Update and Birthday

Since I posted in the middle of the week about my grandson Kai's birthday, I figured I'd start with that. He had his birthday party at the zoo. It was so hot I just couldn't go walking too much so I only have a few pictures of a couple of animals. But I have a few of the kids playing and a fabulous shot of a peacock that decided to come visit.
So please excuse me, this post is going to be heavy on pics for a change.

Literally a foot away from me.

Kai just before he chased the peacock away for the 2nd time.

There are 3 river otters inside that log. It was too hot even for them to come out to play.

Can't believe we got all of the kids to sit for about 30 seconds.

 

My hubby had baked a cake earlier in the day, so we turned it into a birthday cake, since we missed the cupcakes at the zoo.

The Birthday boy, Kai

Big brother Sky.

Kai and Skylor playing with the swords I bought them.

I did spend part of the week stitching on my Sea Otters. I love this cute design. I should have it completed when it comes around on the RNG next. First, where I left off, then where I ended up today.

Maybe I should have done the eyes and ears backstitching, he looks a bit odd without them defined.

Again, I have not "spun" the RNG to find out what's up this week, so I guess I'll surprise you with my next post. So until next time, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and week ahead!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Independence Day! I have spent the day stitching, just like I told my hubby I would. It has been a very relaxing day, until it started raining, which sent my hubby into fits. He hates it because the roof leaks in his studio out back. We have to get that fixed soon.

The RNG came up with #13 last week, so I have been working on my sea otters this week. It's funny because when I went to my grandsons birthday party at the zoo on Sunday, (pictures later this week) I purchased a couple more otters to add to my collection. One of these days, I will get a good picture of the whole shelf.

Anyway, I'll post more and birthday pics at the end of the week. Have a happy 4th and a wonderful rest of the week!

Where have I been?

Hello Friends!

I feel like I have been away for so long, I have been working so much overtime and enjoying my house being virtually empty of people that I haven't been doing much stitching or anything else, for that matter. I have been watching a bunch of movies for some reason.

I did finish the baby announcement for my friend at work, now all she has to do is have the baby and I can complete it with the name, birth date and frame it. We're all so excited at work, can't wait for our baby to be born. Yes we've all decided that she's ours.

 I can't wait to give it to her. I just hope she likes it.

I have been working off and on on the Train of Dreams SAL, I have decided that since I have completed the birth announcement for now, I'm going to get back to my Random Number generator and get my challenge pieces back in the mix. I have added the ToD to the list and another birth announcement since I just found out that my daughters best friend is pregnant too. I have a lot more time to do hers, so I should be able to get it done in time as well.

This is what I'm going to do for my daughters bestie. I bought this in the late 90's and have had it stashed ever since, I pulled it out of storage and the fabric is stained and the little bit of stitching I had started is dirty too so I'm just going to start all over. The floss in the kit has an odd musty smell so I have to convert the Bucilla floss colors over to DMC, no problem there.

 Now then, here's the TofD progress, just to keep you up to date with where I am on it.

 I've done a little more since that last pic, but not enough to warrant a new photo yet. I am really enjoying working on this, but I think I need a little break. Confetti is giving me headaches right now.

So I'll get back on soon and update with whatever the number generator comes up with. So sorry it has been a couple of weeks between posts, but I think things are slowing down a bit and the newness of having an empty "nest" is wearing off. See you soon and have a wonderful week! For those of us in the States, Have a safe 4th of July and if you are lucky enough to have fireworks, please televise them for us here in AZ, all of ours have been cancelled I believe.

I Feel Like I'm Cheating...

It's odd, but I feel like I have been cheating on my 2012 challenge pieces. I have not touched one of them for weeks! I have a reason, but it still feels like I'm being disloyal. I know it's ridiculous, but....

Here's where I got on A Star is Born. The little mama is still holding on, I don't think she's going to make it to her due date, but if she doesn't I can finish this fairly fast.

I'll finish the last of the stars this week and get started working on the backstitching. I can't wait to see her face when I give it to her.

I worked on the Train of Dreams SAL last weekend and haven't looked at it all week so I didn't make a huge amount of progress, but I can definitely see how even just a little bit of progress can keep me motivated. I may not keep updating each week, but I will keep taking pics and will update at least once a month. I like having both pics together to compare on this one.

Had date night with my hubby last night and tonight I'm taking my daughter out for a belated birthday dinner. Tomorrow hubby and I are going to a Scorpions concert. He plays in a Scorpions tribute band so he'll really enjoy it. I just hope it doesn't rain since the concert is outside and we have lawn seats.

I hope to have more pics for my next post. So until then, Happy Stitching!!

Not such a great week, but progress.

