Liebster

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https://sleepykittystitches.wordpress.com/ nominated me for this award. I can’t think of any new blogs I’m following but I thought I’d answer the questions  🙂

#5 – Questions for My Nominees

Where/How did you learn the things you blog about? Stitching is something both my grandmothers thought all girls should know; not being sexist but I guess both were worried about my practical skills, given that I always had my head in a book!

What’s your favorite/most memorable vacation? I still remember Bali very vividly, especially the Elephant Rescue Centre.

What’s the weirdest dream you’ve had recently? I was looking out a house window at the sea – yet this particular house is nowhere near the sea. & hubby had undergone a lot of surgery. It was creepy.

What are you watching lately? Flosstube vids on YouTube & as hubby is watching Ray Donovan I think I need to go back to the start. OOH – I watched Becoming Jane on Saturday and four episodes of Death in Paradise yesterday while stitching. Jane wasn’t so bad, really.

If you had to be reincarnated as an animal, what would you be? Not an ant. Or a spider. Or a cow.

What do you like to learn about (in school or in life)? History. I love even my fictional reads to have an historical element e.g. be accurate even if it’s a modern setting.

Growing up, what were your favorite toys to play with as a child? Not sure I’m a grown-up yet! Altho I do pay the bills…I still love Lego, & I have three of my childhood soft toys.

Wish one thing to come true this year, what would it be? For my headaches to be gone without needing to take meds! I’d sacrifice that tho if someone could work out how to shut Trump up (without killing him). Now that’s a scary dream, and I’m not even American.

Would you rather visit the world 100 years into the past or 100 years into the future? Past. The future looks a bit scary TBH.

What makes you antsy if you haven’t done it in a while? (What relaxes you?) I need to be alone, completely alone, every once in a while. Which is hard to achieve with three boys at home!

What would you do if you did not have to work? (If you pick travel, be specific!) I think I’d still work, at least to stay connected with the outside world. I like to help, so possibly something with community vibes. That didn’t involve weeding.

Now that you’ve got to the end, how about something I find funny? The sub-heading in Chris Rattue’s column today “How do you absolve a problem like Maria?”

Try saying that without the song in your head! You’re welcome.

Sharing is Caring: On learning body kindness

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I think I’ll find myself some beach & go for a long walk this weekend. It’s time to clear my mind of all the chaff. This post from Tsh has a lot of truth.

For the first time in a long time, I have been consistently working out for an extended period of time. I am gaining strength, flexibility, and energy. My clothes fit better, my muscles are more defined, and I was actually looking forward to trying on swimsuits this spring. Then I walked into the

Source: On learning body kindness

WIP Wednesday

Posted in grateful, me, travel by

Confession: I have no stitching to show you. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Despite what I thought, I didn’t have the urge to stitch while we drove nor any downtime, so London looks exactly the same as it did last Wednesday.

But what I do have to show you is my favourite part of the trip. Despite family being all over the South Island, I’d never been to Moeraki and I leant (just a little) on Simon to stop.

Love it. In a lot of ways it reminded me of my Bethells, windswept and open (just more crowded). It was a good recharge-the-soul spot. I was told as a child that these were the floats on Maui’s fishing nets, but the below legend makes far more sense. In any case, I’ll be back.

This was written about them in 1966:

MOERAKI BOULDERS

The Moeraki Boulders are situated on Koekohe Beach at a place named Kumara, midway between Hampden and Moeraki townships in North Otago. Access to them is gained by a small one-way side road, 1 mile north along the main road from Hillgrove railway station. The boulders are grey-coloured septarian concretions, which have been eroded out by wave action from the cliffs of soft, black mudstone that back the beach. In places, partially exposed concretions can be seen in the cliffs. They originally formed on the sea floor when the mudstone was accumulating during the early Tertiary period some 60 million years ago. The largest concretions are traversed by cracks, filled by yellow calcite. In some the upper part is worn away; only a shell remains, looking like discarded segments of orange peel. The concretions weigh several tons and are up to 12 ft in circumference. Similar concretions are known on the north-facing foreshore of Shag Point, some 12 miles further south, but these are derived from older (upper Cretaceous) mudstone.

According to Maori legend, the origin of the boulders dates from the loss of the Arai-te-uru, one of the large sailing canoes that came from distant Hawaiki. On her quest south for the precious greenstone, the canoe was wrecked near Shag Point (Matakaea). The reef which today extends seawards is the canoe’s petrified hull, while close by, in the shape of a prominent rock, stands the petrified body of her commander. Strewn along the beach are the boulders which represent the eel baskets, calabashes, and kumaras washed ashore from the wreck. The name Moeraki (Moerangi) means “drowsy day”.

by Alexander Russell Mutch, B.SC., A.O.S.M., New Zealand Geological Survey, Dunedin.

So there’s a row, then a few separated out and more emerging from the cliffs. The outer surface really does look like concrete, but they are so different on the inside. I took a shot of Si next to the row – that one on his far right is the far left in the top shot. These things are massive (he’s 6ft).

