Winners All Around

There were several entries for my giveaway to win a signed copy of the Cross Stitch Collection magazine which featured the interview with Yours Truly.  It was very intesting to see which designs you chose as your favourites from the magazine.  There were six different designs which people liked with the birds being the leader with five votes.

NB if you want to win one of my giveaways it does help to read the instructions!  I always make people earn their prize by asking a question of some sort LOL.

Anyway, I allocated each entrant a playing card and then picked one at random.  Ewa was the Ace of Diamonds and has won the magazine.  That's great because she is getting married soon so now I don't have to buy her a present.  Joking!

The second winner is me.  Yay!  I have been nominated by Margaret to win this award:

Here are the rules for accepting the award:

* Thank the person who nominated you and link back to them in your post.
* Share 7 things about yourself.
* Nominate bloggers you admire.
* Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know.

So, number one has been done; Thanks Margaret!

7 Things - I have been pondering The Seven Ages of Women recently as my Birthday is approaching and I have a special one in two years.

The Seven Ages I decided upon are:
Baby
Child
Teenager
Working Woman
Mother
Prime of Life
Grandmother

Baby - I was an adorable baby, first child, first grandchild, much loved, chubby and happy.  This is my First Birthday Photo:

Child - I continued to be an adorable happy child although I did lose the chubbiness!  My first experience of stitching came in Year 2 at school when I made a binca mat for my mother.

Choir outfit for school!

Teenager - I was an adorable typical teenager who did alot of fundraising for charity:

Our rock club had saved all their half-pennies to raise money.  

That is my pint on the table next to me!!

Working Woman - this was when I rediscovered cross stitch and started the hobby which has been part of my life for 21 years now.  I commuted to work by train every day for 17 years and either read or cross stitched every one of them.  We had a great group of friends on the train, several weddings and a few babies (not on the actual train thankfully!).  I am still in contact with several of them too.

Mother - That landmark occured nearly 12 years ago now.  In fact exactly 12 years ago I was having alot of fun going into shops to buy baby clothes and telling them I was overdue by a week. hahaha.  You get served very quickly.  My stitching has fallen and risen with each child.  Now they are both older I am able to squeeze more stitching in especially when they are both at school.

Prime of Life - I am looking forward to this one!  This will be once my boys are both more independent and I am able to dedicate more time to myself and my hobbies.  At the moment I cannot leave the younger one overnight so retreats are out of the question.  But one day!

Grandmother - I am going to be an awesome Grandma!  I have been reading lots of blogs written by Grandma stitchers and it all sounds like so much fun.  I just hope my son does not make me wait for grandchildren for as long as I made my parents wait.  Or I will be 72!  I am definitely going to be like the Old Woman Who Will Wear Purple and I'm going to join societies, lots of them so I have can coffee and biscuits out every day!  I will probably start de-stashing about this time too, so make sure you are still following me to score some bargains!

So that's seven facts about me.  Now to the next bit which is to nominate somone.  I have done a few of these in the past so I will nominate some different this time.  Someone who is a new but very regular blogger, who is always cheerful and has lots of crafting going on, someone who does have her personal struggles with her own health and her husband's but somehow always has lots of fun whatever she does with her gorgeous daughter in tow.  Whether it's a day out in the city or a trip to Ikea you can be sure there will be photos galore (including some selfies) and plenty of happiness.

Have you guessed yet?

Here's a button from her blog.  Click on it to visit her and say Hi from me!

There ought to be some stitching pictures by now.  I have been stitching two things which are presents so I can't show those.  However I have also been slogging away on the over one portion of Noel Blanc so there is progress there:

And on Sunday I started Kathy's RR piece.  She has chosen some San Man blackwork months for her sampler.  September (my birth month) was already stitched so I went for February (the Small Boy's birth month).  This is a rather quick stitch, it's so addictive!

This is a really poor quality scanned picture, white never comes out well on the scanner but it gives you the idea of how much I did in just one day!

