so a quickish update.

After finishing the week's course of tablets and taking a week off from doing any housework I thought I was fine. However 24 hours later the pain was back and so a return trip to the doctors resulted in more tablets and an appointment with the physio, which is later this week, i.e nearly a fortnight after my second doctor's appointment.

After weeks of virtual inactivity, as my husband despite being busy with his own business, wouldn't let me do any housework or much else until the doctor said I could I have:

a. Put on loads of weight
and
b Seem to be fine.

Following the doctor's instructions I have come off the tablets a few days before the appointment with the physio and appear to be totally pain free. I'm still keeping the appointment in the hope they may be able to point me in the right direction to getting rid of my recurring back problems but other than that, after nearly a month and a half, I'm pain free. Yippee and fingers crossed it stays that way.

Needless to say there has been no progress in the garden, banned from doing it and so hopefully my seeds will (time permitting) finally get planted this week. A bit late for some of them but I'll cross my fingers and hope. Banned from washing up meant I couldn't clean the greenhouse and the required pots.

I have to admit, as great as my husband was, I was by the end of the first week desperate to be able to wash up, so I could bake, and hoover, as the house was definitely missing a woman's touch.

I'm hoping that next week I'll be able to get back out walking in the Peak District, as I hate the enforced inactivity but I haven't exactly been wasting my time. As the proverb goes, every cloud has a silver lining.

As some of you may recall I have hopes of doing some designing, of the cross-stitch variety, and so with all my spare time I started playing around with pencils and graph paper and came up with the outlines of a design. I then spent an evening trialing PCStitch Pro and eventually purchased it. I amazed myself by not only designing but also purchasing the required materials and stitching the design in 5 days time. Naturally I haven't actually got it into a finished piece yet but as soon as I have I will post it on the blog along with the pattern.

Since then I've got two more designs that I'm working on and I'm having so much fun. I'm so desperate to find time to carry on with this that I'm trying to get up earlier. By moving the alarm clock back in 15 minute stages I'm hoping I can add an extra hour or so to my day.