When in Rome...

We had a lovely time in Rome this week!

We set off for the airport at 4am on Monday, and we arrived at Ciampino Airport at about 10:15am Rome time.  We had booked a self-catering apartment, close to Vatican City, for 3 nights, so spent Tuesday and Wednesday trying to ensure we saw everything we wanted to see:

Vatican City

Palatine Hill

Colosseum

Colosseum

Colosseum

Italian Ice-Cream!

Vatican Museums

Trevi Fountain...Big disappointment!

Vatican Museums

                                     

Vatican Museums

Fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Steps...All boarded up!

Spanish Steps

The Pope!

We had a fabulous time, but wish we had another day or two to spend there... We will have to go back one day!

Today I managed to cross off another item on my bucket list, as I ran a 10K race!  It was my first one, and considering I only started running at the end of March this year, I am well chuffed with my time of 1:25:54... My running buddy and I are now looking at half and full marathons for next year!  Once you have the running bug, you can't stop!

Running Buddies!

My first 10K medal

Sprint finish!

No stitching at all this week, but I'll be doing some next week, as I am off work for another week.

Happy Stitching!
                                     
                                   
                                   

                                   

A Quick Post

It has been a long, but busy week...

Last weekend was quite quiet, as we didn't have any outings planned.  I managed to stitch quite a lot on "Plum Pudding" by Glendon Place, and "Living with Charm" by Lizzie*Kate:

"Living with Charm" by Lizzie*Kate (refuses to display right way up!)

"Plum Pudding" by Glendon Place

Over the week, I have managed to finish the "Remember" on Living with Charm...  I'm not going to get much stitching done this week, as we are going to Rome in the morning, and we are only taking hand luggage, so no needles/scissors allowed! :-(  However, I will be on leave from work for another week, once we get home, so I'll have plenty of stitching time!

I managed to run up to Darwen Tower during the week!  It is quite a steep climb, and my friend and I only stopped a couple of times on the climb up to catch our breath...

Michelle and I at the Tower (think there is a glitch with Blogger tonight!!!)

I am running my first 10K next Sunday - think it will take me about 1.5 hours, but I will be able to run the whole way...

Happy Stitching!

Pirates, Christmas and Plum Pudding!

It has been a hectic couple of weeks!  Work has been busy (as usual), but I've also been away for the weekend, so it feels like I've hardly had the chance to sit down recently...

Stitching-wise, I made a start on "Plum Pudding" by Glendon Place:

"Plum Pudding" by Glendon Place

However, I didn't have all the Dinky Dye threads, and one of the threads I bought from Nimble Thimble was the wrong colour!  I therefore put this away (temporarily), and started on "Santaberry Pudding" by Shepherd's Bush - a Christmas design:

"Santaberry Pudding" by Shepherd's Bush

These pictures show how the designs looked when I put them down...  I now have all the Dinky Dyes threads (thanks so much to Ursh), and will be back to working on Plum Pudding for a while.

My husband and I went to Hastings (South East coast of England) on Saturday, especially for the Pirate Day festivities on Sunday!  This involves people dressing up as Pirates, lots of drinking, a procession through the old town, and events such as barbecues and music.  The weather was glorious, with temperatures up to 32 degrees Celsius...We stayed until Monday, returning home on Monday afternoon.

Me (on the left) with my friend, Vickie at Hastings Pirate Day

Hastings from the top of East Cliff

I have signed up for a 10K race in 3 weeks' time!  I haven't run more than 6.5K as yet, but I know I'll manage it... I have 3 weeks in which to practice!  Running in the heat isn't for me, though, so I definitely won't be running in Rome whilst there in a couple of weeks!

Nimble Thimble and other stories...

Wow, it has been a while since I posted on here!  Life has got in the way of my stitching again, and I just haven't had the time to do anything substantial (as far as stitching is concerned!)

In the last few months, I have only stitched a coaster for an exchange, and a round robin piece for the Needlecraft Haven:

"Meadow Brown Butterfly" by Framecraft - Coaster design

"Welcome Summer" - Clare's RR for the NH RR

"Welcome Winter" - Clare's RR for the NH RR

My husband and I spent a weekend in Windermere last month.  It was for my birthday, but we actually went for the weekend after my birthday, due to running commitments (to be mentioned later).  It was a lovely, relaxing weekend, during which we walked up to Orrest Head to see the views, went on a boat ride on Lake Windermere, and visited the Motor Museum at Lakeside.

My running has exceeded all expectations!  I completed the Couch to 5K plan successfully, and managed to do two 5K runs on my birthday weekend (a celebratory run with the C25K group, and the Edgworth Reservoir Challenge), and I have since run the Race for Life in Blackburn, and the Color Run in Manchester. I am now volunteering with the new C25K group, and I am trying to increase my distance to 10K - I've entered three 10K races in September/October!  The weather has been too hot over the past week, so I haven't managed to run as much as I'd like, but I will get there!

I have been to Nimble Thimble in Oswestry today.  I had arranged a meet-up with some of the members of the Needlecraft Haven Yuku forum there, and we used a room over the shop.  The shop is a fantastic stash enhancing location - quite similar to the shop I visited in New Jersey, USA, a couple of years ago!  I bought some charts, fabric and threads for my daughters and myself:

Lots of food!

"Santaberry Pudding" - Shepherd's Bush and fabric (pattern came with buttons)

"Wouldn't Life be Great" - Lizzie Kate

"The Butterfly Garden" - The Drawn Thread (with specialist threads)

"Plum Pudding" - Glendon Place and fabric, some beads and Dinky Dyes threads

I have another busy week next week, as my husband and I are going to Hastings for the weekend (Pirate Day!).  I will post pics next week :-)

Happy Stitching!

