The longer I stay away, the harder it is to get back

Yes it's been a long time since I've posted. Three months in fact. The end of the year is just such a crazy, busy time. For those of you in the northern hemisphere I don't think you can appreciate the chaos that occurs when both Christmas and the end of the school year coincide. Add to all of the shopping and preparations for Christmas all of the end of year school concerts and celebrations plus work functions plus, in our case, preparations for our main summer holiday away. Then top it off with birthday celebrations for one of our children plus attending other children's parties. Then add in a minor day surgery (for me) with recovery.

This past year we also had my mother-in-law's ill health and hospitalisation and then finding a nursing home for her. She moved in to the nursing home in October but from August onwards we made an effort to visit her very frequently and since she is 30-45 minutes away from us this took up a lot of time. She's settled now and doing well but with her dementia she really has no idea where she is. At Christmas we took her out of the nursing home for the first time and she was confused especially when we brought her back.

Another extra function which occurred in October last year was deciding to change my son's school due to dissatisfaction with the education he was receiving. I was very fortunate to find him a good private school which had a general intake at his year level. He's not happy about this change so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

So does life get in the way of crafting.

I have lost a lot of forward momentum but have tried to pick projects up at random and keep going.

We had our end of year holiday in Sydney this year and I decided to take the New England Sampler with me and I actually worked on it! (How many trips have I taken including long cross-Pacific flights where the stitching never made it out of my carry-on?) I got it out on both plane trips--which were only 1 hour--and a number of evenings and mornings in the room where we were staying. I've continued with it since at home but have decided it is now time to put it away and to get back into my rotations.

I chose to take this project rather than the obvious Sydney one because it is on Aida which is much easier to work on when on the go and because it has simpler regular areas of pattern to do. So I stitched straight lines and finished the alphabet area at the top. Photos to follow.

I just checked to see what my current rotation should be and it is Sydney which follows the New England Sampler so I have to steel myself for working with linen, and on tree branches with half stitches all over the place. But first I'm going to really finish LaTrobe Terrace which only needs to be initialled and dated.

Oh and I forgot to say I framed a few projects myself just before Christmas! Photos coming.