Picture Problems

Apologies, I've received an email telling me that some of my pictures are not showing correctly in archived posts. Sadly, this has proved to be correct. Curiously, the same pictures are shown perfectly on my related Pinterest page. 

I've tried everything that I've been recommended to do to correct the problem but nothing is working. I'm stumped! I've done nothing different at my end and all of the missing photos show clearly in the record of posts.

If any reader has experienced this problem before and can tell me how to cure it, I'd be very, very grateful. 

Making it up as I go

Now I think I've mentioned that we'd only seen the interior of the house once before we bought it - meaning that I did not have the luxury of measuring the rooms and planning where to put the furniture before moving day. 

All of this means that I've developed a new skill - I call it dancing with furniture. The objective of the dance is to find the room lay out that allows us to use the room in the manner that we've planned. Why don't I use a paper plan? Because believe it or not, with the furniture piled in the centre of each room by the movers, it was actually easier to just move it into position until I found a lay out that works and that I like from all viewpoints. 

Downstairs is mainly open plan and was pretty easy to sort with large rooms and plenty of windows. The only real restriction is the traffic flow to the doors, stairs, conservatory etc. 

Upstairs is very different. The cottage is two hundred years old and it has been extended at least three times. The upstairs rooms are very long and narrow which means that they are awkward to furnish. 

Oh how I missed access to my online design resources! Sadly, by this time we'd had the land line connected but the broadband was less than a quarter of the capacity that we'd had before and nigh on impossible for us both to use together. Time to order fibre! But fibre was not going to be available in the village for a while....

So now, it is a few weeks later, we have fibre and I'm an expert in dealing with narrow rooms! 

New Home

It has been some time since I've had the opportunity to write here. These pictures show a very small proportion of the bags and boxes that I've been unpacking.

We fell in love with the new house for many reasons. It is a two hundred year old cottage by water and one of the few heritage houses in the area. It is also located in a small village that was listed in the Doomsday Book. 

It is truly a different world from our old house, purchased new, from a builder on a modern estate. But the old house was my home for twenty years. In that time I'd had the garden landscaped, chosen the colour schemes for each room, painted and made all of the curtains, purchased furniture for the house, replaced the kitchen, bathroom and cloakroom etc. 

After less than two weeks in the new house I was very pleased to have only two rooms left to unpack - the craft room and the guest room. But then things started to go wrong! 

We had a flood. I was relaxing in the sitting room after a long day of unpacking when I noticed a dark stain on the ceiling. I was certain that it had not been there in the morning. I was right. After some investigation we found that the shower in the en-suite was leaking. I was really worried because plumbing is not my thing and the stain was right above the ceiling light. I had visions of the ceiling falling down and the electrics blowing up! Early the following morning I was on the phone to a contractor that I have used in the past but he was the other end of the country on holiday! Worse than that the guys that he recommended were not picking up the phone.... after a phone marathon, I found a contractor in our new village who was able to come that day. The expense was unplanned but the problem was resolved. I went to bed breathing a big sigh of relief. 

Then we realised that the main drain was partially blocked. Another contractor, another unexpectedly large bill!

Then the flush on the toilet in the en-suite stopped working. Another contractor visit and another bill all in the space of the first month!

By this time, I was worried we'd bought a money pit for a house! We knew there would be issues with such an old house but we didn't expect all of these issues in the first few weeks....Thankfully, things settled down and I managed to get back to the unpacking.

New Home

I'm back!

We moved into our new home last Thursday evening. 

As with any home move there was some sadness leaving a house that we had made into a home and lived in for many years; some drama - furniture not fitting through doors and having to be disassembled and some excitement about the new house. 

We finished packing late on Wednesday evening and the removal company arrived a little late at 9:30 on Thursday morning to take us to our new home. It then took far longer to pack up the van than we had anticipated and so the furniture didn't leave until after 4pm in the afternoon. It was another hour or so before I had finished hoovering and washing floors and I left the house for the final time. Fortunately, the new owner was not moving in the same day!

It was after 8pm when the removal company finally left us and the furniture and a plethora of boxes in the new house. 

Unfortunately I'd only seen the house interior once before the purchase completed. This meant that I did not have the opportunity to measure furniture and plan where it should go in each room. 

Somewhat inevitably we found that the two double mirror wardrobes that we had along one wall in our old home didn't fit the alcove in the new bedroom and had to be split between two bedrooms!

I'd asked the removal company to put each item of furniture roughly in the middle of each room so that I could do some cleaning before moving the furniture into position. 

By the end of Monday I had cleaned every room and the furniture in place but the house was an obstacle course of boxes. 

Today, I am left with two rooms (including my craft room) to unpack. Everything else has been unpacked and put away.

I'll share some photos soon! 

Life's Roller Coaster Strikes Again!

Apologies for running silent for the last few weeks. Regular readers will be aware that it has been, shall we say, a challenging year to date! Now things have changed again but this time in a really good way. 

Earlier this year my husband and I fell in love with a house that was for sale. A friend was in the midst of buying her first house and we clicked on Rightmove to see the house that she was so excited about. We weren't looking to move. It simply wasn't the right time for us. Then we saw it! 5 months later and we have just exchanged contracts. We move in at the end of this month.

The new house is truly our dream house with gorgeous views of the water. It is just the right size, neither too small nor too large. It is in a prime location and our nearest neighbour is a Heron who stands and fishes literally just outside the garden gate. 

The other bonus is that I will finally get to have my very own craft room! 

All this means that I'm not sewing at the moment. I'm too busy turning our current house into an obstacle course of boxes and wishing that we hadn't accumulated quite so much stuff over the years! I swear it breeds.

It also means that I will be offline for a few weeks because we've just been advised that we will have to wait ten days after the move to get back on line...

I still plan to sew and to share my stitching progress but I think I'll be making soft furnishings for quite a while. There are so many new windows that require curtains, tie backs and/or blinds. There are also colour schemes to design, chairs to upholster and cushions to make. It is all so exciting! 

I still plan to start my stitch book and stitch tutorials but my giant CHS Village cross stitch may be on the back burner for a bit!

I promise I'll share some photos in August!

Does anybody else do this?

The moment I start stitching a project my head moves onto my next stitching project. It doesn't matter how much I've been looking forward to starting a project or how much I love the design. 

I'm stitching yet I can't wait to start my next creation. 

It is sooo annoying! 

Why do I do this? 

More importantly, how do I stop?

Variegated Bookmark

I am no technophobe  I just like the look and feel of real books. My home is full of books and a pretty bookmark makes reading even more pleasurable. 

This stitching project was a departure for me as I used an Anchor thread instead of my usual DMC. The Anchor thread was an impulse buy. I just couldn't resist the colourful thread when I saw it in my local hobby store.

I believe this pattern is a web freebie but I've had it a while and I am ashamed to say that I can't remember where it came from, whomsoever you are, thank you! If you stumble across this page, please forgive me for my shoddy record keeping. 

I hope you like my bookmark and handmade tassel!