Squee!

Happy happy happy!  I just bought tickets to a show I've wanted to see for a long time.  Now I just have to con my brother into letting me take my nephew.

Long time AWOL

I've really been slacking on computer time in the past few months.  First there was a ton of stitching, weird hours and then NaNoWriMo (which I nuked again).

My brother got married in October.  They did it earlier than they had originally planned so their stitchy gift will be give for their first anniversary.  I finished the Eagle Scout even though I still haven't given it to him.  Oy!  I have stitched about 25 ornaments in the last few weeks.  I also finished the Kats by Kelly pattern I had.  The Dragon and Witches Go Riding are still WIPs.  I'll be adding two baby announcements to next year's list for my cousin and co-worker.

Mom and I have stolen my niece and nephew nearly every weekend for the last two months.  Awesome!  Mom's taking them to church, then the four of us go to breakfast.  Last Sunday, Mom, my nephew and I had a four hour, single hand, Uno game.  I have the Star Trek Uno cards and they have a card that makes you double your hand.  It was played a few times that game.  It was hilarious.  My niece watched Mamma Mia and was almost through the singalong by the time I won the hand.

We're going to my cousin's house tomorrow and then we have the munchkins again for Sunday.  I'll have my niece go through my music to pick what she wants me to put on her soon-to-be iPod.  It should be fun.

So, Merry Christmas to the Christians.  I hope everyone else had a happy holiday, whatever it may have been.

New Wedding design

Thanks to one of my cohorts on the LJ Cross-stitch group, I found the perfect wedding announcement for my brother and his fiancee.  He proposed to her on (well, pretty damned near) the beach and the colors seem to suit her decor, so here we go.  I won't even have to wait for her to pick flowers and stuff.  I can start on it as soon as I finish the Eagle Scout, the Wiehenberg Sampler and the Dragon (in that order).  Yay!

Another movie post...

I just watched Destination Mars! on Netflix.  Tee-hee.  It was awesome.  It was such a great send-up of the 50's Mars invades flicks.  The actors played it "straight" with just the perfect imitation of the pacing that the actors of those movies had.  I have a new dvd hunt. 

Of course, I just found 100 Million BC (which is unfortunately on a double feature with Journey to the Center of the Earth - even I have my B movie standards, low as they are) and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus in the Wal*Mart $5 movie bin, so I'm having a fine movie night.  I am becoming a big fan of the knock-offs The Asylum puts out.  They are just so cheezy.  Ooh.  I just remembered they made this version of Sherlock Holmes, with Dominic Keating and Gareth David-Lloyd.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't the worst, either.  Definitely watchable if you keep in mind it's an Asylum film and the guy playing Sherlock needs to go back to acting school.  Or at least take his hands out from behind his back once in a while.

Piranha 3-D

Okay, before I say anything else, I'll say this: I really want to go see this movie.  It is obviously not going for Oscar nominations (unless the FX are somehow spectacular).  It is a summer horror/fun flick.  Apparently, people are peeved that there aren't going to be any special showings for reviews by critics.  Hello?!  This is the kind of movie guaranteed to make a critic's blood pressure rise and explode out of their pens in a sea of "Ack!  This was horrible.  No, no, blood and gore and 3D!"  Showing it to a critic is a waste of time.  Most won't watch a film and see the fun of it.  They seem to need to find meaning and pathos in every film they watch.  Um, not every film is out there for such a thing.  Some are just fun bloodbath flicks that make you giggle and cheer when the obnoxious git gets eaten and the heroes somehow manage to save the day...except for the egg, of course, which is about to hatch the sequel, er, spawn of whatever the monster is.

I can't wait for this one.  Chomp chomp and Christopher Lloyd thrown in for good measure!

Dragon*Con 2010

I finally found a somewhat affordable place to stay in Atlanta for Dragon*Con but Mom has a lot of travel this week, so I get to wait until next payday to try to book it.  *sigh*  We'll see if it's still available then.

Yes, I'm waiting until the last moment.  However, I didn't realize Misty was going to Dragon*Con until a few days ago.  She never goes to cons I can get to!

