Progress on The Raven

So after I finished my anniversary piece, I picked up The Raven by Lavender Wings again.  I started this on 10-31-10 as part of a SAL with the 123 message board group and once I got the birds stitched, I put it down to concentrate on My Family Sampler.  Well, Halloween is fast approaching so I decided to pick it back up.  The words took about a week to do, mostly because I have to remove my glasses to work on this piece - it's a bit small and I'm nearsighted (I can't see far away - is that nearsighted?)  My goal is to complete this by 10-31-11 so I can start the new Raven piece by La D Da - since there is only a very simple boarder left to stitch, this should be no problem.  I'm going to use the same material, so they will be companion pieces.

Mini Happy Dance

So I completed the border on My Family Sampler this week and everything met!  I'm so excited!  This is my first project with such a large and fairly complicated border, and I have been worried since I started this project (in October!!!) that it would not meet and I'd have to figure out where I strayed.  Here is how it looks:

Now all I have left is to finish the houses, add the people and the kitties and the date (not sure why I skipped that) and find a place to put my initials and date.  This has been a fun project to stitch and it will feel odd to work on a smaller piece, but I'm itching to do something small again!

My Family Sampler

Here is my latest progress photo.  The roof is finally done!  I feel like I have been flying since completing the roof.  I'd love to get this finished this month, but time will tell.  I am saving the people for last - my husband is going to put in a few stitches, so this will truly be a family project!

Under construction

I am still working on the roof of My Family Sampler.  I am anxious to get this house completed - I know I am making progress, but it just does not feel like it!

I did get some more of the border done, and well as the left tree (minus the leaves), the words on the left of the bottom tree and the box that outlines the capital of the surname.  I am so anxious to get to the third corner!  But, I am forcing myself to finish the house before I move my hoop again. 

What I did while I was on vacation

We had a wonderful week!  Scott and I spent the time shopping, organizing and playing with kitties (who keep growing in adorableness and size).  We got a dining room table from IKEA as a 5th wedding anniversary present (traditional gift is wood).  We were originally going to get a sleigh bed, but it was just too expensive.  We will continue to save up for it, and in the mean time, we will have a place for our guests to eat when Christmas rolls around (IN TEN WEEKS, PEOPLE!!!).

I also stitched, of course.  May I present (less wrinky than Cat Lessons, but un-ironed, just the same):

Time for God, by Lizzie*Kate

Started 10-8-10

Finished 10-17-10

Stitched on 28 ct Mushroom Monaco, with DMC

This was a quick, fun stitch, and I think I will have to stitch it again.  So many people I know would appreciate this, and as it is was such a quick stitch, why not repeat it? 

So, now I am working on LHN Family Sampler.  I neglected to take a photo, but not much more had been done, as I abandonned my plan of stitching it on Wednesdays and Sundays just during my vacation.  I picked it up on Sunday and while I love it, I need to find an easier way to acccomodate the vast amount of extra fabric I have - I was afraid to cut it until I had completed the outline, but it's HEAVY!  Any suggestions as to what I could do to help with this would be greatly appreciated!

I hope everyone had a wonderful week, and it's back to work I go!

Happy Friday!

SO glad it's Friday!  It has been a very busy week.  Not much stitching done, and not sure I will get much done over the weekend, as I am going to my Mom's for the weekend to help her with landscaping chores and any other little projects she needs help with.  I do this every month, and it's a nice visit.  I am lucky to be able to see her so often, my brothers and sister live far away and are lucky to be able to see her once a year.

Mischief and Mayhem continue to be cute beyond words!  Every evening Mischief jumps up into my lap and snuggles in for cuddle time.  I'll wrap his blanket around him and he will "make biscuits" and suck on his blanket like a baby.  I took some video of it last night.  I'll try to upload it next week.

