I finished! Snowball fight is all done *cheer*. I managed to get it finished last night which means I can now move on to finishing off some of my other over two pieces that have been languishing. It was a wonderfully easy and quick stitch (even though it took me since december I have spent very little time on it in the intervening months).

Details are as follows:
Desiginer: Jenifer Aitkin-Smith: Dragon Dreams
Design: Snow Ball Fight
Fabric and changes: It is stitched on 28ct crystla linen from Picture this Plus in “mercedes” and I changed the fluffy stuff to purple. The stitching around the scarf was changed to 550 to match the purple although I am not completely happy with that choice. The white dms was replaced with white mill hill beeds for the small snow flakes and there is a single strand of Kreinik BF (forgotten the number) in with the white text. The french knots for the eyes were also replaced by petite balck mill hill beads because I was lazy and thy were closer than my instructions on how to do french knots which I have forgotten.

You can’t really make out the text along the top of the design or how sparkly it is in the photo. In some light the text blends too well into the background, however, I actually like the effect. Sorry for the bad piccie it was late last night when I took it and the light was atrocious.

In other news I went stashing at the stitches and crafts fair yesterday and picked up some yummy dinky dyes silks along with thier celtic diamond knot chart and a couple of skeins of stitches and spice hand dyed cottons too. I managed to refrain from fabric purchases though as I was on a budget (did note down which colours I am interested in though). I also picked up a Kustom Krafts chart “Devoted Soulmates” , 20 Celtic Candlewicking Designs for my grand quilt idea, some fabric dyes for lace painting and a gorgeous lace applique which will find its home on a 17th or 18th century corset one of these days. All in all not too bad a haul and I had a wonderful time with Nic. Linda Jenny (my MIL and SIL).

Nic and I also both fell in love with a few celtic and dragon quilt kits from Applicuts too. Namely the Dragons Parade, Dragons Lair, Quilt of Kells and another one Ithat I think was called Puff. While we both managed to resist buying a kit at the show I am not sure either of us will last more than a few months before caving and ordering the kits online. (more…)

Okay well after too long I have the pics of Fudgeys RR. Nancy posted a pic of my section in its incomplete form on the BB back when I originally sent it off. This time the little guy is all done and is busily flying his way across the great water to get to Sue in the USofA.

The section is from Linda Ravenscrofts “Babysitting” . I think this design is adorable and could think of nothing better to stitch for Fudgey than a cheeky little Dragonling / Goblin. I am not overly happy with my stitching this time round (sorry fudgey) there is more lumpiness than usual… I would like to blame the fabris but it is probably just the way I stitched it and all those pesky single stitches. Now I just need to come to some firm decision for round 2.0 and get started on my layout.

My Round Robin from this round is still with nicole so I will be sure to post pics once I get it from her and then once I get my section stitched on it. I have seen it though and everyones sections look fabulous… makes me think of continuing with the seaon theme… too many choices for someone as indecisive as me.

In other stitching news I remebered the Quick Stitch SAL on the HAED BB. I almost forgot, being that I have had no idea what day has been which this week so far. Easter always messes with my ability to know which day or date it is. I managed to get 389 stitches into fire this wed, which is less than normal but close to my goal of 400 stitches each SAL Wed. It brings my total to over 5000 stitches (5010) giving me 15.85% completed. I should have page one doen in about six more weeks at this rate, eight at the most. *bounce*

Ahh the easter long weekend a blissful four days without work, time to relax, chill out and maybe even have some fun…. or so the story goes. The initial plan for easter was lots of sittng around watching dvds and stitching. Throw in a phone call or two the US a bit of WoW and there you have it. How wrong I was. The weekend was a whirlwind of activity, however all in all it ended coming out quite well.

Friday I was woken up by a call from my Fathers partner informing me he was on his way to the hospital yet again with skyrocketing blodpressure. This is not an overly unusual set of events as my father is 80 this year and has ahd more than a few health problems in the past decade. No trip was really called for on my behalf as really there was no idea how long he would be in the hospital etc etc. Eventually I found out that he was indeed fine and was back home whinging about getting old again. Really up until two years ago when he had a stroke you would of thought he was 60 not 80 but the stroke has had it’s effects and I think he is more shaken these days than he used to be. Saturday we spent the day actually going down and visiting him to see his impressive tiling job on thier new patio and for a bit of lunch. I still marvel that my father can sctually sit in the same room these days for a couple of hours without tearing each others heads off. We even managed to talk politics without screaming it was quite a change :D. Sunday was yet more family visitations and easter egg hunts with the mayhem that only five children can bring. Thankfully I can say that I escaped easter unscathed and free of chocolate this year, which is how I had hoped it would be. The last thing my expanding frontier needs is chocolate. hehe

The rest of the weekend was spent with friends, I managed that bit of Wow and even some stitching on saturday and sunday evening though all told not many hours were possible. St Nick did progress though and if you look at the old picture here you can see that I even managed to fill in a lot of those little gaps (eep I hadn’t realised how long it had been since I had worked on this and updated). I’m still a long way off from my goal for this month and don’t think I will, progress is progress though and slowly it is coming together.
Monday night was wonderful, A large group all met up for coffee with a dear friend from Melbourne who was up for the weekend. We sat around and chatted for a good few hours before heading off to the pancake manor for dinner and more cathcing up. It was a great night with great company and probably the highlight of my easter weekend. Really mad me want to go back down to Melbourne again too. Loads of plans were made for our next trip down which at this point I am hoping will be June next year if not sooner.