Wedding designs

I mentioned that my brother is engaged, now I'm designing he and his fiancee a wedding announcement.  So many of them are way too floral and foufy for my brother's taste.  I found a few on 123stitch that I liked and thought were simple enough to suit their style.  My brother is a cop, I just can't see him really liking an announcement with roses and ribbons all over it.  Sorry, not happening.

So I found one pattern on 123stitch that I really liked part of: To Have and To Hold.  The sepia picture of the couple in the middle struck me as perfect for them.  So I figured I'd probably end up ordering that.  Well, I saw it in Michael's yesterday while browsing.  I hadn't noticed that the whole pattern is only 5 by 5 inches!  Too small.  But I still liked the people, just not the floral stuff.  So I conned Mom into coming to Michael's with me to look at it.

I ended up buying it (plus a frog eraser and felt to make myself a minion from Despicable Me) and spent a few hours last night transferring just the people into PCStitch.  Then I broke into my quote book and found a lovely quote to add to the sampler: "Two souls with but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one." by Friedrich Halm.  I used the alphabet in the kit to chart that and used the Font function to make an alphabet for the names and date.  I'm going to do that in petite stitch since the only way to make it nice enough was to make it HUGE.

So, the pattern is half finished.  Now they just need to figure out when they're getting married and what colors and flowers they're using so I can finish designing it and then stitch the little bugger.

Bells are ringing...

Well, my brother is engaged.  It just happened today and mom got all huffy when I asked her to pause the movie I was watching when she was trying to tell me about it, so I still don't know how it went down.  LOL.  She did the whole pouty, idiot thing and refused to tell me more, so I'll get the story tomorrow as I go to work.

I hope I have more time for this wedding because I would like to make he and his really quite awesome fiancee a beautiful wedding announcement.  Um, I'd also like to lose a moderate amount of weight so I don't appear too huge in any wedding photos.

She just came down and now that the movie's over she's talking to me about it.  It sounds like his very well-hidden romantic streak came to the fore in a big way.  Alright!  I'm so proud of him.

Interesting article I found

I think, if I ever get married, I'll do what this couple did.  I'm not an atheist, but I do get sick of the constant use of gods and other such higher powers in what, to me, is a legal matter.

Atheist wedding

Fabric dyeing time

I'm happy.  I just bought some fabric to dye for my nephew's dragon and hoped it was big enough since it was a good three inches smaller on each side than the one I bought from Polstitches.  It is.  I guess I bought the other one much larger than I needed.  So a night's work dyeing the fabric and then washing and letting it dry and I can start on a neat-o dragon again.  Wahoo!

Just for kicks, I've been looking at getting a Droid when I can upgrade this one.  I really really really want one.  I've been playing with them and talking to others who have them.  I absolutely do not need one, but I absolutely want one.

WIPs

Well, When Witches Go Riding is on hold.  I found out that my neighbor made Eagle Scout and is having his banquet in September.  There is a really nice Eagle Scout badge free cross-stitch pattern I found online.  I've already started it.  It looks like it'll turn out quite nice. 

As for my nephew's dragon, I just saw the same pattern done on plain white aida and it looked spectacular.  I may forego re-ordering the fabric and just stitch it on that. 

So, I'll only have three WIPs for the near future: the badge, the dragon and the Wiehenburg Sampler.

I'm also buying the patterns from an LJ cohort for some hardanger projects by Victoria Sampler.  They are stunning and I've wanted to try hardanger for a while now.  I just have to get over my squeamishness about cutting holes in my fabric!

*sigh* Of course

I misread the date and time for entries to be dropped off at the fair. They had to be dropped off by last night. Judging closed today at 10am. I'll just put them away and enter them next year. It's just so frustrating. I really wanted to enter them and get feedback from other stitchers live. So stupid.

Here are pics of the pieces I was going to enter, anyway.

Here's my version of my LJ group's last MSAL. It was originally charted for cross-stitch, but I'm strange and just had to do it in specialty stitches and add the border and the motifs in the middle. Kathy designed it as a sudoku puzzle!

