Another finish!

I finished Shepherd's Hill! Yay me!

It was a great 4 day weekend with not a lot of errands so I was able to stitch up a storm this weekend (I was sharing project accomplishments with my stitch buddy, Mindy, via text message–sounds like she got quite a lot done too).  The little clay bee keeps shifting so I may have to glue his wings to the fabric (that'll teach him to move around).

Off to a new project, maybe one of the patterns I've designed. I'll have to see what I have in my stash pile that I can get started on.

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.

Candles, hand lotions, and emotional stability

My neighbor has my number, even if she doesnt realize it. She likes to host home parties. Specifically, lotions and candles–wonderful smelly lotions and candles. I know what your doing right now, you're saying "Why the $#@& would someone buy something that smells?" Not bad scents, delicious scents. Fruit, spice, sometimes even sweets. 

By rough count I have over 15 candles, all different and a drawer full of different hand lotions, mostly citrus scented. I love them! Every useless, smelly one of them.

Why do I keep picking out more? Cause I'm weak? I'm supporting the economy? I'm part of the mindless consumerist masses that cries at Hallmark commercials and boybat's Pixar movies? Seriously, I teared up at the end of Despicable Me when Gru kissed the girls goodnight. 

I'm not as far gone in the consumerist department to think that if Joe doesn't buy me a Lexus or a diamond at Christmas it means that he hates me and he's got a divorce themed Hallmark card in my stocking. Do they make those? hmmmm...

 

If I think about it–which trust me, I don't normally like to do, introspection bad, obliviousness good–the scents make me feel good, remind me of happy things.

Except for the crappy smelling lotions and candles, they can all bite it.

Cross stitch masochist

Most of the patterns I pick out are monsters, not as in "EEEK! A Monster!", but as in "Good God! How many years is it going to take you to finish that?" I am apparently a cross stitch masochist.

For instance, one of the current WIP is "Marriage of the Minds" from The Drawn Thread.

Loved the pattern,  just didnt realize that it'll be over 2 feet long when I'm finished. Twenty six inches!

WTH.

I have about 3 bands done. The only reason I have that many done is because I was at home for three weeks.

Boybat will be driving a car by the time I finish this. Not my car–a car, preferably not one that I'm paying for.

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.

21st Century Sewing Circles

I was talking to my friend Stacy a few days ago. She's writing a feature for the college internal newsletter about what staff and faculty do when they're done working for the day.

One of the questions was "Why did you start a blog?" 

I started it as a way to encourage myself to keep up on the patterns I was doing. It's a technological diary, a visual record of my progress. I read other stitching blogs to see what they were stitching, what they were doing, where there were good websites for patterns and supplies. Its a great way to see patterns that you may never have come across in your own wanderings.

Its also a social thing. Here's a network of people who have the same interest as I do. People I would never have connected with otherwise. People from all over this country, and the world. They love stitching enough to write about it. They also share some of their day to day world. The lady whose car drove itself along the backyard until it came to a stop down the hill. The woman who is battling an illness that saps her energy, but still posts her progress on her most current project, her blog friends that send her encouragement and sympathy. Another woman, around my age that chafes against the idea that cross stitch is for past generations, a feeling that I've sometimes had myself. She called on her friends to find a friend who might want to learn and take the time to encourage them to try. Mothers with small children and teenagers sharing the trials and joys of raising kids, working and still finding time to stitch art with tiny x's and colored thread. 

Later, talking to Stacy, she asked if I had a local group of people that I meet with. There's a shop in Spokane, WA that has a group that meets Friday afternoons. It just is too hard to find enough time to be a working mom and all the things that it involves to try to drive 35 miles each way, stitch for 2 hours and head home.  I tried to start a stitch group here in Post Fals last spring, it never seemed to work out. I still would love to find some local people to gather with and share our days and hobby with.

Toward the end, Stacy said something that really summed up my enjoyment of following other's blogs and writing my own, "it's a sewing circle." Exactly!

Photo Finish

There are some days that I wish I had my old film camera. It definitely wasn’t convenient, but I knew all of its quirks and could make it do what I wanted it to do.  I like/hate my digital camera, but I can’t help thinking that it’s smarter than me. During the night, it probably reports to its digital overlords that it has again foiled my attempts to take a decent picture.
 

It would probably help if I read the instructions or took a class, but where’s the fun in that? It’s me against the camera–cue evil laugh–Bwaaahaahaa!
 

Back to my original point that has yet to show up in this entry.
 

I was going to show you some of my finished pieces.

The camera won. I’ll try to get some respectable photos of them when the camera isn’t looking at me. 

Bastard camera.

Kidnapped by Aliens

There's no good excuse why I've been gone so long, so I'm going with aliens. They came and offered to take me to a planet that is entirely devoted to whiskey sours, rock music and pedicures. 

I've been catching up on a lot of UFO's (UnFinished Objects)–you thought I was talking about the aliens again, didn't you? Started a few new projects. Even got some of the ones I finished framed. 

I've been able to design a few new projects, one that I'm almost finished with and three more that are all ready to go.  

Wish I could stitch faster!

Premonition

I knew I was going to do this. I said I wouldn't start a new project until I finished the previous one (since I have way too many ufo's to begin with). But I was weak!

I picked up two Shepherd's Bush kits while on mini vacation last month and I REALLY wanted to start "Pumpkin Hill"...No special reason other than I really liked the colors in the project and was anxious to get started on something new.

Four Wishes was almost done and ready to be framed, it just needed the beads and charms sewn on it. I have left it sit there staring at me for three weeks now. OK, it wasn't staring, needlework cant stare, but it was taunting me with it's unfinishedness. It was saying things better left unsaid. It was downright RUDE! OK, it probably wasn't taunting me, its probably the same thing that happens inside my head when I spend money.

WH makes this face inside my head that's a cross between what you'd look like if you came across a smelly, wet monkey and budget-conscious thrift-miester that would rather keep the Goodwill pleather couch that hes had since his bachelor days than buy a new one that's all soft and reclines. He swears he's never made this face and that it was time for that couch to go away, but I know better. Somehow he's managed to get inside my head and implant that image so every time that I try to buy yet another purse, dress, the latest Apple must have, or another cross stitch mail-order order (which as described in previous posts, always leads to another order) that face shows up.

Hmmm, I just realized I went off on some bizzare, run-on tangent that really didn't need to be there, but hey, I typed it and since I can't type all that well to begin with, its staying there as a testament to my ability to type more than two sentences.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, ufo's. I need help getting my butt in gear and getting Four Wishes finished. Any ideas?