I wasn’t going to post anything until Monday, since I was gone for several days and hadn’t touched a needle in 5 days. But, since I have tons of pictures and not one, but TWO, finishes, I thought, what the hey! Too much for just one Monday update 🙂
Our trip to Florida was good – the weather was wonderful, mid-80s and not disgusting humidity yet. We did a lot of running around, taking Grandma to get some things done, and lots of eating. On Monday, the Kid and I went to the Universal Studios parks, where, of course, we headed immediately to the Harry Potter part, and actually ate lunch at the Three Broomsticks 🙂
Hogwarts FLThree Broomsticks
So when we left Saturday morning, I had one motif and one set of initials left on Mary Wigham. By the time we got home Wednesday, after driving for 10 hours, 7 of that in rain, I was just too tired to even think about it. But, after I got laundry started and other things going yesterday, I was ready to clean off the DVR and get it DONE! So I did – and at 3:30, put in the final stitch, FINALLY!
Mary Wigham, completed 4-4-13. Over-1 on 32ct Country French, using my own conversion of HDF silks.
I took it with me to IHOP for the Thursday night gathering, where I worked on Desert Star. I just so happened to put the last stitch into that, too, at exactly 10:00 – I was too close to finishing to stop, even though our IHOP closes at 10, and since I didn’t have to get up today (or at least not until dogs made me), I stayed to get it done 🙂
Desert Star, by From Nancy’s Needle, done on 4-4-13, on 18ct mono canvas, using the charted Caron, DMC, and RG threads. For the record, Cresta d’Oro is NO FUN.
Well, I can honestly say that I have never finished TWO big pieces on the same day. I don’t recall of having ever finished two small pieces in one day – did I finish two of those Dragon Dreams ornies on the same day? I don’t think so. Anyway, kind of a banner day – clearly the 5 day break was a good thing; the tendonitis is mostly gone from my left elbow, so what better than to get that aggravated again ASAP? Which will be helped along by starting Beaded Dragonfly Tile TODAY 🙂 I was going to be good & work on some other WIPs, but I had my arm slightly twisted by Lisa, who is starting it, too, this weekend. Because I ordinarily require a lot of arm-twisting to start something new, you know 🙂 Besides, I gotta have something to update on Monday, huh?
Okay, off to find a place to set up the sewing machine so I can zigzag my black jobelan 🙂
I think it might actually be spring; though the daffodils bloomed a while ago, and my lilies are starting to come up, it’s been pretty cool here, until finally, this weekend was in the 70s! It was actually HOT in the house on Saturday, with some sun trying to break through the clouds and come in. It only slightly makes up for the stupid time being wrong – none of us seem to be adjusting to the time change very well this year, while last year wasn’t too bad. The birds seem to know what’s going on, though – they have been ridiculously loud throughout the neighborhood, though they also seem to be camera-shy 🙁 I have seen at least one Cardinal pair, flying around the back 40 together, and I can hear a LOT more, but I can’t seem to find them in camera range; you’d think, with nothing greened up and overgrown out there, they’d be easier to spot – not true, apparently. I did catch this cheeky fellow, though:
One of the many Cardinals in the area…
Last week, my Sophomore had his Band Festival performance (LGPE – Large Group Performance Evaluation), and I took the day off to chaperone the trip – I am usually chained to my desk for the month of March, as it is our year-end at work, but this year, it’s oddly quiet, so I took advantage of it 🙂 We saw the practice run a couple of weeks ago, at Brenau University, and the 3 songs the Symphonic Band played were pretty amazing then. Well, let’s just say, they NAILED them for their actual performance, including having two of the floor judges follow them back to the sight-reading room to TELL them how great they did (this NEVER happens, we’re told); one song, Seal Lullaby, actually brought one judge to tears – which is a very good thing, and the pianist got special recognition. No one recorded the performances (didn’t know if we were allowed to or not), but here is the practice run of it on YouTube. Needless to say, the FBHS Symphonic Band scored all 1s, all Superiors, got 43 of a possible 45 As. And, that’s not all – the Concert Band did as well the day before, and then, the Wind Ensemble did it, TOO, on Friday!!! Now tell me that’s not an awesome band program? And even though my kid claims to NOT be a Band Kid – he’s a Kid in the Band, big difference – it has to feel good to be part of that when the entire program does so well! You can see the Wind Ensemble’s 15 minute performance of Angels in the Architecture, also on YouTube. My high school band was nothing like this… Imagine if we had strings… Now, if I can just explain to my child how a piece of music can move you to tears, maybe he’ll finally understand why I push him to be involved in this music stuff.
