Are Wind-up Chickens that "Poop' Jellybeans Appropriate Gifts?

What I consider an appropriate gift vastly differs from what Joe considers appropriate. After the jellybean pooping wind-up chicken, I "help" Joe when it comes to gift giving holidays.

Two Sundays ago, I found book of cross stitch fonts that I was coveting on a website, filled out all the necessary information including billing and shipping info and stopped just short of clicking the "pay here" button. I woke up my extraordinarily patient spouse and informed him that I found what I wanted for Mother's day and he should get out of bed to click the pay button. Suddenly, I realize that he puts up with a lot of crap from me.

It isn't really a present if I bought it myself, right?

The past two years he and Boybat have gone camping with his family during Mother's Day weekend, leaving me at home. For which I am eternally grateful. I hate camping. Tents are like stay fresh bags for bears. Ursine ziplocks. When I leave my house for an extended period of time, there had better be outlets, hot water, and cable involved.

This left me with an entire weekend with only one chore, paint the front door, which took all of two hours–only because I had to let the paint dry between coats. The rest of the weekend I spent watching BBC America (Supernatural Saturday, Yipee!), and stitching.

I've un-banished Lo How a Rose. After much soul searching and pirate-like cursing, I found peace with the fact that I had to frog the bright pink stitches-have I explained frog to all you non-stitchy readers? No? It's a term stitcher's use to refer to removing stitches when you make a mistake. When you remove a stitch you have to rip it, rip it. 

I also finished up Green Snowman and just have to sew on the buttons. I ran out of the oatmeal scone thread that the snowman and the hill are stitched in. No idea if it didn't come with enough or maybe the cat ate it. I thought I was going to have to rip out all the stitching in the snow guy and the hill and start with a new color, but after talking with the ladies in the local stitch shop, they suggested calling Shepherd's Bush and getting another piece of thread. Brilliant! They're my new best friends for the week.

I'm fickle, it'll be someone else next week.

Framing Day

I do love picking up my finished pieces from the frame shop. I was able to bring home 2 of the 3 that I had framed.

This one is a pattern I designed myself, still no idea what to call it. After hunting for a mat that wasn't overbearing,  I decided to go with just the frame.

This one is Shepherd's Bush "Shepherd's Hill". Framed it with a traditional frame and green mats in similar shades of green, but different textures.

I'm hoping to pick up the third one this weekend, it needed to have the mat adjusted. Then I get to add them to the wall o' cross stitch I've started. My goal is to fill up the wall by the end of this year and start a new wall. 

I should have gotten MUCH larger frames.

Yay Short Attention Span!

Yay short attention span!

Which means that I started another pattern and don't feel guilty about it! Now, if I studiously avoid the basket of WIP's I can maintain this reckless disregard I have for ever finishing a project. Go reckless disregard!

With quite a bit of uninterrupted stitching time this weekend, I started Shepherd's Bush Green Snowman and cant seem to put it down. I think it's the green linen. Ooooo, green, pretty...

Started this long weekend off with an awards dinner (I won two awards for graphic design, so, Yipee!) and finished the weekend off today with a rainy day of cross stitching. Stuff happened in the middle there, too.

Yard work on the first nice day of the season. I did have an eager little helper who decided it was his job to relocate the slugs we found under a pile of leaves. Seriously though, if someone had come to me even three years ago and said "You will willingly pick up slugs so Boybat can see them better" I would have snorted in my fruity-flavored adult beverage.

Easter is a low-key holiday for us. I'm still trying to clean the egg dye off of Boybat, and I'm pretty sure he's been on some freaked out jellybean, chocolate bunny high since yesterday morning. I even hid the candy today. Probably doesn't help that he's still finding little plastic eggs with chocolate in them around the house (I forgot where I put them all–next year I'm making notes).

Hope you all had a happy Easter!

Rip it out

Today I am frustrated with premade kits. Its like that some days. 

I've been working on the Shepherd's Hill pattern for a few weeks now. Just after Christmas I decided to rip out the half of the hill I had finished because the two greens in the kit were so similar that I couldn't see the leaves or even the flowers. Thursday was the same thing with the sheep. You can see in the photo that the two gray colors are almost the same. 

I hate ripping out stitches. I argued with myself that that was what the designer intended or they wouldn't give you the floss. Then I argued with myself that the photo on the front of the kit had definite separations of the color and I should just do what I want cause I bought the kit and its mine. Then the "you're lazy and you just don't want to have to restitch it" argument started. Then the "it's mine and I can do what I want with it, so stuff it" argument beat the crap out of the other two and set forth to find a floss color that I already had, so I wouldn't have to drive an hour just to pick up one skein. 

Well, that, and I rarely leave that store with just one thing.

I've found the color that I'm going to use. It's an Olde Willow thread called Shale. It has a little bit of a purple tinge to it but I think it will end up fine.

I'm off to rip out more stitches and up my medication.

How many is too many?

I like to have a few projects going at the same time. When I get tired of one I get to work on a different one until I get bored. Its like a big circle, I eventually get back to the first one, and theoretically I should get them all done.

Unless I keep adding new patterns. Damn you, new patterns! I blame you for my short attention span! 

What was I saying? Oh yeah....

Off the top of my head I have 4 rotating projects going right now,  2 that I've designed (here's one of them called Of Thee I Sing) and 2 from other designers (here's another Shepherd's Bush pattern-I've finished all the specialty stitches–Yay for me!). 

I found another pattern that I'm obsessively coveting (I've almost rationalized getting it) and just got another pattern in the mail that I MUST START NOW! If I'm lucky I wont have a piece of linen the right size, which gives me at least another week to get to the cross stitch store in Spokane I discovered this fall.

But for tonight, I must clean my home before the house cleaner comes–it makes sense if you have a house cleaner–you have to clean the big stuff and hide the piles of clean laundry you dont want to fold yet and the mounds of paper that seems to collect on the dining room table. It's not like people eat dinner or anything on the table, do they? 

Done, finished and framed

While I was lounging on the previously mentioned alcoholic, foot fetish planet, I managed to finish a few patterns. Which surprised the hell outta me. Really. I didn't think I was capable of finishing a cross stitch.

Maybe I've matured?

Probably not. I had to finish a few of my WIP's before I could buy new patterns. It has to do with the face that Joe swears he doesn't make, but that I, apparently, hallucinate whenever I touch the debit card.

Get out of my head, you evil, thrifty face!!!

Here's what I've finished. Hellllooo, debit card.

Coffin Buzz

This was a free pattern that I found at freebiegallery.blogspot.com from Plum Street Samplers. I coffee dyed the linen a few times until the whole house smelled like coffee. Later that day and into the next I was bouncing off furniture. Apparently you can absorb caffeine through your skin. I'll have to remember that, might come in handy. I only used one color of thread throughout it. 

Pumpkin Hill

This Shepherd's Bush pattern went pretty fast! 

What really made me buy the kit was the colors. The kit had all these wonderful color threads twisted together and I couldn't put it down at the store (Thread Needle Street in Issaquah,WA). The bizarre pumpkin sheep helped too. 

Four Wishes (Just Nan)

This is the pattern that I started the blog with. Toward the end it got hard to work on it. I got distracted by shiny things. No, I'm serious, there are days where I have the attention span of a gnat on crack. 


I think I'll go soak my hands in some coffee.