Kings and queens progress.

I am trying to inspire myself to get on with a bit of my cross stitch. It has been a bit abandoned for my crochet and I am not in an amazingly good position to be stopping mid project. Today I hope to finish off some of my half completed kings and queens (after all the monarch deserves it lol). 

We are also off out tonight to this place which an railway carriages turned into a restaurant. I have wanted to eat here since I moved to Yorkshire about 7 years ago!

Granny square

I wrestled with my granny squares at class today and managed to produce this fully finished square... watch this space for more squares over the next few days!!

Wedding stress

Went to see the venue today and just came away with another long list of things I need to sort out. It is now starting to involve timings and until I hear back from the church about this I can't really progress! Today I have managed to contact a hair and beauty person and a venue decorator (whom I won 20% off for in a competition at a wedding fair). I have also started seeing who can come to the evening party. I had a look at how the refurbishments were coming along at the venue. It used to look like this:

But currently looks like this:

Today I also managed to get hold of our architect. They are working on the last drawing now and then I will need to get my planning permission and after the wedding the work can begin!!

Tried to make some granny squares out of a new crochet book I bought. One kinda looks like the pattern in the book but somehow I seem to be expanding each time I do a new row. Still it is class again tomorrow so hopefully she will help me make sense of where I am going wrong! I swear I will spend the whole 6 weeks just learning granny square patterns as there seem to be so many different ones!

Sooo tired

Threw the boyfriend a surprise party with all his friends (that he hadn't seen for ages!) last night and I am so tired now lol. It was a great night though and he utterly loved it, he had been pacing around the house as he had no idea what his surprise was!

I think I have a hair and beauty person and one of the boyfriends friends makes cakes so she is going to do us some cake toppers of the pair of us which was can keep as a memento. I also had a meeting with the headband lady (who kept us there about an hour chatting to us!!) but I think we have come up with a design I like, but it needs a little editing as it is too expensive at the moment!!

I have now lost almost half a stone of weight so I am very pleased with that, not really at the stage where I am noticing it myself though when I look in the mirror which is a shame. I am determined that I will not have a chubby face in my wedding photos!!!!

These are the granny squares I learnt to make this week :D Next week I am going to find out how to do them with more than one colour! I may also ask how I do various different types of squares as I would like a variety of different patterns and designs. One of the girls last night had a crocheted top on and I was figuring out how it was made and what stitches had been used. 

Job applications

I have applied for two jobs at Dogs Trust doing Education work, so fingers crossed for an interview. I am not holding my breath that I will get either of them as I never seem able to get jobs at the moment :( I am totally not going to mention my bad knee at all!!

Other than that I have been making up wedding invites (not managed to sort out the inside of them yet but I think I need to be feeling patient in order to do that!!) and organizing things like car tax. I can't remember if I said that I have also booked my hen weekend to Paris. I can't wait for that. 

The diet was going really well right up until this afternoon and it kinda died a death. But I will pick myself back up again and keep going. I didn't have any chocolate or sweets but I just had a soft moment. I have thrown away the stuff I didn't eat though so I won't be tempted again!

Wedding stuff

Today I went to a wedding fair in York and have sourced a few more potential things for the wedding. I think I have someone for the chair covers, a car (fingers crossed!!) and someone I liked make up wise! We have also been through the wedding fund and figured out that we can just about afford the wedding (though we are still short for the honeymoon). I have told the BF that we need to tighten our belts for a while and stop spending where possible. This means that I need to keep myself amused for not much money! If I can cut back on petrol it would help an awful lot as this tends to be a large expense for me. 

These are some of the wedding placements I have been working on, I still have plenty more to make but they have gone away for a few days as I was starting to make silly mistakes with them:

This is my January submission for the Stitch-a-long Christmas pact that I am part of (we are supposed to do a Christmas related thing each month so that we are not stressed come Christmas).

Hog is now at the RSPCA, he did have something wrong with him so I felt pleased that I had at least picked up on it. 

Crochet class

I had my first crochet class today and this is what I created!! It is all the basic stitches that I will need, next week we are going to move onto granny squares and then I can begin my throw!! 

This was the location down my the Foss where I walked Tess today, she is snoring away beside me at the moment as she was worn out by all the sniffing and running :)

A quick summary of other news:

* The car passed it's MOT (thank God!!)

* Vets say I can run puppy classes with them

* I have booked in to run a training class with the vet nurses as to the problem behaviour stuff I do and then in March I will do a small presentation for owners with firework phobic dogs. 

This is a picture of Hog. He will be going to the vets tomorrow and from there to the RSPCA. He seems to have something wrong with his breathing and I don't really want to be a hedgehog nurse. I have enough going on with the other pets and having his cage in alongside Bramble bunnies is really inconvenient!