WIPocalypse #2

Boy has the past month ever flew by. I completely forgot about the WIPocalypse challenge and working on my stitching after the first little rush I had at the first of last month. I did work a little bit on something I'm stitching for a friend, but I can't post it on here because I'm not sure if she'll read this or not. So, instead I'll post my teeny tiny progress in other areas for the month.

I got a whopping 3 hours work done on Fairy Moon. LMAO. I normally wouldn't even bother taking a picture of it, but I needed to be able to post something, so here's Moony at 78 hours.

I also managed to dig out a few smalls I did in 2007 and FINALLY got them framed. I did these for my two girls when they were tiny. They're bigger now, but they still love them. My oldest and I always read the book "Guess How Much I Love You" in which the final line is "I love you to the moon and back", and this became our key phrase for many years to tell the other that we loved them. So when I saw the "I Love You To The Moon" kit from Waxing Moon Designs, I HAD to have it! I got it off eBay and stitched it up quickly.

My youngest and I read this book as well and said the same things, but when it was time to do one for her I saw the "You're My Sunshine" kit from Waxing Moon Designs it was perfect. My youngest daughter had a thing for the song You Are My Sunshine. My Mother-in-Law sang it to her every time she saw her and Littlest DD always referred to it as her "special Nanny song". It was such a special song for her that at one point, I wasn't even allowed to sing it to her, only Nanny could. lol

So, after only 4-5 years of sitting in the finished container, I managed to get them framed for the girls. Here they are.

Hopefully next month I'll be able to post a little more visible progress, but for now Happy Stitching!

A bit more Waiting

I just realized that I never posted a pic of my 70 hour progress of Waiting. I've now finished over 80 hours and so I have two pictures to post of this one today. I also have another small finish to show off. I saw a picture on an egroup I belong to where someone (Sorry, I can't remember who) posted a pic of a design she came up with. It said "Never trust a skinny cook" and had a small teddy bear with a chef's hat on. I fell in love with the phrase and decided to come up with my own version of this. I "thiefed" a few elements from some other patterns I had, so they're not all mine, but the overall design is.

Here are some pictures...

Waiting at 70 hours. Arm, Back and Scarf completed.

Waiting at 80 Hours - Other arm, Hair and 2/3 of the windowpanes completed. (My god that hair had a LOT of quarter stitches!)

Never trust a SKINNY Cook. (My new motto)

Happy Holidays and all that jazz

I came on to post and realized that I never posted an update about Wanda. I guess with all the hustle and bustle of Christmas, once the operation was over and done with I never thought to put it up on here.

Well, everything went wonderfully. The surgeon told Tina (Wanda's daughter) that these were the best set of Donor lungs he's EVER seen and she was able to breathe on her own almost immediately after the surgery. She was kept on the ventilator for a few days because the pain meds she was on were so strong, she slept too deep and occasionally "forgot" to breathe, but once they stepped her down a bit she was fine to come off the ventilator.

She's still in the hospital, but mainly becuase she's waiting for her anti-rejection drugs to arrive. Apparently when you're a NB Transplant patient, you have to wait for the drugs to come from NB. Ontario pays for all the transplant meds for it's citizens, but if you're an NB citizen you only get the anti-rejection drugs paid for... and they have to come from an NB Pharmacy... Not a big surprise there... NB is horrible for their medical coverage, but I assumed that anything paid for by one province would be the same in all the others... I guess I was wrong on that count.

Tina is doing a wonderful job of keeping everyone updated on Wanda's CarePage. It's a free site where a patient signs up and anyone who wants to keep up on their progress can sign up (for free) and subscribe to their updates. If anyone is interested in keeping tabs on her progress and doesn't already have the link, the page is http://www.carepages.com/. You need to sign up and then put her patient name in. (wandanorthrup)

Here's a picture of the Ornaments I (**finally**) finished for Olivia & Rachel this Christmas. This was my very first attempt at "finishing" anything other than to frame it. It's definitely a learning experience. Most of which is trial and error. I've made a few errors, now I know what not to do next time. I still haven't done "Our" ornament (mine and Jason's) I stitched the back piece last night and plan on finishing it before the new year. It never made it on the Christmas tree this year, but at least it'll be finished in 2006 and ready to put on the tree next year. I think I might try to get a few ornaments stitched up soon for next year. Hopefully that means that I don't have to try and do it all at the last minute next year. Not likely, but hopefully *lol*

Christmas went well here. We had a mountain of stuff in the living room under the tree. So much that we sat there looking at it wondering where it all came from. I mean, I know WE didn't buy that much. Santa brought Olivia a Dora the Explorer scooter and some Magnetic letters (for the fridge). He brought Rachel a play center with a "tent" to crawl inside of and a baby doll that squeaks when you squeeze it.

