Christmas has come early!

My dad asked me what I would like for my main Christmas present, I finally decided that I would like a sewing machine. So yesterday I went out and bought it as transporting it 245 miles at Christmas wouldn't have been a good idea. I did a dummy run for a tote bag and found the handles were too close to the sides.

Brother LS14

Practice run of making a tote bag.

I'm looking back through all of my design & technology books/work from secondary school though I decided to go with product design in the final 2 years, I still kept some worksheets from textiles and it is included in my GCSE D&T book. Hopefully this will help when choosing fabrics etc.

Well I'm off to cross stitch and brain storm ideas for my next sewing piece!

IHSW October :)

Yesterday was Derby day for my football team (Sunderland) and we drew 1-1. It wasn't an eventful match but we didn't lose. I lost out on a Nando's, I had a dream that Sunderland won 1-0 (Sessengon to score) so my other half said if that was the case he would take me to Nando's. Well that deal was off within 2 minutes after kick off as Newcastle scored first.

I tried a row of double crochet and I hope it looks right.

I am happy as my stitchy bug turned up on Saturday so I got a nice small amount of a Christmas card done and I made some nice bread rolls!
Here is the result of this weekend's IHSW:

Saturday's progress.

Sunday's progress.

I hope to get this card finished today just as long as I don't spend too much time in Dunelm-Mill and Hobbycraft I should be fine.

Book finish

This is just a short post, honest!

Well I seem to be a little machine when it comes to reading as I've finished another. This one is called "The King's Spy" by Andrew Swanston, I found it intriguing but not gripping and by that I mean I didn't feel like I needed to keep on reading because of the events. It is about an ordinary bookseller who is a good cryptographer that is summoned by the King for his cryptography skills. He's led into being a part of a war he doesn't agree with and receives an intercepted, coded message that leads to betrayal and murder.

I've not got as much done as I would have liked regarding cross stitch though I have finally decided on an idea for the Christmas ornament exchange after I scrapped the original piece I started stitching. I'm also beginning to be organised with my projects by using PandaHobby which is a handy tool I must say. Anyway I better get stitching.

Cross stitch and a book.

Well this year I decided I would stitch Christmas cards for those nearest and dearest which is something I've not tried before. Here's one that I've stitched but I won't be making it into a card until I've done 2 more.

Design from issue 157 of "The World of Cross Stitching".

 I've also managed to do a lot of the sky on the poppies so now it's back to the stem which I hope will spur me on.

Design from issue 165 of "The World of Cross Stitching".

This weekend I had a lovely time in London and although there was lots to do I managed to read a book and start stitching a Christmas card. The book was Dan Brown's Digital Fortress, it was really good. Near the beginning I thought to myself, "I knew that was going to happen" but later on it turned out that I was wrong and there were a few more unexpected twists.