And here is my version of Ink Circles' Growth Rings. Finally done. It only took me over a year.

Here is the other thing I've finished in the last three weeks. Tree Frog Trio by Dimensions. I, of course, felt it was lacking something as it was designed so I just had to add the words to it. I have the frame and mat for it, I just have to put them all together.

And just because, here is my current WIP, When Witches Go Riding by Prairie Schooler. I'm doing it over one on 28 count fabric. The pamphlet also includes some designs I might be able to adapt to an interesting biscornu in the future.

I was going to enter the two wall hangings and the blackwork Celtic cross I made Mom a few years ago. I'm so pissed at myself, because I could have had them finished in time. I put it off like the idiot I am because I thought I had time. I think I need to put procrastination on my list of nasty habits to get rid of.

Simple stupidity

Sometimes it amazes me how simple skills elude me.  I'm trying to finish my entries for the Northeast Fair (since I have to turn them in today) and I can't even remember how to thread the bobbin of my sewing machine.  It'll be Mommy to the rescue in a few minutes, but seriously, I'm 34 years old.  In my defense, the last time I used the machine was over a year ago...and I had only used it twice before that, but you'd think I'd remember the basic stuff, wouldn't you?

I'll post pics of the finished entries in a few hours.  One is done.  I had to stitch it by hand since I couldn't find the machine thread for it.  Grandma's thread box had some hand quilting thread I used instead.  It was sort of my experiment piece anyway, since I also misplaced the instructions for the wall hangings and used it to figure out how I'd put the silly thing together.  Now that I know what I'm doing, I'm using the machine to sew up Growth Rings.

My cousin recently joined Facebook.  She is one of the grandchildren that has essentially disowned my grandfather, who only has 3-6 months left thanks to his lung cancer.  I just sent her a letter telling her how he was doing when my mother and I visited him last weekend.  Hopefully, being confronted with the severity of Grandpa's condition she'll start to think that maybe, just maybe, she should visit him.  I hope.

TARDIS Rain barrel

We got a rain barrel to try to save water for the garden we're putting in.  It is the same color as the TARDIS!  I'm trying to figure out a way to con Mom into letting me paint it just like my favorite time travel machine.

Sampler colors. Decisions, decisions

I've been coming up with color combinations for the different motifs in the Bush Mountain / Wiehenburg Sampler contest.  I've decided to use as few colors as possible.  I figure if I use DMC Variations 4045 for the one green I want to use and nine other colors I should be able to make it rather interesting, if simple.  I want to use two colors, maybe four of beads to use in the "unstitched" places in the corner butterflies.  Each of the butterflies will be stitched in black otherwise.  There are 23 other motifs including a dandelion-type center motif that I can't decide whether or not I want to stitch in one or two different yellows.

I have to have this stitched by Halloween.  The deadline is actually November 25th, but I'll be working on NaNoWriMo at that point.  It's all full cross-stitch anyway, so that should be doable. 

Of course, I'm also in the middle of stitching the Livejournal MSAL in specialty stitches instead of cross-stitches and Growth Rings.  Once I finish stitching Growth Rings and the MSAL I have to re-order the fabric for Nick's Dragon so I can get that done before he gets home in August.  Then I can pick up on College of Magical Knowledge at home and the Christmas gifts I never actually finished as my travel projects.

New computer!

I have a new computer!  I'm playing on my new, little HP Pavilion dm3 right now.  I like this little guy.  It has a 13 inch screen, tons of memory and I haven't wanted to pitch it across the room yet.  I chose the computer WITHOUT a cd/dvd-rom.  It's external and this makes this sucker so light it's not even funny. 

Now, I just have to wait for my new version of Family Tree Maker and I can go wild at the library again.  I'm just not sure yet if I want to put iTunes on it or wait until I can afford another 1 TB hard drive.  The current plan is to take all extraneous stuff off the old computer, plunk it on a desk from which it shall never move and just use this one for my on-the-go computer.  The old one will be the gaming/movie/music computer.  I figure I'll add PCStitch to this one so I can design anywhere.  Basically, this one will be for research, though.

