And the sun shone!

This weekend, for the first time in a while the sun has shone all day with no outbreaks of rain, so I feel loads better.

Updates as usual - some progress on my Poinsettia, but not a lot.  The boss is on leave as of the end of this week coming so has been getting somewhat stressed trying to get everything done before he goes off.  And when he's stressed, he's difficult to live with, so I've been blog reading in my lunch hour to stay calm rather than concentrating on my stitching. So no promises as to next week's update as he gets more and more stressed as the last day approaches - I shall have a visible halo and wings by close of play on Friday!

Mum was round again this morning to use the Internet so again I didn't get as much done as I would have liked.  However the front headlight is nearly done - most of it is in DMC B5200 which isn't showing up very well in this photo.

While Mum was here, I showed her some of the cross-stitch pieces that I fancy doing.  She wasn't that taken with Papillion Creations or Ink Circles, but she did like the Chatelaine Mandala Gardens.   I will have to get Carnation finished before I embark on one of those, but its nice to know that it won't go down like a lead brick.

I have made some progress on Carnation this week now that Dad has fixed my floor frame.  I've also been doing some maths - I've worked out that there are 7,315 stitches on page 1.  So to get half way through page 1, I need to complete 37 squares - as of this morning, I've finished 31 squares completely and probably done the equivalent of one or two more where I've gone over the edges of squares to avoid ending up with lines on the finished piece.  I'm enjoying it but its slow going - when you've got 15 stitches to finish a square but need 11 different colours, most of which are one stitch only, it takes a while to work through them.

My other start, Fuschia, has gone nowhere this week - it was an emergency piece to fill in for the Patchwork Group meeting last week, and so will probably not get touched either until the August meeting or unless I finish Poinsettia before then. 

On a more adventurous note, I have been learning to drive Mum's car.  I do drive and have a car of my own, but the idea is that I get to grips with Mum's car and then we can do shifts on long journeys cos Dad doesn't drive.  My car is a little run around, but Mum drives a 7 seater people carrier so I've been out a couple of times with Dad (much less stressful than having Mum in the passenger seat while I'm getting used to it) and so far, so good.  Its a lot longer and you pull the neck of the gearstick up to get into reverse, rather than push the gearstick down as you do in my car, and the driver's seat is a lot higher up, but I'm getting there.

I was a bit hesitant to begin with, because the last time that I drove a car of Mum's (over a decade ago), I had a close encounter with a lamp post.  It wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.  Back in the day, my parents' driveway was made rather narrow by the presence of a large lime tree on the edge of the pavement on one side of the dropped kerb and a lamp post on the other side of the dropped kerb.  Backing Mum's estate car out one evening, I got the turn wrong (there was probably a car parked awkwardly on the other side of the road).  Somehow I managed to bring my side of the car right up against the lamp post, and then in moving forward, knock down the end of the wall between my parents and the neighbours, making rocks fall into the drive way so I couldn't move forwards or backwards.  Mum was not impressed and until this weekend I have never driven any of her cars since.  These days, the lamp post has been moved back against the wall and the lime tree was cut down because the roots were going under my parents' house, so that particular scenario will never be repeated, thank goodness.

Well, this has gone on longer then expected so I will finish here and make tomorrow's lunch, which will include freshly picked homegrown cucumber courtesy of my brother in law's greenhouse.