Here are a few "before" and "after" pictures...Before the kids got up and after the carnage! lol

Rachel had so much fun for her very first Christmas! She opened quite a few of her own presents, but when she did, we spent most of our time trying to keep the paper out of her mouth. She had quite an obsession with eating the wrapping paper. Olivia had a good time, because she not only got to open her presents, but about half of Rachel's too.

The girls got a big wagon from my FIL. One of the ones that have the fold up seats and cup holders. It'll come in very handy next summer when we go somewhere. Right now Rachel is a bit too young to spend much time in there, But by this summer it'll be perfect to haul both of them around. It's fun for them and will make my travelling life so much easier. They got a ton of toys and clothes and books. My mom got Rachel her own solid oak rocking chair. She got Olivia one her second Christmas and she saw the exact same one at a store recently and decided that Rachel needed her own as well. We've got Rachel's put away right now, since she's too young to use it now and we don't have enough room downstairs to keep things out that have no chance of getting used. Olivia also got her very own Race Track! She loves it. You "wind" the cars up and put them on the track and they go around and chase each other. It's meant for younger kids, no guns to control the speed, no track that has to be put together every time -- it just folds up when you're done-- and nothing hard they have to do. Another big hit with Olivia was the Care Bears they both got from Rob, Angie and Tyler. Olivia sleeps with hers every night now, and most nights tries to take Rachel's too!

We got so much this year. My FIL got me a Water dispenser that has both hot and cold water and a new pair of Jeans. Now I don't have to heat bottles, I just use the already pre-heated water! My MIL got me a new shirt and got both Jason and I a good shredder. My Mom and her bf got us a $50 GC to the Future Shop and a rain check for a bread maker. Of course, Canadian Tire never has anything in stock when it's on sale, so we're getting it as soon as it's back in. My DH got me lots of stitching stuff. I got a new scroll frame, floss I needed for a project I want to start, a new pattern for my stash -- Fairy Moon by Mirabilia, as well as a few small odds n ends. He also got me a new blouse and some new PJs (both which need to be exchanged).

Jason got a Table saw from his Dad -- which prooves his pet theory that if you think you want something, just borrow it enough and the person you borrow it from will get the hint... He's had his Dad's table saw in our basement for probably 6 months now. lol. His mom and her bf got him a 2gig card for his mp3 player, and the shredder I mentioned above was for both of us. I got him a biscuit jointer, a 4x8 sheet of Pegboard for his workbench and a bunch of the "pegs" to hang the tools on, a case for his mp3 player, a Map book from the girls, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now. For those who don't know what a biscuit jointer is, basically it's a tool to join pieces of wood together, especially when building furniture.

I've spent the last few days trying to decide what I'm going to do with my new pattern. I need to figure out which fabric to order. This is the reason I LOVE the "Fabric Choices" page I've linked to here, and in my sidebar. You can try out almost all the designs from some of the most popular designers out there (Miribilia, Lavender and Lace, Passione Ricamo, and Teresa Wentzler) and with many of the different specialty fabrics available from some of the biggest names in Hand Dyed Fabrics (Silkweaver, Sugar Maple Fabrics to name just a few) and using the magic of Photoshop, the patterns have a transparent background, so you can get an idea what the pattern would look like on each individual fabric! Like I said, GREAT SITE. You can also load your own fabric or picture scan to check it out. Anyway, after hours of looking through fabrics from many designers and weighing price and colours I think I've decided to go with Silkweaver's "Enchantment" Linnen. Here's an idea of what this should look like using this fabric. Of course the fabric doesn't look exactly the same every time, but hopefully it'll be close enough, because this is the look I fell in love with.

What do you think?

