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!

Quiltmaker update

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this piece. I've been working on it all week and it just doesn't seem like I got very far. I hope as I progress farther and get to fill in more colors, I'll feel a bit more accomplished with it. So this is where the piece was when I started the week.

And seven days later...

Ok so I guess you can kind of see which way the quilt is laying just by following the basic outline. But I'll tell you, I'm kind of tired of looking at that gold.

Next week I'll be working on Autumn Evening, which is a pretty ambitious project for me. I think I'll begin the weekend by trying to make a q-snap cover. I bought some fabric and I have the "pattern" so I'm going to see how I do at making something new. I'm looking forward to my little sewing adventure.

Hoping you all have a wonderful week and I'm going to try to post a couple of times this week. So until later....Happy Stitching!!

Color Me Surprised!

I have been awarded the Liebster Blog award! Wowsers! Thanks to Ann at Colorful Cross Stitches. I've seen a lot of the blogs that I follow getting them, I never thought I would be awarded one.

Liebster is a German word meaning favorite, dearest, or beloved. The Liebster is awarded by bloggers to other new bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers to help spread the word about their blogs and to help them gain wider recognition.

The Liebster award comes with four conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting.

1. Choose five up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers to award the Liebster to.
2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
3. Post the award on your blog. List the bloggers you are giving the award to with links to their sites. Leave comments on their blog so they know about the award.
4. Share five random facts about yourself that people don't know about you.

My award recipients are listed below, please pay them a visit!

1. Mellybelly at http://melly-belly-cross-stitcher.blogspot.com
2. Kim at http://kim-demeter83.blogspot.com/
3. Joke at http://jokegaoxing.blogspot.com/
4. Southpaw Stitcher at http://southpawstitcher.blogspot.com/
5. Shannon at http://mylittlestitchingblog.blogspot.com/

Now then, 5 random things you don't know about me.

1. I named my first dog AND my daughter after my favorite stuffed animal as a child.
2. I went to 7 different schools in 7 years from 5th grade to my senior year.
3. I'm the youngest of three kids and my children are my dad's oldest grandchildren, while my oldest brother has the youngest.
4. My lifelong wish is to swim with the otters in Monterey, but I'm not a very strong swimmer.
5. My family has had a reunion every July since the 1980's in Pennsylvania, sadly, I have never been to one.

I never realized how hard it is to pick 5 random things about myself. I'm really quite boring.

Just a quick update on the Quiltmaker, she's coming along slowly, and I must say, I am having a hard time with all the bits of gold here and there. It's making it seem that I'm not getting much done. I know that it will come together slowly, just because it's so large, I just have to have patience. I'll post a pic later in the week. I'm off to stitch for what's left of my Sunday night.

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.