Sunday Stitchalong 4 and Pretty Things

Sunday again - there's no time between one week and the next it seems; are you finding the same?

Anyway, I hope you are having good times, however quickly or slowly time passes for you, and for those of you who have not been in the best of health, I wish you well! There must be something travelling around blogland methinks, for I've been feeling rather depleted and out of sorts myself these past few days or so. No doubt things will pick up along with the weather - if it ever picks up!!!

Right, here's my 'Sunday Stitching with Chrissie' effort for this week. If you don't know about Chrissie's stitchalong, then you can find her  here  and, even if you're not into stitching, you may be interested in joining up with Chrissie and Marianne - also  here - for their Chrochetalong which will begin in a couple of days. Chrissie also has a lovely giveaway happening too, so jump quick if you feel drawn!

I delved into my art box this week and found my compass - such a handy little tool - which I used to create the design for this little Sampler. Most of the stitches I've included are in Jenny Hart's Sublime Stitching book - 'Embroidered Effects' and if you are interested, you can find Jenny here .

Now, as you can see, I have photographed this piece four times, turning the design around each time in order to view it in the various directions! ( Yeah, I know the computer would have turned it for me but I'm trying to make things easy here!) I can't decide which way to make 'UP' even though I had to come to a temporary decision in order to get my post done - what are your thoughts on this; I'll be very interested to hear what you think so please let me know!

This week I have also crocheted another couple of the apple slice coasters, but you saw those last post so I won't include them here. And yesterday I spent quite some time using that little floss winder (also shown last week), and organized all my threads which had threatened to become rather messy. Things will be much easier and straight-forward now with no struggles in the midst of a sewing spell to find the correct end of the thread to pull out of the skein; gosh, do you ever have hissy fits with those things? They try my patience at times!

Look at all those glorious colours! And do you like my tin? I couldn't resist it!

Of course you realise that I now have stitched several pieces so far, during the Sunday Stitchalong, that need to have something made with them - the flower wheelbarrow and the blue wren, as well as this latest design - so I must put my thinking cap on this week and come up with a plan of some sorts.

My daughter bought me some beautiful flowers this week - what a lovely surprise, thank you M! This is a 'Waratah', and is native to N.S.W.. Don't you think it's a stunning bloom?

I also picked a few little things from the garden yesterday to brighten me up a bit:

And I want to show you my 'lollipop tree' which is actually a flowering peach - and yes, it does bear fruit and they are edible, in fact they are very tasty - smallish at first so we thin them out  in the early stages and then it produces fewer but larger fruits!

As you can see, it's not nearly finished blooming yet and will eventually be covered with those delightful flowers: such a wondrous sight!

And here is our 'Boy Buddha' surrounded by pretty plants, from the same area of our little back garden as the lollipop tree. I think our little water feature looks quite content with himself, don't you?

That's about it for this time folks - I'm so happy you popped in and thank you so much for taking the time to leave me your lovely messages; I've been a bit tardy this week in keeping up with all of your posts but will catch up soon for I so enjoy them and the inspiration and encouragement they provide me. Thank you all for showing your lovely work and sharing so much of your daily lives!

❤Joy xo