Lake Baikal cross stitch

First of all I have to admit that there hasn’t been an abundance of crafting going on here at Makepeace Made. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, just that I haven’t had the materials to work with and with Christmas just around the corner the finances are being focused elsewhere. When I got pregnant with little miss A, I had a big clear out of my crafting materials as I just didn’t have space for it all what with turning our spare room into her bedroom. I still have some bits and pieces, just not as much as I used to have. Add in to that the fact that I really fancy getting my teeth stuck into a big cross stitching project (thanks for that Floss tube!), and I just haven’t had the motivation to do much of anything.

Top pic is a section of my brother's card.
Bottom pic is one of the teacher's presents - a craft box filled with
sweets. Apparently Mt T is "going to love it!"

I have cobbled together the Christmas gifts for the boys’ teachers and I’ve also hand drawn a card for my baby brother - OK, he’s 29 this week and I’m sure he would hate to be still referred to as the baby of the family but to me he will always be that cute little curly haired boy even if he is married with his own home and a proper grown up job.

As the title of this post suggests, I have also found my big cross stitch project and I am so excited for it to arrive. It’s a counted cross stitch on 11 count Aida which is slightly different to what I have worked with in the past but it is so stunning I thought I’d attempt the challenge. It’s the Riolis ‘Lake Baikal’ which having bought the kit I then had a good old Google about the lake itself and now really fancy a trip around the Russian region of Siberia where this lake is situated. I ordered the kit online after numerous hours spent searching various websites and a couple of fruitless searches in my local town centre.

I was actually incredibly disappointed in my town centre as I couldn’t find one single cross stitch kit. Now I was either looking in completely the wrong places or it’s deemed to not be overly popular around here. Never mind, it worked out for the best as both me and the hubby are loving the Lake Baikal kit and I’m itching to start. It will be the biggest project I have undertaken in cross stitch I believe and will be quite the labour of love. I’m contemplating doing a couple of ‘Stitch with me’ videos for Flosstube, but we’ll see how that pans out as I’m not a fan of my voice on recordings.

You can just about see this year's addition - my little crochet
snowman

On a more personal note, our Christmas decorations have gone up and things are looking decidedly more festive. We've also had the arrival of our Kindness Elf and the boys are enjoying taking part in their kindness challenges.

It’s been a quiet week group wise as A hasn’t been particularly well. I was excited to realise that 'Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas' is on Monday to Friday for 3 weeks so no doubt I will have a lovely long list of crafts I want to do ready for Christmas 2019. I have to be realistic and accept that it simply won’t happen for this year.

I’ll leave it there and catch up with you next week, hopefully with some crafting to share with you,

M x