chillin' at the crib with my peeps

Today's checklist:

Walk dog, check
Dentist appointment, check
Work, check
Performance appraisals, check
Walk dog, check
Laundry, check
Backup iPhone, check
Update blog, check
Chill out to my biosff*, check

Re-discovered Abstract City Blog that I fell in love with last year.

Check it out , particularly the Lego and coffee entries.

Peace/Out, my sistas.

* biosff = best italian opera singing friend forever (Andrea Bocelli)

Weekend wrap-up

It's 9:30 Sunday night. Where did another weekend go? Could Monday morning really be less than 10 hours away?

At some point this weekend, my patience finally ran out with the "punto gigliuccio" stitch. I'm making an executive decision and pressing forward, which translates to: I'm changing it. It will still be a drawn thread band and will look something like it should, but it won't be Italian but it will be d.o.n.e., soon.

On the 25th, Christmas stitching included precious little stitching on my NOEL band sampler (not enough for an update photo) but also a new start on black linen with red, white and green thread. It's a pretty small square design that might make a good biscornu. We'll see.

Maybe it's just Sunday night blues but my back hurts, my stomach is still grouching at me for eating too much after church, I didn't get much stitching accomplished, and the laundry room is a disaster. Whaaaaaaa! (Yes ma'am, I would like a little cheese with my whine, and another day off before Monday!)

In Bruges

Not since FARGO have I seen such a screwed up, twisted, crazy, dramedy as "In Bruges". I love me some Colin Farrell too. If you liked FARGO, check out In Bruges (as long as you're not allergic to the f word and violence, lots of violence). Brilliant.

Christmas stitching and other stuff too

Twas the night before Christmas Stitching and all in my brain, a buzz was a roarin' as loud as a train! "Stitch this or stitch that?", was the question I asked. "Stitch it ALL", someone answered, (the small voice in my head). A floss tag, a pincube, a biscornu for sure, all in bright colors of green, red and azure.

As you can see, I'm a little preoccupied tonight, so this post will be short and sweet.

I'm making steady progress on the withdrawn thread bands on Assisi peacock. Actually, I finished the middle section:



I still need to cut, withdraw and re-weave the last section (ugh), and figure out how exactly to work that punto gigliuccio stitch for the upper band. Trick-ee! If you have any suggestions for me, don't hold back.

My away game (dragonfly checkboard) is flying! I'm still only stitching on it during lunch breaks, so by some standards, it's not flying, but it's moving pretty darn quick for my liking. I'm working the fill-in stitching in the non-dragonfly squares, just making stuff up as I go, and it is turning out quiet nice if I do say so myself. On the days I can't walk up to the shop and stitch, I've been emailing the shop owner to encourage the other sit-n-stitchers to do a couple of squares for me, but they seem to think I'm kidding. No takers so far.

I also snapped a couple of fabulous amaryllis shots tonight. Sharing a couple, (unedited):

Susan Boyle is my hero...

If you want to be inspired, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

This woman is absolutely, bar none, my new hero. The judges and audience are so catty at first, then, WOW, she blows their minds.

FAN-FREAKIN-TABULOUS.

Susan, you ROCK!!!

Online Needlework Show

Everyone's talking about it, but just in case you missed it, be sure to block out a healthy chunk of time to look at the online needlework show. It's such a treat to see all these designs at one time!!! (and much more fun than dumping all my stashed patterns in the middle of the floor and looking at them!) I am sure I won't be able to resist making a "Wish List" for my LNS owner to order. Be sure to look for door prize info at the bottom of the screen on many of the vendor pages.

Happy Hunting!

Weekend Update

Easter weekend is always chuck full o'activity, but somehow I always seem to squeeze in a little stitching between the grocery shopping, cooking, baking, laundry, family functions and general household chores. I have fond memories of finishing some of my most favorite pieces early early on Easter mornings past. There isn't any chance of me finishing anything this Easter, but I'll keep up the tradition of slipping a few stitches in before church tomorrow.

Before I give you the Stitching Update, I just have to share this easy peasy Paula Deen mini-cheesecake recipe. So few ingredients, so little time, yet perfect little cheese tarts. I've been making it for years, but just had the brainstorm today to put a little different twist on it. Who doesn't love a little cheesecake with either cherries or blueberry topping?

Well, that's always good, but how about a little Hershey syrup, caramel sauce and a healthy sprinkling of pecan pieces?

