Where's The Sheep?

I'm sorry if these photo's are a little bit dark today. It is very overcast here at the moment and I can't get any better photos. Winter is on the way. Extra blankets are being put onto beds. In fact 2 days last week we had our fire alight. It was all nice and cosy when that was going.

This is my current progress on Grazing Sheep by Scarlet Letter. It is such a glorious sampler. I keep raving about the colours that are in it, but they are worth raving about.


As you can see I figured out the border. It is very pretty and looks quite lacy.

Judy from Crazy 4 Books asked the other day where were the sheep. Well, here is one slowly appearing. I am now back into over ones and I am half way up a tree at the moment, but I thought this morning that I would quickly do the outline of one of the sheep to prove that they are there. There are 7 sheep altogether. I noticed that 2 of them have dark faces.

While I was stitching this sheep this morning I was remembering one of my trips to England where we drove around for a month and we travelled over a few of the Moors e.g. Dartmoor and Yorkshire in Bronte Country. The sheep with the dark faces reminded me of the Yorkshire Moors. I was also remembering going on the first day of this expedition to Salisbury Cathedral and seeing Jane Austen's resting place. Ah memories. I quite enjoyed visiting a lot of English Cathedral's and Churches. I always remember visiting one Cathedral where they were having a choir practice. Beautiful. I am very partial to listening to choir boys. They voices of angels.

We have had a lovely long weekend for Easter. It was lovely as I saw my other 2 Sons and lovely DIL. It was lovely to spend some time together. The Easter Bunny paid a visit and eggs were enjoyed by everyone. Hopefully the waist bands don't expand to much.

On the knee front everything is slowly getting back to normal. Although I had a bit of a fright a little while ago when I nearly tripped over. Knee is a bit sore now. I just have to be careful with what I do.

Thank you to Deb from Lavender Rose Ramblings for giving me a Sunshine Award for my blog. I have tried to cut and paste it onto this posting but for some reason it won't work for me.

I have to nominate 12 other people for this award, but the way I am going today, I don't think it will work so I would like to nominate everybody who kindly visits me. Your comments and thoughts really mean a lot to me. Thank you.

Well, my youngest is on School Holidays again for 2 weeks. There goes to the peace and quiet. Although it is good that he is able to help me.

In case you are wondering where Hannah Lancaster is, I am taking a small break from working on her on Sundays to allow my friend Tawny who leads a very busy life to catch up with me. I am more of a lady of leisure at the moment. Hannah will be back again in a couple of weeks. I have been working on Grazing Sheep instead.

A Little Bit of Verse

Because of my need to be careful what I do and the need to do a lot of sitting I am flying through Grazing Sheep at the moment.

I am currently working on the verse and I still have 3 lines to go.



This is one of the most beautiful samplers that I have done. The colours in it just pop and it is the perfect piece of work for my current situation. The only problems I have at the moment is the lacy looking boarder around the verse. It is the corner bits that I am having trouble with. There is a separate chart for this boarder but I don't know if I am still slightly off with the pixies of if I am just plain thick but currently I haven't got it.

My plans are to do the boarder leaving out the corners and try figuring the out later. Hopefully the plan will all come together.

Thank you for all the well wishes for my recovery. It is going slowly. It isn't as painful as it was, although it does have it's moments. Instead of doing physio therapy, they decided that I would be better doing Hydrotherapy as I have 2 legs to worry about. One I have to bend and the other straighten. It is so much easier doing exercises in water and the strain and stresses on the legs isn't as noticeable as doing it out of the water.

I keep having problems though with one gentleman though when I am doing a certain exercise on my right leg, the one that I have to straighten. The exercise is that I have to stand with my back against the wall of the pool with a rubber ring around my ankle. This brings the leg up and supports it while I have it straight out in front of me. I have to stand there on one leg with a belt with all these lead weights in it and it is placed on my knee. I have to do this exercise for between one and two minutes. No twice this man has accidentally walked into my leg and he has nearly knocked me over. I know that he hasn't done it on purpose but he is so lucky that it is my right leg and not the left. If he had pushed the left leg the wrong way, I am sure that I would have seen stars and he would have had his lights lights punched out lol. Luckily he wasn't there last night. I had my eye out for him though.

