Hang on to your hats, it is gonna be a LONG post - lol!

 

I must apologise for my two week absence from my blog but TraderVic and I have been on a little jaunt to Sydney in ANOTHER STATE! Yep, we were finally able to leave Vicghanistan (as TraderVic likes to call Victoria due to the rather Draconian measures taken by our Premier to combat Covid-19).  It was rather nice to be somewhere else for a change and, of course DS2 and his lovely GF live in Sydney and our very dear friends are up there for six months, so we stayed with them. However, I think that I will leave that for another post as I suspect that this one is going to be long enough as it is!

So long, in fact, that I thought that I would give you a little "Table of Contents", so that you can scroll down to the bits that interest you, although I hope that you will kind enough to read all of my news - stitchy or otherwise.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Announcement of WINNERS  of my 1000th Post Giveaway

2. Small SAL_February Update (although I missed the Linky List on Mary's Thread - Boo Hoo!)

3. March_Let the People Choose...

4. FNwFfor March

5. 2021 February (and now into March) Reading Challenge update

Here we go....

1.  I am very pleased to announce that the winner of Counting Bats by Just Nan is 

JHM

JHM, I will email you shortly.

... and the winner of both of the Ink Circles designs ('cos she was the only one interested in them) is 

Serendipitous Jo

Troubled Water by Ink Circles

Water Hazard by Ink Circles

Jo, I will email you shortly re your win.

Congratulations to both my winners, these will be winging their way to you both soon.  

And for everyone else, keep in touch, as I am sure that I will have another giveaway very soon.

2. Smalls SAL_February Update

Please click on the Smalls SAL logo below if you would like to see what everyone else stitched this month (Unfortunately I missed the link up this month due to our Sydney trip but it is so lovely to see everyone else's Smalls.)

As to what Smalls I stitched in February, many of you may have seen them before on earlier Feb 2021 posts but here goes anyway....

#1 Baby Alphabet, which I stitched for Jo from Serendiptious Stitching's Secret Stitching Sweetheart Blog Hop

Baby Alphabet by Sheepish Design

28ct Mocha Linen

Floss: Threadworx 1087

#2. The Stitching Bee by LHN

The Stitching Bee, was a kit (except the backing fabric and the button, 'cos I couldn't find the button that came with the kit but once I had FFOed it, there was the button after all but "Too Late", she cried!) which came as part of my A Little help from my friends subscription from The Silver Needle. 

3. Let the People Choose... This is another SAL run by Serendipitious Jo, again click on the logo below to see what everyone else posted as Spring designs this month.

My Spring contribution is as follows....

A Spot of Spring by the Drawn Thread, which was a recent FFO piece.

Then I had a bit of a ferret through my pile of finished (but not fully finished) stitched pieces and found the following (yes, some of them did appear for last month's "Let the People Choose" theme of Birds) which 'spoke' to me as being Springlike - either in subject or colour palette.

 

Prairie Schooler

4. Friday Night with Friends_March 2021 edition

... this is a virtual sew-in hosted by the lovely Cheryll from Gone Stitchin'. Click on the logo above to see what everyone else worked on this past Friday night. For myself, I had a new start and stitched on "Cardinal Winter" by LHN. I am stitching on an unknown overdyed 28ct linen, using a mixture of suggested and my own choice (for the snow) DMC threads and my own choice of overdyed floss by GAST for the border, trees and rabbits.

5. 2021 Reading Challenge_February Update

I know, I know, I am now FOUR books behind (as opposed to two behind last month) but I am not worried - still heaps of the year to go.... So, this is what I read since last update (scroll down this linked post to find out what I read last month):

For this month's reading:

• I powered my way through the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz
• Kept listening to the wonderful Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch
• Reread a piece of nostalgia with "Village School" by Miss Read
• Shivered my way through the thriller "Shiver" by Allie Reynolds
• And committed myself to rereading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and (the later books) Brandon Sanderson, I must admit that last time I fell by the wayside long before the series finished as the books kept getting larger and more complex, the wait between books was long, too, I had three young children and went back to work and then Robert Jordan died and Brandon Sanderson wrote the last few books but this time I am determined to read all fourteen plus the four extras (.5 books, they call them) this year!  

This is my current reading list.... and yes, I do read several books at a time - I do like to dip in and out of books as takes my fancy.

Lastly, I must admit to abandoning reading "Where the Crawdads Sing", I know, I know, everyone is raving about it but I am sorry to say that I just found it boring, and life is too short to read something that you are not really enjoying (even for bookclub - lol!).

6.