Oh yeah baby - Turtle Cheesecakes!!! What's not to love?

Stitching Update: Dragonfly wings have proven to be a little more demanding than I thought, so I may be keeping this project (a.k.a. my away game) home for a while, until I've moved on to the less thought-demanding fill-in blocks. There are only 12 whole stitches in each dragonfly, but lots of 1/4 and 3/4 stitches. In such a small area, there is no room for fluff.

Last, but not least, my lovely peacock. I've nearly finished the cross stitching. I have three withdrawn thread bands to work. The first (above the lettering) is ready for the filling, the second (below the Assisi section) is in the "unweave/reweave" stage, the third is the big blank area between the two flower borders (just below the second band). It's in the "nothing is happening here yet" stage.

So there we are. I do hope you all are enjoying the joys of the season, some beautiful weather, some family gatherings, some delicious dinners and some quiet stitching time. I can't imagine a better way to spend the weekend.

Happy Easter!

It's not Easter until somebody breaks out the bunny ears!!!

Now before you go calling the ASPCA, you should know that no animals (or humans) were hurt during the photo shoot portion of this blog. As a matter of fact, some will do ANY-thing for a trisket!

Shameless.

Carmen and I are wishing you and yours an Easter basket filled with Hope, Love and Peace.

Palm Sunday

My kind of field trip

Stumbled across this on the web today. I think I'm green with envy.

ALL ABOARD the Crazy Train

As I was busily readying myself for work at 5:00 this morning I had an innocent thought. Or so I thought. It occurred to me that I might actually finish my Assisi Peacock sampler before the Spring Stitchers Retreat in May.
The Background: The Spring Stitchers Retreat ranks in my top 5 favorite annual events, along with the Fall Stitchers Retreat, the Heritage Farm Stitchers Day Out, Seminar and Share-A-Stitch. It is the first stitcher's event of the year after the long cold winter and I count down the days like a kid counts down to Christmas. There are two schools of thought about the projects to take to Retreat. 1) Take everything you own OR 2) Debate for months about which projects will become 'chosen' and only take the special ones who make the cut.

For the past several, no, make that many retreats I've taken three different projects.

• The Warm-up. It's the Friday evening project that you aren't really serious about, but while everyone is arriving and settling in, you stitch on it, but it doesn't require much concentration.
• The Saturday Project is the one I want to dedicate the most time and attention to. The Retreat Ladies know, without a doubt, my Saturday is Peacock Saturday.
• The Wrap-up. Sunday morning comes all too soon and it seems like it's time to pack up as soon as breakfast is over, so I like to try to put the first few stitches in a new project on Sunday.

WELL. This year, my retreat will start on THURSDAY, not Friday AND my Peacock might be finished long before retreat. DRATS. WHAT EVER WILL I DO??!!??!! Oh the possibilities started dancing through my head like visions of sugarplums. And wouldn't you know it, my stitching room is handily located adjacent to my laundry room, where I'm supposed to be ironing my outfit for the day. Hummmm. Let's just take a quick peek in that PHF*.

Needless to say, I forgot all about having a J.O.B. to go to for about 1/2 hour this morning as I pawed all the pretty things just waiting for me to start. And, all of them seemed to have their bags packed for retreat. Competitive little boogers.

I'll need to further ponder just how to structure my 4 day retreat, but I think I've pulled projects o'plenty to keep me busy, just in case I finish my peacock before then. 40 days and counting...

*Project Holding Facility

My Away Game

I've made great progress on my away game lately; enough to share a snap:

These little dragonflies are super simple, super sweet and I'm loving them a lot, especially on this bluish-purple sparkly fabric; or is it purplish-blue? Anywhoose. As I've mentioned before, this is going to be a checkerboard for my three XSDNs* in TX. But, instead of filling in every other block with a dragonfly, I believe I'll only stitch dragonflies in rows 1-3 and 6-8, so to emphasize the purpose of the board. The Sekas pattern was only supposed to be a 5 block by 5 block sampler, as seen here, but all I could see when I looked at it was a checkerboard, which as we all know are 8x8, not 5x5.

And so it was envisioned, and so it shall be done.

Then, after the dragonflies are in place, I'll go back and do fill-in stitches in the empty blocks.

I look forward to skipping lunch to work on this little ditty, one dragonfly at a time.

Happy Stitching!

* X-tra Special Darling Nieces