Seeing stars

I returned to work yesterday - having been off with a grotty head cold and sinus pain all last week I thought I ought to put in an appearance. I should have had a nice easy re-entry as the local Clerk to Governors' cluster meeting was sheduled at the hospitality building of our local racecourse, so a morning out of the office rather than first day back straight into the melee.

As with all good plans - how often do they not turn out as expected.

When I arrived I found that the meeting had been rescheduled for two weeks hence?!?

Ok I thought - fair enough - the notification is probably sitting in my email inbox at work which I couldn't read as I was off sick - so I went into work instead at the normal time, much to the delighted surprise of my colleague

Never found the aforementioned email - no idea how the other clerks had found out the meeting was postponed - one of life's little mysteries!

Still I put my usual four hours in at the office instead and made a reasonable start on the backlog of bumph littering my desk. I can't say I feel 100% better from last week's cold but this is winter and I guess lots of people out there are not firing on all cylinders at present - still the world keeps turning. DH is currently in Dublin on business for three days (lucky dog!) so the taxi driving comes down to me and only me for now in amongst the rest of family life - thank goodness I feel better than last week - but we ladies are made of sterner stuff and we manage :o) After all as the old adage goes: Kids get colds, men get flu and women get on with it!

I didn't do much stitching yesterday - partly because I spent my spare hour and a half between taking the kids to school and starting work searching out a non-existent meeting - grrr what a waste of valuable stitching time!

Still the evening before I had made a start on the stars - Sarah (DD1) who's also at home poorly had insisted I work them in red and white to match the beachballs. Fine, I thought, give it a go......... but no, I'm afraid those white ones just don't sing at all ................ sooooooooooo dull! You often find that adding black to a painting really deadens everything and art teachers usually advise against the use of it unless essential - this white seems to do the same here for me.... yeeuchhh!

So I had a rummage around to see what else I could come up with and found one or two brights in the haul of recently selected fabric sitting neatly on the sewing room shelves. You'd be proud of me, I managed to extract them without pulling the rest of the fabric onto the floor behind them. DH is talking about maybe putting my long awaited work surface across the whole width of the room under the window this weekend so I daren't make a mess or I'll have it to shift before Saturday.

I stitched one bright green star to see how it looked - MUCH better than that miserable drab white which goes 'see-through' as you stitch it on - I just know the fabric wasn't that thin when I ironed the freezer paper on - gremlins at work again I think!

So this evening I can see some frog stitching on those white stars and I shall replace them with a variety of brights including the green - probably purple, turquoise, yellow etc too.

Better to have realised now than once I'd put all the white ones on :o)