Major Happy Dance!

I'm so happy and pleased with myself!  Page 4 of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is now finished!

I started this piece on 25 May 2011, but have had two breaks in stitching since then - one to finish my cousin's baby sampler and one to finish my younger niece's 5th birthday present.  So this photo shows the top section completed.  I have to do this much again twice and then the final row of pages is 6 blocks deep.  Carnation is 294 stitches wide by 350 stitches deep, so 102,900 stitches in total.  The section shown in the photo is 294 stitches wide by 100 stitches deep, so 29,400 stitches completed, plus whatever has overlapped into the row below.

I feel really proud of myself - the patience and determination and sheer sticking at it that has gone into this piece so far has paid off.  And to have a page finish on my birthday is icing on the cake!  As per my last post, Carnation has now come off the stand and Angels has gone on for the next little while.

It has been a busy week this week - Pilates, babysitting, Slimming World, colleague's leaving do, coffee morning, Patchwork Group 30th birthday party, my birthday - so Carnation is really all that I have to show you.

 While I was babysitting, I did put some initial stitches into Bouquet 6, but then I got distracted by Great British Bake Off on iPlayer, so there is very little to see.  On the other hand, I now have the possibility of a venture into basic bread rolls running around in my head.  I haven't made bread rolls since Home Economics at secondary school well over 20 years ago, so this might be interesting :-)

When I weighed in last week, I found that I had put on 0.5lb.  I wasn't surprised - I'd been skimping on my weighing and measuring etc.  I won't be surprised if I put on this week as well - there's been a lot of cake and other non-slimming foods packed into the past few days!

I have the plumber coming tomorrow morning early to service the boiler before the really cold weather kicks in, so I need to take all the gubbins out of the cupboard so that he can get to it.  I will leave you all with best wishes for you and yours and may the frog stay away from your stitching.