Almost there!

I've been working on "Here Comes Treble" for the last few days. Here are the updated photos.

I should be able to finish this up completely by the end of the week. Maybe even tomorrow while the hubby is out playing with the band.


I started a new job at work this week. So we've been learning new things and it's been making me a bit thick headed. So much info and new processes we have to learn for this new position. I'm loving every minute of it though so I'm not complaining. But BOY does my brain hurt at the end of the day. Thank goodness for my stitching, it has helped me unwind and get ready for bed at night.

On a more serious note, hubby has had some liver issues since he was a teenager and got hepatitis. Thanks goodness he quit drinking in the late 1970's so that has helped him out a lot, but recently he's been experiencing some pain. He has to go to a liver specialist due to the results of his blood work. Some of his levels are elevated so they want to do a biopsy. I'll keep positive, but it is a bit worrisome. Just send some positive thoughts our way, if you please. I'd really appreciate it.

So I'll see how close I can get to finishing the treble clef tonight and then dive into the bass clef as soon as I'm done. Until next time...Happy Stitching!

Here Comes Treble update and Days 14 & 15

Yesterday got away from me and I was so tired by the time I realized I hadn't posted updates, I just went to bed. So I took a new pic of Here Comes Treble with a bunch more done. I'll be working on it again in a few minutes, so updates at some point tomorrow probably.

Looking like I should be able to finish this in the next few sittings, even though I only stitch a little at a time. I'm really liking this series.

Day 14 is the Minnesota Twins logo, another one for my hubby. He's a huge fan of the Twins. I'll probably turn this into a trivit. I did one of these for a stitchy friend of mine for her birthday since she's a big fan too.

Day 15's project came from Ink Circles and is a freebie. I have a sister-in-law that is a breast cancer survivor and so this one means a lot to me. I have worked on it a second time for about 10 minutes.

I know not much extra done, but once I get going on it, I should be able to really rock it. That's the nice thing about using variegated floss, you can make color changes without having to switch threads!









Done for the night I think so, until next time...Happy Stitching!

Days 12 and 13

Day 12, oh Day 12, how I grumbled at myself. I spent most of the evenings available stitching time gridding. And not just ANY gridding, but gridding on a spot of fabric that doesn't have any stitching on it! Oh how foolish I felt. BUT the good thing is, I learned a lesson from it. I won't be doing that again. Yes, I do try to learn from my mistakes. I try to learn from others mistakes too, cuz I know I won't live long enough to make them all myself. :)

So once I discovered my big waste of time, I was pretty deflated and demoralized and figured the best thing I could do was put a few stitches in and put it up for the night, I'd come back to it later when its number came up again. These are my few stitches, at the top of the area that will get stitching. "Ah well, live and learn", as the hubby says.







This is what I got done on the next stitching session. Not too bad, huh? I started at the center where the quilt is located. When I get back to it, I'll try to put some of the blues in, just for a bit of contrast.

I bought this pattern about a million years ago. Ok so I exaggerate, it WAS about 10 years ago though, before I took my long vacation from stitching. I even bought the major colors in the pattern, so I'd have all the same dye lot. I just didn't have the fabric for it, and I couldn't find it. Not really sure I looked very hard for the fabric either. The pattern was quite intimidating to me, but I really loved it. So now that I have been introduced to Mystic Stitch and HAED patterns I am not so intimidated by this one. It doesn't have nearly the amount of confetti as the others and not full coverage of the cloth. It's also got fairly large blocks of color to make it faster.



Day 13 was another evening spent in frustration. I had planned on doing one of my sea otter patterns.

The chart for this looks like it was hand drawn and very small and dark. I have a scanner that is "supposed" to be able to enlarge areas, but I couldn't seem to make it work this night. Oh how I struggled with it. So I tried another one of the sea otter patterns that I have, no pic of it, sorry. The chart for that one also was hand drawn in appearance, but it was larger, and I could actually see it to try it out. Well the fabric I was going to do this one is a 20 count Lugana. I'm NOT a linen stitcher. I have always used Aida and I've never had a problem with tension or stitches laying well. OMG is linen different! Apparently my style of stitching is NOT meant for linen. So I frogged all of what I managed to put in the linen. Bailed on the idea of doing the really detailed version of my sea otter and quit for the night.


