Rainy and cold Bankholiday Monday - how unusual

I was hoping to finally sort out my garden today - mow the lawn (it hasn't been mowed since last autumn!), tidy the shed etc. Well, as always on Bankholiday Monday, it's freezing and raining, the wind is blowing cold as anything (temperature is 6 degree C brrrrrr). As it's been raining all night and frequent showers today, I sort of gave mowing the lawn a miss. At least I cleaned out the patio and some weeding in my small patch of herb garden.

There isn't much stitching to show from last week, I think I've only stitched about 2 or 3 lenghts of thread on the Lilliput Lane. But my first priority at the moment is to finish my very very very last assignment. 2000 words needed - 900 and counting!

Stephen King 'Misery'

StephenKing tells a story again from the eyes of a writer in his unique sense of horror.

Paul Sheldon is a commercial successful writer. He grew to detest his most famous creation - Misery Chastain - heroine of rather corny romance stories. She made him rich but turned him - in his opinion, in a writer without creati,ve juices flowing, boring samey work. But Misery Chaistain has a big fan base .... So when Paul has a car accident during a fierce snow storm, his number one fan Annie rescues him and takes him to her remote house. Annie starts to nurse him back to health, and even though Annie used to be a nurse, the word doesn't seem appropriate for her, indeed she has quite a few secrets which Paul will eventually discover. And Annie's motive is not entirely humanitarian.

When Annie finds out that Paul has killed of Misery Chastain in his latest novel in order to finally escape her, Annie is not at all pleased, indeed, she forces Paul to change the story to 're-surrect' Misery. And Annie certainly has her ways to make sure Paul does exactly what she wants - it's not at all Florence Nightingale at all. Paul finally realises that there is only one way he can come out of this alive - he needs to escape by any means, broken/  missing limbs or not.

adidas WOMEN'S 5K CHALLENGE 2010

I must be mad! My colleagues talked me into this! Together with my collegeages, I will taking part in the Adidas Women's 5K Challenge 2010, on 5. September 2010 in London Hyde Park. Mad, or what! Currently, there are 4 of us. We will be running for the Evelina Children's Heart Organisation ( We are involved work-wise with the Evelina Children's hospital) . Well,for those of you who don't know me - I can't run even 100 yards ;-)) I can walk, ok, I walk for miles with the dog, but running is a whole different story. I know I don't have to run for the whole 5K, I can walk in between or even walk all the distance, but I guess I see it as a challenge now. I have actually started (a very small scale) training programme, would you believe it.

Week 1: 3 days a week -- walk 2 minutes, run 1 minute, repeat 7 times.

I am seriously struggling on the 1 minute run, but take it very very slowly. I will keep you updated on my progress.

Blueberry cheesecake

I promised to update more often :) sitting in Starbucks in central London (the Strand), eating blueberry cheesecake and drinking latte. I've got an Open University tutorial tonight. This will be actually my last ever tutorial, I can't believe it. My course is nearly finished, one more assignment and the exam of course. But the next few weeksbefore the exam are going to be hectic, and my usual spare time will be used for revision. Ok, back to my cheesecake now!
- Post From My iPhone

Clematis update and new start Egyptian

Ok, I have to admit again that I haven't been a very good blogger. Since going back to work.... yep, there never seems to be enough time at the end of the day to go on the laptop. To be fair on me, we did have an awful connection, and I was hardly able to get wifi connection here upstairs in 'my' room. the connctions is forever breaking up, this is soooo annoying.

Anyway, this is the Clematis update from 2 weeks ago. I actually do start enjoying this piece.

And .... here is the new start:

It will be an a big Egyptian design which I'm stitching as a SAL with my friend Jo. Ever since we went to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin I am really fascinated by all stuff Egyptian, Jo has been for many years.The design is by Anchor and was published in British Cross Stitch Collection Magazine February 2007. We are stitching on 16 ct. Rustico Aida which I think sets it off beautifully. 16ct is one of my favourite counts anyway. The face is stitched with quite a lot of Anchor Marlitt thread (shiny thread) which is not too bad to stitch with actually. I expected it to be very slippery, but it is not half as bad as some metallic threads.  This is how the design will look like when finished:

Cross stitch up-date and a finish !!!

Happy Dance  - the giraffe is finished. It will take a while before I can frame it, as it will need a special frame because of the size - but never mind. I really enjoyed stitching the giraffe.

Here is my progress from NH afghan from last week. Not a lot done, it doesn't show anyway. The flowers contain so many different colours - it's unbelievable.

And here is the new project which will go into the rotation instead of the giraffe. It's my wedding picture - the one where I had all the problems earlier when I had it charted by DMC and they did it in black and white. However, thumbs up to DMC - they've changed for me to full colour without problems. So here we go. This is proper confetti stitching, the first time actually that I'm doing proper confetti like this.

First Flying Lesson

Dan had his very first flying lessing at Stapelford Flight Centre. 30mins cost £100 but it was worth every penny according to Dan (Best thing he ever did in his life! according to Dan). I felt like joining, it looked that much fun and exciting!

The plane was a Cessna 152 (2 seater), and even though it was his first lesson, the instruction put him straight away into the pilot's seat. At some point, the instructor (who btw was great, as Dan was clearly a bit nervous) said to him: 'OK, now you slowly push this button in, and pull  this  up - and you known what is going to happen? Dan said 'No' and he says: 'well, you are taking off now all by yourself' and off he took! Once in the air, apparently it is not that difficult. The instructor told him how to turn right, left, and go straight on and than said: 'ok, you are the pilot, now go where you want' and that's when he said the tension in him fell and he really started to enjoy it big time. To land the Cessna was down to the instructor though, as this is apparently 'the most difficult bit' LOL.

And now he can't wait to do it again, so so much want to be a pilot. I hope his dreams are not coming crashing down (excuse the pun) before he even took off.... The only way in is either private pilot training (costing at least 80 - 100K) which might be an option if we win the lottery LOL. Otherwise he could try RAF and go through their selection process. Well, wait and see, for the time being one young man is on cloud nine.