Oops, I missed again

Well, not actually true, I have finished the doll for my Spring Swap with Stitchin Fingers, but I can't post piccies before she arrives at her new home. I haven't had much time to do anything else as we still have a houseguest at the moment, so my craft room's out of action, although I am itching to get in. It will be another few weeks before everything is back to normal I think.

I was so excited to log on and find even more people have been kind enough to read my ramblings, thank you all so much for your kind comments, it's always great to hear from you.

We've been quite busy:

Outdoors - spent last weekend gardening madly again, and my new borders are beginning to bloom at last, hooray! Plus, we have a family of blue tits who have at last discovered our new feeders and have been munching happily all week. It's lovely watching mum and dad feed the little ones, they are even brave enough to continue when we're in the garden, which is very surprising.

We also have some baby magpies who are real trouble makers, but very amusing to watch.
Last week a young vixen was settling down to snooze in the sun under my neigbour's tree, and one of the naughty magpies distracted her while the other pecked her tail! She was most indignant but refused to move, so after a few half hearted attempts they got bored and no doubt found something else to torment!

Indoors - I've also had a bit of a baking revival ( in anticipation of the new kitchen!) Pies, bread dough and cookies, my goodness, what has come over me haven't done that for ages! Seriously, you can't imagine how excited I am about it. The current one is 1960s, white melamine with sharp metal tops, doors hanging off, no backs to the cupboards, drawers that don't work, and I won't even begin to mention the decoration.... I love to cook, but, it's, shall we say, a challenge, at present, so I really have to be in the mood to do battle, clambering into the back of cupboards, and dealing with vibrating worksurfaces which are not fitted down correctly......!

What else, oh yes, more good news, my niece Katherine loved her engagement journal and her mum did too! She rang me this morning, very excited, which was lovely. It's always nice to know someone is happy with what you do.

Now, I just want to mention there's a brilliant link today on Sharonb's Pintangle

If anyone is reading this and they are not familiar with Pintangle, (there may still be some!) please, please, please go and check it out. Sharon deals with all things textiles, is an amazing artist and embroiderer, founded Stitchin Fingers (which again, if you don't know about please visit), plus she is a wizard at getting communication going in the online textile world. I wouldn't have started this blog without her, and she helped me such a lot at the beginning, when I was too scared to put my work out there.

The link today is to Art Trader magazine, which has loads of great articles, plus, you can download all the back issues. Hours of fun and useful info for free! I'm going to enjoy browsing through them this week.

We're off to Bonnie Scotland on Thursday for a couple of weeks so I won't be blogging, but I will take my sketchbooks and some stitching, so I hope there will be something productive to show when I get back, and hopefully some piccies too. Meanwhile, here are the blue tit family enjoying the feeding station.