Sparkles Christmas Challenge ~ Anniversary Candy Winner

Thank you all for joining in and making our 3rd Anniversary Blog Hop so much fun!

Your projects were all wonderful and I wish you could all win a prize!  All of the  winners from the Sparkles Christmas blog and the DT Blog Hop have been posted on the main Sparkles Christmas blog, but I’m also posting my candy winner here too…

Drum roll please…

I checked all of the comments and all the links on Mister Linky, put them all together and came up with 29 entrants. I used Random.org to generate my winner, and that was No11…

LISELOT, that was you!! 

This is her beautiful card

 

And this is what you have won from me:

I’ll be sending you an email to get your postal address and will have your parcel on it’s way as soon as I receive that.

Please remember to check the main Sparkles Christmas Challenge blog to see who won the other prizes on offer, you never know, it might have been YOU!!

Please pop back again tomorrow when our new challenge for the month of March goes live.  MARCH!!!!  Eeeek!  Gosh this year is going fast, lol!

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday 247

What indeed, I don’t even have a work desk this week, I have a chair!  Even though I’ve been making cards again, I can’t show anything until this weekend as it’s for a Design Team!  So after a number of weeks of not having an interesting desk, I actually do have an interesting desk this week but I can’t show it to you!!  Yes I know, it’s called irony, lol!

So I thought I’d sow you this instead, my set up in the family room where I like to sit and knit!

What you have here is a nice, comfy chair with a couple of cushions, a foot stool to pop my feet on, a nice rug in case my legs get a bit chilly, a side table for my bits and pieces and really good light directly overhead!

Here’s my side table:

On there is my current pair of socks, a tape measure, knitting needles in their packet, a knitting magazine to browse through, a ladybird row counter (you press down on its black head and it indexes the count up!), my pattern, which is propped up by a box of tissues behind it and my knitting bag. The blue tin belongs to Andrew, I can’t even recall what it’s for, but it’s useful for to put stuff on it and it stops my pattern falling forward too.

And yes, I know you’re going to ask, that is a piece of thick wooden doweling at the end of the sofa!  Andrew has strained his shoulder shoveling snow and found some exercises online that include twisting a certain way whilst holding the doweling.  He says it’s helping!

Finally, this is my current project, another lace pattern:

And talking of socks, this is how the blue ones turned out, I finished them last Saturday.

Regina asked me in a comment last week how long it takes to knit a pair.  Of course, they all vary, depending on the complexity of the pattern and the spare time I have available.  Some days I can knit for an hour after work, some days I get no knitting time at all, but on average, a pair like these will take about 3 weeks from start to finish, but I have no idea of exactly how many hours I’m talking about.  I can do a plain pair in just two weeks, which is a lot quicker than when I first started, but still a lot slower than some people I know.  I’m sure if I had nothing else to do and didn’t have to go to work, I could knit a pair in just a few days.

As usual, head off to Julia’s for all the details about What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday.  I’ll catch you on the hop no doubt!  Well, hopefully I won’t but you know what I mean, lol!

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Hello Peeps, here we all are again.  I missed our little trip round the desks of the world last week as I was a bit under the weather.  I picked up a cold, along with 2/3 of the office, from a colleague who took a four day break in Florida and brought back a cold as a gift for the rest of us!  Nothing to do with all of our snow and cold weather, and everything to do with someone who went from 10F to 80F and back to 10F again in the space of a couple of days!

I’m still on a knitting trip at the moment, it’s easy I suppose as I can do it anywhere, but I did have a card to make at the weekend so you’re getting a bit of both on show this week.

There are some freebie paper downloads from Sizzix on the left; blue socks in the middle, one complete one working on the foot; the card I made is at the front and behind that is my washi tape holder that Andrew made for me.  Apart from that, just the normal tools of the trade.

Head off to Julia’s for the full linky list and the details of how to join in.

And anyone wondering what our weather is doing, we’re now at close to 78″ of snow this Winter, to put that in perspective we normally average 46″.  However, starting today (Wednesday) we’ve got mild temps with RAIN on Thursday!  It’s going to ruin the snow base and we’re not happy about that at all as the Cross Country skiing has been superb this year.  Plus with a lot of snow still on the ground there’s going to be a lot of standing water and it’s due to freeze every night too!

Sparkles Monthly Challenge

Hello All – Welcome to another challenge at Sparkles!  February is the LOVE month so we want to see Hearts, Pearls and Ribbon or Lace on your projects this time round.  We’re sponsored by the fabulous folks at Crafty Ribbons

I have a very simple project this time round.  I’ve been very busy at work again and I also picked up a bad cold, so I’ve struggled to get into the mood to create to be honest.  I hope to be feeling better and back to my old self very soon though.