This week has been hectic and frustrating and a couple of other things and I'm glad it's over. My daughter turned 25 on Tuesday. I really was looking forward to taking her our to dinner at her favorite restaurant and had it all planned out, but wouldn't you know it, the money I had set aside for dinner got taken out to pay the car insurance! I mean, what? I need insurance on my car? Oy! The timing just couldn't have been worse. So I couldn't take her out for dinner on her birthday, but I will take her out next week, this time to her other favorite restaurant since her boyfriend did take her to the favorite. I did get to make her requested birthday "cake", however, and it was DEEEEEElicious!

Make a wish!

Yes, it was a chocolate pudding pie! And she blew the candles out so hard, she knocked them over. When my son asked if she made a wish she said, "I don't need to make a wish, I already have everything that I want." What an awesome kid! So happy to have her in my life.

The rest of the week just seemed to get away from me. I did get some progress on my birth announcement, but didn't finish it, like I'd planned. But here's the progress on that one.

This is so darn cute, I really want to finish it up quickly so that when my friend has her baby I can give it to her mom (who also works at my office) as soon as I get the name and date on it and get it framed, probably the following Monday, whenever that may be.

I worked on the SAL all week, off and on as my mood allowed. I spent most of the week battling a case of the blahs. Depression hadn't set in until last night. So here's the progress I made over the past basically 2 weeks.

I saw in the enlarged photo that I missed a leg on one stitch that I'll have to go back and fix, because even if you can't see it, I know it's there and it will drive me crazy knowing that I didn't take care of it.

Can you see it?

I finally got a version of Adobe Reader that will allow me to highlight my progress on the chart. This was very frustrating for me since I love the paper print out and all, I just can't see it very well. Now that I have the updated version that will allow me to highlight it, I can zoom in and highlight and see it without straining my eyes. YAY!!!!

I found out some really disturbing news about one of my cousins this week and I'd really appreciate any prayers and good thoughts for his health and welfare. He and his brothers have been more like brothers to me than my own brothers at times. I'm pretty heartbroken for him right now.

I'm hoping this week will see me cheering up a little bit more and I'll get more done on the birth announcement and then maybe I can get back to my crazy 15 rotation and get some of them worked on too. Wish me luck?

Have a wonderful week!

Baby announcement progress

This week I worked almost exclusively on the baby announcement for my friend at work. I didn't really plan on giving it to her at the baby shower today, but I did hope to have it close to finished. I did make great progress on it and I will work on it again this week until it's ready for the new baby's name and date of birth. I'm really happy with what I got completed.

It is definitely a quick stitch. I didn't get to touch it one night so I'd say another day or two and I'll have it ready for back stitching. We had the baby shower today and we succeeded in surprising our friend! She had no idea that we were planning this for a couple of weeks. One of our managers almost let the cat out of the bag today though, he caught himself just in time. Thank goodness for that. I was a bad girl and didn't take my camera so I have to wait to get pictures from one of our other girls who did remember.

I was working on my SAL last weekend a bit, devoted a little more than a day because the other girls are blowing me away in their progress. I'm enjoying it anyway so I'm not too worried about falling behind. I will take another picture on Sunday but here are the progress pics for the Train of Dreams.

If I can finish the stitching on the baby announcement I'll roll the number generator to find out what is next and post an update during the week if I can.

Tuesday is my wonderful daughter Sami's 25th birthday. She's probably my best friend aside from my hubby. I'm taking her and her boyfriend and my hubby and son out for dinner at her favorite restaurant Red Lobster. The boys aren't really seafood people, they'd prefer steak to seafood any day of the week. They will order whatever else they can find that isn't fish and be happy about it....or else! LOL

So here's hoping that you have a wonderful and relaxing week ahead and I hope you all find time to treat yourself to something special this week. See ya next time!

Restart and an update

Hey everyone! I hope you are having a great start to your weekend. I'm on a roll I think. I even got a quick nap in this evening. This week was a weird one for my stitching. I really tried to work on my 22 ct Fire Moon, but the way I have to have it set up on my stand, under the magnifier, I have to sit all hunched over in order to see it, and my back was screaming at me after only a few minutes. I did stick it out for an hour or two and only got 1 row done before I decided that my best bet would be to get a swatch of my 16 ct out and cut it to size and start over. So I did!

This is where I was with my 22 ct last time I worked on it.

And after restarting on the 16 ct here's where I got up to as of this morning.

Oh yeah I caught up and passed where I was, definitely much easier for me on the larger count, considering the 22 ct got worked on 3 times before that top picture. So I think I'll have a good chance of completing at least 1 page of this project this year.

