Music I love

Sunday 30 December 2012

Into the dawn of a New Year



I always grow thoughtful at this time of year.

Who among us doesn't ?

A time to reflect.

Pray for mercy,

peace  ~

and good health for all we know and love.

Dream of days filled with happy stitching.

Holidays to come.

Friends and family all around.

Music and laughter.

Less suffering and sorrow in this weary world.

And most of all,

being thankful for all of God's goodness to us.

A blessed 2013 to you all.



Love and stitches,

Anita xxxx



Wednesday 26 December 2012

This beauteous season




It's been the most wonderful time.

Apart from the fact I had not a minute to stitch before the festive season began.

Next week though,

I'm off on a whole weeks leave and I will stitch more Christmas lovelies!


On Christmas Eve,

Santa arrived early,

bringing these.

From my dear friend Isobel, who has the most wonderful patterns, thread keepers and Etsy shop.

These are the hand painted thread keepers I bought from her store





Aren't they so pretty? They are hand painted. Such talent!

These are my favourite photos from Christmas





















































I hope you are all well and have had a blessed Christmas time with your loved ones.

Here's to plenty of stitching time in twenty thirteen !

Love and stitches,

Anita xxxx

Sunday 16 December 2012

At morning, wrapped in frost




We woke this morning to another beautiful,

frosty Sunday morning.

Yesterday we had a lovely day out to our new ( £6 million to build)

Titanic centre with my son and his girlfriend.

We had lovely nibbles before we left and

I gave them this as a Christmas present


They were thrilled and couldn't notice any of the million mistakes I'd made lol.

I'm loving these frosty, silent days.

However yesterday my heart was aching because of the  tragic events at the school in Connecticut.

It beggars belief that a young man can take guns

( which unbelievably were registered to his mom!)

Kill her,

and then go on to kill teachers and little ones.

One of those,

Charlotte Bacon, was the grand-daughter of a missionary family from Overseas Missionary Fellowship,

( with whom I've been involved with for many years.)

So close to Christmas,

all those little gifts that won't be opened on Christmas Day.

It's hard to make sense of it all.

I have to continue holding on to my hope as a Christian however,

that God never intended for us to live in a fallen, broken world.

And that at this time of year,

the coming of Jesus reminds me that He came to make things right again.

I hope you are well dear friends

and as I am, in the words of President Obama...

hugging my kids a little tighter.

Love and stitches

Anita xxx

Sunday 9 December 2012

Stitching with stars



It's the season of love and hope 

I love clementines and they always taste lovelier at Christmas

I always have a candle of hope at my window
My messy Christmas baking


My grandma's old scales

Nigella!

Darling hubby preparing my cake tin in the middle of all the chaos :)


A blurry shot because the light was low :)



Hello dear friends.

I was * hoping * to have some pictures of my finished and framed pieces for you to see, 

but my framer ain't done yet!

This is such a busy time of year, I haven't had time to lift a needle!

I've been baking up a storm in my kitchen, Christmas cakes  

( is there any nicer smell than a Christmas cake baking ? .. )

Oh and making cranberry sauce.

Nigella, thank you for all your wonderful books. I'd be lost without you.

I love these days.

Spices filling the air,

Carols and mittens and the promise of a few days off soon.

I treated myself to some beautiful thread keepers,

from my new favourite fellow stitcher  Isabelle 

I'll post some shots when they arrive :))

Oh, the title of my  blog has changed, AGAIN !

I found that my previous one was very common on the Google search engine.

And I like to be unique!

Hope you like it.

I hope you are all well dear friends.

Kisses and stitches,


Anita 










Sunday 2 December 2012

The first snow

Well, not exactly.

However,

I live in hope.

Part of me wishes for the snow of twenty ten,

but our city is not prepared for a snowfall like that.

We had a water crisis and the head of our water board lost his job~

because he handled the situation so poorly.


I vowed that year I would never  again take for granted

water and lovely hot showers.

And I haven't.

Stitching wise I started a design by Zaza Pique.

Then my material started to fray and I had to bin it, grr.

Bless Amazon, I was able to buy fray away there,

it's a glue that dries transparent and does exactly what it says on the bottle.

Stops your material from fraying.

I'm not savvy enough with sewing to use a machine ( I have a wee one in a drawer somewhere :)

and I'm too lazy to sew around the edge by hand lol.

WAIT!

I have been to the framers to have three pieces framed.

Viv , my framer is going off to the Christmas market in Prague on Monday,

so won't start them until she gets home.

Sheesh.

Some people. :)

Pictures when she gets those babies done.

Can you believe December is here already?

I'm loving the frost filled mornings.

The leaves that look like they have been dusted with sparkling lace.

Hot Chocolate.

Carols.

Twinkle lights.

And the fact that Jesus loved us enough,

to come as a little baby for us.

I hope you are all well dears,

and enjoying these lovely days.

Love and stitches,

Anita xxx