What a crazy time this is. I hope you and those you hold dear will come through the pandemic safely.

Like many parts of the world New Zealand is in lockdown. We stay in our homes with only the people we live with or, as we call it, “our bubbles” and only venture out for essential purposes. I’ve been making use of this time in isolation to work on my stitching. I have been distracted from stitching by my one year old grand-daughter (first grandchild). Anything dangerous seems to draw her like a magnet so scissors and needles get hidden well away while she is here and often get left hidden away. I dearly miss her visits while we are in lockdown but now that I can keep my stitching out I am progressing well on the BrightSea Village Needlecraft shop.

As well as getting back into my stitching again I’ve felt inspired to design again too. I had begun to think that the “Nifty Needle” would be the last building in the BrightSea Village collection but over the last few days I’ve been working on a new building and I’m so looking forward to stitching it now so I imagine I’ll be racing to get my current and next projects stitched so I can start it.

Wherever you are please keep safe and, as we Kiwis say, stay in your bubble.

From Thursday my site will be temporarily closed for business until the end of April while I go on holiday. (Wheeee!) I’m off to Singapore and Melbourne.

Fingers crossed that soon after I’m back the Bee Happy Pyramajig will be released.

December. While most of the world revs up into a frenzy of activity, preparing to celebrate I freeze like a deer in the headlights and feel overwhelmed. Presents bought – nope. Decorations up – thinking about it. Cards sent – not going to happen. Stitching done – . . . you get the idea.

I’ve still been stitching every day but only for a short while. My wrists threaten to play up if I stitch for more than an hour. So, progress has been very slow but I’ll show you what I’m working on. I think I mentioned a while back that I manage to lose my scissors fairly often so I felt the need for a scissor fob. I’ve been working on a set of three in the form of birdcages. While I’m not keen on the idea of caging birds I do love fancy cages. They would look silly empty so I’ve compromised. There are birds in the cages but the doors are all open.

I’ll keep plodding along, stitching a little each day, and hopefully these will be released as patterns sometime – I’m going to be very vague here – next year.

Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate around this time of year, I wish you peace joy and laughter and the company of those you love.

BrightSea Village is preparing for a big celebration. There’ll be music, love, laughter and cake.

I’m now working on the last section of this project. I’m finding it so hard to put the needle down at the end of each stitching session as the picture gets more and more exciting. (If don’t I’ll pay for it in wrist pain though.) This is what I love about cross stitch; watching the picture come to life and then adding the back stitch and seeing it pop off the canvas.