Still waiting for my fabric for "Family Sampler" to arrive.  I was hoping it would arrive yesterday in time for me to prep it for stitching, but alas, it did not.  If it is at the house when I get home today, I'll bring it to Maine with me, but who knows if I will be able to get it started.  I plan on stitching it on Sundays and Wednesdays until all my Christmas stitching is completed, then it will be my focus piece.

Hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!

WIP

One of my active WIP's is Cat Lessons for People by Lizzie*Kate.  I am making it in honor of these guys:

Mischief and Mayhem, born on May 29, 2010 and adopted by us on August 3, 2010.  They are a delight!  Here is my current progress:

Please excuse the hoop marks and general wrinkleyness (yep, I made that word up!).  I am going to put their names and birthdate at the bottom, and hang it in the laundry room.  This is where they spent the first few days with us.

This is the first photo I took of them!  Look how fuzzy and small they are! 

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Today we went to a birthday party for my 2 nieces, who turned 7 and 6. It was nice to spend the afternoon with family!

Now I'm home, playing with my babies and getting dinner ready. I worked on Cat Lessons this weekend - no progress pic yet - the memory card is full of kitty pics! I tried to kit up Time for God but I'm missing a few colors - they must be with other projects.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Katurday - woo hoo!

So now that I have finished my first ornament of the season, I really think it's time for my mail person to PLEASE deliver my JCS Ornament issue already!!! Mail already arrived so I guess I'll have to wait until Monday. But, I DID get something in the mail that I wanted to make as a Christmas gift, so I guess I'll get started on that. Here it is Guess I'll get up to the studio and start pulling it together! Enjoy your Katurday!

First post of the decade!

Happy New Year to my friends and followers! I have been lurking behind the scenes so far this year, taking care of house stuff and focusing on setting up my craft room, but this giveaway has prompted me to come out of the woodwork in an attempt to win this awesome giveaway Jennifer is having at her blog! Check it out and take a look at the darling furbabies she has as well! I am looking forward to spring when are are finally getting kittens!

I have a few goals in my head for the coming year. First, to cut down on grocery spending and reduce the amount of waste. This will require me to be more creative in my meal planning, and to help me out with that, I have been keeping track of what we have been having for dinners every night on a calendar my mother gave me. It will also give me the opportunity to use the cookbooks I got for Christmas (although I had to resort to the internet to get the recipe for banana bread - didn't want to waste the bananas!!!)

My second goal is to get back to stitching more. I haven't picked up a needle since we started the move in October - there was just so much to do with packing, organizing, moving, unpacking and organizing! The house is slowly but surely starting to come together, which is good, because our housewarming is in February, but I miss the stress reliever of stitching.

The third goal? Be healthier. It is astounding to me how I take advantage of good health, considering the importance of it, and I know good health is not a guarantee in life, so I should be mindful of that.

I think that's enough for now. Later this week I think I'll add a sidebar that calculated how much we are spending on groceries - that will be interesting (and maybe a bit scary?) to see.

Here's to a happy and healthy 2010!

Weekend Plans

I'll be spending my weekend cleaning and moving stuff from our storage unit to the house. I think once we have all our belongings there and in some sort or order, it will really start to feel like home. Right now, it's very echo-y and kind of dark. We will buy some lights this weekend to brighten it up. I'm so looking forward to spending more time there! We have explored the neighborhood a little - walking to the CVS and the pizza place and the coffee shop, but nothing further than a half a mile form the house. Maybe we will take a break sometine during the weekend to go exploring, check out some yard sales. I don't think I'll be able to pick up my stitching again (without feeling guilty) until after Thanksgiving. That's okay, though. I have found quite a few unfinished projects (alas, the dreaded backstitching) that I really need to complete. That would be a good project for 2010!

Yikes!

It has been MONTHS since I have posted! I really have no excuse, except for the fact that I have been in a whirlwind of activity which has ultimately resulted in the purchase of our first home. No, it did not take 10 months, but it is what it is. We are thrilled, terrified and looking forward to spending our first holidays there. I will take LOTS of pictures, because we have LOTS of work to do!

