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Welcome to my blog!

I'm Lori and I love to craft. I cross stitch, knit and crochet and anything else that takes my fancy! I love to make amigurumi and other knitted and crocheted characters.
I live in the north east of England and when I'm not busy with thread or wool I love to read thrillers and watch things on the TV that make me laugh. I have a love of tattoos too and have quite a collection!


Friday 26 August 2011

A surprise monstie, a spooky WIP and some sunflowers :-)

The postman brought me a surprise yesterday from my friend Laura to thank me for the bride and groom ami's. This is Hattie the hug monstie....

Isn't she adorable!! What a gorgeous little monstie she is, I do love getting surprises in the post :-) Thanks Laura!!

I started a new stitch last Saturday called Hazel's Wardrobe by Sue Hillis Designs. I've had this chart for a couple of years and I'm thrilled to find I have finally started it! So here's the progress so far...


It's about half way there at the moment and I'm loving stitching this!

Well, this year I thought I'd plant some sunflower seeds so back in around May I got me some little pots and compost and planted twelve seeds which sat on my kitchen windowsill in a row. Then began the waiting!

After about six weeks I had eight little shoots which I thought was pretty good going. I separated them and re-potted  them and waited a bit more. Well five of them flaming gave up and died on me! I'm good with flowers and plants when they have actually grown but I guess the seeds are a bit of a different matter! So, after the three remaining plants were about five inches tall I thought they were strong enough and the weather had improved enough for them to venture outside. I carefully planted them in the yard and immediately we were hit by three weeks of gale force winds and rain, one more died as it was snapped in it's pot :-( But never fear the other two survived!!! So they grew taller and stronger and then after all that they were hit by beasties which seemed determined to eat great big holes in all the leaves. So the bug spray was used more than once (they were tough little buggers!) and we were good again :-)

Yesterday morning I looked out the kitchen window and saw this!!!


Yippee!!! One big flower.....


and one about to bloom!! I was thrilled and very pleased with myself that two had made it past my curse of the seeds :-)


It's rained for the last two days solid here but I have a little ray of sunshine in the yard!

7 comments :

Lauren Hatwell said...

Awwww, cute little monster. What a lovely surprise. I do love Halloween.

Gorgeous sunflowers and gorgeous stitching too. I must say my sunflowers have been a bit unlucky this year. I managed about 7 really good ones in the end. The chickens will be looking forward to the seed heads later this year. Lx

Debs M said...

cute monster...i LOVE halloween x stitch yet the only 2 i have done was for swaps..go figure! well done on your 2 surviving sunflowers..they are lovely x

Kerryp77 said...

fab monstie and what glorious sunflowers. i love the halloweeen design looks like a fun stitch to do and looking great so far.

Crafty-Laura said...

Yay, there's the monstie! Hehe :-) I love the halloween design, great colours. And wow, your sunflowers are looking great!!! I can't wait til we have a garden and we can grow things properly :)

steph said...

Yay! The sunflowers are gorgeous.Hazel's wardrobe is looking fab and I love the little monstie.
HUGS

cucki said...

very sweet monster..i love him..
and a very lovely stitching..i love halloween too..
beautiful sun flowers..so lovely xx

Chris said...

LOve the new sitch Lori, looks wonderful already. Sunflowers are very pretty too :) xx