A Sweet Gift And Overcoming A Phobia

On Friday I received an email from Sally to let me know she'd put something in the post to me. So Saturday morning saw me accosting my postie as soon as I saw him coming down the drive (and he really isn't nice, so you can tell how excited I must have been lol). When I opened the package I was so touched to find this beautiful pincushion from Cherrywood Design Studios called Eat, Sleep, Stitch. Sally saw that I had this chart on my wish list so was so thoughtful to stitch one of the designs for me. I actually had a few tears I have to say as I'm struggling with feeling rather down at the moment and this was such a welcome surprise. Sally's stitching is so beautiful and this is my first ever beaded edge item, and it's perfect! I love the colours and have sat it by my side but can't bring myself to use it as a pincushion at the moment lol. So thank you again Sally, you are a wonderful friend/surrogate sis, and I will treasure this!After my early morning excitement I then went onto have THE best day in ages lol. Hubby and DD were both elsewhere so I had the house to myself, and I'd decided that Saturday would be the day I would finally get my sewing machine out and give it one last shot to get over my awful phobia of it. When I was at school I used to be great at sewing, even made some of my own clothes, but since then my phobia has grown and grown and I've been terrified of ruining my stitching by the machine running away with me or ripping the fabric or something, so it's just sat in the cupboard under the stairs. But on Saturday I got it out, had a good read of the instructions and figured out how to set it up. I found some old scraps of fabric and had a practice for a while (wanted to make sure I could actually sew a straight line lol) to check tension etc, then I was off! I was very nervous the whole time I have to say, but I did relax a little the more I got used to it, and in the end I had three finishes! Two are below and the other is for a gift so can't reveal it here for a little while yet. Sock Monkey is from this year's JCS magazine and I stitched it for DD who got a sock monkey from Santa last year and LOVES it. The M Designs Hope Tree I stitched a few years ago, but have just never got around to making up. I think the key for me now is to make sure that I get the machine out again regularly, if only to make up one item, so that the phobia can't grow again and hopefully I might get a bit more confident with it.I still have Lizzie Kate's ABC Christmas that I want to finish up before we put our decorations up on the 5th, so hopefully the machine will be out again in the next few days and I'll have another finish to show soon!
In and amongst all the excitement I have been stitching and even finished Waxing Moon's Spooky Greetings Bellpull, as well as making more progress on my Personalised Sampler and HAED QS Alisha, but I haven't got around to taking pics of those yet so they'll have to wait til my next post.
I've also now fully kitted up LHN Winter Whites for the LHN Winter SAL I'm starting with Sally, Chris, Lesleyanne, Claire and Hazel on 1st December. I cut and prepped the fabric yesterday and it took a lot of self control not to thread my shiny new needle and put in that first stitch! But I was a good girl and will wait til the 1st lol.
Finally, I know it's now well after the 14th which was my blogoversary and I now have 54 followers instead of the 50 I had when I last posted, but it's time for my giveaway! You were all very polite when I asked what you'd like to win in a giveaway and didn't make any silly demands of a whole set of DMC or anything, so it's going to be a surprise! If you'd like to be sent a surprise, which I hope you don't mind but will be in the New Year now as the Christmas chaos here is about to start, please leave me a comment on this post and I will draw a winner on the 1st December when it's time to start releasing those choccies from our advent calendars!