Been busy!

It's been a busy couple of weeks around here - actually, been busy since the end of April.

First off at my second job it's been a little crazy . For those of you who don't know, I work one job 2 days a week and another one three days a week. The 2 day a week job I've been at for about 6 years now. It was full time, but they were hit hard by the economy, and when they downsized, they had to cut me to two days. I wish that wasn't the case, because I LOVE it there, but, alas, it is what it is. The other job, where I work 3 days per week, I've been at for a little over year. We've been downsizing there in the last couple of weeks due to the transfer of a big client. So it has just been crazy hectic THERE! I do accounting, so layoffs mean final checks, and all the other stuff that goes with it.

The last weekend of April / first weekend of May (April 30th/May 1st) we were in Vegas for a long weekend with our bowling league. Gambling didn't go great, but bowling went pretty well. I ended up being the second highest scoring female bowler, Mike was 5th highest for the men. And our team came in third! So I won almost $200 bowling, Mike won about $100. So that was nice!

Then of course, we had Mother's Day - we had a fairly low key celebration - my sister had my parents, my other sister, and us over for a WONDERFUL dinner of tri-tip, crab legs, cheesy potatoes (my contribution), asparagus, salad, and cheesecake! YUM!!!

In the meantime, I finished my dollhouse.......here's THAT picture:

This past weekend was my great niece Alexis's First Holy Communion. She prefers to be addressed by her full name - Alexis Grace! She's a sweetheart, and LOVES being the center of attention. So she was in her element in her princess dress. She is Anthony's older sister (those of you who have been following my blog for a while will remember Anthony - he's the cutie patootie that was treated for kidney cancer two years ago). She has already decided she wants to go to Stanford, and has written them a letter telling them so. Of course, that's still 10 years away!

Finally - if you've lasted this long - I started on my first ever HAED. It's called "Boulevard of Dreams". It's a picture of the Strip in Las Vegas. I gridded the first 10 squares - I figured that will get me thru four pages across. That means I'll be good for a quite a while. I got a LOT of stitching time in yesterday, and completed 2 squares (with quite a bit of overflow). I'm going to try to track my time on this one because I know it will take a LOT of time and I know people will ask.

No pictures of it yet - it's just a blue rectangle right now.

Thanks for checking it out!

Lots of Updates

Finally got to give the birth announcement picture to my niece and great-niece. Yep, that's Payton in my arms, and her mommy, my niece Jillian. Jillian was thrilled. Payton on the other hand didn't seem very impressed....although in her defense, it was time for dinner! LOL

This one is my Just Nan - Queen of the Needle. I've had it out for a couple of weeks, but I still seem to be in a stitching slump at home. The progress I've made on this one has been mostly in the last day or two - so I'm hoping that maybe I'm out of the slump now!

And last but not least, my travel project. It's by The Needle's Content and it's called "Spanish Geometric Sampler. It's a four page pattern, and this was when I finished the first page. There is a little "bleed over" as I went onto the next page if I still had some floss left on the needle. I took this a couple of weeks ago.

Finally - after looking at the HAED (Heaven and Earth Designs) website a number of times and not seeing anything I liked, I heard someone talking about a Chicago pattern. So, I had to check it out, and I LOVED it. So I bought a Chicago pattern and a Las Vegas pattern, both by the same designer. His name is Dennis .... something or other! How's that for helpful??? But if you search on Chicago on the HAED website you'll see it, and if you look at that designer and look at "Boulevard of Dreams" you'll find my Vegas one. As much as I would LOVE to start one or both of them, I am telling myself I HAVE to finish something else first! LOL

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Two Progress Photos

Well, I'm back to my "normal" rotation - so here's a picture of Frederick. I had him out for two weeks, but really only stitched on him one week. For some reason, I just didn't have my stitching mojo this past week. It seemed like by the time I got home from work, did whatever needed to be done around the house, I just couldn't muster up any interest in stitching. Might have been my car situation - which I will explain about at the end of this post. If anyone doesn't recognize it, it's a Dimensions pattern - Frederick the Literate. However - all I'm using of the kit is the pattern. I subbed out the floss for DMC, and the aida for black evenweave.


This next picture is progress on my travel project. It's not the typical travel project because it's not very small - but it makes an awesome travel project because the motifs are very repetitive and it only has five colors. It's not the greatest picture - I thought I took some with the flash and some without, but I don't think any of them had the flash on. The colors are purples and greens - three purples and two greens. This pattern is called "Spanish Geometric Sampler" and it's by "The Needle's Content". I saw someone else stitching it, and really liked it - wasn't easy to find, but 123Stitch was able to special order it for me.

