Life & Stitching

Last week at work we were all waiting with baited breath to hear news as to whether the reduced hours would save our jobs for the time being or if some of us would be getting redunancy notices. This meant I wasn't exactly in the mood for stitching on a night, just couldn't concentrate, so after finishing part 5 of the Papillon mystery I put my stitching way (no pic I'm afraid yet).
One thing I did decide after sending Karan her prize from my contest was that I miss being in exchanges and sending my friends stitched items and gifts. I haven't taken part in any since early this year when I hit a slump and was scared I couldn't keep up with them, so I've joined a little xmas stocking exchange on the Tranquil Stitches BB and am also doing a private xmas ornament exchange with one of my stitching friends in the USA. I so love to see what people receive in exchanges on their blogs, and often wonder about the exchange boards they are on as I've never come across them myself. Does anyone know, are these sort of things invite only generally? I don't want to commit myself to lots of exchanges again just yet, but will see how the 2 I've signed up for go and take it from there. All I know right now is that I'm excited to be exchanging again.
And talking of the private xmas ornament exchange, I've finished the stitching for that today after only starting it yesterday! I decided I felt like some xmas stitching but it took me a few days to find the right ornament and kit it up as I always procrastinate that lol. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, now I just need to decide how to finish it into an ornament. No pic of that either I'm afraid and it will be a good while before it can be revealed as my exchange partner reads my blog.
I've also been thinking more about joining in the UFO night on the Stitch & Stash BB again. Julie does a stirling job along with Mr Stick in beating people until they stitch on their UFO's, erm I mean encouraging them lol, and while I'm being a bit flaky about my stitching right now in general I think that if I can at least put in one evening a week on a UFO I might feel like I'm making progress on something. Going to give it more thought, but it's seeming like a good idea right now.
And back to work, finally late Friday afternoon we had an email saying that the reduced hours had been passed, and asking us to decide which day we want to take off each week, starting 17th Nov for approx 6 months. I've chosen Monday's as it will mean a longer weekend for me, and after the worry of thinking we were going to be out of a job altogether the reduced hours are a welcome alternative. I've decided to make the most of it while it lasts, the reduced money isn't ideal, but the extra time at home will be wonderful, especially in the run up to xmas, and hopefully overall it will mean more stitching time as well lol.
Well, enough of me waffling, seem to have got carried away there, guess that's what you get for having a couple of days off for half-term, going to the cinema and then a play barn with Erin, and xmas stitching and writing most of your xmas cards whilst there!!! I think I must be giddy with the shock of being organised!
Til next time, have a great week everyone (hugs).

Boo Winner

Sorry I'm late with the draw, the weekend didn't go as planned so a bit behind with everything lol.
Anyway, without further ado, Boo's new owner is.......





KARAN!




Can you please let me have your snail mail addy Karan and I'll get it in the post to you asap.
Thanks for entering!

Some Enforced Wagon Time

Well, it's been coming but was still a huge shock when an emergency departmental meeting was called at work for 2pm today.
We've been told that unless enough people are prepared to reduce their hours by working say 4 days instead of 5 for the time being, then redundancy consultations will begin on Monday. As much as everyone needs every penny with living costs going up as they are, the majority of us have agreed that we would rather try to manage like this for 6 months or so in the hope things improve, than risk having a redundancy notice on our desk in the next couple of weeks.
I'm trying to think positively in that it will mean I'll have more time at home to do the things I'm always trying to fit in on an evening. We are going to have to tighten our belts though and part of that is obviously going to mean me climbing on the stash wagon for the foreseeable. Anyone got any tips lol?

Boo To You!

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who left me a lovely message after my last post with hugs and support etc, it means so much to me. Things here are still not great but I'm trying to stay positive and thankfully I've been stitching a little more which has helped.

I've been working on Cirque as it's easy going with no colour changes and last weekend I finished page 2 which is my third page, taking me to officially over half done!

I may go back to it soon and carry on, but for the last few days I've been working on my HAED Cabin In The Woods. I spent 2 nights getting really frustrated as I was in confetti central and just wasn't making any progress so in the end decided to start at the opposite side of the page which isn't as bad, and haven't been doing too badly. Will show a pic once I've got more done.
Then today I've mustered every ounce of courage and made up the Just Nan Boo Tin! Now I don't have any finishing flare lol, so it really is scary for me to try to finish off something I've taken ages stitching and it makes me feel really nervous the whole time I'm doing it in case I make a mistake or it doesn't turn out right. But apart from having to fiddle with the twisted cording I'm really pleased with the result on Boo. DH has now been instructed to get the halloween decs down from the loft this afternoon so Erin and I can put them up and display my new tin!

And in recognition of the kindness of stitching friends I am now doing a draw for the Boo chart and leftover beads. Obviously there will be no tin, web charm or ribbon, but I'm sure you imaginative stitchers can work around that lol. So, if you'd like to enter, please post a comment and saying you want to be entered, and I'll draw a name a week today and then get the chart in the mail to the winner on the 20th Oct, so you'll still have time to stitch it for halloween if you get your skates on!

