Cross Stitch Swap

Trish in MD PM'd me a week or so ago, asking if I'd be willing to trade my issue of Cross Stitch & Needlework that has Halloween Fairy in it; I told her that I was still using the mag for a couple of upcoming plans, but I would be willing to send her the pages for HF. Even though I told her she didn't have to send me anything, she insisted, and yesterday, this is what I got from her:


Three charts right off my LL, and one of those Needlework Cleaners that I have read about, but never seen! How cool is this? Trish definitely went above & beyond - these are wonderful designs, all in trade for a few magazine pages and 3 of the beads that I had left for HF. Thank you, Trish, and I hope you enjoy the Fairy as much as I did, and as much as I will enjoy these!!

Spring? Could it Be? An Update

So, being this is Georgia, we had this last weekend:


To 60s, almost to 70, if not actually 70, and this, this weekend:

 
Which means we are probably in for one more good coating of ice before it's all said & done - probably right after the hyacinths bloom, just like every year :( IF they bloom, since we seem to have a renegade dog in the neighborhood who like to dig in anything WE have mulched.

WooHoo to the American Olympic team! The hockey game against Canada last night was pretty awesome - though I think luck was really on our side. Sorry Trish F :) But maybe we will meet again, hmmm? The bad thing about the hockey teams is, half of our Atlanta Thrashers are all playing for their home team, Russia - Ilya Kovalchuk is a tough competitor. I am glad Apolo Ohno was able to get that 7th medal - that short track is one tough event! I guess I'll be happy for Evan Lysacek, though I really don't like him much, and though I think Plushenko was showing some poor sportsmanship by whining about his win, I do see his point; I remember when they started doing the quad jumps several years ago, and it was all the rage, and the telling mark of the "new" champions - what happened to that, besides this stupid new scoring? I agree with him saying to not push the limits to now include the quad as a requirement is not advancing the sport - because it is supposed to be a sport. Anyway, it just seems that skating is using the NASCAR method, of making everything so even, and using a totally unfathomable scoring system, that it isn't much to watch - who knows what's good? Lysacek had better choreography, but if Takahashi had stuck his landings, I think he would have beat them both... I'll look for him in 2014 :) 

Okay, on to the stitching, of which I had some this past week :) First, I started another of the small Joan Elliott pieces a couple of weeks ago, but have only stitched at lunch a few times. Here is my progress on Imagine:

 
I also started a little Dragon Dreams Valentine Freebie, which is a mystery, because there are no colors with the key - you have to pick your own :) So I did. I don't ordinarily do anything with hearts, but I felt like I needed a challenge, so... I might finish it up this week - I have a lot going on with games & a kid birthday & stitch in Tuesday & Saturday both :) But at any rate, this is how far I got:
 
I also worked on my RR - it has to go out next Monday, so I wanted to do one more block. I started "D", got it about 2/3 done; this I will finish up this week, so it can go north :)


 
My main piece of the week was Knotgarden - and I finally got the Neverending Green Corner #3 DONE!! Next time, I'll see how far I can get on that top section of potted topiaries and the gate. This is the overall (the corner detail is here):


 
And, since I got the green corner done on Friday, to work on Carolyn's piece, when I got to a stopping point on that Saturday, I took out my long-neglected Tanglewood, and got the Dragon done, as well as adding a bit to the tree :) I need to work on this more, too.

 
This week, we have 3 games, Tuesday stitch in, since I didn't go last week, and Saturday, the local group, PINS, gets together. Little Kid's 13th birthday is Friday, but another boy on his team shares his birthday and is having a party, so we'll celebrate with LK either before or over the weekend, so he can go hang out with the other boys. In between all of this, I will try to finish up Carolyn's D and get it packaged up to move on to Jodie, and also work on AD Samplar 4 Saisons. I think I'm going to take Kaleidoscope to the stitch in Tuesday again - it's easy enough to work on that I can't mess it up too bad while talking (though, since I talk with my hands, if I'm stitching, I have to be quiet :) ). And that's the plan for this week, so far as plans go :) Happy stitching to every one this week, and I hope Spring is coming to an area near you (or Fall, for those of you on the Other Side)!

(I have no idea if any of the above pictures are clickable, or not - Multiply is misbehaving today. I tried.)

A Post-Blizzard Update - Further Flurries Expected!

Yes, it's true - we actually had SNOW in Atlanta - and not just a dusting, but actually about 3" up at our house! And it came down fast - see my video of it here. And yes, I took video of it - because it doesn't snow like that here. I also took a video of the Dumb Dog outside in it - his first snow :) Excuse the audio on that one - I wasn't out there in it, and the tv was blasting away as always...

