IHAS and TUSAL

Yes, this weekend was International Hermit and Stitch weekend, and while I didn't get any stitching done per se, I did get something stitchery related done. I spent Father's Day with my dad, playing in his wood working shop and getting more of my stitchery box done:



Two of the drawers in place.



The other drawers waiting to be assembled.



Assembling the sides of the drawers.



The drawer sides being held together for the glue to dry.



Just needs the knob on front and a bit of sanding on the top to be done.

All of the drawers need to be sanded on the top because when I was cutting the pieces with my dad's table saw (a first time for me) I didn't get all the pieces cut exactly so there's like a centimeter or two between the various pieces. I told my dad to go ahead and finish the box since it just needs that little fiddly bits for the drawers and then the knobs and side handles attached to be done.

On the stitching front, I have put together a small traveling stitch case to take with me to work to give free cross stitch lessons when someone asks. And as I won a small book of Oriental patterns by Joan Elliott from Sharine of charbella stitching, I decided to start one to relax in the evenings. She's only 4"x4" on 28 ct 2x2:



She's rather relaxing to stitch and my original plan was to make a bunch of these and put them on the cover of a notebook I had covered with fabric. Only I misjudged and the fabric was too pretty to cover. *laughs* That's what I get for buying pretty fabric. Next time, I'm going to do just plain fabric to attach my stitching to as presents for various people.

And finally, my TUSAL jar:

IHAS update

Wow what a week. I did manage to get a bit of stitchery in over the weekend as it was International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, but I didn't get much since Sunday, Hubby and I went out to see "OZ The Great and Powerful" followed by dinner with his parents who had babysat for us as well as got in some grandparent time.

One of my Facebook groups decided to have a WIP toss to motivate each other into continuing to stitch and possibly complete their projects. Here's mine:



They are Joan Elliott's Sea Goddess, HAED QS CLaire, HAED Four Heavenly Beasts, Oak Island Mystery, and Barbara Baatz's December Fairy. Some of them haven't been touched in a couple of weeks while one or two haven't been touched in a couple of months.

But as to what I actually worked on, it is Barbara Baatz's December fairy that I'm turning into a birth announcement for my daughter.



This is her left sleeve and part of her wing. The Krenick blending fillament will be added to the wings after they are all stitched because I think this makes them glitter more instead of mixing the thread and the filament together in the needle.

Also, Leslie at Under the Sea Fabrics finally got in the scissors and scissor fobs that many on her FB group preordered from her in February and I got mine in the mail yesterday.



These are the first pair of "novelty" scissors that I have bought with the intent of using, and they're actually very comfortable to use. The fob is a lovely strand of pearls and clear gray beads on a wire, and the large lobster claw means it can probably be used for something other than a scissor fob if you had a mind to dress something else up.

IHAS update

Didn't get much stitching done at all this weekend due to various problems. Got a few stitches in Four Heavenly Beasts done however.



As this is my first HAED with color and confetti, this is slow going but if I do a few stitches every day, I'll probably get this done sometime in the next decade.

No IHAS this weekend....

I was going to do an IHAS weekend, but I ended up a bit busy...



As you can see, there is a new eddition to the family. She was born on Friday, December 14 at 11:55am. I went in to be induced as she was a big girl at 8lbs 15oz and 22 1/4 inches long.

We're all home now, and doing fine.



The happy daddy with baby Genevieve Tatianna and momma.

September IHAS and TUSAL post

I apologize if the pictures this time look a bit odd, but I had to tak them with my phone camera as my regular camera is being used for work purposes. My boss has finally relented and is letting us set up an Ebay store to sell the craft books that are not moving in the store. So, I'm the one taking all the photos of the books in question to do a massive upload as the goal is to "open" the virtual store on Oct. 1.

To my shame *snickers* I found myself purchasing a couple of HAED patterns. I blame Demeter at Sense and Stitchability for Clara finding her way into my cart followed quickly by Rochelle. This is unusual for me because I normally don't go for the "cartoonesque" patterns at HAED, but these two were just lovely. Also for those that didn't know, there is now an Official HAED Stitchers Group out on Facebook as started by Michele herself. It's interesting and I joined as quickly as I could.