I'm Back

I don't know how long I will be able to sit in this chair to type this post as I have trouble at the moment of getting into the chair and out of it.

I would just like to say a big thank you for all the wishes of good luck to me during my recent operation on both of my knees. I had to have a total knee replacement on my left knee and I also had to have hardware that was in my right knee removed. All together I have been in hospital for 3 weeks. One week was in a hospital and the other 2 weeks were in a Rehabilitation Hospital where I was undertaking Physio twice a day to help me on my road to recovery. While in Rehab I spent 2 hours per day in either the Torture Chamber undertaking all sorts of exercises to strength my knees or for a hour a day in the Hydrotherapy pool. I much prefer the Hydrotherapy. Exercises are so much easier in water lol.

While in Rehab in my free hours and there were many of these I worked on Grazing Sheep. The basket with the strawberries in it was my project and they took 2 weeks to finish. The strawberries and the funny looking dog are all worked over one.

I think that they are just so stunning. I had an awful moment while in Rehab and I must have been still "off with the Pixies" when I reread the instructions and discovered that the bottom section was all over one. My immediate though was "Oh No". After many hours of thinking what I could do to on this section I decided to read the instructions again. I mustn't been with the Pixies this time as I read that the Folly and the outline of the sheep were worked over one, BUT all the green grass was worked over 2. It certainly was a "Thank You Lord" time. I don't think that I could have stood to do so much boring work over one. Anyway, today is a brighter day. Now I just have to work out the satin stitch boarder that surrounds the verse. Another thing on this sampler that isn't easy. It is ok once you get away from the corners, but the corners could be a problem. Oh well, these things are sent to try us.

This is my progress on my Stitching with Hannah on Sundays Sampler. I spent a couple of more days working on this sampler earlier in the week as technically I have missed 3 weeks work on it. Hannah is looking lovely, but she does have tricky moments.

Now comes the hard bit. Getting out of this chair. Not easy as it is on wheels lol. I tried to do this on my laptop but for some reason the photos wouldn't upload and at one stage I thought that the computer had crashed. Just what I needed. But thankfully it is working again. Looks like I have to stick to my DH's computer to update my blog.

It's All A Bit Fruity

I know I haven't blogged for a few weeks, but I have had a lot going on.

My Son finished his School Holidays so we had to go and get everything that he needed for the new school year. He started back last Friday so it is all nice and quiet here.

I also had to go and have a few tests and Dr's Appointments as I have to go into hospital in 2 weeks time for an operation on both of my knees. (Oh the pain of it all).

Although I haven't been blogging or visiting other blogs I have still been stitching and this is my progress on Scarlet Letters - Grazing Sheep. I love SL Samplers. Don't worry there are sheep in the sampler, just not yet. They are down the bottom. There is a dog though that will appear quite soon. But we have gone very fruity with pineapples etc. There are more fruit in the other basket, but these are over one as is the dog. In the border which I hate doing. Yes, I am one of those border haters. I think it is the repetition, in each corner there are large gold stars which are done in satin stitch. I am waiting to get a bit further down before I do these as I found that sometimes it rubs a bit and leaves little balls.

On the Hannah front, this is this weeks progress. See not much border done, although I am doing one or two a week when I stitch this on Sundays. Hannah is worked on 40ct cream linen and Grazing Sheep is on 35ct cream linen.

While my son was on holidays. He and a few friends decided to go down the end of the Street where we have this amazing waterfall. Although it doesn't look like it was doing much when he took the photos. If he went today, it would be a different story as we have had so much rain that yesterday which caused 2 landslides on the railway line, a train to derail and also closed the Highway due to a landslide.

Anyway, back to the photos. He borrowed my camera and took these photos and I thought that you might like to see what is down the end of my Street. Remember that this is part of the Blue Mountains National Park and that I am surrounded by the National Park.


This is a photo of part of the water fall. I think there are a few more parts to this. This all goes down into the Grose Valley.

This is the top of the Valley. It is a long way down to the bottom and there are millions and millions of gum trees down there. This is usually where all the Bush Fires lately have been.

