Rotation update

I modified my rotation a little (list in sidebar). I was struggling to work on Shimmering Mermaid on Thursdays, so I decided to put her away for awhile and focus on something else. I guess that is not really the point of a rotation, but I also figure there really aren't any rules either. :) It's not like the cross-stitch police are going to knock on my door and serve a warrant because I shelved a project. :) In its place, I have started working on Lo How a Rose. I fell in love with this design when I saw it posted on Vonna's blog.

I have a couple of other updates to show...

This is Simple Gifts-Love. It's been awhile since I posted a picture because I have had to frog this one so much that I haven't really made a lot of progress. A fun note on this one...the design is charted with the initials PS in one of the motifs for Praiseworthy Stitches, I am assuming. Ironically, my middle and last initials are PS, so I just added a K and wahlah!

Here's Blessings and Kind Wishes. I enjoyed working on it yesterday. I kind of hated to put it away for a week.

I'm pulling out This Is the Day to work on tonight. Have you seen Nicole's WIP of this?? Gorgeous!! I love the color conversion that she is using. :)

In other news, I rushed right out and bought my very own copy of this and promptly watched it last night...

I bought my copy from Target, which had several free codes inside to download the movie and extras on iTunes. I was pretty excited about this! I like that I can download it to my iPod too. :)

We leave for Disney on Friday bright and early. We are so excited!! I have started packing. Oddly enough I can't decide what I want to take on to stitch on the road. I have a packing list that is a foot long, but that one little detail has yet to be decided. We have a 13 hour road trip ahead of us, so I want something relatively easy that I can put on Qsnaps. I normally stitch in hand, but I have a hard time stitching in hand when riding in a car. I'm sure I will figure out something between now and then.

Until next time!

Happy Stitching!

Kellie

Very Little Stitching...

I have done very little stitching this week, it seems. I have been so busy... I think there was something to do every single evening last week after work. I hate weeks like that.

I did make progress without frogging on Simple Gifts last Wednesday. I was ready to throw in the towel on it in my last post. I will post a picture of it this week showing updated progress.

Thursday was supposed to be Shimmering Mermaid, but I just wasn't feeling the love for her on Thursday. Instead I made a new start (actually two, but who is counting...). I started Lo How a Rose and My Favorite Kitten. No photos though... Something about new stash in the mail makes me want to start whatever it is as soon as it comes in...and suddenly I am bored with all of the other projects that I have started and abandoned. Pathetic!

No time to stitch on Friday. We ran to town to get a few things, supper at McDonalds with Ronald McDonald himself, and then Jake had a sock hop to attend at his school. It was so cute and so funny to see all the littles dressed in jeans, plain white T's, poodle skirts, bobby socks. :) His school does a lot of fun things. This particular dance was just for the kinders, 1st, and 2nd graders. They had a prize patrol awarding prize tickets for kids who participated in things like the twist, the limbo, hula hooping, etc. I think Jake would still be there dancing if they were passing out prizes. We came home with more than our fair share of junk, I mean, prizes. I came home completely exhausted...

I did regain my focus over the weekend. I worked a little on Blessings and Kind Wishes (not enough to be photo-worthy). I managed to get a few stitches into This Is The Day... I love that little red bird. :)

I also worked on June Morning quite a bit yesterday evening. This is one fun project! I love the colors, and I love the different motifs. The dragonfly was my favorite, but I think the strawberry is starting to edge him out...

Tonight I am back to Kindness. I have decided to try stitching the little brownish leaves in 611 DMC and see how that works. My skeins of WDW Cocoa are too dark...it is blending too much with the Chestnut. I checked the pattern, and DMC 611 is the conversion for Cocoa. We'll see how that works...

Thank you all for your responses regarding thread storage. I like floss away bags a lot like several of you. I just haven't found a good way to store them other than on a enormous ring with all of the rings thrown into a tote. Thank you for your kind comments on my projects as well. I have been a little disenchanted with some of the projects in my rotation this week, but determined to stick it out. That is what a rotation is for, right? to work on things and see progress and finishes. I think I picked way too many huge projects for my rotation and not enough smaller (quick gratification) pieces...but that is okay too. Every stitch is one stitch closer to a finished project.

Okay, I am off to visit some of your blogs that I have missed out on this week.

Happy stitching!

Kellie

June Morning, Kindness, and some random thoughts thrown in

I am stitching away on June Morning on Mondays. I finished the house this week and started the strawberry. I thought I had all of the colors I needed already set aside for this but discovered I need DMC 433. I am going to check my stash and see if there is an extra skein in there. I have a whole set of DMC on bobbins and can pull from that if I have to, but I have found recently that I really like using DMC un-bobbined (I have no idea if this is a word). I have been slowly collecting a set in either floss away bags or thread drops...I have almost decided I prefer thread drops over everything else, but can't think of a good way to store them. How do you store your various threads? I have described my random DMC storage already. I keep overdyeds in floss away bags. Sometimes I prefer to use them on the hang tags that they come with. GAST and CC have the best hang tags, IMHO, because they have two holes in the tag...one for the ring and one for the thread, whereas WDW just has the one hole in their tags. Okay, that was a tangent...back to June Morning...

I also finally finished the chestnut brown background on Kindness!!! Only to discover that I now get to stitch all the leaves in a different shade of brown...cocoa. I have nothing against brown. I rather like it. My son's eyes are brown. I am just tired of stitching in brown. On the cover, the model's leaves have more of a greenish look to them, or so I thought. But the design calls for Weeks Cocoa. The Cocoa almost blends in with the Chestnut, I think. I stitched one tiny section in Cocoa in the top left corner last night. I guess I can decide by next Monday what to do...stitch with the recommended cocoa or switch it out for something a little more greenish.

