Catch Up

 A holiday has interrupted my normal life rhythm but it was certainly worthwhile.  

I drove north to Auckland to catch up with friends and relatives and managed to fit in a trip to Ribbon Rose to purchase all the ingredients for this project. (Which of course I started immediately on my return and which I will construct this week).

Then my long time friend Fiona obligingly offered accommodation and took time off work to enjoy three days of adventures with me.   We had to include another needlework shop at which I purchased three kits and today finished this needle book.  Isn’t it cute?   No embroidery on this one though.

And another visit to another needlework store and a Praiseworthy Stitches kit came home with me to be stitched and completed.

Another day we went across the hills to the East Coast and had a delicious lunch at a waterfront restaurant 

then a visit to see the statues of Hairy McLary of Donaldson’s Dairy.  

This is a series of much loved children’s books here in New Zealand and Fiona and I had great fun taking photos and reminding ourselves of the rhyming phrases.  This is Hercules Morse as big as a horse.  Can you see Zachary Quack just by his right ear?

And the next day I persuaded Fiona to pull out the multiple plastic storage boxes in which she stores her Unfinished Objects.   When I first met her nearly 30 years ago she had a huge collection and it has grown:).  She is an expert embroiderer and does many classes, perhaps too many, so that some do not get completed.   We sorted them through into stitched but don’t want to construct, stitched but will need to construct, part stitched, and will never complete.   And then……to my surprise nine of the second category found their way into a bag and came home with me.  

 I’ve completed this one. Fiona stitched it in 2006!!   Working on the next one now :)

You might wonder why I’ve been on such a stitching marathon?   Well the first week in December I’m having Carpel Tunnel surgery