Marches Past

It's a glorious, if somewhat chilly, early Spring day today and as usual at this time of year all I can think about is the garden. Working and tidying in the garden, planning the garden, tidying the greenhouse, sowing seeds, putting in plants and looking forward to the odd hour relaxing in the sun once the weather warms up properly.

I managed the first grass cut of the year on Sunday, so at last the lawn is looking neater and shows off the few border edges that I tidied recently. Still lots to do though and once I've posted this I'll be out in the chilly sunshine cutting back, weeding and generally tidying.

My daughter will be 21 in April this year, and I'm not even going to think about where the time has gone, but instead I've designed a cross stitch sampler to celebrate her Birthday. I never got round to stitching a birth sampler when she was a baby, so this is a more grown up version! Inspired initially by a beautiful 19th century sampler, and in keeping with other cross stitch designs that I have done along American folk art /British traditional lines which I love, I have started to stitch. And plenty of time with each stitch to think back over the last 22 years, which have been the best and happiest of my life, and to be hugely grateful and thankful for my beautiful daughter.

I'm finding that I'm changing things as I go as fresh ideas come to me, but I'm trying hard to stick to my original design. 

Just a few tweaks in the first row that I've stitched....I added Logan our Toy Poodle as one of the dogs, and for good measure threw in a couple of ginger and white cats to remember our lovely Bessie.

This was typical of Bessie and Logan, Bessie exploring and Logan following and watching! I suspect there was a frog or a mouse behind the barrels!

I have also finished and framed the simple blue and white lighthouses I was stitching over the last few weeks and am quite pleased how its turned out.

Sewing and embroidering outside is one of the simple pleasures I love on a sunny day, so am hoping for lots of warm and calm days soon - too much wind is bad news when sewing al fresco!

Whilst looking for photos for this post I came across projects I'd worked on in March last year and the year before, and it seems I was on a crochet roll. 

A couple of years ago I finished my first crochet blanket, a baby blanket for a friends granddaughter, made up of pink popcorn flower squares.

I'd also been making lots of cotton crochet wash cloths.

And I came across this photo of a beautiful vintage dresden plate quilt that I bought at this time of year a couple of years ago.

Coincidentally it's actually on my bed at the moment as it's such a fresh and pretty spring-like quilt!

Thanks for all your comments on my last post and for visiting me here, I hope you all had a good weekend.

I'm off up to London this week to the Country Living Spring Fair with my lovely and BFF Jane from flowerhouse blog, as I was the lucky recipient of a pair of complimentary tickets! We usually go to either the Spring or Christmas Fairs most years but didn't manage either last year, so we're both really looking forward to our visit to see ( and buy!) the wonderful and inspiring goodies! I already have  a modest shopping list Jane..... ;)

Here's wishing you a happy early Spring week full of sunshine!