Not one to give in and completely give up, on day 16 I had a Day 13 Redux.

I found some hand dyed Aida fabric, from one of my stitchy friends on the 2012 Cross Stitch Crazy Challenge group, and my Endangered Young 'Uns booklet that I bought to work on for a charity quilt, and started again. I didn't do a whole lot due to time constraints, but I did finally give day 13 a proper start.

My friends and family chose 13 in one of my random number requests, so I worked on it again the next night and got a bit more done. So I am FINALLY working on an otter piece for myself. Yay!!









Later this evening, I'll post more progress pics from the bass and treble clefs. Thanks for playing along with me on this journey.

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!

Update...

I spent the evening working on QS Fire Moon. Got a bit more done. I think my eyes are about tired out from that. Dark colors are pretty hard to work with, especially at night. Here's an updated pic.

Even more of my first 15 days of the Cross Stitch Crazy Challenge.

I have been looking at fellow stitcher's blogs and seeing different things that I'd like to add to mine. As with anything computer-y or tech-y, I just jump right in and make changes without reading the manual. I have a hubby that I call Manual Man! He's my super hero. He reads tech manuals for fun (the weirdo). So I just go clicking around on the edit pages until I find what I want, then click on the preview to see if that's what I really wanted to do. And lo and behold! I found how to make the tabs show at the top of the page AND how to make additional pages, not that I have any other pages to make at the moment. Oh yeah, I hate looking stupid, so there are some questions I just don't ask in public. So maybe I'm getting better at this blogging stuff.

Anyway, tonight's posting is from Day 6 and Day 7. I have recently (like the last 6 months) been introduced to HAED (Heaven and Earth Designs) and of course like a lot of "novice" stitcher's I've been a bit intimidated by the sheer size and number of stitches, as well as the number of colors. So I bought a QS (Quick Stitch), it's still really involved, but not quite as large. My Day 6 start was my first HAED, QS Fire Moon.

I totally love how it will look when it's completed, providing I do a good job on it.

I have decided that I will be doing this one row at a time. Filling in stitches in the middle of already completed areas is just a bit too hard on my old eyes. So while I'm working on this completely intimidating pattern, I'm also going to be learning about parking my threads. It seems to be working so far.

I also found that the Q-snaps are great for keeping the fabric tight and helping me to keep track of the parked threads. I'm so glad I invested in them. I think I will be going back to The West (link over there--->) to get some more.

Day 7 is called "Here Comes Treble". It started out being for my hubby, who is a musician. But my daughter saw it and asked if I would give it to her boyfriend, who is also a musician. Well my hubby plays bass in a couple of bands and since Day 8 is called "First Bass", I'll give him that one alone. So this one is going to my daughters boyfriend.

I have made progress on this one since I actually worked on it a couple more times since the beginning of the challenge.

What I did was ask my friends on my Facebook page to pick a number between 1 and 15. Well two people chose 7 and so I worked on this one for a little while that evening. I absolutely love the richness of the colors in this piece. I bought the specialty floss to go with the pattern rather than using the DMC-ish (their words) replacement. This pattern, as well as, Days 8 and 15 came from Ink Circles.

The next night I did the same thing on one of the Challenge page, and again two people picked 7. So I worked on it again. Both evenings I had a couple of people pick 13 and then 12, so I did extra work on them the following night. I'll post those progress pics in a couple of days when I post the first shots.

I really like how this one is progressing. I think it will be really nice when it's done, probably not going to be done in time for his birthday, since it's this Friday, which incidentally, is also my birthday. So maybe in time for my daughter to give to him for Valentine's Day. We'll see how it goes.



I'm off to stitch more on Fire Moon tonight so I may add that pic later on. Tomorrow, I'll post days 8 and 9. Until then, Happy Stitching!

More updates from the first 15 days and beyond

While I really wanted to stitch this afternoon, I got so caught up in the NY Giants winning against the SF 49ers, I didn't stitch at all. I will once I'm done posting this, I think.

Day 3's project was the only WIP I had chosen for this challenge.

