Baby sampler finally finished!

I had been putting off doing the lettering on this for ages. The planning takes sooooo long. I just wanted to stitch the words & be done, so it's taken about 6 months to get on with it! When it got to the stage that I was dreaming about this blooming thing, I thought it was about time I got it over & done with. I ended up copying the alphabet and cutting around the letters and planning them that way. It took all day planning and stitching, but it's all done now & although I'm not totally happy with the positioning of the lettering, I don't have to look at it, so I don't care!

I also went to a stitch show last week. It was the Stitch and Creative Crafts show at the Excel, London. My friend, Sue, drove us there, as I'd managed to talk her into coming with me. The parking there is VERY expensive-£6 for up to 2 hours (£10 for up to 5 hours, but there's no way we could stretch to that), so we whizzed around in under 2 hours. To be honest, it was fairly small and there wasn't a lot of stitching stands there anyway.

I remember when the shows were huge and there was loads of bargains. No so much now. Prices weren't that cheap and even companies like Sew-It-All weren't there. I only needed to buy some mount board, but couldn't find any. Bought some beads and 2 sheets of peel offs....and some cheese! Yes, you read correctly, cheese. What a cheese stall is doing there, I don't know, but they had some samples out and it was scrummy! I bought some garlic and herb cheese and some cheese with ginger in-sounds odd, but it's gorgeous. The company are https://www.snowdoniacheese.co.uk/

There was all kinds of weird stands there-pies, holidays, clothing. I'm sorry but what on earth are they doing there? It should be stitching, knitting, scrapbook, card making, that kind of thing. Leave the food for the ideal home show or something. So, I think this will be my last show for a while. I say this after every show I've been to in the past 4 or 5 years, but I keep wasting my money going again, then just complain afterwards. No more!

I'll save my pennies for shopping online. Can't say I'll save them to spend in my local shop as it's now gone. Craft Lines in Theydon Bois was a nice little shop, but as I was told at the show, they had to close the shop down a while ago. They told me they still do mail order-not through their website, but by phone only. Then they gave me a 'With compliments' slip with the phone number on and I was surprised to see the website address on it too. Their site hasn't been updated in years (as I was told by the man on the stand, who, I assume, runs the business), due to costs, but yet they haven't taken it down, or even bothered to put on the site that the shop is closed and they cannot process orders through the website. I'm sorry, but I find this shocking! You can't run a business in that way. How many customers has they lost because of this? I certainly wouldn't bother buying from them. They should take a look at http://www.sewandso.co.uk/ and get some tips from them. Now they know how to keep their customers happy!

Anyway, rant over...LOL! Think I'll go and do some stitching to calm down.