Well, that's enough for today. I should get a LITTLE bit of housework done before Jason gets up. I started the post at 9:51am and now it's 12:03pm, so I think I've spent long enough on here. lol. Mind you, that's including many breaks to play with the kids and do all the normal "Mommy" stuff. I've probably only been on here half an hour or so in total, it just seems like a lot more.

New ornament front stitched...

I've finished stitching the ornament front for the final (3rd)ornament I'm making this year. It's GloryBee's freebie "Blackwork Noel" (If you visit it, notice that there's a dropdown near the bottom of the page to see the other freebies GloryBee has available.) It was a really quick stitch, being made up entirely of backstitches and all, and was done in just one evening.

I changed the orientation of the ornament slightly. It was meant to be square as opposed to diamond shaped. I just turned it 45 degrees and then I had to change where the letters fit. I stitched the letters over 1 instead of over two as was called for. I wanted a more delicate looking letter, and the size they were originally were too big to fit right once I changed the way the ornament was turned. It also called for all the blackwork, or redwork I guess, to be stitched with two threads, but I used one instead. I like the fine line look better. the picture to the right is a picture of what the original is supposed to look like when stitched. (Picture was taken from the GloryBee site)

I plan on stitching a second one for the back of the ornament, but instead of NOEL for the letters, I plan on plotting out my own letters. A "C" and a "J" for Christine and Jason , then "0" and "6" for the year on the bottom, I should get that finished tonight and then hopefully I'll get all three ornaments finished this week... lol... Then, once I get those done I can finally get Fairy Celebration finished. I've only got about 2 or 3 evenings worth of stitching left to finish it off, but I wanted to get the Ornaments done before Christmas.

Rachel's Ornament and other things

I haven't had a lot to say lately, so I haven't been posting much... just a few jokes for the past few days. Life's been fairly slow lately. I haven't even been stitching. I've been a bit tired in the evening and have been spending it laying on the couch in front of the boob tube. I know, I know... if I were stitching I'd be sitting in the same place... It's not like it's a physically draining thing, but I just find that if I'm concentrating, it's still more tiring than just laying there "vegging".

One day last week I fell asleep in front of the TV around 9:30. I got up a few hours later and went straight to bed and slept right through... I think I just needed to catch up a little. I'm normally a night owl and am usually up till midnight or later (sometimes MUCH later) almost every night, then up around 8 with the kids. Olivia hasn't napped since a few months before Rachel was born, so I don't get a chance to catch up during the day like I used to... I guess I just needed a week or so of earlier bed times to catch me up a bit.

I did manage to get Rachel's Ornament finished -- the stitching and beading at least, I still haven't gotten either one "finished" in that it actually makes a real ornament. Right now it's still just a small piece of Aida with some floss and beads on it. I need to get my butt in gear... maybe tonight since there's nothing on TV. lol. I say that like it might actually happen... I've been saying that for a week now and I'm still in the same boat! Here's a picture

I haven't been in much of a Christmassy mood lately. Not a total "Bah Humbug" kind of mood or anything like that. I'm still semi-excited... but I just can't get into that really excited Christmassy mood that usually hits once we get this close to present day *grin*

I got some news from my Mom the other day. My Great-Grandmother is not well. According to mom the doctors have given her anywhere from hours to weeks to live. Her body is just shutting down. Sometimes I feel sad and other times I feel like I should feel more.

There's a bit of a back story to this... For those that don't know me in person, or have just never heard about this. My Grandmother, her only daughter, had Alzheimers Disease and passed away in March of 1998. Several months before Gram died, Grampy asked Nannie (my Great-grandmother) to come home and stay with them. They pretty much knew Gram wasn't doing well and thought it would be good for her to have her mother around. Nannie said no. She wasn't going to move home to New Brunswick. (She lives in Ontario and has for as long as I can remember.) Then a few months after Gram died, I heard through the grapevine (the family) that Nannie had OFFERED to move to Saint John (here in NB) to look after her ex-boyfriend's son because he wasn't well... (BTW, don't let her hear you calling him her BF though... According to her, he was just her "boarder". For 40 years! *wink*) Anyway, after I heard about her offer to move back to NB to take care of Joe's son, I got mad. VERY mad. She can do that for her "boarder's" son, but not her ONLY child!?! I've been hanging onto this anger for a lot of years and I know that even though she's not going to last much longer I'm still having a very hard time letting it go.