While not part of Easter exactly tuesday night is also well worth the mention. We headed out to dinner with said friends from melbourne once more, but this time to a delightful little restaurant in New Farm called Anise. What got us there over anywhere else is that it doubles as an absinthe bar of sorts as well. I think I will post again later about this though as it really deserves more than a cursory mention and I have some cute piccies from the night as well.

Apologies for the long rambling post. I hope no one got too bored. There will be a few more over the course of today and tomorrow too I think I need to add piccies of fudeys RR still and my SAL progress for this week as well.

Well after two weeks away I was finally able to pick Fire-ACEO up for the SAL. I love stitching on this, the colours are so vibrant.The only thing I struggle with was my crazy decision to start it on 25ct Lugana 2 threads over 1. It really does make all the colour changes difficult and slows my stitching considerably. The depth of colour still suckers me in though. The thought of restarting is just too depressing to even contemplate so I continue to plod along with it and really I do love how it is turing out even if it is not as neat as it should be. This one is for me so I don’t have to be all paranoid about my stitching. hehe.

With having the day off yesterday I was able to get 773 stitches in which brings the grand total to 4621/31650 stitches or 14.6% complete. It will seem like more progress than that if you campare it with the last update of this piece in my blog. The last time I stitched on this I only updated my progress on the BB not actually here. Now to figure our what to stitch over easter… I was going to stitch St Nick so I could catch up a bit on where I planned to be by now, but the Hermit is calling to me. hmmmm…

I just realised I didn’t post an update of Snow Ball Fight after the weekend… ooops. It isn’t quite finished but I have done all the actual cross stitch. Just back Stitching, the text and beading to go. It is easy to forget about all the fiddly bits like backstitching and how long it takes when you mostly work on HAEDs. It is not something I can say I miss. I always seem to struggle with the backstitching and end up having to redo it too many times. You’s think it would be the easy part, hehe I am just backstitching challeneged I guess. Thinking about it though that isn’t going to go well for my obsession over blackwork.

I have also add a pic of how my floss arrives when the floss fairy blesses me with a package (not a very good photo) The little packets are just so gorgeous I had to share. The two shown are for the Shrine and St Nick in his study. All the floos for St nick is now on bobbins and ready to go over easter so I can fill in all those gaps and hopefully get a long way to completing the first page over easter. I have fudgeys RR done too, just need to get to a post office. Being on an enforced sick day again though it is unlikely I will be able to get there today. Maybe it will be best if it waits until after easter to be sent off anyway, things in transit over holiday periods can sometimes take longer detours than deasired and I would hate that to happen to Fudgeys RR. That reminds me I should make sure to post a piccie of my section.

Todays plan seeing as people insist on me being sicker than I feel is to spend the day watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Pirates of the Caribbean (nice Johnny Depp fix) and stich my little heart out on Fire for the QS SAL. Should be able to make some good progress I’m thinking. This enforced relaxation stuff has its benefits I guess

So I have been playing around with a few ideas for my next RR layout. I am still so incredibly undecided but I put together a mock up tonight of an idea for Ian Daniels Wolf Moon.I love her hair and the moon / leaf in this picture but the rest of it … well it doesn’t sit right. The wolf looks diproportioned and her arms remind me of the aliens from Mars Attacks. In particular the one that goes to the white house all dolled up like a woman. She has this skaing/ floating walk and moves her arms up and down much like the arms in the original are posed. Because of these things I had always thought to only stitch a section of this piece cropping it at just below the shoulders of the lady. It means I lose the funky twisty stick up the left hand side but I can live with that. So…. when I was thinking about RR ideas it seemed to be a logical place to start as it is unrealistic to think I could incorporate a whole design or even most of one into the contraints of the RR sections. My mock up is no where near as polished as the beautiful ones Nancy does but it gives the impression. I am still to really check stitch sizes etc against the original chart and will probably leave that for another night as photoshop is really starting to try my patience and that is limited at the moment with my head being all flu ridden. So here it is, my mock up… what do you think? Does it work or should I move on to another idea entirely?

