Stitching versus Reading Time

Well, it's happened already this year.  Two stitching projects need to be done ASAP and I want to read.  I also decided to take on the Temperature Scarf, which will take me until next January to finish.  I figured a scarf would be better since I'm using the high and the low of each day, not just the temperature at a certain time.  Also, stitching a five foot row of single stitches is not my idea of fun.  I just need to buy one more skein of yarn, a medium green for temperatures from 51 to 60 degrees.  Add to that my renewed membership on Ancestry (made some real connections with the obscure family members, Wahoo!) and I've started tapering off in my reading time.

I have been trying to listen to Emma, by Jane Austen, as an audiobook as I stitch, but I don't think I'm really getting all of it.  One of the ways my ADD works for me is that if I'm listening to something while at my handiwork, my focus is on the work and I process the audio in the background.  That's why I'll tend to do that with movies I've memorized or just plain music.  I don't miss anything then and I do think I've been missing some of Emma.  I kind of hope I have anyway, because she's not a very likable character thus far.

Between writing, stitching, genealogy, and the reading I feel like I'm too busy to sleep, but I shall do my level best to regain my high status as lazy slugabed.  Starting with right now.  I have work at 4 AM and I need at least five hours sleep.  Good night.

Artistic endeavours

Lately I've been expanding my artistic horizons.  I signed up for Swap-bot over a year ago but have just recently started joining the swaps.  I've been focusing on ATCs.  I've also been working on my drawing and painting skills.  They, to be generous, are non-existent.  I 've been making Zentangles to work on the drawing and have purchased a bunch of watercolors and watercolor pencils for the painting.  Since I have so many random papers at home I've been using them for some of the ATCs I've sent out.

I'm enjoying myself even though I'm getting a little frustrated with my lack of skills.  I know I'll get better as I work, but I just feel as if I should be better already.  I know it just takes practice, but I wonder sometimes how I'll find the time in the day to get better at all the hobbies I want to improve in.  Stitching, designing stitching, painting and drawing and throw in the occasional bout of writing.  I need to win the powerball so I can just indulge myself all day, every day.

Stitching and tv

Never try to stitch while watching your favorite team play a game.  It's not very productive.  Man City just drew with Fulham and for at least the last twenty minutes I didn't set one stitch.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Heaven and Earth Designs is evil, I tell you. Evil!

HAED is an evil design company. I found a new pattern I really really really want and Mom already has whatever my Christmas present is on layaway somewhere. WAH!

Except for Celtic Cross, this is just the stuff I like from what they've added in the last month. I need to win the Powerball so I can Stash and S.E.X. and then quit my job and do nothing but stitch and read.

Sanctuary of Knowledge - New top of my HAED wishlist
Audobon - I like this one, reminds me of a Klimt painting
My Pretty Blues - I like the smirk on this dragon
Faux Fabulous - What can I say other than, "It's a frog!"
Fablemaker - I want to cover my walls with every single one of James Christensen's designs!
Tinderbox - I have no clue why I like this one, I just do.
Pescatus Mechanicus - Erin, you have to look at this one! Atlantean Steampunk? Here's the artist's site: Ciro Marchetti
Medusa - I've always felt sorry for her and this is an amazing rendition
Dreams of Gaudi - So maybe Marchetti will join Christensen in my "Everything done by them" list


Mom would love this one: Celtic Cross

PCStitch woes

Okay, I'm frustrated.  I wanted to do a new design.  Since I now have my computer, I wanted to put PCStitch Pro 9 on it, which is on Mom's computer since this one was acting up when I got it.  The disc has disappeared so I tried to copy the files from one computer to the other and now not even the old version of PCStitch I had on here will work.  Argh!

Time for major fiddling to figure out what's wrong.

