No proper stamping for ages, then ...

... three birthdays this week, so yesterday it was time to dust off the birthday stamps and get down to some serious stamping! And I'm quite pleased with the results too ... except I can't show you as Blogger is being very naughty and not letting me upload any photos! Bad Blogger! Ah well ....

I was giddy as a kipper this morning - a rather large package arrived for me all the way from Australia! A few weeks ago I entered a competition for a spool knitting group I've joined ... and my name was picked out the hat! So what was the lovely prize? Well I was thrilled to have won a Santa knitting nancy and a truly gorgeous book 'A Very Beaded Christmas', packed full of lovely seasonal projects! I will certainly be having a go at some of those ...! And will post a photo when Blogger behaves itself! ...! A huge thank you to Maz who runs the group - until recently I thought I was the only adult who would admit to still doing French Knitting lol ...!

Right then. I'm off now to have another go a uploading these here photos ...!

A Challenge for 2012

A lot of bloggers set themselves a challenge to last throughout the year ... whether it may be a calendar page for each month, or a Christmas card a week, or anything else - all are brilliant ideas and I've been wanting to set myself a challenge too. The challenge I settle on has to be something I can pick up and put down on a whim as sometimes time is tight, and not too in-depth, complicated or time consuming and something that can be a bit varied so I don't lose interest. The challenge I'm setting myself is to knit/weave/crochet a scarf a month for the next year. It doesn't sound too taxing does it, but it will enable me to hopefully learn new techniques without adding any stress of having too much to do, maybe even knitting on 'proper' knitting needles (ha!), and if I do more than one in a month it really doesn't matter!

So what will I do with the finished articles? As of yet I have no idea (next years Christmas gifts??) there's plenty of time to sort that out yet! In the meantime it will be interesting to find out what challenges others are setting for themselves!

WOYWW - Playing with my new stamps ...

Well here is my dining table this week ... I have been playing with my new M&S Kirstie Allsopp stamps I had for Christmas, although the chicken on the orange paper on the cutting mat is a freebie from Craft Stamper. The thank you card is for my lovely MIL who bought me Pippa dolls for Christmas (see previous posts for more about these). I do love the tin the stamps came in, its very pretty and I have a million and one uses for it already! The white bag contains numerous balls of wool yet to be put away, as I'm going through a scarf-making phase... trouble is I make the scarves then give them away before I remember to take a photo. Duh! The last one I knitted was a long black scarf with red and black fringe on the ends ... It looked lovely (honest!) and was very well recieved.

Here's a close-up of what came in the tin ... stamps, ink pad, ribbons, tags and notelets ... all very useful of course!

So why am I showing you this? Well its WOYWW of course, that time of the week when hundreds of bloggers around the world share what is on their desks ... To find out more please go to Julias blog here .

New Year, New Look ...

Today I started faffing around on my laptop and have given my blog a fresh new look - I hope you like it -  it took me ages to figure out how to alter the background, header picture, etc and I still can't add my signature to the end of every post! If anyone can help please...?


Also I would like to wish everyone who reads this a very Happy New Year!!! I wasn't in a fit state to post anything yesterday after having got home just before four in the morning ... now I feel fully recovered and ready to send the kiddies back to school on Wednesday!!!