Stitch from Stash 2014 Update - May

I haven't spent anything on cross stitch stash this month!  I am still well within my £180 budget for the year, although this will no doubt be spent when I'm in the USA in November!

I have stitched on the following items this month:

"Santa's Journey Afghan" by Margaret Sherry (UFO)

Dusty's RR piece for Needlecraft Haven "Welcome RR"

"Spot of Summer" by Drawn Thread (finished)

"Three Little Maids" by Heritage Stitchcraft (UFO)

I don't seem to be stitching as much as usual at the moment - things are quite hectic!  However, I am sticking to my UFOs, and not buying any new charts/kits to get my stitching bug back...

I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone else has done this month!

Happy Stitching!

Running, Stitching and Journaling

Here is this week's stitching progress picture:

"Three Little Maids" by Heritage Stitchcraft

I haven't had much stitching time again this week, but at least you can see it's an owl now!

Next week's rotation piece is "Count Your Blessings" by Silver Creek Samplers.  This is how it looks before I stitch on it again:

"Count Your Blessings" by Silver Creek Samplers

I picked up my "new" car the other day...and I love it!  It is a Toyota Yaris, and it is a lovely car to drive.  The petrol consumption is really good, and it drives well on the motorway.  I have bought a new Bluetooth stereo for it, as it still has the original stereo fitted, and this will be fitted by the shop next weekend - I will then be able to listen to music from my phone again!

My running is going extremely well - I managed to run 5K yesterday!  It felt so good to actually achieve it, whilst only on Week 8 of the programme.  We still have 5 sessions to attend before we complete the programme, but I now know that I can run 5K comfortably... I now have a Garmin sports watch to monitor and record my runs, so I can give myself targets :-)

I have started Bullet Journaling.  This is a method of organisation and productivity that I'm finding very easy to maintain, and also very useful in day-to-day life.  It basically involves writing everything in one place so you never misplace it, or have to search for notes or lists in various notebooks or folders on your PC.  I have bought a notebook, washi tape, page markers and pens to help with my organisation.  If you're interested in finding out more about this, watch this video:

My daughter comes home from Uni next weekend (for good)...so we will have a busy house again.  It is also Darwen Live next weekend.  This is a local music festival, where bands from around the North West of England play on the stage that is erected in the town centre, or in one of various venues.  It is usually a very busy event, with lots of drinking involved!

Happy Stitching!

A Finish!

I have managed to finish "Spot of Summer" by The Drawn Thread!  It didn't take very long to do...

"Spot of Summer" by The Drawn Thread

I didn't have much stitching time this week, but at least I did get this finished.

This week's rotation piece is "Three Little Maids" by Heritage Stitchcraft.  This is how it looked before I started stitching on it today:

"Three Little Maids" by Heritage Stitchcraft

I have bought a "new" car!  It is a Toyota Yaris, and it is ten years old, but it has low mileage for its age and it runs beautifully...  I pick it up on Thursday...  My current car, a twelve-year-old Fiat Punto, will be used by my OH for the time being.

I am now running for 25 minutes at a time (roughly around 3.3K).  We are in week 7, and some of the group managed to run the 5K on Saturday.  I feel I could manage it if I tried, but I want to stick to the Couch to 5K programme to ensure I am comfortable with running for an extended period before I attempt it!

Even though I am doing all this exercise, my diet is a bit up and down at the moment - probably because of all the bank holiday weekends we have had recently!  As a bit of an incentive, I have bought this plaque from Handmade from Zoe with Love - she has a page on Facebook:

Happy Stitching!

AWOL...

I have been AWOL for a while... The time has gone by so quickly, and I lost my stitching bug for a short while.  However, I have been doing some stitching:

Santa's Journey Afghan by Margaret Sherry

This was my last rotation piece before I lost the bug... I did manage to get some of it stitched that week!  I then stitched a wedding card for my work friend/colleague, but it got lost in the post (and I forgot to take a picture of it before I sent it...) so I'm going to stitch another card for her.  I'm a bit miffed that it probably ended up in someone else's house, or even worse - the bin - but I'll get over it...

The piece below is a round robin piece belonging to Dusty in the USA.  The round robin has been arranged through the Needlecraft Haven Yuku group.  This is a lovely design, and I have stitched the bottom left corner:

I am going to be stitching on "A Spot of Summer" by The Drawn Thread for the rest of this week.  Here is how it looks before I stitch on it again:

It should be finished by the weekend...if I can get the time to stitch!

We decorated the living room over the Easter weekend.  It is now a pale lilac, with a cream colour on the ceiling.  It didn't really need decorating (and there are rooms in the house that definitely do need decorating!), but we had bought some new curtains that were purple, and they wouldn't go with the peach colour on the walls!  One of those "it seemed like a good idea at the time" moments...

My running is going well.  We (the running group) are now coming to the end of Week 6, and are now on continuous runs for the remaining 3 weeks of the programme.  If you had told me back in March that I would be comfortably running for 20 minutes without stopping by now, I would have laughed at you!  I am definitely getting hooked, as I have signed up for the Race for Life (to raise money for Cancer Research UK), and also the Color Run (correct spelling) - both 5K runs, and the Color Run involves being covered in different colours of powder paint as you are running!!!  I have also rearranged our weekend in Edinburgh for my birthday, just so I can do the 5K celebratory run with the running group!  The weekend in Edinburgh will now be in September, and we are going to Windermere in the Lake District for the weekend after my birthday - so we're getting an extra weekend away...

Happy Stitching!