A new year, a new goal

So - its Day 1 of my second year of blogging & retirement and I thought that I would adjust the settings to go back to my favourite blue colour.  I have also adjusted the weight loss tracker to represent a more realistic goal for this year.

Whilst I was playing around with the layout, I thought that you might be interested in the stats behind the blog.  This graphic reflects the audience across the past year.  As you can see there are readers from across the world - which absolutely blows my mind given that this blog is, in reality, more like the ravings of a madwoman!  So - thank you if you have taken time to read these ramblings and an extra thanks if you've been pressganged in to having your photo taken for the blog!

Page views by Countries

Entry	Pageviews
United Kingdom	16052
United States	4795
Ireland	708
Russia	231
Australia	175
Poland	69
Ukraine	63
France	60
Germany	57
Netherlands	51

Anyway - onto today's offering.  I woke up early - around 5:30am - and couldn't get back to sleep.  Only one thing to do - get up and finish this wretched WI bag!  Given that I was meeting Carine at 10:30 am with said bag - I was cutting it fine - but here it is in all its glory.

 

I could, as ever, point out the faults - and I have learnt a lot about this pattern and would change certain things if I did it again.  However it is a lovely design and I am already itching to make another one!  Was it well received? - absolutely - it was just too big to use so I am about to embark on a smaller one - not the same pattern, but sacrificing my splendid sampler embroidery for the cause!  Sad to say - the bark was also too large so we are sort of back to square one - although we now know what we don't want I guess!  The bark was that tall that Ben, Carine's youngest, wanted to see how he measured up against it!

The next task was a quick visit up to Tesco's to buy flowers for tomorrow's WI posies and, when I got home, to brave the wild and wet weather to cut some foliage so that it is conditioned properly.  Those tasks being completed, I then focussed on binding the Anni Downs quilt - or rather preparing the chequerboard binding ready for application.  I know, I know - I should have been wading through my Tuesday night blocks but its Scamblesby this weekend so I wanted to have the quilt finished.  That way I could use Sunday for some of the said blocks, plus the WI bag of course - well, that's my thinking anyway.