I used this sweet image from House Mouse, only it’s second outing in the few years I’ve owned it!  My colouring was done with Prisma Pencils and I tickled the rose with a Sakura Glitter Pen.  All of the papers are a free download from Sizzix and the pink card is from the snippets pile; that papers received a spray of Perfect Pearls Mist too.  The hearts were cut with a Provocraft die and the sentiment is from Penny Black.  The LO is from Sketch and Stash, but I rotated it.

Please pop over to the main Sparkles blog to see the wonderful inspiration my teamies have for you this month.

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Challenges:

Sketch & Stash ~ Current LO plus neglected stamp and new papers

Gruffies & Guests ~ Love Is In The Air

Pixies Snippets Playground ~ Use Up Your Scraps

Hazel’s Patterned Paper Challenge ~ Anything Goes with DP

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday ~ 244

Wednesday once more, actually Tuesday where I am but are we splitting hairs?  Whatever day of the week you call it, it’s the day to join Julia on her weekly desk tour of the globe.

I don’t have a desk this week, it’s untouched from this time last week as I’ve been quite severely afflicted with sock knitting fever!  Or at least it seems that way!  This is what I’ve got going on at the moment..

Not one, not two but three pairs of socks!  The one on the left was knitted at work during lunch breaks, its pair will be knitted in the same manner.  The one in the middle is for a sock challenge (who knew such things existed??) and is ready for the heel to be worked.  The one on the right is for Andrew and has been knit here and there between the other projects.  Yeah I know, three pairs at once!

And then there’s these, my first pair of lace socks, finished last Thursday evening, these were also for a sock challenge!

So what’s the cause of this knitting frenzy you ask?  The weather I’m afraid.  As you know it’s been pretty bloody cold in these parts in January, and very snowy too, 40″ worth.  And so far February has added another 6″ to the pile with more tonight and tomorrow.  I peek in at my desk, bereft of activity, when I come in from work and I feel sad.  I then think about the warm fire downstairs, the hot tea waiting for me and the socks I could be knitting by the warm fire and I’m afraid there’s just no contest!  This is what it looks like outside right now, well on Sunday at any rate..

That’s a nice little snow pile behind me, it’s about bust height and I’m 5ft 5″.  Of course, it’s not all fallen snow, it’s also been shoveled, or blown, off the driveway, but it’s getting to the point where we can’t actually throw the snow over it if we’re shoveling by hand, and the long range forecast for February is just more of the same.

But you’ll have to excuse me for now, the socks are calling!

Sparkles Christmas Challenge ~ Anniversary Bloghop

Welcome all to the Sparkles Christmas Challenge Blog Hop.

Today our wonderful challenge is three years old and to celebrate we have a lot of very special prizes for you.  We have a large number of sponsors sponsoring the challenge itself, including Joanna Sheen, Marianne Designs, Pink Gem Digis, Fantastic Ribbons, Di’s Digis and many more!  We also have a DT blog hop with lots of prizes along the way for you there too.  We’d love for you to join us so we have a very easy challenge of **ANYTHING GOES**… as long as it’s Christmas related.

I made three very quick and simple cards using wonderful pre-coloured images from Beccy’s Digi’s:

Very simply done by just mounting them on to co-ordinating card.  The Merry Christmas card also has a little scored pattern around it but that’s not showing up too well.

*** I also have blog candy for you to win, but there are some rules that I need to let you know about first.  You WILL need to enter a creation into our Anything Goes challenge and you will also need to leave a comment for me on this post, AND on every DT member’s blog post too.  This is what you can win from me.***

To enter, add your name to Mister Linky below, making sure you have completed, or will complete, the criteria.  Now WordPress.com blogs are famously strict and don’t allow the use of Javascript which is required for every Linky tool out there.  This one is supposed to work with WordPress, but if it isn’t working or if there’s a problem just leave me a comment and I’ll make sure you’re in the draw.  The candy will remain open until Feb 25th  and the winner will be announced on the main Sparkles blog and also here on Feb 28th.  I will post worldwide, but I will check  that all criteria has been met.

Now you should have reached me from the wonderful PAT’S BLOG, your next stop is the equally lovely and talented JO.  If you get lost along the way you can find the full list of DT members at the main post on Sparkles Christmas Challenge.  Have fun!  Looking forward to seeing your creations.