There was also a pretty picture of a sandstone wall down there. There are also caves in this wall.

Here is one of the caves. I hope he didn't go into it as there as snakes down here.

Silly me, I have uploaded the wrong photo of the water fall. Sorry.

Here is one of the natives. I think it is a lizard and not a snake sunning itself. It looks like it has legs.

Hopefully I will be able to post another photo of Grazing Sheep and Hannah before I go into Hospital. Next week is another busy week. If not, I will see you when I return.

The Girls Are Framed

I didn't get much stitching done over the weekend as I finally sat down and framed both Betsy and Beatrix.

I tried a new method of doing it. Vonna has this really good tutorial on how to frame a sampler and I tried that. I bought some acid free board with foam in the middle a heap of pins and I was off. So much easier than the lacing method. It is not perfect, but I am quite happy with the out come that is the main thing.


I haven't hung them as yet as I have to get some stronger hooks before I put them on the wall. Especially Betsy. Don't want her crashing down on my head lol. Even worse if it happened to land on my DH's. The thought of that makes me shudder lol.

On the stitching front, here is my update on Hannah Lancaster. I really didn't get that much done but I am really enjoying stitching her along with my friend Tawny. I'm looking forward to seeing Tawny's progress, but really at the stage where we both are, there isn't much to show.

On the Grazing Sheep front is is definitely nothing to report. I haven't done anything on her since last week and she has even less than Hannah.

Well, until next time, I hope you all have a lovely long weekend to my friends in the States. If you aren't in the States I hope you all have a lovely week.

Beatrix is Now Finished

I have finally finished Beatrix. She was my problem child who I had a love/hate relationship. I love her, but I for some reason hated working on her. Maybe it was because she was stitched on 32ct linen over 1 or it was the continual use of just one thread. I don't know, but I am so glad that she is finished and that she can leave my work basket and be framed.

I started working on Scarlet Letters Grazing Sheep last night, but I haven't done very much. No enough to show anyway.

I am also doing something that I don't normally do. I am doing something with my friend who doesn't have a blog called a SHS which means - Stitching Hannah on Sundays. Both my Friend and I have wanted to stitch Hannah Lancaster for a long while, so we decided to dedicate Sundays stitching this amazing sampler and we both started last Sunday. This is my progress. It isn't much to show at the moment, but that is ok. I hope this Sunday is better weather wise than last Sunday. Last Sunday was one of those really hot sticky days. Not good for sewing.

I feel quite sad today. I live in one of the most beautiful places in Australia and also one of the most dangerous. For the past couple of days the Police Rescue and emergency people have been looking for 6 people who failed to come back after a few days canyoning in the Blue Mountains. Late yesterday afternoon, the Police Helicopter found them, but unfortunately one of 2 teenagers that were in the party had been killed from a rock fall. He was 15 years old. I have a 15 year old son as well and I feel so sad for his parents.

For the past 2 days after all the heat we have had we have misty, raining conditions. Yesterday there was a break in the weather and the helicopter was able to get the other 5 people out and take them to hospital. They have all been released this morning. But they couldn't get the body out. Police, Paramedics and Emergency Crews stayed and guarded the boy's body.

Today is another really misty day and I am listening to my DH's RFS scanner about all the problems they are having getting the body out. They have to carry it out as it is to treacherous for the helicopter. It is going to take them a long time to do this.

I find this all so very sad. I think the other teenager in the party was his brother.

She is all Finished

She is finished. Yipee. I think she is so beautiful and I am looking forward to hanging her with Betsy Davis.

I finished most of her on New Years Eve while waiting for the Sydney Fire Works and only had a little bit more to do on New Years Day.



I decided to make a New Years Resolution to try and finish Beatrix Potter before I start something else. She is coming along nicely and I only have a few more motifs to go. She has been in my workbasket for quite a while and it will be good to have her finished. So I will have 2 samplers to frame.

Well it looks as if Grazing Sheep will be my project and I am looking forward to starting her. Hopefully Bea will be finished by the weekend all going well.

I hope that you all have a wonderful New Year this year.