Merry Christmas

MS 12 Days of Christmas

I have this posted as individual finishes on my other blog http://cathy-mystitchingjournal.blogspot.com/ but a friend asked to see the whole piece so I'm posting that here.  The fabric is 25-count potato Lugana which isn't showing well in the photo and I'm using the called for Anchor floss.  This is on my to be finished list for 2012.

Weekly Update - 10/2/2011

This was my week to work on Seaside Victorian and I've now completed the top half of page 1 as well as part of the bottom half.  I like that it's actually starting to look like something.

Now I'm back to charity stitching, this time for Binky SD.  So far, this attempt at a rotation seems to be working!

My talented daughter has been busy

We gave Janice a sewing machine for her birthday--actually we gave her money and she used part of it to buy a sewing machine.  She didn't have Kyleigh this weekend, so she spent part of it sewing.  First she made the Tinkerbell pillow for Kyleigh to use for naps at preschool.

Next, she made a prototype of a green snack bag that she'll sell at the boutique next month.  The previous one she made was squared off and had velcro across the top, but I felt the velcro might make too much noise when opening or closing so she came up with this idea instead.

 Her final project was the tutu and wings that will become part of Kyleigh's butterfly costume for Halloween.  The wings still need to be painted pink and purple.

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Weekly Update - 9/25/2011

This was my week to stitch something other than Seaside Victorian, so I chose to stitch two butterflies for WOCS since the target date is 10/1/2011.

For this project, we were asked to use a butterfly pattern designed for WOCS and choose three shades of one color to stitch it in. There will be 36 butterflies in total.  We were also asked to send a fabric for the border along with it. I scanned the squares with the fabric I chose for each.

For my first butterfly, I chose to use DMC 3607, 718 and 915.



For the second, I chose 964, 959 and 3812.





Seaside Victorian Update

Stitches, that is.  Seaside Victorian has been set aside for now, but I managed to add about 1700 stitches this week.  (The colors in last week's photo were more accurate.)  You'll probably notice that the first two columns are one row too long.  I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm going to leave it for now.  It's close emough to the colors in the next row that I'm planning to skip that row to get back on track.

 

Because I'm enjoying this so much, but have other obligations that need attention, I've decided to try a rotation.  I'm stitching on Seaside Victorian every other week and in the other weeks will be stitching on various squares for WOCS, Binky SD and Q4OC. plus an exchange project for Shared_Crosses and a finishing up a project I started a couple of weeks ago.  Lots of stitching in my future.

Pumpkin and Soxie

In April, we brought home two kittens that we got from a friend of a friend of Janice's.  Janice took their brother who Kyleigh named Bobby (after Bob the Builder)  Ours were immediately named Pumpkin and Soxie, mostly because of their coloring.  We were told at the time that they were six weeks old and both males, but we later discovered they weren't quite that old and that Soxie was a female.  Of course that didn't make a difference to us.  The top picture was taken the day we brought them home.

I took the bottom picture this morning.  They are six months old now and still spend a lot of time together.  They're not allowed on tables and counters, but they love to curl up on top of things.  Right now, one just got removed from the table in my home office and the other is curled up on the shredder. 



My Current Project

One of the ladies in my Yahoo Group, Shared_Crosses is stitching a HAED called Seaside Victorian by Dennis Lewan and I fell in love with it almost immediately.  She started in the bottom left and I started in the top right so we're working in opposite directions.  Below is the picture of what it's supposed to look like.  I'm seriously considering removing the ship, but I have a long way to go before I make that decision.

Below is my start.  I've only been stitching on it for a week and this is approximately 3/4 of 1/4 of the first page.  I'm using a light blue 25-count Lugana, one over one and I'm really enjoying it. I'm planning to continue with it through the weekend, then I need to work on some other projects.

I do have another HAED in process.  I started Faery Tales several months ago, but haven't quite completed the first page.  I'm stitching it on 18-count Aida, one over one and I don't really like the coverage so I'm thinking I might restart it using 25-count Lugana.  I've surprised myself in that the 25-count is easier than I thought it would be.

Kyleigh spent the weekend

Janice was at a women's retreat with our church this weekend, so Kyleigh got to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa.  This is the first time she's ever spent the whole weekend.

Friday night we went to see the Angels play the Yankees.  It was a long game and we left before the fireworks, but got to see the fireworks from Disneyland on the way to the car. 

I was closing the back door after letting the cats in and managed to close my right thumb in the door.  The nail is now a beautiful blue/purple and I'm going to lose the nail.  It was painful the first few days, but isn't too bad today.

Saturday we woke up to thunder and rain showers so we had a very lazy type day.  David had promised to make pancakes, but first he fixed the knob on our bedroom door.  It's been sticking and hard to turn and I've been afraid of being either locked in or locked out, but I think he really did it because he asked Kyleigh to open the door and she couldn't get the knob to turn.  Late in the afternoon we went out and played in the backyard and Kyleigh found Janice's old wagon and filled it up and pulled it around the yard.  She also spent time lugging our cats around.

Side Note:  Have you ever realized after the fact that you should have taken a picture of something but missed the opportunity.  I did that a lot this weekend.

Sunday was church.  During the service a sheriff in uniform sang the song "Where were you when the world stopped turning?"  I'd never heard it before, but it's a beautiful song and there was also a slide show of 9/11 images to accompany it.  Here is a link to the lyrics if you're interested. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanjackson/wherewereyouwhentheworldstoppedturning.html

I took this picture of Kyleigh all dressed and ready to go and sent it to her mom.

We met Janice at Olive Garden for dinner since it's within walking distance of her condo (I had her car), David had a gift card and they had the neverending pasta bowl special.  Kyleigh wasn't happy about it, but she did go home with mommy.  And I have the next two days off work to recouperate.

Angels Game Fun

Janice, Kyleigh, Bob (the holder of the season tickets) and I normally go to all the Friday night Angels games.  Janice wasn't able to make it tonight so Bob and I took Kyleigh to see the Angels play the Yankees by ourselves.  The pre-game ceremonies included a walk around the field by active military and their families.  There was also the flag ceremony where they unfurl a large flag on the field and a flyover by seven jets.  I didn't get any pictures because I was holding Kyleigh.

Bob normally keeps score, but not when Kyleigh's around.  Then he spends his time either entertaining or being entertained by her.  The picture above was taken at tonight's game.  He's responsible for the sweatshirt being on backwards.  BTW, Kyleigh doesn't spend much time watching the game

The pictures below were taken at last Friday night's game.  Bob purchased that monkey (purple is her favorite color) and later said it was the best $20 he ever spent.  They played "There's a monkey on your head", Hide the monkey", The monkey is mean", etc.

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