In The Doldrums

Things at work since I went back after my op have been getting steadily worse again and this last week I've spent a lot of the time near to or in tears, and taken to having early nights as all I want to do is hide away and sleep, which I know for me is a sure sign I'm depressed again.
There were more redundancies at work last week and everyday we seem to hear more doom and gloom about the housing market etc, so everyone I work with is at rock bottom and the atmosphere is awful. I think my job is probably safe for a while due to my length of service, experience and qualifications, but dealing with the atmosphere on a daily basis is getting hard to bear. When you spend so much of your life at work it becomes impossible to turn off after work when things are so low whilst you're there and I have to admit that I'm really struggling. I'm trying to take it one day at a time but earlier today I was so close to handing in my notice and just throwing in the towel...
I have had one nice day though. At the weekend DH and I took Erin to Gulliver's World in Warrington which is a theme park for young children. Erin absolutely loves it there as she can go on the rides as many time as she wants. This time she was also tall enough to go on the three rides she's missed out on before, a roller coaster, a runaway mine train and the log flume, and loved them, especially when I got soaked through on the log flume lol. We had an absolutely wonderful day, the weather was gorgeous, the queues were short for the rides surprisingly and it was just so nice relaxing and being a family with no worries for a while. DH and I said we definitely need to get away for more days like that, as I felt like a weight had been lifted off me for a few hours.
Stitching wise I've nothing to show I'm afraid. I have done the stitching for the Just Nan Boo Tin, but have yet to pluck up the courage to attempt the finishing. I've done none besides that and to be honest the rotation has fallen by the wayside, so I've decided for now that when I do actually feel like stitching I'm just going to grab what's calling and see how it goes. It's typical that when I'm stressed or down I usually turn to my stitching, but at the moment I can't even be bothered with that.
Here's hoping I'll snap out of it in a few days.

How Does Your Monday Go?

I've got the usual Monday blues, not helped by still worrying about the Paypal fiasco. We managed to get all the cards stopped so now it's the waiting game while the new cards come through and we see if we will get the money back from Paypal. We have decided that if/when it is resolved, if we get our money back we are in future going to use an old bank account we have never got around to closing just for Paypal, and just keep a small amount in it for that purpose only, so this can never happen again. Thanks for all the messages I received, it makes me feel a bit better at least knowing people care.
Now onto what this blog is supposed to be about, stitching! Here are my HAED Alisha QS and the Papillon mystery How Does Your Garden Grow with Part 4 now complete. I've also done a little more on Cirque but want to wait til I finish the page til I take another pic.




The past couple of weeks I've carried on with my rotation but have missed quite a few nights of stitching which isn't good for my sanity lol. Anyway, I've finally finished the round and I'm pleased with what I've achieved, especially on HDYGG.
I've been wanting to start the SALexandre with Sally and we had planned to begin this month, but I couldn't help thinking that I shouldn't be starting another big project at the moment when I want to make more progress on my wips. So we've decided to put it on hold for now and we'll see how we're both set in another few months or so.
In the meantime I've decided to keep my slots in the rotation as they are, but rather than a set time on each project I'm just going to stitch on it for as long as I'm enjoying it. If it's one I'm not particularly enjoying I can move on, but have to have at least put in a few stitches. I'm hoping this way that I can make much more progress on my focus pieces, Cirque and HDYGG, and maybe even finish one of them before the end of the year so I can free up a slot, whilst still making some progress on my others and mostly not getting bored.
So it's back to slot 1 today, which is smalls, and I get a new start which I'm really excited about! With halloween coming up next month I couldn't resist the new Just Nan Boo Tin and Needlebook when they came out, and have been dying to start one of them since they arrived. I have plumped for the tin first and now have everything laid out at the side of me on the sofa for when Erin has gone to bed!
Hope you all have a good week. Thanks to all my readers and those who take the time to leave a comment. And welcome to my new commentors, it's lovely to see some new faces here. I've been very lax in reading and commenting on blogs this past couple of weeks, have just been finding it hard to settle, but I hope to rectify that soon.

Argh! Paypal Fraud!

Sorry for my screaming, but this afternoon has been a complete nightmare. This is nothing to do with stitching so please feel free to ignore my post, I just need to vent.
I got an email earlier from Paypal to confirm that a payment had been sent and my bank account debited.... Now only DH and I use the account so I wondered what DH had ordered. When I looked at the amount, $1,150.00! I knew immediately that it couldn't be DH, but by this time my bank account had already been debited with £659.57!
I then got an email from Paypal to say that they had flagged it up as a suspicious transaction and I immediately followed this up by reporting it as an unauthorised transaction, which will take 10 days to either resolve and for us to get our money back, or we're over £650 out of pocket.
Now I don't know how you girls that use Paypal use your account, but for ours when we buy something the money comes straight from our bank account, and if there is not enough money available it is charged to a backup credit card.
So we've had to ring our Bank and credit card companies to stop our bank and credit cards, and on doing so we found that someone had tried to charge £6,000.00 to our credit card as well! Thank god they had immediately flagged it up as suspicious and when we rang it was then rejected. It's going to be 7-10 days before we get new cards, so until then we can't get any money out or buy anything!
In the meantime our Paypal account has also been frozen and I don't want to give anymore bank/credit card details until I know if this is going to be resolved.
I feel totally sick to my stomach right now, can't stop crying and am really worried that we're not going to get the money back.
So another reason for my posting this is to ask if anyone can give us any advice to help stop this happening again. How do you use your Paypal account? Do you have a bank account registered as well as a credit card, or just a credit card? Do you use a separate card that has a small limit on it specially for things like Paypal and Ebay? Right now I just want to close the account I'm so worried and scared because I don't know what I'm supposed to do....