Good to be back

Well, life is resuming its normality after the Christmas festivities - thanks for all your comments over the last few days :) Poor Len cops it from me every year with the "bah, humbug" stuff ... last year I wore my Christmas tree outfit round there for Christmas Day which was a hoot - and this year he actually liked his little ornament (which was more for Carole's sake though). Before I gave it to them I told him he's not allowed to throw it out, stamp on it, set fire to it, or curse it ... he guessed it had something to do with humbugs, and got a laugh out of it haha. Now I have to make one for me too, as I ordered enough of the little lightbulb buttons to make two ornaments.

Christmas Day was relatively quiet for us, especially due to the fact I had just finished 7 days straight of 5am starts, and it had taken it out of me - Mum and I had our own little Christmas dinner with turkey breast and ham on the bone with a nice salad, followed by champers and panettone - it was lovely. We popped round to Fraze's parents for about an hour in the early evening just to say hi and drop presents off, then gave Fraze a lift home. They've been really good to me when I moved here on my own, and have semi-adopted me into their family ... Len says I'm the daughter that Carole never had :)

As for Christmas prezzies, due to finances this year my gifts were a lot more meagre than they've been in the past, but I've always said the thought behind the gift means more than the gift itself ... I just had to keep reminding myself of that as I felt a bit awful not being able to be as open with my gift-giving as normal. I gave Mum a Christmas stocking full of choccies and sweets that I know she loves - as well as a can of Guinness LOL (the other 3 were hiding in the fridge). Growing up my absolute favourite thing at Christmas was my stocking - it never had expensive things in it, just a few nuts in their shells, an orange, a little bottle of Babycham, and some little gifts like a pair of earrings/junk jewellery etc ... I moaned my head off the first year I didn't get one 'cos I was getting too old for it ... and to this day I still miss it ... mutter mutter mutter LOL. It's still my favourite Christmas memory/tradition - and the last two years it's been me giving the stockings instead to try and keep a bit of tradition in my Christmas Day. I also got Mum the latest Diana Gabaldon book (as we both adore that series), and gave her the needlebook I'd stitched for her. We both received a knitted scarf from my cousin's new girlfriend posted from my aunt in England (she lives in Thailand), which was very thoughtful. I got a DVD from Fraze, and something else is still to come but it'd sold out in the shops, a latch-hook Santa kit, and some hand-towels with ducks printed on the band (love them!!) with a small coffee plunger - all very useful gifts :) As for the Christmas money, I've made a dent in it already with a mix of items - a pair of Klasse scissors, Thread Heaven, plus 2 packets of MH beads and 2 skeins of thread from Dragonfly Dreams; a packet of undies; a 1/2 Christmas tree (for my hand-made ornies next year) and a stand-up Santa in the post-Christmas sales ; and the rest is being used to pay for my Embroiderers Guild membership, and a new iron - there you go, a happy mix of 'needed', 'stash' and 'frivolity' :)

I was back at work on Boxing Day, the joy of a 24-hour call centre, but took a small stitching project in with me so I could at least get a few stitches done inbetween calls - I'm on 3-11pm this week, and the evenings have been a bit quieter. I haven't made great inroads into any stitching at all, but I've started two needlerolls - Spring needleroll by Lorri Birmingham and Love needleroll ornament by Jeannette Douglas Designs in the 2005 JCS ornie mag. Just waiting for the Holo Fyre Werks thread and MH beads to arrive before I can finish the Love one, and the Spring one is being stitched on in the evening hours at work this week. Only managed to get another 5 hours into the Dratted Dolphins, but at least I got to roll up the scrollbars and I can get cracking on the final half - yippee!

My next rotation segment was for Egyptian Garden, but I'm replacing that for the time being with something else until Carol and I do a SAL for EG later in the year - only problem is I can't decide which to start first ... Le Jardin Silk Sampler from a 1998 issue of JCS magazine (which I'm definitely starting in January), or one of the bright canvaswork pieces by Jen's Jems now I have my black canvas here ... hmmm, I think the canvaswork piece might win out - it's a quicker finish ... and there's still plenty of January left to start the other one LOL.