Yes indeed, those ARE buds in that tree 🙂 And no, I don’t have band pictures – I really didn’t know what we could take pictures of, since the SAPA thing we had the weekend before was very strict on what could & could not be filmed/photographed… I have a really crappy couple of pictures on my phone – but not for public consumption, I’m afraid 🙁
On to the stitching, of which there was some….
Thanks to a conference call, I was able to make up some time on Desert Sand Sampler, since I haven’t gone to the IHOP 2 weeks in a row now, thanks to band stuff 🙂 I also did a bit on it over the weekend, thinking I’d finish it up – but also spring cleaning bits & pieces, and yeah, the usual mountain of laundry, got in the way, so it’s not quite done, but darn close:
Desert Sand Sampler, through Band 14 – only 3 more to go and then BEADS 🙂
I also continued working on Mary Wigham, and now can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. It would be really nice to have her done this week, though I think it will maybe run into next week a bit, depending on how busy I am this week. How cool would it be to have 2 finishes in the same week??? It could happen… Here’s Mary – I’m on Page 9/8, and again, am having a heck of a time with this motif that you see started here – it’s on 3 different pages, and none of them have the same size grid on it – ANNOYING! Because, you know, I’m so good at COUNTING 🙁 I have lots of lines drawn on my chart pages – hopefully this border meets up later today 🙂 And hopefully the bird that is in this motif FITS when I’m done 🙂
Closing in on the end of this Mary Wigham odyssey – over-1 on 32ct French Country linen with HDF silks.
So, this week, I will be continuing with both of these pieces, and we’ll see what I can get done 🙂 I have the March PINS meeting on Saturday, I can’t wait! I also have the taxes done – and it’s not even April yet, though I WILL be waiting to the last minute before sending that check to that government department that must not be named 🙁 I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday, which I assume will lead to another one soon – but I do fully intend to go to IHOP after I am done, because wow do I need to go! On that note, Happy Stitching to everyone this week!
You KNOW you have a lot of Cardinals when the Jays are the quiet ones….
Yep, it’s that time that I dread – move the clocks ahead an hour, for no apparent reason. I don’t understand how we save anything, if those of us who are up early have to turn on every light in the house to get ready in the morning, but don’t have to turn them on as early in the evening. Um, cutting an inch off the bottom of the blanket and sewing it to the top does not a longer blanket make; actually, if you take into account the seam allowance, it’s SHORTER (pretty sure I’ve said this before. Multiple times). And yeah, for those living in the SOUTH, on an average summer evening, my house is hovering around 80-85 degrees, WITH 2 A/Cs running non-stop. So by all means, I want to force myself to go to bed when it’s sweltering, instead of staying in bed for that hour before the big ball of flame comes back, when it has finally cooled off enough to let you sleep.
Bees & weeds, Oh Happy Spring! NOT SHOWN: The beginnings of the annual Pollen Dump 🙁
Yes, I AM cranky today. And? Stupid time change…. At least no one hit me or the dog when I had to walk them in the DARK this morning. There is no sane reason I am up before birds. None.