To knot or not (SBQ) and other stuff

This week's SBQ asks:
How do you secure your thread when you begin a new one? Specifically, do you or have you ever used a waste knot?

I do use a waste knot form time to time, usually when I feel I'm running low on floss and want to conserve every millimeter of floss for stitching. For a while I used it all the time because I hated trying to "catch" the tail in my stitching. But now I usually just run my needle under some existing stitches nearby when starting a new thread.

The only time I leave a tail and then stitch over it to catch it is when I'm starting a brand new project, or starting in an area where there isn't much stitching already done to run the needle under.


Now, onto the rest of the post. Sorry I haven't been on much lately but the past few days has seen a household full of "sickies" here chez moi. All 4 of us have caught a rather nasty strain of the cold. This is our second go-round in the past few weeks, so I've been spending any extra time that I'm not looking after the kidlets recouperating. Unfortunately that means not much stitching going on either. I've spent much of my time sleeping lately. *grin* Luckily Jason doesn't mind looking after the little ones. I seem to have gotten the worst of it this time around. Last time I only had a stuffy nose for about a day and a half, but I think I more than made up for it this time. It almost feels like half cold/half flu. I've got the cough and stuffy/runny nose of a cold, and the aches and pains and fatigue that go with the flu.

I finally got a little bit of stitching done last night. I started the lettering for the back of the two ornaments on Monday night and last night I finally got Rachel's Ornament finished. I still have to work on the beading tonight so I won't be posting a progress picture until the that is done. After that I'll try and get them finished into ornaments. This is my first time "finishing" a project, so it should be interesting. I found a little tutorial on how to make the braid that goes around the ornament out of floss. I was planning on buying standart white braid to use, but now I think I might try making my own out of the pink and purple shades of floss that I used to stitch the mittens and scarves. I think it would be cute to have all 4 shades in there. Of course that means I'll have to pick up more floss too because I have very little left of most of those colours.

I'm so excited about Saturday. We're going shopping in Moncton. Now this thought usually brings dreadful thoughts of a packed Walmart and trying to find a parking space at the mall without having to walk 10 minutes to get to the front doors dragging screaming kids behind you all the while.

But what is so exciting this time is that Jason and I are going SOLO! Yes, that's right Jason's mom is watching Olivia and Mom is watching Rachel. We've got the whole day to shop without having to stop every 5 minutes for pee breaks, or bottle breaks, or dirty diaper breaks...

We can actually go to lunch somewhere that doesn't give out toys with their meals.

I can actually stop at a craft store and poke around for a minute without worrying whether or not the baby is in the car with Jason screaming her face off the whole time. (something that has actually happened once or twice)

I'm so excited thinking about it that I'm almost ready to get up and dance around the room...

(I know, I know... What's stopping me, right? It is good cardio after all.)

Olivia's Sparkling Snowman

I finished stitching another "small" last night. It's the Christmas Onrnament that I mentioned in my last post -- or rather, it WILL be a Christmas ornament once I finish it. I plan on stitching Olivia's name and age along with the year on a back piece before finishing it into an ornament for her. Maybe something like:

Stitched by Mommy
for Olivia
3 Years Old
2006

We'll see how it turns out. I need to go through my books and magazines to find a lettering that I like. I know I have a couple of them that are cute, I'm just not sure how many I have that are small enough for this. The stitched area is only 48w x 58h (including all the beading) so it's a fairly small area for lettering.

Speaking of beading, this is the first projet I've ever used beads on. I've had a few packs of Mill Hill beads a few years ago but never used them. (I bought them for Scrapbooking) So when this pattern called for 4mm ribbon french knots, which I desperately hate doing, I decided to put some beads on in their place. It's cute. It almost l0oks like sparkling snowflakes falling, whereas before the knots were green ribbon... not very "snow like".

I changed up the colours for the pattern quite a lot. The scarf and hat were supposed to in shades of blue and the mits and ear muffs were in green. Also, the ecru stitching around the edges of the snowman were supposed to be in DMC silver metallic, but I started stitching and ripped it out completely a few minutes later. I HATE HATE HATE working with that stuff... I've never worked with the Krienik metallics though, are they any easier to work with than the DMC? I hope so because I love the metallic look, but refuse to use it unless I absolutely have to. Besides, I thought the ecru was more authentic looking. I still get the "sparkle" from the beads, so I'm quite happy with it.

