365 / 97 - tea, poppies, plants and post

Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Last night my sewing task was to finish some poppy pins and to make an assortment of tea-themed badges... I got lots of tea embroidery done, and did some poppy stitching but didn't have time to finish anything. Ah well.
Here's a shot of my workspace last night, too. Working on the sofa again...
Most of my creative energies (and, you know, my actual energy!) was expended earlier in the day by doing lots of mucking about with plants. My mother laughed at me for using the word "gardening" in relation to my motley collection of much-neglected potted plants but whatever word you want to use I have been doing that :)

My main task yesterday was setting up some new pots outside my flat - some with winter pansies, some with cyclamen and one with a hebe that I bought ages ago and never potted it up (I am frankly astonished that it still lives!). It's all a bit mucky out there still (we need some rain really) but this is what my outside space looks like now:
I have also been attending to many a neglected pot plant inside my house - so many of them have needed repotting for just months and many others needed cutting back etc... I am working my way round them all rather slowly (there are rather a lot of them!) repotting, tidying and taking a few cuttings. This is what my kitchen windowsill now looks like - three little Christmas Cactus plants (grown from cuttings) coming into bloom (one is out of shot), a repotted cyclamen and a whole assortment of cuttings that I'd cut anyway so I'm seeing if they'll root just for the heck of it:(the cuttings are all in tiny little jars that once held dried herbs etc, the greenery and the light glinting off the clear glass looks really lovely).

This is the momma Christmas Cactus, flowering its heart out at the moment next to some baby spider plants and (just at the edge of shot) a rather sorry-looking peace lily!

In other news, the gift guides are back up on Etsy and only one of my items seems to have disappeared post-maintenance & that was where two of my recycled card sets were on the same page of the same section. Also yesterday was a day for lovely post - my brooches arrived from paperiaarre, causing me to gasp at how beautiful they are in real life. I was very pleased to spot one of her brooches in the gift guides, too! This photo really doesn't do them justice but I did want to show the lovely packaging...
Gorgeous printed thankyou note and freebie gift tags, too. Very stylish stuff indeed.

Gosh and I almost forgot - I sold my 400th item on Etsy yesterday! It was part of my 250th order too, so I will be sending out an extra-special bundle of freebies to my lovely buyer :)

UPDATE: My poppy design is now available as a sewing pattern! Visit my shop to see all my printable PDF patterns