I knew weather was coming - our first high school game is tomorrow - though I doubt I am going to go, since it is away and just a scrimmage. At least DH and Little Kid have a couple more weeks before their club ball starts - but at the rate we are getting precip, they are never going to get a practice in.
Yadda, yadda, yadda - on to the stitching :)
I took Kaleidoscope along with me to Tuesday's stitch in at the Stitch Store, and got two more blocks of it done:

I want to get this done soon, so I can start kitting up Starry Nights that Lori gave me when she finished it. I love the colors in this, and need to get a couple more of hers in the stash. Terrie at the Stitch Store also has Needle Delights' Sierra kitted up - if I had the $$$ sometime when she's having a sale, that might have to come home with me...
During the Opening Ceremonies Friday night and all day Saturday, while being blinded by the snow glare coming in the front windows, I worked on Lyne's wedding sampler; I finally got the first dove completed, as well as all the flowers & ribbon above it!! I can't believe how long that dove took to do - I thought for sure once I got to him, it'd be a breeze. Not so. One section I lost my place many times, and frogged, restitched, frogged, restitched - I finally gave up until I got the backstitching over to that point, so I then knew where I was. But he's done, and I think the other one will be a little easier.

And lastly, my main piece of the week was EGS again, and though I felt like I did a lot on it, it doesn't look like I did much. Though I did have to frog the bottom basin of the fountain that I had put in last time - I was down one row too far :( But that was just a few minutes to fix :) But I did fill in a heck of a lot of green, and some of the wisteria coming down the next column - you'd just have to see the last pic and this one side by side, up close, to notice most of it. man, I thought this fountain scene was going to be a breeze, too, except for the peacock. Maybe the border going fairly quickly lulled me into a false sense of security???


This week, back to Knotgarden and the Green Corner of Purgatory :) I also need to do a 3rd block on Carolyn's RR, so it can be ready to move on the first of March! I'm not going to the stitch in tomorrow, even if I don't go to the game - getting home after 10 just kills me the rest of the week, so I think, when I can, I need to limit myself to every other week. Summer will be better, when I have more energy - and don't have to get the eggheads up, which wears me out at the get-go. I can't make them understand that 1) I hate getting them up as much as they hate me getting them up, and 2) I don't want to get up, either, not at 6:00 every day. Come on May!

I am trying to keep up with the Olympics, though DH seems to have an issue with me watching the figure skating. Ummm, if I can watch hundreds of hours of soccer, then he can suffer through a little bit of Olympic ice skating. WTH? If they continue like last night, the good stuff will be on after I go to bed - I thought being on my continent this time would be an advantage, but so far, it isn't proving to be much of one. It was so sad to watch everything about the Georgian luger - just such a tragedy, and for what? I hope his family can find something positive to take away from it...

Well, that's the highlights for this week - happy stitching, everyone!

Another Monday Update

The Super Bowl is over, a new season of NASCAR has begun, and the weather BLOWS! It must be February :) But I'm not going to complain about the weather just yet - we don't have feet & feet of snow, so I'm good - though I really could use about a week of no rain! The old barometer head has been getting quite the workout the last few months - and frankly, it's tired.

Quick notes on last week tryouts - the Big Kid made his Varstiy team (not really much doubt there), but Little Kid did not make the cut for his middle school team - and we are completely stumped as to why, considering a few of the kids that did make it, who DH has been coaching for a few years now. It's actually stumped several of the parents. But, is it a political thing (DH's club team has played this coach's rec club team before, with LK, and it wasn't pretty for that other team), or did LK just not do something to his satisfaction? Oh well, he says he doesn't care - but I still want to know why. I'm guessing this coach has never actually played the game, he's the school's stuck-ee. Oh well, we'll try again next year. Idiots. But, at least LK won't be completely beat to death by the end of the season - those two years of middle school ball where they also play club ball at the same time are rough on them; Big Kid played 7 games in one week, it was awful. And took all summer to stop aching. Yeah, that's worth it... School ball is so crude, anyway - it's going to be hard enough to watch the high school games - playground rules are not entertaining, if you know what you are watching.

Anyway, on to the stitching - of which there isn't a lot. Between the weather doing a number on my head most of the week, and some serious fatigue (also weather-related, I'm guessing), I didn't have a normal stitching week. I stitched a little bit every day, I think, just not very long. So all my grand plans from last week for what I wanted to work on this week kind of went out the window - I only worked on MTM. No, really, it's the only thing I touched all week! I got 99% of that right-side town's middle building done - I still need to do the last 2 Jessicas when I get home today, before I put it up.
The backstitch detail on that green roof went better this time than it did the first time - I went across each row this time, then came back and did the top-to-bottom lines. But I did have a mild panic attack when I was working the black - the last color I put into that building; the first on in the top town had all those dense Rhodes stitches under the roof, but this side wasn't charted for them, and nothing in the notes telling me to do them that way (the top town was under my Q clamp, so I couldn't actually see it to pick up on that sooner). So I looked at the other two to go, and they aren't charted for the Rhodes, either. Now why is it only the top one? Is that one of those infamous mistakes of hers, or is it by design? Oh well, I'm certainly not ripping anything out and redoing it. It's just a bit odd - though it looks just fine. I may do the bottom one the same as the top one - or I may not. Depends on how much it bugs me between now & then. I looked at photos online of other WIPs, and I guess most of us stitched it as charted, from what I can see in gallery pics. Weird...

