I’m still sticking to simpler stitching goals because I have a lot of work to do on the house before my birthday when we have visitors all weekend!
The last one is wishful thinking, but hey we’ll see what I can manage!
My goals for September were:
Two out of three ain’t bad! 😀
Today’s “Stitching Blogger’s Question” was suggested by Bea and is:
When you have almost finished a pattern and start thinking about the next one to stitch, how do you select it? (a list, most recent purchase, etc.)
Hmmmm… what a fascinating question! I’ve been plagued by obligation stitching lately, so I think my next start is going to be one for ME! However, I would normally go through my stash and pull out whatever calls to me the loudest. Oftentimes, I even kit things up in advance just to stop their screaming. 😉 In fact, I have one that’s been sitting and waiting for me for months. I’ve been dying to make a tuffet pincushion (biscornu)!
That being said, I have a lot of WIPs that I want to start working through, as well, so I’ll have to balance out new projects with exchanges, SALs and WIP/UFO work. I figure that I should be able to get a serious rotation started in the new year, once all of the obligation and gift stitching has really come to a head.
Of course, all of that being said, I had a tough time getting to sleep last night because my housework goals for the next couple of weeks were swimming in my head, along with visions of finally starting into the graphics work needed for my intensive, heavenly website revamp. Shoot, I have contracted web work to do, too! Eeep!
Yeah, 2006 is looking like a good time to reprioritize my life. 🙂
Sorry for the morose twist, folks. I normally try to keep emotional, personal issues to myself, unless they’re happy. However, I wanted to post my mother-in-law’s obituary to my blog for a couple of reasons. First, it served as notice to all who read my blog that I wouldn’t be posting for a few days and the reason why. Second, for the people I’ve had to tell about this sad event, it’s been much easier for me to say “I don’t really want to talk about it right now; go here for more information.”
Thank you for all of your kind words of caring and condolences. It’s nice to know that I have such a supportive cyberfamily out there. Every new comment brings a sniff and a few tears. Fortunately (or is it unfortunately?), the world doesn’t come to a standstill for events like this one. The speed of life being what it is, I’m content to just be sucked right along with it.
There’s no shortage of things to be done in my household this month. I’m turning 30 on the 23rd (wow, really?!?) and we’re having people over, so I have a huge honey do list. Except most of them are for me! I cleared out the dining room Monday to make room so that I can paint a ton of trim. We ran out to Home Depot yesterday and bought some more paintbrushes and another canvas drop cloth. I’m not sure where the other one went, but we think it’s in the basement and I’m not wandering into the spider zone to retrieve it, knowing that I’ll have to clean it before I can use it. No time for that! So, last night I spread the drop cloth on the dining room floor and brought in all of the trim, plus the primer and paint. Let’s see, I have to paint crown moulding for the main bathroom, crown moulding, baseboard, door and window trim for the reading room and maybe a window sill for the master bedroom, if I have time.
I’ve already started to clean the house. FLYing be darned, I just don’t have time to work through that system right now, I’m in emergency mode! I normally wouldn’t be nearly as concerned, but we have friends visiting who have never seen the house (yes, we’ve been here for nearly 4 years, but they have had two children during that time, so they’re excused 🙂 ). That means I have to make EVERY room presentable, if at all possible. Hmmm… methinks Terry’s boat will have to go back under the spare bed for a little while. Which means I’ll have no excuse to not pick up the rest of the craft room. And the computer room will need to be picked up a bit, as well, despite needing to make room to setup my mom’s new computer which just arrived yesterday from Dell – a week or more ahead of schedule. And our bedroom – UGH. I don’t even want to think about that right now. Talk about the universal dumping ground. I think I may take the FlyLady approach of 15 minutes intervals in that room so I don’t get completely overwhelmed.
Yes, well, one step at a time. And lots to keep my mind occupied so it doesn’t have so much free time to wander into darker territories, eh? 15 days left to get ready! My parents arrive on the evening of the 20th. Okay now, less blogging and more painting!
Cyndy L. Magee (nee Leckie) passed away quietly after a long battle with cancer on Saturday, October 1, 2005 at her home in Medford, NJ. She was 56 years of age.
Born in Malden, MA, she resided in the Tamarac section of Medford, NJ for the past 21 years, moving there from Sicklerville, NJ. A private Physical Therapist, Cyndy was contracted by the Medford Twp. Board of Education where she worked for the past 20 years. She is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Canada and the Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, PA and was a member of the American Physical Therapy Association.
