Happy New Year

I seem to have done nothing but cross stitch this holiday - and it's starting to make me cross eyed. Not least because I keep being inspired by other quick, easy and colourful crafting ideas... I really fancy making a softie or two, and I want to experiment with needle felting, and I want to cover my diary with pretty fabric. But I won't. Not yet anyway. I have too many half-finished projects cluttering the house, and this won't be one of them!

Here's a picture of it so far...

I'm very pleased with it, but am a little concerned that the colours aren't as bright as I'd intended, and that it looks a bit like a Victorian cherub - which is really not what I was after. It's a pattern generated from this photo of Kewpie in my strawberries.

Still, at least it's moved away from beige (I've used pink and brown as well!), and fairly soon I'll be on to green. Which will be brilliant!

I went sale shopping yesterday. I bought some recipe books from Borders for casseroles and stuff (slow cooking's my current favourite) at half price, and a notebook which I'm thrilled to pieces with.

I've already used it to compose a shopping list, copy down a recipe for Cawl, make a note of picture frame sizes and prices, and to price and plan the layout of how I'm going to frame the robot cross stitches. I can't put it down - it's too lovely. There has been nothing particularly impressive of inspired put into the book as yet, but it's only a matter of time. In years to come I expect it to be auctioned for a kerjillion pounds, after I earn my fame and fortune doing something good and interesting. I haven't decided what that thing will be yet. In the meantime, here's a sneaky glimpse of the notebook you might find yourself bidding on in the dim and distant future...



I also bought a lamp. It wan't in the sales, but it was very reasonable (an Ikea purchase), and I'm loving it. You might have noticed that the pictures of my front room in this blog are a bit dark. This is because my front room tends to be a bit dark. This might have something to do with the dark yellow I chose to paint it when I moved in. I'm starting to think about painting it a lighter colour, like white - but definitely not (never) magnolia.

The dark cross stitch in a dark room was starting to strain my eyes a bit - but not any more. Behold, my lovely new lamp!

The room is still dark (this photo was taken at 2pm today), but my corner is gloriously bright and lovely.