HAED Progress

Well, after another week of stitching, I've finished another three rows of blocks of stitching (roughly 2,400 stitches, plus the overflow into the next row). Now it will get put away for another week while I work on another piece. You can kind of see mountains coming into focus in the picture......

Thanks for checking it out!

Finished another page

Well, I finished another page of my "Spanish Geometical Sampler". This has been my travel project forever (it seems). It's a perfect travel project even though it's a little big. Because things repeat it doesn't take a lot of counting (you just have to follow along with what you've previously stitched.

It's a four page pattern, and I just finished page 2. But that's really more than halfway done with the stitching, because pages 3 and 4 aren't full pages. But then again, I'm probably less than halfway done because it gets beads as well.

Thanks for looking!

Progress Picture

Here is my latest progress on my Blue Ribbon Designs project - the name of it is something like "Letters, Leprechauns, and Luck" (or something along those lines!). I'm liking it - it's an easy stitch - the little extra partially stitched squares are just to use up the end of a piece of floss.....

Thanks for checking it out.

Perspective

Well, this picture was to try to give some perspective on just how LITTLE progress I've really made on my HAED. I shouldn't minimize it, a start is a start, right?

The pages of the pattern are (approximately) 8 squares across and 10 squares down, so 80 squares to a page. There are 35 pages (not all complete pages, but for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to say they are full pages. So, that makes 2,800 total squares. I have completed 24 squares (plus some fractional ones, but I only count "full" squares. That means I am approximately 0.86% of the way done! LOL

To add to the ambitiousness of the project, I am not working only on this. I have a total of four "home" projects and one "travel" project in a rotation. The travel project is a repetitive geometric design, so it's ideal for travel. I don't want my other three home projects to get neglected. So I'm going to work one week on this project, then a week on project A, then a week on this one, then a week on project B, etc. So I will stell get time in on my other projects.

Thanks for checking it out...

Started my First ever HAED

Well - I did it!!! I took the plunge! This is the beginning of my first ever HAED! It's a design called "Boulevard of Dreams" and it's a picture of the Las Vegas strip at dusk. So the sky is all sorts of blues and purples.

I gridded just the horizontal lines (except for the left hand edge) because I figured as long as I could find the four corners, I could "make" the square out of it. I was too anxious to start, so I only gridded the first ten lines (the pages are 98 stitches long, so ten rows gives me the first pages going across.

The pattern calls for 2 threads on 25 count - I can't imagine how you would begin to do that. I'm doing 1 over 1, and the coverage is fine. I have another picture, which will show just how small this portion is in comparison to the whole picture. However, I've been struggling to get the pictures to post in Blogger. I finally got this one to post by going into Picasa and choosing the "Blog This" option. However you can only do one picture at a time that way.

I also have been keeping track of my time. Since this is a stitch at home project, I've built an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the time, and I've been counting full squares as "done". Obviously, I cross over into other squares, so the time I've spent and the number of completed squares aren't REALLY a clean match. So far, there are 24 completed squares, and I've stitched for 32 hours. But I don't strictly stitch - the television is always on, and the computer is next to me so I am periodically "distracted".....LOL

Anyway, thanks for checking it out....I think I'll post the other picture on a second blog post. Or maybe I'll see if I can edi this and add a picture. We shall see!

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!