In other news, I didn't go to Tuesday's stitch-in, deciding rather to head to bed very early instead. But I did go to the Stitch Store for yesterday's Super Bowl sale. I took TTM with me, wanting to finally make a decision on fabric - which I didn't - and in the process, Terrie, the shop owner, said she was thinking about starting MTM, but she's a little scared of the specialty stitches. So I told her I'd bring mine to the stitch-in this week, if the weather and my head cooperate (more crap moving in tonight/tomorrow - again possible snow); really, I don't think there's anything in MTM that're really that difficult - the Queen stitches on Knotgarden were more problematic to me, since the schematic she includes for them doesn't fit the space to put them in - but I figured it out. So maybe I can nudge her over the edge :)

This week, after I get those two Jessicas done, I get out EGS again (it seems like I just worked on that), and see if maybe I can't do some of the things I planned to do last week - Lyne's sampler, and maybe Kaleidoscope. I may take one of those to the stitch-in tomorrow - or something else entirely. And since the weather has just been awful for so long now, I am really not believing that we haven't been out for a walk lately, and I haven't taken any pictures, really, since we got back from Florida. So here's one I took this weekend:

These aren't just dogs - they are the never-ending source of specialty fibers used in all of my work :)

That's the news - am waiting for the Olympic Opening Ceremonies on Friday - let's see if I get any stitches in that night! Happy stitching this week to everyone!

February 1st - An Update

Wow, here goes another year flying by already!! Weather-wise, I am not impressed by this year so far.The "big storm" came through Friday night, and fortunately, didn't do much at all here - some rain/sleet, and the very tops of the tallest tress had a thing coat of ice Saturday afternoon. But I hear north of us got quite a bit more snow & ice. I was actually surprised how much ice I saw southwest of me when I went to the store on Sunday - a few miles from the house, and every tree was coated - and I didn't have my camera with me :(

Middle school tryouts got canceled Friday, as the storm was moving in (not a big deal for us, but a couple of the schools in our county are waaayyyy out in the sticks, and far enough north that I suspect the might've gotten dumped on - though school is in session today, so still not a big deal, I assume). They resume today, and high school tryouts start today. It's going to be a tense couple of days around here (though they are both shoe-ins, so not really sure where the fear comes from, other than Little Kid hasn't done a school tryout before). In indoor soccer news, Big Kid made it to the semi-final round last Wednesday; I didn't see the games, as I was just too tired to go - been fighting off a cold for the last week, and think I have to now officially declare I have been defeated :(In other sporting news, Ms. Trish has been spreading the Olympic Spirit about; she sent out several RAKs with Olympic goodies in them!! I can't wait for the opening ceremony - I hope we don't have games that weekend, so I can stay up to watch them!

On to the stitching! My main project for the week was Lady & Unicorn, which, as usual, didn't get a whole lot of time; I think I only put in about 6 hours total for the week on it, which sadly, is only about 300-400 stitches. I just wasn't up to it a couple of nights, fighting off this cold and being fatigued. I did finally get into the groove last night, of course - right before I had to put it up for the week :( But hey, any progress is good progress, right?
I have moved the previous album down and made a new one for this year's progress, but I'll link the previous picture here, if you want to try to spot the difference :) And here is the current overall - from the scroll down, anyway.I also did another letter on my current RR, Carolyn's. I really like this color combination she picked out - this Weeks linen is such a nice color, lends itself well to so many things. It's basically a non-mottled Days Gone By, and you guys know how I love that fabric - only 1 completed BoInk and MTM & Celtic Banner WIPs on it :) Anyway, I got the letter "C" done - cows & chickens, how awesome are they?

I also did another motif on Mary Wigham - I've been itching to get to that carnation, so I could use my BeRedded :) Wow do I love this red from Vikki!! I steer clear of lipstick reds, so it's got to be deep to grab me - what do you think?


The green here is BeFrogged - the other green motif, there upper left, is BeLeaved. I love these colors - and I haven't even used but just a few so far!!! And I really will have to use more of this linen - I can't get over how nice it is, even the odd slub doesn't bother me like some others have in the past :) Of course, having a SHOP to look at stuff in now really helps...

And speaking of shops, at last week's Tuesday night stitch-in, and during lunch last week, I got great progress on Dream. In fact, it now is completely stitched, just waiting for beads, which I hope to get to today, if my head will quit thumping for a bit :)


I will start Imagine this week, on another Silkweaver solo. I'm liking these little spur-of-the-moment projects that become finishes :)

This week, back to Medieval Town, and hopefully getting the better part of the right-hand town done! I don't know if I'll go to this week's stitch-in or not - depends on how my head feels tomorrow after work. I would like to work on Lyne's sampler, and maybe Kaleidoscope over the weekend :) I am also planning to shop JJ's Super Bowl Sale this weekend, and have them order me the PTP Haunted for Sleepy Hollow :) Then I am done stashing for a while! Until next week, Happy Stitching, everyone!