Well finally I have Nancys RR on her way home. For all the drama it was not a horrible stitch (except for those hideous light DMC colours, I’m with you on e those fudgey they are just icky to use). The final product came out lookg sweet too I think, it will be fantastic to see it once Nancy has time to finish the other sections and get her framed.

The pic on the left is the whole RR as I sent it off and I have given a close up of the section I did as well. I am surprised at how well the detail has been kept for being stitched over 2 on 32ount fabric too. It is a tribute to the skill michelle has for charting these complex designs and keep them so close to the original artwork.

Seeing nancys RR in person has made me start to reconsider my idea for the second round as well. I had though of doing a “Silver Screen” theme and stitch a border like film cells for ech section and get people to choose a section of a B&W chart. I still like this idea but really the temptation to take one of the designs I love and know I will never have the time to stitch on my own and give it the “Nancy Treatment” is starting to win out. I was thinking a black and white Ian Daniels though I hear rumour that Fudgey may being doing this… there are so many charts to choose from though I may have a play over easter and see if I can come up with something I like. I still need to check with the other girls about stitching over two on 40ct linen too as it is really what I would like to use this time.

Well this will be funny but here goes :p

March Goal Review

Stitching Goals

1. Complete Page 1 of St Nick in His Study Not a Single stitch
2. Partitcipate in QS SAL (should be able to finish half a page of fire at least) Missed a week and didn’t update here but I did get to the half page mark
3. Complete page 3 of The Devil (~3000 stitches) Nope, did get about 1400 stitches in really early in the month though
4. Finish the second dragon on Snow Ball Fight (try and finish the entire piece) nope, still have the head to do then all the back stitch etc
5. Finish Nancys RR section my biggest disappointment for this month
6. 2000 stitches on Metamorphosis not even close

101 in 1001 goals

• Complete the first set of four weeks from task 36 I managed 1 week but not 4
• Complete task 4 locate dmost of the doubles but haven’t donated them yet. Most will probably go to book crossing
• Finish (yes I have started but it is taking for ever) task 16 nope
• Organise and complete task 32 (have ordered the book release pack from book crossing) Released on, also captured one so it is at least a start

Aprils Goals

Stitching:

1. Page 1 of St nick
2. Page 3 of the Devil
3. Nancy and Fudgeys RR sent off to thier respective destinations
4. Finish Snow Ball Fight
5. QS SAL each WED (1000 stitches over the 4 weeks)
6. Update regularly again

No other goals this month for the 101 in 1001 maybe later in the month I will review some of those and see how I am going. As for stitching the rotation will not be in force this month. I need to focus on St Nick a bit more to get back on track to have it complete with in the allocated time.

Well march has been…busy, I could use a few more descriptive terms but busy will do.
Work: *sigh* now that is the biggest Bugbear of all. Things had been more than a little hectic since I returned from holiday in Canada but it seems as always things can always go that little bit further. Expectations are high now that my supervisor only has me to concentrate on on a daily basis (other than the honours students I am meant to be babysitting). I am back to trying to work on threee areas of my project simultaneaoulsy, which just doesn’t work. Basically things just get left undone or I wear myself out by pulling long days and coming in on the weekends. The latter option being what has been going on for most of last month. To make it all more complicated the refurbishment of my laboratory has been given the go ahead and we have until the 13th of April to locate new space (done), clean out the space we found (way too scary to describe but needless to say there were some rather “funky” chemical finds in a disused old inorganic lab), move all the equipment and clean out the old lab. It has been one hell of a job so far and we are only about half way. It has been taking me eight hours a day of cleaning and moving to get this far and still I am being asked about all the work I am meant to have done. Where I am supposed to do it is my question, given that neither lab is now set up to a point where I could put the reactions on I require.

Blah here ends my work rant. There is more but really no one wants to read it and I can do without dwelling on it. The main point here is that all those loively lofty stitching goals I had have gone out the window. I htink I managed 2 QS SAL wed (about an hour each) and that is it for stitching. I have even run over time with the round robin. That bugs me the most I am missing a colour and have been searching for it everywhere I have tracked it down now but stioll have to go get it (hopefully that will be organised this afternoon). I hate missing deadlines, it is something that really knocks me about and hits the guilt complex centre of my brain into over drive.

On the upside though I did get enough motivation to join a gym. With all the stress lately I have been finding it almost impossible to keep my diet in check and my level of activity has dropped way off. Where I will find the time I don’t know but the gym I joined is open really early till quite late. The best thing about it so far is Yoga. I have always wanted to try it and though it would be great for my flakey neck. So I signed up with the motivating factor of having had to deal with migraines or severe tension headaches every day for the last month. Let me just say “it Rocks!” after just one session my shoulders and neck were feeling more relaxed than they had in ages. It was a hell of a workout for my muscles but all in all great fun and relaxing, something I intend to make a regular habit of.

So march has been a bit of a right off, here’s to April being better