Cough cough splutter

The good news: we are all getting towards healthy again. The bad: dragon snot is corrosive. This makes it very difficult for poor Duncan to wipe his nose. The only one to avoid the 'tag-you're-it-lurgy' has been hubby, and he's exhausted from looking after all of us. He's off to Japan for a week for work soon, so he'll be happy to escape the germ infested house.

Despite the lurgy, gastro and never ending coughing, we did manage to celebrate Spencer's 2nd birthday with his favourite tea 'Pumpkin Soup with No Vegies' (as the elder calls it!!!!) with toasted turkish bread (brush with oil and dust with Italian herbs, in the oven for 5 min- yum!). We finished off with a twinkling star for his cake. His favourite song is twinkle twinkle little star, which currently sounds like this:

'wiiii wiiii wwwiiii STARRRR,
hoooo iiii wooo maaa ooo ARRRR' 

We were very lucky to receive tickets to the Wiggles concert a couple weeks ago and had front row seats. (Hopefully they didn't get sick from our coughing.) Spencer's eyes were the size of golf balls when they did his favourite song complete with twinkling disco ball!

It was also fantastic to have my lovely sister over from New Zealand for his birthday and some girly catch up time. I really miss having her company, so it was great to have time to chat and show her what I've been working on. Speaking of which...

In between tissues we've been working on... 

1. The 'Silvenes' embroidery for Patchwork and Stitching Magazine. This piece was inspired by a favourite book of mine called 'The Lions of Al-Rassan' by Guy Gavriel Kay. It was also inspired by some beautiful tile work in a book I saw on the Blue Mosque in Cairo. It's the first thing I've done with using colour pencils and textile medium. Lots of fun. However, the beautiful framing job cost squillions and millions. Bummer. You can't see it here, but the fountain has silver threads for the falling water.

2. Designing an alphabet quilt, which Duncan is not too impressed with. He thinks that there are some moments in life that should be kept private... I think it's something to do with the pink showercap...

3. Starting this stitchery cushion for Benjamin, whose 5th (what??? already???) is in July. It's a stitchery of his drawings, which I've scanned in and rearranged. There's some gorgeous drawings. I didn't include the picture of a Stegasaurus with his head bitten off by a Tyranasaurus though... a wee bit bloodthirsty for an embroidery. My favourite is the cat that looks a little like roadkill. Benjamin is right into letters at present, and is trying to spell, which is wonderful.

4. Shamelessly stealing and converting a 15th century Indian motif for an embroidered bag. I'm going to call it 'Are you insane??' for obvious reasons. I'm even more insane, as I'm going to do it all in metallic DMC threads, which are enough to make anyone grind their teeth. (Sorry DMC.) Apparently it's a lot easier to do with the washaway stiffening stuff on the back, but the Vliesofix people who assured me that Spotlight carried their wonderful product are sadly mistaken.

Anyway. Enough diatribe for this month! Off to cook tea, finish the Christmas bags for P&S, and the Fish bag instructions for Homespun. Marg has done an awesome job on the quilting. It's HUGE though... I said to her when we get it back we'll lop off the handles and use it as a sleeping bag for Spencer!

cheers,

Natashia