Bean asleep in the pampas – because sometimes, you just gotta sleep wherever and whenever…
So anyway, last week was highly unproductive, stitch-wise, thanks to band stuff that cut needlessly into my time. I was SUPPOSED to see the steel drum band play on Thursday, but I missed them entirely because they were SUPPOSED to go on at 6, leaving me a few minutes to stop by IHOP and drop off a couple of things, but they got moved up to go on FIRST, so I watched a kid with a Chinese yo-yo, and what I assume was some kind of Native American dance, before I finally got my son’s text that they were done already. WTF? Glad the school doesn’t allow outgoing signals. So that evening, by the time we got home and cleaned up an entire Coke that exploded in my car, was a complete bust, when all I really wanted to do was sit & stitch with my friends at IHOP 🙁 Saturday was more band fun – our school hosted a SAPA event, which had the potential to provide a heap of crucial funds for the band program, so of course, they needed a heap of volunteers. Despite my better judgment, I signed up the Kid and me to do NOT concession stand. Which evolved into me standing in the gym for 6 hours, doing NOTHING. The last 3 hours of my shift, I had to hold up a QUIET sign, and keep people from exiting during performances. And had to watch Winter Guard performances, which, if you are into that kind of thing (I am NOT), might be cool, but after 3 hours of hearing flags and guns and swords hit the floor, along with all the thumping songs that were NOT Adele, my head was DONE. I had to go home and sleep for a few hours. I guess it was a great success. Don’t call me next year, I’m busy.
Daffy-dil – these bloomed a couple of weeks ago, but it won’t stop raining long enough when I’m home to go out with the Canon…
So, all that said, the only stitching I did all week was on Mary Wigham, and I did get some decent progress on her. I have the majority of the middle row of pages done – I just have to get the small bits & pieces of overlap for the next row, and finish one large motif, and I am on the downhill side!
Mary Wigham, as of 3/10/13. Over-1 on 32ct French Country, using HDF silks in a random converison. Almost done with 6 of 9 parts.
One thing I have to mention – it is very hard to work on some charts that are broken up into parts, when a stitched area covers 2 parts, especially when the two different parts are not the SAME SIZE. For instance, this “LW” motif, with the little diamond things surrounding it is spread over 2 pages; but, the grid on one page (in the released pdf we were given) is a different size than the grid on the next page, so you can’t line up the sections and smoothly go from one page to the next. Talk about getting wall-eyed… I know, MW was a freebie, so I shouldn’t complain, and for those who would actually stitch those little areas that are mostly on another page as each part gets released, I guess it’s not that big of a deal. But trying to do it all at once, especially when using variegated floss that needs to flow naturally, and not show a definite stop from what was on Page 3 vs. what came out months later on Page 6, it’s a HUGE PITA. I assume that means that the pdf’d parts were not all generated at the same time (the entire chart made into a pdf, which would naturally fall into as many pages as needed), but each one individually. Maybe that’s how charts have to be published, so the grey overlap can be noted – but I haven’t seen this be this different on any other chart (and I do have a few in my experience 🙂 ). Meh, whatever, I’m getting through it, it just takes a bit longer to see what I’m looking at…
In other news, I did get the lighter shades of Carries that I ordered, and did make one sub on Plum Pudding – that blue was just too blue, so I subbed out the Moon Shadow for Fairy Dust, which is more muted, and I think fits in much nicer:
GP Plum Pudding floss toss – 28ct Sprite from PTP (though my piece is definitely GREY instead of purple), and my conversion from the DD to Carrie’s silks – because Carrie has the most amazing array of purples 🙂
Also, on Sunday, there was a field trip to an open house for a local online-only shop, Cross Stitch Felicity, who attended the Nashville Market and brought back some goodies. Jeanne survived the Crazy Cat Lady Experiment that was our local “shop”, and decided to open her own shop, online only, for now. So with all the Nashville goodies in had, she and her “staff” got a conference room at the Springhill Suites by the mall, and we went and did some damage 🙂
La-D-Da, Plum Street Samplers, and new to me, Scissor Tail Designs. And a new possible local framer 🙂 I could have been very bad – but I left stuff for the others 🙂
So, while not a huge stitching week, it turned out to be pretty darn good. Sure wish I still had that hour at night to keep working on Mary Wigham – not looking forward to the crash when the time change really catches up to me this week, because it will, it always does 🙁 But give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll be my usual grumpy self 🙂 Which is why DH has been/will be hiding in the garage, working on the Bug again. Check back next week, see if I was able to stay awake long enough to accomplish anything! Happy Stitching!
Dummy doesn’t like the time change, either – he doesn’t like to pee in the dark, I guess…