Small Happy Dance and SBQ catch up.

I finished a quickie project last night. It took about two days (stitching at my pace -- slow) to finish this towel up. The design is from Better Homes and Gardens Cross Stitch Christmas Magazine (I'm not sure which year offhand, I've got 3 or 4 of them) It's the perfect size for a hand towel.

I stitched it with the intention of giving it to Olivia's Dance Teacher at their last class before Christmas, but now I'm not so sure. I think it's very cute, and don't know if I'm going to give it away or not. *lol* I finish so few projects that when I do get one done I don't want to give it away. Maybe once I get a few more finishes under my belt I might be better at parting with them.

I haven't gotten around to answering very many of the SBQ (Stitching Blogger's Question) lately so I've decided to play a bit of Catch-up for at least the last few weeks.

SBQ for November 16

Do you stitch Christmas ornaments? If so, how many do you stitch each year and for whom? If not, why not?

I'm actually currently working on my very first Christmas Ornaments. I never stitched them before because we always had a very "coordinated" tree. It is always decorated in Red, White and Silver, and I never saw a lot of patterns that matched this theme that I liked, so I always stayed away from them since the ones I liked didn't "match" our tree.

But since Olivia was born we've slowly been collecting more and more "non-themed" and kid-friendly ornaments, and this year Olivia saw a cute snowman ornament I had in one of my magazines and said she wanted me to stitch it for her. There are two there, so I decided to stitch one for each of the girls and to find one to stitch for Jason and I as well. I've decided I'm going to try and make it an annual thing. Make three ornament every year. One for each girl and one for us every year. And when the girls leave home, they've already got their start on a Christmas Ornament stash for their own Christmas Tree.

SBQ for November 8

How many different brands of “complete” embroidery floss sets do you own? How do you keep track of it? (i.e., spread sheet program, index cards, palm pilot, etc.)

I don't own ANY complete sets of floss. I use mainly DMC, but I buy floss as I need it. I'll pick up one or two that I don't have every time I get a chance, which until recently wasn't often since I can't buy DMC floss in Fredericton anymore (only Anchor -- at Walmart) and I rarely get to Saint John or Moncton. So hopefully someday soon I'll end up with close to a complete collection of DMC. That would be nice.

Or rather I should say I don't THINK you can get DMC in F'ton anymore... the two places I used to get my floss and Cross stitch patterns in F'ton have both closed down. Trimmings was a small-ish craft store with TONS of stuff for Cross-stitch, Beading, Sewing and Quilting plus some stuff for other crafts, but those seemed to be the main focus. They closed down, oh, probably two years ago now, and Lewiscraft in the Mall closed down probably around 6 months ago and there aren't any LNS that I know of at all in Fredericton.

A small home based shop opened up in my town a month or so ago and they carry DMC floss, but not the complete collection of colours, and their distributer doesn't carry a lot of the big names in patterns like L&L and Miribilia etc etc. Their distributer only carries "kits" and I hate buying kits, especially now that I've discovered stitching on higher count fabrics. (Linnen and Lugana, pref 28 count) I desperately hate stitching on 14 count Aida fabric, and that's usually what kits include for fabric.

SBQ for November 1

How did you decide on the title of your stitching blog? Was it random, or does it have a special meaning to you or about you?

Well, until earlier today my blog was just called "Christine's Little World" I guess reading this SBQ a few weeks ago kind of got me thinking about how uninspired that sounds. *grin* So, I've been mulling it around in the back of my head and finally came up with the name Ramblings of a Scattered Mind, which pretty much sums up everything going on in this blog. There is no unifying "theme" to my posts. They mainly seem to focus around my stitching and my family... for this month, but knowing me I'll completely switch gears in another month or so and will be posting about something completely different... So it seems to fit...

However that being said, the title has absolutely NOTHING to do with stitching. I don't have enough ambition to keep one blog going steady, let alone two. In other words, my life isn't interesting enough that if I don't put my stitching stuff on my main blog I'd have nothing to say. *lol*

I think that's enough for now... hopefully I can keep up with doing this on a weekly, or at least bi-weekly basis so I don't have to type this much all at once again.