That's the plan, anyway.  We'll see how it goes.  I just have to avoid the temptation of ZooTycoon and Civ III, which I haven't been able to play on the other due to memory issues.  If I clear the huge database programs off the old one, though, I should have enough memory to use it for them.  I hope.

Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long and Growth Rings

Well, just for kicks I'm doing something called simply TUSAL (see title for translation).  We just display our ORT jars each New Moon to see the cool stuff we're all doing.  Thread, fabric, beads, yarn, needles and pins are all fair game as long as they are from your stitchy projects.  Here's mine (a bit late) for the March New Moon.

I decided to dress mine up a bit, so I stitched a Celtic knot for the jar lid and a little label for the jar.  Let's see, the major source of Orts right now is Growth Rings, with some threads from the MSAL I'm doing on my Livejournal group.

As for Growth Rings, here's what she looked like on the New Moon.

There's a sort-of new fabric store right next to White's Sewing Center that caters to quilters and I managed to find the perfect fabric to finish Growth Rings into a wall-hanging when I'm done with her.  If things go according to plan, that should be by the end of the month.

Gorgeous Men, Movies, Stitching and Sickness

I've been having a movie marathon today.  I started it and will be ending it with Bruce Greenwood.  Damn, that man is gorgeous.

Star Trek, The Pirate Movie, National Treasure and National Treasure 2

A few more days of prednisone and another week or so of antibiotics and maybe I'll actually feel well enough to go out on the weekend.  The good part is that I managed to stitch enough of Growth Rings to achieve the Bronze medal for our LiveJournal Stitching Olympics.  If I move my ass today and tomorrow I'll get the Silver.  I've even gotten part of the second page done for the Gold medal. 

I'll have to feel well (or at least decent) by Wednesday.  We're going to Celtic Women for Mom's birthday present.

Update

Wow.  Almost two months without a post.  I guess I should update a bit.  I confess to getting addicted to Farmville on facebook and just generally not bothering to get on the computer much in the past few months.

Anyway, for two, brief shining weeks I was a college student again.  My mother mentioned this to my family at Christmas and my brother's girlfriend warned me of something I hadn't thought about.  The college I was going to get my bachelor's degree through turns out not to be accredited by any of the groups accepted by the schools I wanted to go on to afterwards.  So, I disenrolled and am back to square one regarding school.  So much for the affordable option.  I'm back to trying to figure out how to afford Thomas Edison State College and still eat, pay for the bloody car, etc.

My brother is now deployed overseas again.  This time Mom and I got to say goodbye.  In a way I wish I hadn't gone.  He was all sorts of affectionate to his girlfriend (very nice, I like her a lot and hope she sticks) but basically ignored Mom and I.  I mean, he could have at least treated Mom with a bit more love.  I don't expect anything from him in the way of caring for myself, but not to give Mom any real attention was just wrong.  *sigh*  It's him, though.  I shouldn't have expected anything else.

Even being an asshole, he is my brother and if anything happens to the little shit I'll be devastated.  He'd better keep his head down and his butt covered.

I've gotten a new library card and have been using it often.  I'm currently reading The Great Influenza by John Barry.  It's really good.  I like the fact that he seems fair and is talking about both good moves and mistakes made by the government, military and medical people involved, as well as the civilians.  Out of curiosity I looked at some of the Scranton papers for the time and was amazed by the ads for the patent medicines all over the place.  The flu wasn't even the top story, even though Scranton was reporting a ton of deaths.  The war stayed the focus of the media and that's exactly what the government wanted.  They wanted the whole country working as a machine to support the war.  It's really interesting.

I still have to finish my Christmas gifts for a few friends since I just didn't feel like stitching the entire holiday season.  I also have to finish crocheting my Ravenclaw scarf for myself.  I have to restart from scratch my nephew's dragon since it somehow acquired a huge hole in an area I just can't fix.  Once I finish the book, I'll start stitching gifts again.

That's it.  Back to research since I'm at the library doing genealogy right now.