Embroidery Ledger

It has been a lovely few days here in Ireland: in-between the rain showers anyway.

My sewing has been hampered because my sewing machine committed Hari Kari.  I have no idea what's wrong with it.  It seems to miss a stitch every few stitches underneath and despite far better people than me having a poke around on it, it remains in its box refusing to work.  I just don't have the funds to get it fixed so RIP sewing machine.  Our time together has not been the easiest but I will never forget you xxx

I've almost finished another Christmas ornie but guess what?  Yup..another exchange piece so you will have to wait a while before it can be seen.

On a different note, I have done a little more on my Embroiderer's Ledger.  I was really lucky yesterday and managed to get an A3 Artists book for just a few Euros because the front cover was the wrong way around!  I don't care which way around the cover is; it was perfect.

My first official embroidery stitches ever have been added. They reminded me of iced gems, a small snacky biscuit found in the UK..so now I have huge craving for them.  Yum.

I love the paper I chose. I'm not sure you can see but there are darker and white outlines of flowers as well as the roses and forget-me-knots on the buns and the wee butterflies. There is so much potential with this...I am very excited about the next stage!

Hubby took me out for a drive yesterday to get me out of the house.  It was a beautiful sunny day so we drove to one of the many local lakes that are here in our part of Ireland.

It really was a beautiful day and I felt so much better for going out.  We  have to budget for everything now, like many people, so what better way to enjoy the sun than on a local drive, looking at local beauty.  A few euros for petrol and the rest was free!

We then went to Lough Key to see the castle in the lake.

If I could afford to do the lottery and won it, I would love to buy this and renovate it.  It is really stunning.  It was built as a folley and was used to host parties etc until the late 1960's-70s.  Just beautiful.


I used to be quite good at identifying birds and wee beasties but my brain is still quite fuzzy.  As we walked through the woods, I was hit on the head by a twig and above me was a really cheeky bird, bouncing around on the branches, taking aim at innocent bystanders with it's malicious twig-targetting!.  I used to know what sort it was but darned if I can remember it's name.  It is on the tip of my tongue.  Perhaps you guys can help though the photo is quite poor.  Everytime I got the blooming bird in shot it hid behind a twig or a branch, just to pop out again as soon as I put the camera down!

And finally, as it was still quite sunny today, I went with dh and ds to Roscommon.  We had two hours to kill while DS was in his art class (essential as his school are not running art as a subject but ds is doing it at Leaver's Cert which is the same as A' Level) so we did the weeks shopping.

With lots of bigger stores close together, we did them all and I got what would have cost me around 200 euros in my local shop for 80.00.  You really do have to shop around these days.  I was so pleased.  We will do this every fortnight now.  And on the drive back we had to transform from sensible parents and safe drivers to......(drum roll please)......

Super-hero Sheep Savers!!!

Can you believe no one would stop to help this lost wooly sheep to a place of safety????  This is a really busy road and sooner or later it would have cause an accident...so we stopped and helped get it into a field until it's owners could be contacted.  Poor thing was terrified as cars beeped and lorries over took it.  Ridiculous of them.  Never mind...she is safe now.

Thank you for reading what has been quite a random post.  Have a lovely weekend! xx