August

August is here and, as I write this, so is the sunshine! It's been so lovely to see it. 

I am also trying to write this while watching the olympic fencing finals - men's epee and women's sabre today. So hopefully I won't be too distracted.

July passed by in a bit of a blur to be honest. 

We spent a lovely week in France visiting my parents and although the weather wasn't brilliant we at least escaped the torrential rain and storms they'd had the week before! And we did spend one glorious day enjoying the unexpected sunshine by the seaside!

But other than that I haven't got much to report. 

Motivation for crafting has ebbed since I don't have a pressing deadline at the moment (I'm very much a last minute sort of person - it runs in the family!). I have been playing around with some Scandinavian style embroidery which I am quite pleased with. 

I enjoyed making these even though the embroidery itself took a while.

There are some new stitches for me in there which is always nice. The swirly pattern is stitched in whipped backstitch and the dashes around the outside of the heart are bullion stitch. 

They are stitched onto felt (my favourite medium at the moment it seems!) and I stitched the pattern through tracing paper. This was a reasonably successful strategy but picking out the teeny bits of paper was rather annoying and did fluff up the felt a little too much. Will have to rethink that for next time!

I think they might make a good addition to my shop range for the mid-winter-festival-that-will-not-be-named-so-early-in-the-year. Or maybe smaller versions for Valentines day. We'll see.

As it's August, it also means that I have now been blogging for a year (and 11 days to be exact). So I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to everyone who has read, followed and commented on my posts over that time. I really do appreciate it.

I have big plans for a competition or a tutorial in the near future (so many 'big plans' for the summer - wonder if I'll get them all done!) so watch this space!