An overdue catch-up and some new pattern sneak peeks

As usual, a flurry of bugs and viruses has heralded the start of winter here on the tip of Africa. But this is the first time I’ve succumbed to two bouts in quick succession – and taken more than my usual two or three days to recover. I’m generally fairly resilient so feeling unwell like this over what was for me a rather lengthy period caught me unawares and has made me fully appreciate my usual good health. 

Fortunately I am now well on the mend, but what little energy I’ve had in the past three weeks has been spent on keeping the bones of my needlework business ticking over and so my social media presence has been fairly non-existent. I have some new designs sitting here, though, waiting to be mounted and photographed, and have made a start on drawing up the patterns. So I hope to have those up in the shops fairly soon. Here are some sneak peeks:

And I’m about to start the embroidering phase of an exciting project I’m working on for release later in the year. I love having a lot of embroidery projects to work on during winter, because it allows me to spend hours at a time on the couch where the light is good – usually in the afternoons – stitching away while catching up on podcasts and new music. Bliss.

And this year there’s the World Cup in addition to Wimbledon on the sporting front, so even more excuse to sit and stitch, although most of the football games are in the evenings here so there’s more crocheting going on then than embroidery. It’s a great way to wind down the day though, and I’m finally making some real progress on the blanket of rose and daisy blocks (watch this space).

A couple of really great opportunities have also presented themselves in the past week or so, out of the blue. So I’ll be mulling and jotting down concepts and ideas for those, too, while embroidering away my winter afternoons. Mornings are and will be spent on the computer teasing out ideas, writing and drawing up patterns.

Of course my regular freelance editing work fits in between all this, so I have a busy time ahead. But winter is perfect for hibernating and immersing oneself in embroidery (any excuse will do, really). But this is all sounding far too enticing now, so I’m off to my sunny spot on the couch for some actually rather rare Sunday morning stitching.