Tonight I work on Simple Gifts-Love. Considering that for the last two Wednesdays, this project has given me absolute fits, I have frogged more than I have stitched, and I have zero progress to show, I am almost afraid to even take it out of the bag. I have decided that if I have the same problems tonight, then it is a sign of some sort and this project is getting booted out of the rotation for awhile.

Other than that, I am looking forward to quite a relaxing evening. My house is clean, supper has been cooked, dishes washed, son is done with homework., and it is only 6:30 p.m. I love nights like this. :) Hope you are enjoying your evening wherever you are as well.

Until next time...

Happy Stitching!

Kellie

Weekend stitching

I managed to stitch quite a bit over the weekend. Especially Saturday. I worked on Blessings and Kind Wishes. I completed the house and most of one of the birds.

On Sunday, I worked on This is the Day. I stitched the background of the alphabet until I ran out of WDW Conch. Then I worked on the sun. I need to place an order today for some more threads for this. I love this piece but it is a thread eater. :)

I am re-thinking what I am going to put in my Friday slot. I started Bayside Bungalows this week, but I didn't get very far on it. I am thinking that instead of stitching a new piece on Fridays that I might pull out one of my many WIPs and work on that instead. One of my goals this year is to whittle down that wip pile, and it isn't going to get smaller if I keep starting new pieces. So I am debating... I could save Bayside Bungalows to stitch on the way to and from Florida in a couple of weeks. I think I will go through my WIP pile this week and see if anything beckons me. :) (I did not start Red House Sampler, btw.

Thanks for the well wishes. They must have worked. Whatever I felt like I was coming down with never materialized (at least not yet).

Working on June Morning today... pictures to follow later in the week.

Happy stitching,

Kellie

Progress and a thank you

First of all, I want to shout out a big thank you to Tanya of the Sampler Girl. I recently won her two March releases on her blog, and I received them this week. They are gorgeous!! Thank you Tanya! :)

I have been dutifully stitching this week although I don't feel like I have much to show for it. I am not posting a picture of Wednesday's stitching because it was an exercise in frustration for the second week in a row. I stitched a beautiful circular motif on Simple Gifts Love quaker only to discover at the end that I left out a huge chunk of it on one side so it wasn't matching up correctly. I spent two hours stitching the motif and 30 minutes ripping it out. ugh. I am about ready to throw it out the door.

I worked on Shimmy on Thursday. I have more of her hair and most of her wing completed (is it a wing? on a mermaid? I hadn't noticed it until I started stitching it.).

I was excited to start something new in Friday's slot. I picked Country Cottage Needleworks Bayside Bungalows. I didn't get much stitched...I spent most of my time choosing fabric and getting the sides zigzagged. I decided to stitch it on Lakeside Linens 32 ct. Vintage Pearled Barley. I think it is going to be a fun stitch. :)

Today I am supposed to be working on Blessings and Kind Wishes, and I probably will, but I am fighting the urge to start the Red House Sampler. I bought all of the DMC last night, and I have a piece of fabric that I think would be perfect. (Just say no. Just say no. Just say no....)

It has been a long week. I have not felt well...not really sick, but feeling like I am on the verge of something. And I was scheduled to be observed by my principal on Friday. She is a wonderful principal...wonderful to work for...and I knew it would be fine. But it still makes me nervous. I was glad when it was over, and it went well. She was complimentary at the end, which I was grateful for. I will meet with her next week to discuss it in depth, but it was nice to know that she liked the lesson beforehand. :)

I plan to spend most of the weekend stitching. And I am looking forward to it. After I post this, I am going to park my behind in one of my comfy chairs, either listen to the book Outlander or catch up on some of my shows on the DVR. Bliss!! :)

Have a good weekend everyone.

Happy Stitching!

Kellie

A Finish!

WhooHoo!!! I finished Simply Live early Saturday morning. I am pleased with how it turned out. I want to try to find a frame that will work and frame it myself...maybe. I have never tried to frame my own needlework before, but I have been reading some online tutorials and plan to give it a try.

Primitive Needle Simply Live on 36 ct. Silkweaver Purely Primitive with Crescent Colors conversion.

I am not sure what I will put in my Friday slot. I am thinking I might start either Lizzie Kate's ABC Lessons or Country Cottage Needleworks' Bayside Bungalows. I want to put something in that slot that won't take forever to finish.

Saturday night I worked on Blessings and Kind Wishes. I made some progress on the house.

In other news, we had quite a scary event very early Friday morning. I awoke around 4:15 a.m. to the sound of thunderstorm. I awoke my husband about ten minutes later to ask him if he thought it was hailing. The wind was blowing hard, and it was starting to storm even harder. We both were laying there listening, when all of a sudden, we heard a roar (like a train). Without saying a word, we both bolted out of bed, ran to Jake's room, scooped him out of bed, and flew down the stairs to the basement. The next morning, we found our huge wooden swing set in a crumpled mess in the backyard. I am pretty sure we had a small tornado pass right behind our house. Several neighbors had damage as well. I am so glad it was the swing set and not the house...or us. Very thankful!!!

Here's my sweet Boo. He is an outdoor cat who visits us indoors on occasion. He's enjoying a nap in the sun on this sunny but cold Sunday afternoon.

I think someone is a little jealous...

Time to round up the rest of the family and get everyone ready for church. Afterwards, I hope to pull out This is the Day. I usually spend Sunday afternoons stitching, but I had errands to run today. I am looking forward to stitching (hopefully) a lot tonight.

Until next time...

Happy Stitching,

Kellie