And on to my car saga. We have (well, had) two cars - one is my Explorer, and the other was an 18 year old convertible that my Dad had given of us (because we had been sharing a car). Last Saturday, we were out for the day, and someone crashed into the convertible - the estimate to fix it is $13,000. Not likely to happen, since the high blue book value on the car is only about $2,000. So - now it's a matter of dealing with her insurance and my insurance....what a hassle!

And I did get to deliver the bingo picture and the baby sampler in the last week or two. My friend Diane LOVED the bingo thing - and she did notice her birthdate included in the picture. And yesterday I saw my niece and the baby, and gave them the birth announcement. Her hubby was sick, so I didn't get to see his reaction. My sister took a picture of my niece, the baby, and me, with the birth announcement. As soon as she sends me a copy, I will post it.

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Back from the Framer

I stitched this for a dear friend that we've played bingo with for more than 10 years. Her birthday was back in October, but right before her birthday her father passed away. So, her birthday passed without a bunch of fanfare (as she wanted it) so we bought her a gift card to a restaurant and kept things very subdued. But she's in a little better place now (with the birth of her first grandchild) so even though there's no occasion, I'm giving it to her now. I decided not to mat it because I didn't want it getting too big. We tried frames in every color that's in it, and the red just made the whole thing pop. It's a little set back so that the charms didn't hit the glass. I customized it a little bit by scrambling up the numbers so that her birthdate is included in it. It will be interesting to see if she notices!

And here is the baby birth announcement I did for my great niece. The framer agreed with me that a simple frame and no mat was best - the pink and blue checks make it look already matted (or at least I think they do). The only other frame I might have considered was pink, but they didn't have any pink frames - well, they had one - it was bright pink with glitter all over it! LOL

I'm happy with the way both of them turned out. It's funny, when I look at the picture of the birth announcement, the bottom of it looks a little crooked. I even went and looked at it again - it's not, it must have just been the way I took the picture!

And on a different note - the subject of blog comments came up on one of my stitching boards, and I realized I'm guilty of some bad blog etiquette. I am thrilled when people comment on my blog, but I'm not very good about commenting on other people's blogs. Part of that is because often I feel like all I would be saying is "That's gorgeous", and I feel like that's repetitive. But then I realize I like to hear that about my stuff, so other people probably do to. The other reason is I follow a lot of blogs on google reader. So I often don't even go to the blogs. But I have made a decision to be better about commenting on people's blogs - even if it's just to reinforce other people saying how pretty things are!

So....with that being said - thanks for checking out my blog - and if you have one, and if you post on one of my stitching groups are, odds are I will comment at some point! :-)

Finished the Birth Announcement

Well, I finished my great niece's birth announcement...my first finish of 2011. It's actually been the only thing I've stitched on since I started on it which is not my "normal" system. But I really wanted to get it done.

I made a few changes to the pattern - most noticeably in the center part. I didn't like the "fill in the blank" style of the center, I wanted it to look a little more "formal". So I wrote out the date and stuff. The other thing I changed is the original pattern called for the baby's first and last name - I did first and middle, since the last name is down below with her parents' names. And...since she's a girl, I changed the coloring of the lettering to a dark pink rather than blue.

There are a few other less obvious (at least in the picture) changes - the pattern didn't call for stitching the white background on the wallpaper around the clock, the clock face, the stars (nor did it backstitch around the stars) and one part around Mother Goose's apron. But I thought it looked funny to have floating dots on the wallpaper, and also that it looked funny when the rest of the picture area was solidly stitched.

On Monday, it will go to the framer, so I can't wait. I'm thinking of a white frame - I don't know if it will need a mat - I think the blue and pink squares will kind of act like a mat. We'll see once I get there and we play with mats and moldings.....

Thanks for checking it out!

Update on Fairy Tale Baby

First off, I apologize for the dark picture - I usually play around with taking some with and without the flash, but for some reason, I forgot to when I took the picture.

I didn't post an update last weekend because I THOUGHT I would be done with the stitching of the design (other than the border) by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest and I figured I would post at that benchmark.

Instead, I spent Tuesday evening frogging. The bottom left hand corner is about five or six shades of brown and tan for the ground. On Monday, I went in to fix one solo stitch that I had missed, and then, somehow, forgot which symbol the thread I was using matched up with, so I went ahead and started continuing with that piece of thread on the WRONG symbols. I got a little further along before I realized my mistake. And because there are so many color changes in that area, the threads get kind of interwoven with one another on the back, so frogging gets a LITTLE tough!

I finally frogged it, and finally finished off the stitching of everything except the pink and blue border...and the backstitching. After I took this picture, I started on some of the backstitching, and it does bring the picture to life.

Thanks for checking out my blog - I do appreciate it, and all your comments!

Sad News

The world has sadly lost a wonderful woman, a talented stitcher, and a good friend to many....

Rest in peace Rene LaFrog....you will be missed by many.

You are thought of with every stitch.