Finally, I am going to keep posting this to make sure everyone sees it!  My Followers are increasing in numbers as a result.  A request to all the people who Follow my blog via Feedly or Bloglovin' -

Please could you also click on the Google Join This Site button just above all the smiling faces to the right of my blog?  This button is how I count my Followers and return the following if they have a blog.

Margie brought this to my attention, she follows me via Feedly and said she hoped I had a way of verifying that.  Unfortunately Feedly doesn't have any way of finding out who your lovely followers are.

So please show yourselves by using the button!  It means I can find your blog and also, another 7 followers will trigger a 500 Followers Giveaway.  Only people listed under my Followers will be eligible for the Giveaway.

An Award

I received this lovely award from Topcho of Bla. bla? bla! recently.  It's German for "Favourite Blog"  Here's what I have to do:

• Put the award on your blog - done
• Link the blogger who nominated you - click on award to go to Topcho's blog 
• Choose 5 other bloggers - see below
• Visit their blogs and let them know - they all visit mine so they'll find out that way haha.

I decided to choose 5 blogs who run great fun events for us all to join in with.  Having done the Advent Calendar and the Secret Stitching Sweetheart for Valentine's Day I can really appreciate the effort which goes into a bigger event.  So here are the blogs:

Daffycat - for services to the Totally Useless (the SAL not the bloggers!)

and also because whenever the Large Boy sees the Dancing Cow he does the Daffycat Dance.

This would be available on Youtube except for the fact that hubby does not let me exploit my children.  Damn.

Measi - for helping us all face the End of the World in a more organised state.

Joysze - for giving us an excuse to hide away and Hermit once a month.

Heather - for enabling us to think there is method in our madness by giving us a theme each month (and letting me flex my imagination to see how I can shoe-horn Green Goddess in there every month).

Nia - for the best Christmas Party ever and inspiring all the 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways (which I was very lucky with!)

I've just noticed that Topcho already gave Joyzse the Award so I'll add:

Evalina Maria - for making me dig out two very elderly Christmas UFOs and shaming me into stitching them (sometime this year).



OK, Award ceremony over, frocks and jewels all go back to Rachel Zoe.  I die.  Bananas.  Shut. it. down.

Blogger Award Part 2 and a Giveaway

Gabi aka the Lady of the Floss is having an amazing giveaway to celebrate her Blogaversary.   The prize is $100 to spend at Anita's Little Stitches, an online shop.  And guess what?  This is the very shop that sells the amazing scissors I love.  So if you enter and if you win then you have to buy me scissors, OK, deal?

Part 2 of the Stylish Blogger Award - choose 15 blogs to pass the award on to.  It seems like we all follow alot of the same blogs which is great as it feels like a real community with everyone knowing everyone else.  I thought I'd pass my Award on to some of the less well-known blogs.  I went through my list and chose people who really deserve a wider audience.

Here they are:

Already Forgotten by Valentina, stitches Mirabilias and crochets, she loves cats.
Confessions of a Fabric Floozy - by Amanda, she did the Crazy 15 in January and has been stitching smalls
Cross Stitched by Astrid - she loves dragons and has the cutest little boy in a dragon costume
Delphyne in Stitches - a fellow hermitter and new to blogging
Home is Where the Heart is by Lesley, a Rogers Waters fan, she is crocheting and needs her stitching mojo back
Stitching in the City by Hannah, the city being London.  Hannah is new to blogging, follow her ambition to stitch her first Chatelaine this year!
Stitchy Stitcher - by Eyani, Mirabilia, Joan Elliott, Dark Side of the Moon, what more need I say?
The Inspired Stitcher - another new blogger with a great piece about "inspiration" this week

This takes ages!!  Finding all the blogs and links.

Part 3 to follow.  If you like any of these blogs then tell them I've given them an award, save me a job hahaha

Stylish Blogger Award

Anne from Doll's Musings has awarded me The Stylish Blogger Award.  Am I Stylish?  I'm not sure, maybe my blog is, but any award is nice to have!  I have to Thank Anne, say 7 things about me and pass the Award onto 15 bloggers. 