The best part? I have TONS of wallspace to fill with stitching! Here is my current dilemma - unpack or stitch?

Survivor

Tonight is the new survivor. I have seen every episode since the start of the series. The hubs will only watch with me if there is a water challenge planned, so I will often use this time to stitch. I haven't been stitching a lot over the past few months. I am getting close to the end of a project (except for the dreaded backstitching), and I guess I am losing motivation. The holidays will get me back into stitching shape!

This post needs no title...meaning I can't come up with a pithy title...

Today will be another lovely lazy day, once I have completed all my chores. I picked out some Christmas designs last night while the hubs and I watched this. Not a great movie but it was fun trying to recall the names of all the people in it. Once my kitchen is back in order, I'll start preparing and measuring my Aida. I haven't determined how many "thingies" I will need, but the most I will be able to make is 10. I may have my first one completely finished by the time this starts tonight!

TGIF!

I have been waiting for Friday all week. After having a rough start (I was not feeling too hot on Monday, and MISERABLE on Tuesday) I feel quite refreshed for the weekend! I am starting to prepare my list and budget for holiday gifts and hopefully, I will not be too ambitious where stitching is concerned. I always tend to over estimare what I can get done and underestimate how long it will take me to do it. I can't go into too much detail as to what I am stitching, because I may have reciepients who read this, but I will give a hint: she was a great inspiration for what I will be making.

Work in progress

Here is my work in progress on Hunting Nostalgia. I would estimate I am almost 3/4 done with the regular stitching. Then the dreaded backstitching...

The first pic was taken last Saturday, and the second one was taken a few minutes ago.

*Blogger is being weird, sorry for the ugly layout...

Gifties

I just purchased this pattern. I love it's simplicity and the fact that it looks like there is no backstitching. I will work this on evenweave, which will be my first attempt at anything other than Aida. I've used plastic canvas and waste canvas, but those don't count, as they were very similar to Aida, for me. I must admit, I'm a little scared of evenweave, but if my experience is anything like the experiences of the other stitchers I read about, I will soon stitch on nothing else. Can't wait!!!

Yay Friday

I am blogging quickly today because I want to get right to stitching. With such a busy work week, I did not get much progress done on HN. I will take another progress pic when I start tomorrow, so you can see how much (or how little) I can get done in a week.

I don't know who I'm talking to when I say "you", the only one who knows about this new blog is Scott, and I'm fine with that for a while. This way, I can post the pix I want and not have to worry about my family seeing gifts early.

Okay, off to my weekend!

Busy Kitty

I did not blog yesterday because I had to work late. Part of my job involves computer programming and we were changing the way we were going to deliver a weekly newspaper product (until today, we mailed it, now we have home delivery). The deadline for this project was actually a week ago, and I set it then because I knew I would have a hard time getting corporate support. Our company is currently being sold (as part of the Wall Street Journal sale) so all the corporate programmers will be out of work soon, so they really have no interest in helping the individual sites get their projects done. Yes, it sucks. So, yesterday, I was forced to wait until the very last second before I was able to proceed with my conversion. And since I have an hour commute I did not get home until after 10 PM.

The good news is that the project was a success and now my boss will leave me alone for the rest of this week (And I realize that means it's only tomorrow, but it's still a break!). He even let me leave 2 hours early today! Yay! I spent my free time purchasing my favorite imported cross stitch magazines! I have a subscription to the first one but it does not start until next month (but I already got my first issue. I know, strange).

So, I have BB9 to watch and Survivor to watch tonight, which I will do while working on HN. Later!!!

Finally wireless!

Thanks to my brilliant brother, I am finally wireless! I would have never been able to do this on my own, so I am forever in his debt. Am currently updating the Wii so we can exchange Wiimail!

My weekend was very lazy. Spent a LOT of time working on "Hunting Nostalgia", and actually took before and after pix, which I will upload soon.

Must go now, playing with the Wii...