You were a dismal failure!

you did not succeed in your assgnment to keep me from starting again. Man, did you NOT succeed. lol In the last week I started:

Midsummer Nights Designs Quaker Meetinghouse

So far I've made it this far:

I'm stitching on 32-count jobelan (probably parchment) with Thread Gatherer Silk and Colours "Stormy Skies" and Sampler Threads "Grape Leaf" and "Cranberry." The wite is still up for grabs but it'll probably either be Sampler Threads "Oatmeal" or Weeks "Whitewash."

I also continued something I started 2 weeks ago, Mirabilia's Halloween Fairy --
So far I've come to the conclusion that Bunny Honey and whatever that other brown Crescent Color this pattern calls for are *not nearly* different enough!!! See:


I *also* started a little freebie Quaker motif. I'm doing it over one on some 28 count ight blue linen with a funky (unknown) color of Victoria Clayton silks:


So you see that you have failed utterly and completely! lol

I have shown great discretion over the last two days though. I have worked exclusively on my Vierlanden Mystery Sampler. And I can happily say I now have all the crowns and the whole first row of letters in. I apologize for a lack of pic though... maybe this weekend. :)

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Quote of the day: "It is the prerogative of wizards to be grumpy."
Jim Butcher – Storm Front

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Still can't *#($&)@^#*(@&$ find: Zelazny's This Immortal
Currently reading: Tony Hillerman Hunting Badger ; Jim Butcher's Storm Front; and Terry Pratchett's Going Postal

Stop me before I start again....

Ok, I was antsy I guess. I took my birth-week off to stitch whatever called to me sooooooooo.....

One night I *had* to do something new so I did a part of a pattern from The Gift of Stitching: http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2580144830098700431blaeKv
While watching QVC's all Irish 24-hour special I not only bought a sweater and a jacket, but I started and finished A. Fox Original's "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"

I also finished an ornie from last year's JCS issue --- only, what, 6 months in the making!!! lol


I also started Mirabilia's Halloween Fairy. Sorry, I forgot to photo that.

Now I am back on the straight and narrow. I am working on that *(#@$^(*#)&@ collection of snowmen. Bad designer! Bad designer!

I'm done!!!!!!!!! I'm done!!!!!!!!!! I'm DONE!!!!!!!!!!!

For my bday I treated myself to finishing up my M Designs Personalized sampler from the Cross Stitch Pals Reunion class last October. Whatcha think???








Other than finishing up the sampler all I did was lounge around on my birthday. It was lovely. Well, it was lovely until 4pm when a pair of friends got all over my case for being a slug and kidnapped me off to the Director's Guild for a showing of an episode of Ugly Betty and a chat with the cast. Now, I don't watch Betty, but it was a fun evening and the cast was very entertaining. Yeah, I guess I might have to watch... at least once and a while. :)

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Quote of the day: I’m very tall when I’m standing on my charisma. --Harlan Ellison

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Currently reading: Tony Hillerman -- Hunting Badger
Would be reading if I could figure out where it went: Roger Zelazny's This Immortal

Possibly we skipped Spring?

I guess we've decided to go straight from Fall to Summer -- I mean it's not like we had a winter. Today it is upwards of 80 degrees. Hmpf. A lack of Spring makes me grumpy apparently. Possibly impending birthday-dom is making me grumpy as well. I'm turning 32. ;-) Anyone who says I'm math-challenged can take a flying leap again this year!

Let's see, to catch up... I dog sat for a couple good boys (well, mostly good boys) a week ago so their mom could go to Indiana for a scrap booking retreat. She was productive and the boys only tried to eat the mailman and the gardener. A good weekend all around. Here, meet the adorable fur hellions:


Aren't they cute? If only they stop trying to eat people the world could meet them and realize the full measure of their adorability.

Dog-sitting was accompanied by the early arrival of summer so the boys and I spent a morning outside lounging about. I stitched up the second side for my first biscornu:

Wish me luck! I'm going to try putting it together this week. When I wasn't working on the biscornu I admired my friend's camillias. My uncle used to have a walkway lined with giant camillia trees (ok, so they were awfully darn huge when I was 8. Come to think of it, I was pretty tall at 8 so maybe they were huge. :) Because you deserve the joy of a Southern California "winter," I share some shots of them:

Wish you were here?

Aside from the biscornu, I've made progress on a snowman-themed RR that is semi-secret so I can't share yet. Yeah, it's the one that drives me batty since it changes color every 3 stitches. I feel like writing a letter to designers:

Dear Outstanding Designer, I love your artistic talent. I envy your creativity. I think you and your designs are wonderful. But I wish to bring a small matter to your attention. No doubt a person of your talent and brilliance is just working on to high a level to realize the very simple, lowly fact that there is absolutely, positively no need to use 3 shades of every color in your pattern for shading. More often than not you are creating an obviously fictional setting so there really is not need for me to, for instance, change colors three times in order to stitch the 1 full x and 3 one-quarter stitches that make up the thumb on a snowman's glove. Really and truly I respect you -- all stitchers everywhere respect you. But we'd stop taking your name in vain if you'd just realize the utter and complete idiocy of never using more than 3 stitches of one color in a row. Thank you very much for your attention to this. Sincerely, Stitcher In Need of Drugs or a Hand Gun and Your Address

Think maybe they'd get the point?

I've also done some little bits on a few things. There's my Vierlanden Mystery sampler


Because I can never let well enough alone, I did some adjusting. I rearranged the letters in the alphabet so my name appears and I stitched the name in a different thread. Sigh. Why can't I just leave a pattern be? I am hoping to get the snowman RR out of my life this week and have a day or so to dedicate tho this piece. I would kind of like to catch up with the rest of the SAL.

I took a few moments to finish a bit on my M Designs personalized sampler:


I'm really liking this piece, but I have a problem. There's a whole bunch of beautiful fabric left over at the bottom....

I added the row of numbers to take up space, but, as you can see, I still have a bunch left. I've been hunting motifs and contemplating adding a saying to the bottom. Any suggestions?



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Quotes of the day:
"The corner the light doesn’t reach is the one the dime rolled to." Archie Goodwin – Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

"…his function is rather like an anticomputer: you feed him all kinds of carefully garnered facts, figures, and statistics and he translates them into garbage."
Zelazny – This Immortal


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Currently would be reading if I could find it: Zelazny's This Immortal
Recently finished reading: Rex Stout's The Rubber Band and Stout's Fer-de-Lance