Second Finish in Time for Valentine's Day!

I'm so proud of myself! I'm not usually one to stitch really fast, I think I've said that before a time or two, but I now have my second finish of the year. I got both of the Valentine's presents done!

As you know the first one was for my daughter to give to her boyfriend. I saved "First Bass" for my wonderful husband. He's trying to figure out where to hang his new present now. I think it may end up being hung by the picture of his mom, who taught him how to play music at a very young age.

He's not the mushy type and I revel in the fact that he shows me he loves me every day of the year. So I don't want or need him to spend money on something that is just a thing. I'd prefer for him to make me dinner, as he usually does, and tell me he loves me. I am just waiting for dinner now. Mmmmmm smells good!

I also have been working on my HAED, QS Fire Moon. One thing I love about my camera is it takes really good pictures, that are also very very large. So when I'm editing them to make it so they can be uploaded, I first have them show the actual size. Well since this is such a small stitch size, and the threads are really dark, it's hard to tell if I've missed a leg on one of my stitches. Tonight when I blew this one up to actual size, I could see that I missed the finishing cross on one of the stitches on the second to last row. So when I go back to it, I have to complete that one cross. LOL

I am getting the hang of parking my threads. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. And I am not ending the thread at this point either. I am leaving threads hanging on the right side because that color might be close on the next page so I will already have that color started when I get to it. I'll see how it works once I actually get a page done. Notice I said WHEN, I'm not going to slack off and not finish this. It's a challenge, but fun!

Not sure what I'm going to work on tonight, or if I'm going to work on something tonight. Maybe I'll let my random number generator choose for me. So until next time, Happy Valentine's Day! And Happy Stitching!!!

Framed and back to the Bass-ics as it were

Ok I know you're probably tired of seeing "Here Comes Treble" but I got it framed today, ready to give to my baby girl to give to her sweety on Valentine's Day.

Let me know what you think. I am quite proud of myself and I think the framing job is pretty good for an amateur.

I got back to work on my honey's clef last night. Tonight I'm just a bit brain dead so I'm just taking it easy and biding my time until I'm tired enough to go to sleep. I'm tired, just not sleepy if anyone can relate to that.

I didn't take a pic of last nights progress, so I'll wait until after I do some more on it tomorrow. I might even drag out one of the other projects I started. Just to keep things fresh. I kind of want to get one of my big pieces out again, Autumn Evening, QS Fire Moon, or The Quiltmaker. I'm open to suggestions if anyone cares to voice an opinion.

I have to try to take it easy tomorrow and get as much done around the house while it's quiet. We're having the Super Bowl party on Sunday and I don't do "people" well. So I'll be a little stressed. Thank goodness we have 3 big-ish TV's to go back and forth to, so I don't have to get "stuck" with anyone for the entire time the game is on. I just can't go into my bedroom and hide as I usually do when I get overwhelmed with company, cuz I don't have a TV in my room, I'm not sure how that happened, but for now it is television free.

Ah well, I'll be stitching tomorrow, so until I'm back, Happy Stitching!

Not necessarily an update

The last two days I have been working on First Bass and Here Comes Treble. I decided that my daughter and I will give them to our honey's on Valentine's Day. I don't stitch very fast so I am taking as much time as possible working on them.

Here are the updated pics of both. I'm pretty proud of how they have come along.

I know I said that I'd post the last few of my challenge pieces, but I'm just about out of steam today. It was my birthday and I spent the evening stitching in peace. No one bugging me to do something or go somewhere. It was nice. It also happens that my daughters boyfriend has the same birthday as me, so we've been having our birthday cake together for the last few years. Here's a picture of this years cake.

So tomorrow (later today) I'll try to post those other challenge pictures. Until then, Happy Stitching!

Bought more stash

I pick my hubby up from work every day. It just so happens that on the way to pick him up, is a Michaels. Well since it's my birthday on Friday I thought I'd buy myself a present or two. So I stopped at Michaels to look around at what they still have in their cross stitch section, it seems to shrink every time I go. So, since the last time I was there, they either had a huge sale on cross stitch stuff that they didn't bother to tell me about (how dare they?!) or they are not restocking and going to let it all go away, because that area was practically empty! There was hardly any floss, it's usually overflowing, and the fabric hangers were mostly devoid of product. Well I picked up two large rolls of 16 ct aida, 2 packages of #26 needles and a new gridding pen. On the way past the clearance frames, I found a couple of frames that will fit the Here Comes Treble and First Bass perfectly! So I got 2 of them, I may go back for more so I can do the whole set for my hubby later. All in all a successful trip to Michaels. Oh yeah I got a new glass jar for my TUSAL! I'll post pics of that next month. :)

So last night I did a little more stitching on my day 15 start, which I'll post when I get to that day on these update posts. Tonight I worked on First Bass which I posted last night, so I have an update on that one to post tonight along with the day 10 and 11 starts.

Got a lot more done on this one today. I really love how it's looking and now that I have a frame for it, I can't wait to finish it up! Maybe I can give it to the hubby for Valentine's Day.

I didn't get as much stitched on the Day 10 piece, In God We Trust, as I'd have liked to, but I think once I have a chance to get to it, it will go pretty quickly. I love the PM patterns from Gloria and Pat. I have several more that I'll do at some point. I think I may even brave taking on the Noah's Ark piece eventually. Maybe I'll put it on the list for the 2013 Challenge.

I spent most of Day 11 gridding for this large project. It's called Autumn Evening, I think I got it at Herrschners, pretty sure I did, anyway I love the contrast between the light and dark colors, and I'm a sucker for a beautiful sunrise/sunset. This will take me a long while to finish and I suppose if I can get 1 page done I'll consider it a win. Who knows it might go faster than I think, but I'm not expecting to have this one done by the end of the year.

Tomorrow I'll post the next two days and if an update is required, I'll do that as well. Until then...Happy Stitching!

TUSAL a day late and a thread short.

I just found out about the TUSAL (link over there--------->) and signed up and took my pic. I don't have a glass jar yet, I have been thinking about it and now I have a reason to get one. I currently put my ORT's in a candy bar tin. This probably won't fill up very fast, but again I remind myself, it's not a race. I enjoy stitching at my pace and would probably take another hiatus if I tried to push it.

While I'm here updating this, I'll post the pics of my Day 8 and 9 starts. I haven't added to either of them yet so they're stuck at the first pics progress.

This one is going to my hubby without a doubt. I think I made really good progress on this one for just the short time that I worked on it. I love the colors too. Both of the music clef's use Crescent Colours floss. I might buy more of it because it works up really nice.

A bunch of us are doing or have done this Alphabet Heart. It's a freebie you can get here. I am going to stitch the letters of my last name in a darker variegated thread, that way it stands out more. This one will probably stitch up pretty fast. I just have to get back to it.

I'm not doing any sort of organized rotation. I found a random number generator online that I can set my own range on. I got #15 today, so I'll be working on the day 15 project tonight.

I'm enjoying posting my updates, I think I'll keep it up. Little by little I'm learning new things about this blogging stuff. So until tomorrow...Happy Stitching!