The Next Round - an Update

The next round, as in, the US Women's Soccer team made it through to the next round of the World Cup, after getting screwed REPEATEDLY by poor reffing against Brazil, and STILL managing to pull out the win!!! It took 120+ minutes, and all came down to PKs, and one great save by Hope Solo - though Abby Wambach's fabulous header at the last possible moment was pretty spectacular, too! Not to bore you with details, you can read & see video here if you want :)

 
Now we just need to pull out all the stops and beat France - that bogus send-off [Buehler? Buehler?] hopefully won't factor into it, and hopefully Wambach & Rapinoe can get 'em in the net!

And really, that's about the highlight of the week. For various and sundry reasons, there was not a lot of stitching, despite having Monday & Tuesday off. I was on the phone an inordinate amount of time this week - suffice it to say, since I am NOT a phone person, it made me a little bit cranky :(

 
(geddit - cranky, storm clouds? Because I'm stormy when I'm cranky? Not funny? Well, :b~~~~~~~~~~~)

On Tuesday, I went to a stitch in, and I worked on Tanglewood. I got a whole branch outlined, and then *gasp* got part of it filled in! Yes, at the SAME stitch in! Weird, huh? THAT'S how you can tell I'm getting down to the nitty gritty on Tanglewood, the branches are getting smaller :)



Gotta move over to the other side as soon as I get this branch done, though, if I am not mistaken, when I worked on Natalie's for our RR a couple years ago, I went over the top and down the right to get to the peacock - so we'll see which way I actually go when I get that far :)

The only other thing I touched was Knotgarden. Now, for anyone who's done a big mandala, I think we can all agree the repetition is the killer. I would just like to state for the record that I am NOT impressed that this thing is kicking and screaming the closer I get to the end. The inner yellow border with the green eyelets, it turns out, is harboring frogs. GGAAHHHHH!!!! I won't even mention that it's the wrong damn color, or it was before I played a little trick on it with one strand of the right color. Good thing I got some of the gate in so I can see the mistakes :( I don't want to put it down - but I really want to put it down for a bit, you know what I mean? Considering I didn't stitch Monday, Thursday, or Saturday nights at all, it's not like I slaved away over it - and maybe that's it, maybe it's mad at me for ignoring it. Well, too bad! Here is where I got on the gate (that middle topiary, not shown, IS also completed now):



So, for the week, not much to show for it - other than a huge deficit in my cell minutes. As for this week? Well, I just don't know yet. I am reallllyyyy tempted to get Rainforest Crunch out and at least try a few stitches in it, to see if the 18ct linen I got is going to work for me, or if I am going to be unhappy with it unless I do it on canvas. I really don't want any more WIPs, but yet - I want to start EVERYTHING I have kitted - which, when my Carrie's Thread's get here from Karen at Wasatch, will now also include FWD's Eclipse and also IC Mother Maya. Just for the record, that brings my Kitted up to easily DOUBLE my WIPs, maybe even TRIPLE - so you see, I could really just go off the deep end, if I so choose :) Good thing I am literally out of space to keep any more WIPs, and that's with two of the bigger ones still out traveling!

All of which means - check back next week to see what I actually worked on - because as of this minute, your guess is as good as mine :) Happy Stitching this week to everyone!