Cross-stitch update

I have some pictures to show off.  I have a teeny little finished piece of a scooter that I'm going to make into a magnet using some old Red Barons fridge magnets.  (Name removed to protect the guilty.)  The scooter was in one of last month's British mags, the name of which escapes me at the moment, except that it was supposed to be stitched in pinks.  Ugh!  So, I converted it to greens.

The next pictures are the WIPs I'm actively working on right now.  Herbs & Spices will be going to my cousin for Christmas and should be finished and framed by Halloween.  It's from a very old Cross Stitch & Country Crafts, October 1988, in fact.

This is Crescent Dragon from Joan Elliott's Bewitching Cross-Stitch for my nephew.

And this is Growth Rings by the designer Ink Circles.  It was in one of the American magazines a few months ago.  I can track it down if someone wants to know.  I'm using DMC 4130 and 4140.

Stargate cross-stitch geekdom

One of my fellow stitchers on the LiveJournal Cross-Stitch community made a gorgeous design based on the stained-glass windows from Stargate: Atlantis.  I am so damned tempted to make a large design of the windows myself.  Not like I don't have a million other things to do, right?

Yippee Skippy!

I have my computer back and running!  She's awesome.  I've already done some research at the library and updated my iPod finally.

Now my goal is to clean all the sundry stuff off it and stash it and iTunes on my external hard-drive so my baby runs faster.  Life is good and it's time for me to get off the computer so I can finish cinnamon on my Herbs & Spices sampler.

Stashing

You know, maybe fixing my computer will be a bad thing. Using Mom's once or twice a week or so cuts down on the time I spend looking for more stash. I just made a wish list on 123 Stitch. Eep! It's huge.

But I'll let my family know about it anyway, just in case one of them wants to buy something on it for me. ;p

Busy days - work, play and Star trek

I really do exist. Besides work, I've been doing a lot of crochet and glue gunning lately. The crochet for a friend's birthday and Mom's incipient Belle's Blankets and the glue gunning and quilting for a friend's wedding accessories.

Here's a picture of the accessories. I used white, blue and brown ribbon with freshwater button pearls as accents. For the pillow and book I quilted one layer with a design all involved seemed to like from the book 1,000 Great Quilting Designs using DMC 938 and 827. Thankfully, for my sanity's sake, they loved everything...and it was a beautiful wedding, full of laughter - perfect for them.

Here's my version of Dave the Barbarian's pet dragon Faffy. I used the pig design from the book Toys to Crochet and just kind of "winged" it for the alterations I had to make to make it a dragon. Thank the gods for felt. The wings are orange felt in a vague wing-shape stitched onto pipe cleaners and sewn like there's no tomorrow into the back of the dragon. The patches are just single crocheted circles sewn onto his back. Horns are rolled up tubes of felt, sewn like crazy and the eyes, tongue and nose are glue-gunned onto him. Ben really liked it and actually recognized it without any prompting.

As for Belle's Blankets (named after Grandma), Mom wants to start a group of people that make afghans and throws for the vets at the VA hospitals around here. I figure I'll do a massive granny square and use up the rest of some of the skeins of yarn I've managed to collect in the past couple of months. Oh, I also have my Grim Reaper nearly finished. He needs his accessories and a face. I'll take a picture of him when he's finished. For an idea of what he should look like, check out the lower left-hand corner of the cover of Creepy Cute Crochet. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to alter Cthulu to make him into a Ood for Dragon*Con. It shouldn't be too hard. Oh, I also get to try to catch up on my neglected stitching.

Mom broke her ankle and my new camera on Easter. It's healing nicely and I had to buy another new camera, which is regrettably bubble-gum pink but will do what I need it to do. She's healing fine. We got new cell phones and numbers. I've somehow managed to resist killing my co-workers these last two weeks. Did I mention I got my driver's permit on Friday? We'll see how long it takes for Mom to nag me about the lessons. I may have a week's grace. I also saw Star trek on Friday. It was really good. I'm still in a little shock over some things they did with it, but it was really good. Go see it!