On May 15th, my hubby had to go for his first colonoscopy, the poor baby didn't like the prepping for it one bit, not that I blame him. So I took the day off to be there to support him and bring him home once it was over. I took along one of my portable pieces, the Bugs Bunny bookmark, on 14 ct vinylweave. I had taken it with me the last time he had a procedure done, in February, but I forgot to take after pics, so this progress is a little misleading. Here is where I left off the last time I took a picture.

Just for reference, after the last procedure I had completed the D and started the first 3 rows of the right leg of the A. This is where I left off last Tuesday.

Unfortunately, I had to sit for a couple of hours waiting, I did a lot of people watching too, since the hospital cafeteria is a very busy place. I made pretty good progress for me in just a short stitching period. Eventually I'll hit on this for a weeks worth of stitching, it still hasn't come up on the number generator. Once it does come up, I'm sure I'll come real close to finishing it or perhaps even completing it and starting my Marvin the Martian bookmark, which is covered up by the vinylweave of this one.

We started the Train of Dreams SAL. We're working on it at least once a week and then posting our progress for each other to follow on our FB group. Since I'm also posting here, this is my progress after only about 2 hours of stitching last week when I was super busy.

I decided that this week I was going to devote a full day to stitching this, for right now it's mostly just black so it will stitch up pretty fast. I'm doing this one on 18 ct, so it won't go as fast as the 16 ct but infinitely faster than the 22 ct would have been. I must tip my hat to all of you who can stitch on linen and other super fine count fabrics. I just can't until I get a better floor stand that isn't quite so low to the ground, or a better, lower stitching chair.

This week I'm going to work on the birth announcement for one of my co-workers. She and I started together almost 2 years ago. We're having a baby shower for her next Friday, a luncheon shower at work, which NEVER happens anymore. I really hope she likes it. I want to see if I can get this done by Friday, probably not, but I'm certainly going to try.

Thanks to all who have left comments on my posts! I love hearing from you. For those of you in the US, Happy Memorial Day! and for those of you in other parts of the world, have a wonderful and stitchy weekend!

TUSAL #5

I let the new moon get away from me. This past weekend was absolutely insane for me busy-wise. I don't know what happened. Here's my ort jar for this new moon. I got lazy and just put it up on my project case this month.  If you are interested in getting involved with the TUSAL, head on over to Daffycat's page and sign up, it's never too late to start!

I do need to put a little update on my QS Fire Moon, I started over. I'll explain more when I post my update on Friday.

I hope everyone has a safe rest of the week, it's going by fast, or not, but I'm definitely ready for a long weekend!

It's Contagious!

Okay, so it's not really contagious, or maybe it is...decide for yourself.

I have been following quite a few blogs, as you can probably tell if you look at the list over there. ----------> And some of the posts I have looked at drooled over, are either knitted or crocheted. I used to know how to knit, very simple straight (don't even know the name of it) type of stitch. You know, in, wrap, over, out type of thing. I actually have crocheted a couple of blankets and many granny squares, but never knew how to connect them so they just kind of went away some where...I wonder if there's a black hole that sucks in old crafy leftovers, like next door to the one that is full of odd socks? Anyway, I digress, I saw on Milly's page a link to a ripple pattern that she is using to create a blanket (a Rainbow blanket!) for her car. So I went to the link she posted where she got the pattern from and it looks simple enough that a rusty crocheter, like me, could even follow it.

Well, last night I went to Walmart looking for general stuff I needed around the house, and I remembered that my store was to be one of the lucky stores that was going to get cross stitch stuff stocked. I went looking for it where the other sewing stuff has been for the last 12 years, and I noticed that the yarn was gone and no cross stitch stuff was in evidence. There were a few bins that had yarn on clearance but nothing else, it was spooky. For once there was actually someone there that I could ask where it all went. They moved it to where the silk flowers are?!?! Who would have even considered this as being sensible...anyway I found that the floss and cross stitch patterns were there already just waiting for me to come and get what I need.  Wait a minute, this was supposed to be about the yarn...in the clearance bins, there were 10 skeins of a nice variegated purple yarn that would make a very nice throw for me to use in the winter when I'm watching TV. So I got all 10 skeins and then bought a couple of crochet hooks. So I am now attempting to create this pattern from the instructions and my memory of what I used to be able to do.

But it's all your fault! If you all weren't so proficient at this knit-y crochet-y kind of stuff I wouldn't have even been tempted to pick it up again. I live in the desert for crying out loud! Who needs a blanket in the desert where it's 105 degrees every day in the summer!?!? LOL Sorry I just had to have someone to blame it on, because I certainly can't take responsibility for ANOTHER obsession.

I do have an update on one of my cross stitch pieces. Last week the lovely random number generator kicked out a 10, meaning I would spend the week working on my In God We Trust piece. Here's where I left off last time.