Yep, I’m going back.

 

WIP Wednesday

Posted in cross stitch, grateful, me, Project Life, travel by

Wow. After six nights of the N drug I am feeling so much better. It’s amazing how productive I can be without that constant drag feeling & mental fog. The humid weather may have disappeared for a while too, which is adding to my overall feeling of goodness.

The Project Life app is FINALLY available on android. Finally. I had my first page in minutes of downloading the app, true to the promise. As I don’t have any games on my phone (I’m so disciplined, lol) I can see that this might be my “what shall I do for the next five minutes” app. This is using the Kraft kit, one of the freebies:
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Stitching-wise I am still working on Afternoon in London. I’ve finalised the threads I am using & that makes it faster. There’s been a couple of days where I didn’t do any work on it, but the last two mornings I’ve woken refreshed at five so snuck in half an hour before leaving for work (I do bring it to work but don’t often stitch at lunch, as Sarah & I walk usually) & as usual on any project, some visible progress enables more progress 🙂  plus I also want to do Paris.
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Si & I are going away this weekend – five days! – & I hope to finish while we’re driving. I may have to pack a second project just in case. I will more-than-likely be social media free for that time, so have fun everyone! See you in a week!

February Smalls SAL

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This SAL is a free choice SAL hosted by Heather over at Stitching Lotus. You can click on the button in my sidebar and it’ll take you there, or Feb’s page is HERE.

This month I’ve been really productive Smalls wise. I have Rahenna’s pixie, the Noel Mini Sampler (three specialty stitches I’m proud of, and it’s even laced up, ready for backing) and Up in the Treetops, a much-converted Lizzie*Kate design. I’ve also decided that the March Joyful World SAL piece will be perfect for our September, so that’s planned for then.

Plans! Ah! Those things I break…notice there’s no Mira update? That’s because I hate that fabric. I see a big frog session in my future…

February WIPocalypse

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WIPocalypse is hosted by Mel at her blog http://measi.net/measiblog/ – or you can click on the icon on the right 🙂

Question of the Month: If you have any of your pieces on display in your home which attracts the most plaudits?

I don’t actually have anything of my own on permanent display at home, just the ones I pull out at Christmas for the tree. I have lots waiting to be framed, and ornies made for me in exchanges, but the pieces I have had framed are displayed in other people’s houses. All anyone can see in my house is whichever WIP is currently on the scroll frames! Right now, that’s Persephone and my new start, Afternoon in London by Country Cottage Needleworks. This is after two evenings:

363e59ad9083b6f297924642bd6ec158At work I am teaching Kimberley to stitch! Her grandma loves pigs, but is sadly very ill and heading to hospice soon. Kim wanted to do something to honour her grandma – learn a craft her grandma loves to make something very personal. She chose this wee design  & I kitted it up for her. We had a session on Tuesday and I had multiple people tell me how cute it was to see her working away during her breaks! Love sharing life skills.

 

As for myself, I had a follow up with the GP yesterday, as I’m in week 3 of this low level headache. Something to *woot!* about – my iron levels are 36. That’s thirty-freaking-six, peeps. It’s not been that high since I was a newbie teenager working at MedLab. And I am now trialling Nortriptyline on a half-dose as a preventer. Apparently it’s an anti-depressant/stop-smoking agent in full dose 25mg – but I’m on the baby 10mg. I took it at 8pm and was snoring by 9pm. This morning I woke at 2, went to the bathroom then straight back to sleep. No anxious dreams. I do feel a little hung-over which apparently is a side-effect for a week or so but even that is less than the headache. Things look good, today!

I have lots and lots of smalls to share later on in the week too. Happy today.

WIP Wednesday

Posted in 16 in 2016, cross stitch, family, Mirabilia, Nora Corbett, round robin by

One really good thing about regular posts is that the pressure is off to create witty titles. I’ll leave that one up to Maia, eh?

This week hasn’t been great. This fortnight, really. I am dependant on meds to keep the headaches at bay and continue functioning. I am nowhere near as bad as some people (and freakily there is a shortage of Sumatriptin right now here in NZ, so I am hoarding the 10 tablets I have left and using the other stuff) but I am going to have to have a serious conversation with my boss when he returns from Ambiente next week. Ideally I’d like to work from home Wednesday and use that to catch up on sleep and slide my working day by a few hours. I’m fairly disciplined and there are no regular scheduled meetings for me that day, apart from his catch-up. Say a prayer for me, please?

20160215_215159On the Finish front, I have #3 – Crafty Rahenna’s round robin is done, and will be off in the post today. I think that is actually ahead of schedule! There are no beads, as she will add these post a wash (Poppy’s wings need it, they aren’t as white as they could be) and no thread conversions on my part.

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Mase has begun to stitch again – he is already converting the baseball from this chart to a red cricket ball and made the decision to swap around the two colours in the gridiron ball.  Okay, then. I might have started a monster! This is at about an hour of work, and he’s actually done more. Apparently he “needs” his own Instagram as he doesn’t want to continue to use mind. Hmm, really? Need?