The couple of lines of blue where the thread is hanging at the top is the bit that I managed to get done on day 2. For whatever reason I had a hard time concentrating on stitching that evening. I should be used to having a short attention span, but it still catches me off guard at times.

This project has been my "go to" project whenever I feel like stitching mindlessly. It is mostly large blocks of one color at a time. So when I want to stitch but I'm too tired to count or pay too much attention to the details, I work on this.

Day 5 is my only seasonal project. It's titled Best Witches from a Better Homes and Gardens Cross Stitch and Needlework magazine from October 1998. Yes I said 1998! I took a long hiatus from stitching when I lived in apartments that were either too dark or too small for me to stitch comfortably. I just bought the Q-Snap in the last few months and found that it really works great. I love them!

I think that when I really get going on this one it should stitch up quite quickly. I can't wait to be able to take the finished product to work and hang it in my cubicle. I have not done any more work on these two since I started the challenge, I'll post updates as they come.

Tomorrow I'll post the start for day 6, my first HAED, and then day 7's start and a couple of updates to it. Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend.

First 15 days completed.

Ok, so the first 15 days are done and I completed that part of the challenge. I made a new start or worked on a WIP on each of the first 15 days of January.

I really wanted to keep a daily log of how I did on those days, however, life seemed to want to intrude at every turn. So rather than beating myself up over not posting on my blog for those days, I did post pics in my album on the Crazy Cross Stitch Challenge group.

At times I felt like I was not getting squat done where others were just trucking along getting a lot of stitches in each day on their pieces. Then I realized it's not a race. I stitch while I watch tv, play FB games, talk to my hubby and other life things. I have a hard time sitting still, I'm constantly moving one thing or another and squirming. My mother used to get on me all the time about sitting still. I couldn't do it as a child and I certainly can't do it now. So I'm going to try to not judge my progress by anyone elses abilities.

Anyway, I'm going to post pics of each of my 15 projects in the coming days from day 1 through day 15 and then any additional progress that has been made since the first day, in the next few days. Don't want to make a huge post for all 15 at once. I'm not going to do day one or four because they are posted already and I haven't revisited them yet. So here is day 2's project.

I am making this Bugs Bunny bookmark for my hubby. He's a big cartoon fan and he's always identified with Bugs, not exactly sure why. We both read voraciously and if you could see my great room, you'd know for sure. I have 8 book cases that are completely full. So I know that this bookmark will be used (probably used up) and well loved.

Once I have finished with Bugs, I'm going to do one for me, but I am a huge Marvin the Martian fanatic, so mine will be the Marvin one. The bookmark I'm using currently is a grocery store receipt, so pathetic, I know.


Tomorrow I'll post the one WIP that got included in this craziness and the seasonal project that I started. Until next time, Happy Stitching!

Today's start is fun!

Today I got a good start on Dysfunctional. This is so much fun. I don't want to put it up tonight. And I don't think I will for a little while. Sleep...not sure I want any tonight.

I want to be able to keep going on this. The fabric is a light blue and the vibrant colors stand out beautifully. I can't wait to see how it develops. So far, this is my favorite start.

My daughter just moved into her first apartment yesterday. She’s so excited, of course her mother is just as excited! I will be trying to find time in this year’s challenge to start her Woodland Goddess piece. I know she’ll find a place for it in her new place.

Here’s hoping I get the hang of this blogging thing. Happy Stitching

Beginning the 2012 Cross Stitch Challenge

Okay, so I am a day late in getting started with my progress posting, but I did start my first project on time. The project that I started is a picture of a jukebox. It will be in a trivet and used as a hot mat when I'm done. This is what it will look like when it's complete.

 I didn't get much done because I was just not feeling well. My grandsons seem to have taken the lesson in sharing a bit far, they shared their colds with me. And me, being the loving grandma that I am, I embraced it with both lungs and sinuses. Boy, does it hurt to breathe.

Today I am working on a WIP (work in progress) that I call the Southwest Mission. It was a freebie that I got from the PC Stitch program a bunch of years ago. It's about the only one that I can work on without having to look at the pattern much. It is a lot of large blocks of one color. I think that may be why I have been working on it for so long, I get bored with it quite easily.

I'll post progress pics for the week this weekend. Here's hoping for good progress the rest of the week!

Until next time, Happy Stitching!