Happy New Year From the Southern Hemisphere

Well hello and welcome to my first post for 2014. It was a very quiet New Year's affair at our house as it has been for many  a year.....all in bed asleep well before midnight!

I made up my mind that I was NOT going to start Amy Mitten's Winter Casket Keepsakes until I did some more work on the Essamplaire Casket as I let this get way behind due to wanting the Mermaid's Treasures to be a 2013 finish. For now I will just have to keep myself happy watching Amy Wilson's Blog to get my fix of the Winter Casket Keepsakes progressing. She is a machine and gets so much done each day it is awesome.

I see on her blog that Amy finally after 6 months received her Home Sweet Home kit  from Stitching Shop in Colorado .This is for Carolyn Pearce's book of the same name. I had been looking at subscribing to this through Country Bumpkin over the 10 months but it works out more economical for me to purchase from the USA as only one lot of postage. I just love the network of needlework women on the web who willingly give up their sources to others. It is invaluable when you live way down here!

I also had a really lovely email from Lee over the holiday period. Thankyou again Lee for your kind words. It is really encouraging when someone finds your efforts inspiring. I too am constantly inspired by the achievements of others and it motivates the use of the needle 24/7...if only we didn't need to sleep every day how much more we would achieve!!!

I don't tend to do New Years resolutions but here is a visual update on my New Year's decision...

 

Since I have kick started this project again I have padded both birds, made the needlace for the right bird which is the best piece yet...practice makes perfect!, made the legs and stitched the tail feathers. Oh yeah...amazing what you can do in a few hours when your husband and kids go to see 'The Hobbit'....

 

Margriet from Essamplaire has posted the lessons for the Frog Purse and so far it doesn't look to onerous but I don't have the kit yet due to xmas mail so don't have to feel guilty about not starting that one yet!