I didn't get as much stitching done this weekend as I wanted. I mean, hubby was away playing with his friends all weekend, leaving jsut me and the cats. Perfect time to start stitching right? Saturday, I started the commission piece, hoping to at least get the dress done, and I spent fifteen minutes putting stitches in before spending another fifteen tearing those same stitches out. So I worked a bit on the groom, settled the frustration down a bit, and then managed to restitch the sleeve and back. Finished all but three white stitches at the top of her sleeve *dances*. Also talked with the lady I'm doing this for. I told her I'd reached hour 60 on this, and that what I can do is throw the hours out, we agree on a fair price for it, and that's it, or I keep counting hours and present her with a final bill. She decided to agree on a price, and I have to confess that it's much more relaxing now that I don't have to track every minute of this.



Haven't done the confetti filled flowers yet which is in her hand and arched above them, but I'm getting there. Honest!

Officially, this is the only piece I worked on during the weekend, but the next two, I worked on at the doctor's office. I had to go in for my week 28 work, which was a diabetic test. I have no idea what the premise behind this is other than to get the baby as wired as possible on sugar so they're beating up on Mom for the rest of the day, but after drinking about half a can of soda syrup cut with sugar water (only way to describe the taste, I swear), I had to sit around for an hour until they were ready to tap a vein. So, knowing this in advanced, I took my Mill Hill kits with me as they went along very nicely in my stitching box.



Didn't get much done on the Haunted Mansion, but then I picked it up when I got tired of doing the Moonlit Kitties.



One of the kitties has finally put in an appearance, and it's slow going because every other stitch is a bead, so he's a bit like a checker board there.

Now my TUSAL jar. As you can see, a lot of whites and creams because of the dress. A bit of gray there is mostly from the groom, but the oranges and browns are from Kitties.



An idle question for those that add pictures to your journals (which is like everyone I know and follow): What do you use? Photobucket recently seems to have more bugs than a flophouse apartment, and I'm getting tired of it locking up on me all the time or just not working (which is why my pics are so large when compared to the others).

August WIPockalypse Take Two & return to Belly Dancing

First up is my WIPockalypse/IHAS report. *hangs head* Yeah, I've been bad about not posting it, but in my defense, my computer decided to self destruct via virus and I had to get a new one.

So first up is Moonlit Kitties:



Didn't get a whole lot done that weekend and things have been up in the air enough that I haven't had a chance to do any more stitching on these since that weekend. Mostly because I've had a hard time concentraiting due to pregnancy and exhaustion.

Now that commission that I'm wondering is jinxed at this point. It seems like for every three stitches I put in, I'm tearing out five.



Here it is as of today. *sighs and shakes head* I haven't even started on the nitty gritty flowers or even charted the names and date.

On a better note (for me at least), my work schedule has let me return to my belly dancing class, and last night I had a blast! I was the only one in the Beginning Technique class, which was fine as my teacher decided to drill with zills. *laughs* My arms were tired by the end, and we only did a little bit of veil work. The veil I have is a bit heavier than a chiffon so that didn't help the arm soreness either.

It will be fun to get back into that again.

TUSAL and IHAS weekend

Wow, a two for one weekend!

First up is the TUSAL post. *grins* Yes there are two jars. The short one is for the commission piece and the tall one is my usual jar. The dark brown and bright yellow in the usual jar is part of Mill Hill's "Moonlit Kitties" that I completely tore out and restarted since I originally started too far from the edge. That problem has been fixed.



Next is the Moonlit Kitties in person. *grins* When I originally started this, it was going to be my first preforated paper project and I didn't know how to find the center. I have since corrected that mistake and started with the moon part as it was near the center.



And finally, the commission piece as it is right now.



