I've been tidying up ...

Usually, if there's something to do other than cleaning & tidying I'll ditch the housework and have fun elsewhere. But occasionally you have to accept the inevitable and drag the vacuum cleaner around. My sitting room was looking like a bombsite, overflowing with crafty stuff, while the front bedroom wasn't much better. That was being used as a dumping ground for the crafty overflow. I blitzed both rooms, brushing carpets, wiping surfaces, binning what wasn't worth keeping and bagging up unwanted stuff for the charity shop. I also rearranged my bookshelves. Bringing together from various places all my craft books and - blimey! - I seem to have acquired rather a lot. I didn't realise I'd amassed so many.

Well, I shouldn't run out of inspiration any time soon, should I? Not with all those reference books to hand. I also shouldn't buy any more books for a while ...

I bundled lots of paper scraps into this pink storage tub, then played around with an idea I'd seen on Instagram, for making homemade washi tape (of a sort).

That diverted me for a few minutes. (I'm easily distracted.)

You can stencil and use ink pads and printing stamps to add interest to your tape. I would've made more, but I needed to crack on with the cleaning.

With a tidier house and a virtuous, even slightly smug glow, I settled down to my stitching. This little fishy piece is nearly done. The colours are more vivid than in the photo, which has kind of washed them out.

This is another completed page for the Ann Wood 100 days stitchbook challenge, and below is the page I'm currently working on. Day 67, would you believe! I'm so looking forward to making up my fabric book and seeing all the pages displayed together.

Anyway, there's not much more to tell you, so I'll keep this blog post short and (reasonably) sweet. Having finished reading 'The Mad Women's Ball', set in France, I've returned to 15th century England and Philippa Gregory 'The Kingmaker's Daughter'. It's about Anne Neville, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, who grows up to marry the man who'll inherit the throne and become Richard III. Once I've read that I'll only have a dozen books on my once-towering To-Be-Read pile. Slowly but surely I'm getting through them.

Hope you're well and enjoying the Spring weather (assuming it's springtime for you too, that is.) Bye for now.

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Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

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