Cross stitching it up

I am the fortunate recipient of a little family treasure! This is a cross stitch sampler done by my great great aunt, Annie Hocking (I think that is accurate) about 100 years ago when she was a child. Cool, right?

My Grandma moved house recently and was de-cluttering, and as I "like this sort of thing", I scored! Hooray!

Inspired by this I have started working on my own cross stitch sampler. I printed out some graph paper, googled cross stitch alphabets and started putting some ideas down. Caleb was in turn inspired by what I was doing, so I printed out some bigger squares for him and he designed a cross stitch pattern of his own. I pretty much abandoned my project to stitch up his pattern, and here 'tis.

It's a picture of two characters from Toy Story 3. Can you tell which ones? These two cross stitches hang side by side in our study and hopefully will be joined sometime in 2011 by my sampler!

Hope Softies

Like everyone else, we watched the TV in disbelief at the flooding in Queensland. I can't imagine what life is like now for those affected, particularly those who lost loved ones.

I'm sure you've all been across to Toni's blog and seen and bid in the auctions to raise money - a LOT of money as it turns out!

And you have probably also come across Steph's initiative, "Hope Softies", over at Mon Petit Poppet to provide handmade softies to the little ones who lost everything in the floods.

Here is my humble contribution. Pattern from Craft Schmaft. He looks sort of menacing, but has a heart of gold. He'll begin his journey north tomorrow.

4 months

She is getting to that age now where I start to get less precise. How many weeks is she? I'd have to pull out a calendar and count them. But she is 4 months old now. I can tell you that much.

She is also a beauty. Wearing a little handmade garment her grandparents bought for her on one of their travels.

Indulge me while I record a little about 4 month old Eve... She is still sleeping well at night and did extremely well on our week away. She is getting close to rolling from her back to her tummy and is only now tolerating a good amount of tummy time. She has officially decided that the dummy is not for her, but will chew on it to humour mummy every now and then before spitting it out, getting quite good air.

Most of the time, when people smile and talk to her she will study their face for sometime before gifting them with her big smile, but sometimes she surprises those whom she loves with a smile just because.

Eve at one, two, and three months.