The groom as put in an appearance off to the side, there's a bit more backstitching on her skirt, and I pray I can get her skirt totally done for this weekend so I can concentrait on fixing the bow mistake (don't ask. I have no idea where that mistake is in that bow)and getting it closer to complete. My goal actually at this point is to have this done by Sept 1st or as close to it as humanly possible without working myself into a stroke. I am not looking forward to all the backstitching in the floral arch or her bouquet.

Another Three in One Post

Yes, I'm lousy at blogging. Or at least keeping up to date. *laughs* First off, is a combination of the WIPockalypse and IHAS since I haven't touched this since IHAS: This is the commission piece. As you can see, I've added some beading to it to give it a bit more bling than the blending filament would have since it was only suppose to be one strand of filament to two strands of thread. And my TUSAL jar for July with the pattern in the background to show how much I've gotten done on it. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep track of my blog a bit more and write a bit more, but it's easy to lose track of the days anymore. *Grins* I confess I'm normally a flutter-brain, but toss in a pregnancy and I'm lucky I can function most days without a detailed list.

Late TUSAL and IHSW

Life's been a bit crazy lately so excuse the fact I'm nearly a week late for both of these. Plus it doesn't help I had to figure out where everything was in the new Blogger. It also doesn't help that photobucket has a new photo editor that's just as confusing. This is the start of the kalediscope for my youngest neice. This is the part that wraps around the main part and it will have her name on it. and my TUSAL jar with some rainbow colors in there due to the kalediscope. I have a baby blanket I've started crochetting for my SiL who's expecting as well, but I don't have a very good picture of that one. I'll probably get a better one about the time the WIPockalypse come around.

IHAS Weekend update

I honestly hadn't thought I had done that much this weekend as I had to work on Saturday and then Sunday was putting up new bookcases that I found for a decent price at WalMart. But when comparing the pictures from the WIPockalypse and then what I did this past weekend, I did a lot.

From the WIPockalypse:


And the progress:


Heaven and Earth Design is having a 35% off sale today and tomorrow for President's Day, and Hubby let me take advantage of that. I promised him no more than three patterns at no more than $40. If I couldn't manage that, then I'd only take two patterns. Talk about a test of will to limit myself there, but I did. I picked up Lovers by Nene Thomas,Sweet Daydreams by Melissa Dawn, and The Map of Middle Earth which will look great in our gaming room. *grins* Yes, I'm geeky enough to risk going cross eyed and extremely tired of brown to stitch that one.

Weekend of stitching partially derailed

I had someone who was trying to help me all day yesterday by taking up my stitching space.



Meet Bacchus Bratticus. He likes heping Mommy stitch, especially if he can pounce the string and shove the whole thing into her face. He's not really evil. It's just the way the camera's flash caught him.

I did get some stitching done however, both on Royalty and Beware of Zombies.


Before


After


Before


After.

I ended up carefully tearing out all the stitches I had done before because, as I was stitching wtih two threads, it was starting to push the fabric weave out of place and warping it. So I had to restart with one thread. *shrugs* You live and you learn.

Also, my new TULSA Jar!



I saw that in a Kroger's Marketplace and really really liked the look of it. As it was on sale, I bought it.

Now, on the Terry Pratchett front, I've finished Men At Arms and have picked up Mort to read next, but I'm really enjoying the Night Watch books. I'll probably read through all of them just to say I did and then really covet and collect the Night Watch books. *grins* Also, for this challenge, I'm also going to read Good Omens again since that was a Terry Pratchett book that he wrote with Neil Gaiman. A wonderful book IMO.

I'm sort of thinking about stitching Ishtar for my belly dance teacher because she sorta looks like that when she's dancing. All proud and majestic. Maybe when I get a bit of breathing space in my current projects 'cause I'd hate to start that and then never finish it. Right now the one I'm really itching to do is Midnight at the Oasis and listening to belly dance music while I'm stitcing is not helping that urge. *grins* Maybe I'll start on that one to break up the monotone of the other two pictures.

EDIT: It was Royalty that I had to frog completely. Sorry. It made sense in my head but didn't get translated to paper.