wips, finishes and mountains (picture heavy)

The last few days have flown by as usual, but even in all the rush I did manage to get some stitching time in each evening.




As I mentioned in my previous post I started on a wip - the alphabet blocks for my nephew, and I mangaed to finish up both the letters "e" and "f". I was quite surprised at how quickly I managed to work up these two squares as the previous ones seemed to take forever!







Tonight, I decided start one of my "guilt-free january" starts, and the red and white table cloth won out over Autumn in my garden (aka AimG). I still haven't picked a fabric for AimG or pulled the threads, and with the table cloth, the fabric was just sitting there by the computer (it arrived a few days ago) and I only need one colour, so it was out of ease that it won, nothing more. I will start AimG, hopefully still this month, but if not that is okay, it is definitely next on the list for new starts. Here is my progress so far on the table cloth:




I'm stitching it on christmas red (DMC 304) 28ct jubliee fabric with DMC B5200. I'm enjoying it so far, and hopefully it won't take too long to stitch up. I'll keep you updated on my progess.




This weekend, on Saturday, my hubby and I also did some finishing. He helped me make my very first pinkeep! It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, and was quite fun in the process as well. I will definitely be making more of these in the future - I've already got two finished pieces lined up to become future pinkeeps already! I also finished up a pincushion as well, so all in all a good day. 'Scuse all the pictures I was playing with the camera...






































Sunday, the three of us decided to go out to the mountains. We went to both Lake Louise and Banff, but we spent most of our time at Lake Louise. Here are some pictures of our outing... though the temperatures weren't that cold, it was fairly chilly outside thanks to the wind! We had lunch at the Chateau Lake Louise and it was great. Originally we were going to have the afternoon tea (high tea) but thought it would take too long, and just ordered a quick lunch instead. One day though we will go back for the afternoon tea, it sounded yummy!




One of our plans for this summer is to hike up to the tea house at Lake Louise (7km round trip hike). Hubby has never been and I haven't been up there in forever, so we've decided to go have tea up there. If anyone would like to join us, you're more than welcome!