I used up all my interesting facts last time I got an award and the large boy was no help - "tell me something about Mummy that other people don't know" "She is called Mrs Bossy-Boots" No, I think people already know that.  Thanks for nothing.  So here are my 7 photographic things:

Some of my Earring Collection.  The rest are kept in my jewellery cupboard.  Yes I have a cupboard for my jewellery.  These are my favourite and my best earrings that I wear most.  They are displaying on cake cooling trays.  The cakes I eat are already cool from the shop so I don't need to use them for their original purpose.

 This is the T-shirt from the first ever concert I went to.  I love live music.  I love loud music.  My Mum let me go on a coach with 50 hairy rock fans on the grounds that the organiser had been 3 times before and had a proper job and was therefore considered quite respectable.  I shan't say how old I was because then you'll all know!

 This is my rubble collection.  The brick on the left is from the music venue which hubby used to run and where we got together.  I was working for him and he is such a gentleman he insisted on walking me home every shift.  No ulterior motive there at all.  When his lease ended they sold the building and it was demolished.  The one on the right is a genuine piece of The Berlin Wall.  I went to see Roger Waters perform there and we all brought back chunks of historical rubble, see it has graffiti paint on it.

 This is my needlework book collection.  They live in the kitchen so I have something interesting to read when I am cooking heating up food.  (Tolkein and the Medieval manuscripts have sneaked in because you never know when you need to grab a quick look at them).

This is my display shelf for my smalls. (small projects, not my underwear haha).  I bought one in an "antique" shop but it was 5mm too small for all the frames so my Dad made me this one to match.  The other one has ornaments on.

This is my stash chest, under the stash clutter!  Bonus points for anyone who can indentify the two WIPS visible on top of the chest.

This was the last thing I bought myself.  It was £3 and is very useful as well as decorative.

I don't have time now to post 15 links to my 15 blogs so you will have to wait for part 2.  Oh, the suspense!  I have to go bath the small boy.  He seems to be having a sugar-rush, he had yoghurt for afters which is full of sugar.  It makes him giggle like a loon.

I won an Award!

I have been awarded this lovely award by Lesley Home is Where My Heart Is  Thank you Lesley!  Now I have to award the award on and say a few random facts about myself.

I would like to keep you guessing as to my award winners.  There are two sites that really take my breath away, literally on many occasions.  This is the first one here and here are your clues - it's not a single stitcher but a group.  Some designs are easy for a stitcher to make look good, the Joan Elliot Oriental booklet is a good example.  The designs are simple to stitch but very beautiful, it's almost embarassing when people admire them because Joan has done all the work and I've just stitched it!  However on this site the designer IS a genius and her work is amazing BUT the individual stitchers have so much input into the finished pieces they really deserve the praise as well.  See if you can guess which site it is before clicking!

My second choice is here again it's not a single stitcher, in fact I don't even know if this person stitches herself.  However her artistic talent is definitely not in any doubt.  If "I want to live near X" was a valid reason for getting a Green Card to the States I'd be there at Immigration tomorrrow!  As it is I just have to visit this site and drool all over the keyboard.

Here are some random facts about me:

I volunteer (too much),
I talk in meetings (too much),
I'm not shy,
I'm slow to anger but slower to forgive,
I like to be awkward (if there is a,b and c on a survey I'll be d),
If I can't be the best at something I'll be the worst (sport!), I don't do "average",
I'm a cat-person,
I'm an activist (a lactivist-activist!),
I need positive people in my life otherwise I do get depressed,
I'm an extrovert who recharges by being alone,
I love words.
and finally -
If I could have a superpower it would be the ability to live one day a week as a different person, to get inside their mind and understand their motivation for the things they do.

Hope you've all learned something new about me!  And I have noticed I have 50 followers!  Wow, I try to follow all my followers, so if you follow me and I don't follow you yet it's because I can't find your blog - leave a comment and I'll come stalk follow you.

There are no photos in this post yet - disaster!  It's too late to scan Baby Swing now so I'll do it tomorrow.