Dragon's Lair and Summer Sampler

I  worked on Dragon's Lair and Summer Sampler   last week.

Here is a 'before' photo of Dragons Lair:

And a 'now' photo.

A close up:

I really love how colourful this piece is. It is for one of my twins Joshua. Not too much stitching left and then 100's of beads to sew on.

And lastly but not least Summer Sampler by Lizzie Kate.

I always think that LK charts always look so much better stitched than the photo on the front of the chart.

Lizzie Kate Summer Sampler

I have been really busy this week and I have not managed to stitch as much as I would of liked. But every stitch counts! I swapped blues for purples on the house as I did not fancy the blues :-)

We have been very busy in the garden making way for our new pets as well as preparing the garden for growing our own veggies.

Colin (on the right) and our friend Phil having a break whilst reading instructions and Lindita Stinky Rita being nosey lol.

One chicken coop!

Hopefully we will be getting our three chickens over the next week to ten days. We will also be adding a run to the coop but we have been advised to keep the chickens in the coop for the first 3 to 4 weeks.

Phil made us a lovely bird house!

Birdhouse and Coop in situ.

Colin also put together a frame for either the runner beans or peas.

There is still absolutely tons to do in the garden. And I have to say that my house resembles a green house as we have propagators on nearly every window sill in the house lol.

Woohoo, A Finish!

Definitely a big woohoo! Not only is it my first finish of the year but my first finish in months!

Back view:

Humming Birds by Barbara Ana

Stitched on a piece of scrap 28ct linen from Polstitches.

Close up view before it was stitched together.

I have already started a new piece.

It is Lizzie Kate's Summer House Sampler. I have changed the colour of the house to purples though :-)

Stitching of Different Kinds!

I finally got around to doing a little stitching. I picked up Castles in the Air. The piece is getting big now and hard to take a good picture.

Here is a close up of the are I am working on:

Lots of embroidery stitches. I love to do them but find it slow going.

Next up, I finished a crochet blanket for my granddaughter Doullie.

It is quite large. I did flower granny squares. I sewed them together using a chain stitch and then did trebles in rounds around the outside.

I have also been doing some knitting.

I love these two colours together, they are so pretty!

I am making boot cuffs! If I like they way they turn out, I can see myself knitting several different designs and probably a few in black and red for when the drumming starts up!

I have decided to grow lots of different veg this year, so spent the last couple of days preparing the garden ready for sowing in a couple of weeks. I will be growing a lot of the produce in containers as it is surprising just what you can grow in them. I have seeds in window propagators for tumbling tomatoes, chives and oregano. Tomorrow I will be staring seeds off for sweet peas (flowers) as they will climb nicely amongst green beans. I am going to grow spuds in bags and have beetroot baskets as well.  I am not sure whether we will plant carrots this year as I don't think we have time to try and find some old planks on the cheap or free to make raised beds for them, but who knows.

This time next year hopefully we will have built a chicken coop and we want three chickens which will produce around  10 to 15 eggs a week. They are cheap to feed and make funny pets.