Cyndy was in love with life and will be deeply missed by her husband of 35 years, Gerry Magee of Medford, NJ. She is also the loving mother of Terrence (Terry) Magee and his wife Jenna of Lincoln University, PA, the sister of Donald Leckie and Elaine Kellogg both of NH and David Leckie of AZ and the daughter-in-law of Clairaine Magee of Canada.
A celebration of Cyndy’s life will be held privately and at the convenience of the family. Funeral arrangements are under the direction of the BRADLEY & STOW FUNERAL HOME, Medford, NJ, (609) 953-7600.
In lieu of any other expressions of sympathy, the family requests memorial donations to the Fox Chase Cancer Center at Virtua, C/O 175 Madison Ave., 4th Floor, Mt. Holly, NJ 08060.
I did it! I did it! I finished the baby sampler piece… WAY before midnight. In fact, with enough time to spare that I was able to scan it, then fiddle around with my scanning software’s color correction settings and scan it again! And here it is:
The design is by JBW Designs, called Cute as a Button for Girls. I substituted DMC for all of the overdyed flosses called for, except for the GAST Evergreen in the border. That’s the only one I had, as I don’t have a lot of overdyeds. I also substituted buttons that I bought at WalMart which happened to be a reasonable match in color. They are a lot bigger than the button pack that I used when I stitched the model (which you can see here, if you’re curious), but the ones in the button pack didn’t match color-wise and I didn’t have enough time to go from store to store to find the best substitutes.
Now, I just have to find some time and the courage to try finishing it as a flanged pillow! Sorry for posting 3 times in one day for those of you trying to get caught up. 😉
Okay, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I went to Silkweaver’s site. The whole picking a new fabric for Fairy Moon has been eating at me, so I started looking at my fabric choices again. Unfortunately, the fabric viewer I was using is slightly broken, so I couldn’t bring up some of the fabrics that I had previously noted. I looked at the Solos page and one fabric caught my eye. Okay, there were a total of 3 interesting ones, but this one just called to me. So, I pulled down the image, loaded it and Fairy Moon into a graphics program and put them together. Oh my!
You know what? When something calls to me that strongly, I listen and obey. 🙂 The fabric isn’t as dark as I wanted to try and go, but it has a lovely, swirly, kind of sunset in the clouds kind of feel to me. I can’t wait to see it in person and do a floss toss!
Of course, while I was there, I figured I may as well buy a couple of other things, so I indulged in a SoloFest Pack and a couple of small things from the Odds & Ends section. I limited myself to $50, which was better than the first total in the cart of nearly $90. I put a lot of things back. There truly is no point in buying fabrics at this time for an ornament magazine I don’t have yet. 😆
Well, I’m off to report my transgression on The Wagon board…
I’m working from home today, as poor Terry is still in bed with a cold. It will be a sick day for him, which is a good thing because he desperately needs the rest. He hasn’t slept well in days, maybe even weeks. So, here I am, laptop in lap (with a heat-safe pad in between so I don’t burn my legs), putting off my work. It’s Friday and there don’t seem to be a lot of people in, looking at my IM contact lists, so it is going to be a slow day. Good for me, if I can manage to switch gears and get back into my Java programming. I only have one JSP left to write to front-end the application I wrote a couple of months ago, but I’ve been working in Lotus in the interim and so Java is looking pretty foreign to me at the moment. I’m hoping everything will start to fall into place again once I get into it a little more and really focus on it.
Anyway, the dog is laying in her usual “Queenie” spot. Her royal highness like to plant herself on the soft, cushy arm of the sofa. She’s in REM sleep right now and/or dreaming, so everytime I glance over at her, something else is twitching. Her whole nose was going crazy earlier. Sometimes her eyes are half-open and darting all around. Her little paws twitch a little bit sometimes, as do her ears very faintly. Uh-oh, she just woke up! I wonder if the sound of my typing woke her? Of course, I couldn’t help myself and just had to pet her royal cuteness, which caused her to climb down from her throne, seeking more cuddles.
On to the stitching queens. You know, I truly wish that I had the prowess of you ladies in the stitching blogosphere. I would love to be a speedy stitcher, particularly like Carol. I have no idea how you can handle a full-time job during the day, manage to clean the house, work with all of those beautiful flowers in your garden and still stitch like the wind, Carol! I would also like to have even a fraction of Becky’s extraordinary finishing talents. You post such lovely finishes every week (if not every day), Becky!