I was hoping to get all of the cobblestones done this week, but I got caught up in the crocheting and a lot of season finales on TV this week. I did get close to completing them. Here's where I am now.

I can almost see the puppy in that void already. Next time, I will get the puppy done too. And maybe my little headless Precious Moment boy will have hands and a face too.

I checked already for next weeks project and it looks like I'll be working on the QS Fire Moon. My first HAED, soon to be joined by the SAL Train of Dreams. We should be starting that in a couple of weeks. So I'm going to try to get a handle on the blanket thing and work on Fire Moon this week. So until next time, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and week ahead!

Some Progress and other pics.

Hello everyone! Thanks to all who have commented on my recent posts. It warms my heart to know that I'm not the only one looking at my posts.

So last week we had the SUPER moon as you all probably know, if you didn't....where have you been?!?! :-) I did go outside and take a couple of pictures of it just to see what I could capture.  When I took this one, the security light was on at the corner of my house, I was at the end of my driveway, with the camera sitting on my neighbors fence post (it's made of concrete so it's very stable).

The moon looks pretty big there and you can really see the street even though it was relatively dark.

Now, this one is after the light went out and I made sure not to move or the light would have come back on.

I thought is was really odd how when there was some extra light, the moon appears much larger than when there was no extra light. Interesting how the appearance changes even though the two pictures were taken less than 5 minutes apart, from the exact same position.

Ok, now for my stitching update. I worked on The Quiltmaker this week. I really worked a lot of overtime so I didn't have a lot of free time to stitch, and when I did it was very slow going. I know this is going to be the slowest part for me to stitch just because there are so many different colors and I have a hard time choosing one or two to work on at any given time. This is where I left off last time.

I was really tired of gold by the time I finished the last week of working on this. So I decided I was going to put some "color" into it. Well wouldn't you know that the symbol I picked to work this week, was even lighter! So I did look for a real colorful color to do and got a blue that I could do. So here's what I got done this week.

Not a lot, but it's ok because I'm not stopping, and eventually I'll get past this thing of too many choices to make at once and I can concentrate better. This design is too pretty to stop working on it.

Now I noticed (again) when I was editing my pictures tonight that my camera is AWESOME! I have the camera set to the "Best" setting for resolution. So when I take the pictures off the camera I have to reduce the size so I can post them here. In order to do it, I set it to View Full Size, then change the image size to 1024 x 768. Tonight I cropped a small portion of the full sized picture and then added it to the full one as a zoom in. Here's my composite picture.

I must say...I LOVE my camera!

The number generator came up with 10 for this week. So I'll be working on In God We Trust for the week. Let's see how much I can get done on that before next Friday. I am really chomping at the bit to get started on my Train of Dreams SAL, but the other girls aren't quite ready. So I'm patiently waiting.

I hope you have a wonderful relaxing Mother's Day (for those of you in the US) and a fabulous weekend for everyone!

Shopping trip...more stash!!

I am getting all my materials ready for the Train of Dreams SAL. I ordered and received my fabric from 123stitch. Purchased and printed the chart and tonight I got to go shopping at Joann Fabrics and bought all my floss.

I also got a kit and the latest CS Gold that we have here.

I'm winding bobbins as I watch tv rather than stitching. I find The Quiltmaker doesn't hold my interest as much as some of my other projects, but I'm not going to give up. I know that the area I'm stitching is probably the most detailed and at times tedious, but I am plugging away and I have actually added some blue this week, so it's not so bad. I'll have another update on it on Friday. So until then...Happy Stitching!

7671 Days and Counting (cross stitch)!

I spent the week working on my Halloween design. It is the first time I have gotten it back out since I started it on January 5th. Surprisingly, I got most of it done, but it will take one more turn through the rotation in order to complete it. Here's where I started last Friday.

And this is where I leave off today. I was a lazy girl yesterday and didn't stitch after working for a couple of hours overtime last night. But a put another section of the border in this morning before work (was late leaving too!).

I think this week I'll be working on the Quiltmaker again. I think I'll work on some color this time, the gold about drove me nuts last time.

I'm going to be starting a SAL in a couple of weeks/days not sure which with a few other Randal Spangler fanatics. We're going to be stitching Train of Dreams. I have the fabric on the way from 123stitch, so that means it will be here tomorrow or Monday. Can't wait! I'll have to head to the store to buy the floss just for this. It's my first SAL so I'm really excited.

You may be wondering about the 7671 days thing, well I am celebrating a milestone today. 21 years ago I got clean and sober and decided to take it one day at a time, and when I figured out how many days it was, it came up to 7671 days....there have been 6 leap years in that time. I don't make a big deal out of it so much anymore but I thought that the number of years was pretty ironic.

So as I have to let my geek out a little bit today, May the Fourth be With You!

Happy Stitching!