Don’t worry if I didn’t mention your name specifically. There are plenty of stitchers out there who I envy; I’m just drawing a blank at the moment. But more to the point, if I had the quick fingers of Carol, I would be finished with the baby sampler already. As it is, I made good progress last night, completing the border. Yes, I know, I owe a picture, but I set myself a deadline of the end of September for this one and I refuse to change that, even if I started anew less than 2 weeks ago. I’ll be running a race against the clock tonight to finish before midnight, but I am determined to finish this! I just have the words “Cute as a button” to stitch, along with the dotted line below them, and then the backstitched personalization, which I already charted out, fortunately. The final touch is to add some buttons that I bought at WalMart when I bought the fabric for the pillow and then I’ll be done. I will be ecstatically happy dancing if I can pull it off.
This weekend is dedicated to model stitching… as is every weekend until I finish this project. I am nearly 2/3 done, so hopefully it won’t take too many more weekends to complete. In fact, I’ll be able to work on them during the week once I’ve finished the baby sampler, so maybe I can get it done that much more quickly. Once that’s done, I have to figure out what WIPs to get back to. I’ve lost my place since starting the model stitching project. 😆 I guess I’ll pull the next WIPs according to any deadlines that I have set in my stash list.
#10. God worried that Adam would be lost in the Garden of Eden, because he would not ask for directions.
#9. God knew that, someday, Adam would need someone to hand him the TV remote. (Parenthetically, it has been noted that men don’t want to see what’s ON TV. They want to see WHAT ELSE is on TV.)
#8. God knew that Adam would never make a doctor’s appointment.
#7. God knew that, when Adam’s fig leaf wore out, he would never buy a new one for himself.
#6. God knew that Adam would not remember to take out the garbage.
#5. God wanted man to be fruitful and multiply. But, He knew Adam would never be able to handle labor pains and childbirth.
#4. As “keeper of the garden,” Adam would need help in finding his tools.
#3. Adam needed someone to blame for the Apple Incident and for anything else that was really his fault.
#2. As the Bible says, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
AND…
#1. God stepped back, looked at Adam, and declared … “I can do better than that.
Today’s “Stitching Blogger’s Question” was suggested by Cheryl and is:
Have you ever just quit a project while in the midst of it? (We’re not
referring to UFOs here, rather projects that you know that you’ll
never work on again.) Why? What did you do with it – throw it out,
give it away, put it away?
Oh boy, this is quite a relevant question for me! I have had this happen a couple of times this year, which is very unusual for me.
The first incident was with a model stitching project (UNHEARD of for me) which caused me to have a nervous breakdown a few months ago. Okay, contributed to a minor mental breakdown. I called the shop, explained that I was having personal issues and would be unable to complete the project. I also told them I would be taking a hiatus from model stitching for them for a while. I don’t know if I’ll go back, as there have been other issues… Anyway, I sent it back to them as quickly as possible and still got paid, plus it wasn’t deadline-based, so while I don’t feel good about not completing the project, I was just mentally incapable of continuing and they seemed to be very understanding. I’m not proud of that one. 😳
The second incident was with a bookmark kit from NMI (NeedleMagic, Inc?) that is stitched on white plastic canvas (not a problem) with this thin, yarn-like, non-floss stuff. I couldn’t stand stitching with the junky thread anymore and the kit only cost a dollar or so, so it’s going to whomever trades me for the other two kits I have unopened. 😈
The third incident was just last week with the baby sampler I was working on. I had been stitching a Dimensions Creative Accents kit called Sleepy Moon Birth Record (sorry I can’t find any pics on the web to link to), but it seemed to just be CRAWLING along. I finally decided that there was no way I was going to meet my self-imposed deadline of the end of September.
Coincidentally, after sorting through my stash for trade, I happened upon my chart of Cute as a Button from JBW Designs. It was leftover from when I stitched a model of the piece for a shop and I hadn’t liked it at the time and thought I would never use it again, hence it’s existence in my trade pile. At this point, however, it looked to be a much quicker stitch than what I was working on, so I kitted it up very quickly (all DMCs except for the green overdyed, which I happened to have in my stash) and got it onto Q-snaps to get started. I then ran out to WalMart early last week and picked up two lovely fabrics in pink prints to make a flanged pillow a la Summer Truswell (see yesterday’s post).
I have packed Sleepy Moon back up and put it away. I think I may finish it for another couple at some point, but definitely not right now!
