RECAP July Goals:

1) Finish Magic (including word Magic) [Magic finished but not word magic]
2) Work on Blackwork Dragon [worked a little on this]
3) Start and Finish Ever So Little - Chimps [started Zebra - almost done]
4) Start Stitcher's Hideaway piece in Sturbridge [started and finished!]

5) Quilt Purple Triangles of Amish Quilt [2 1/2 finished]
6) Finish piecing block 10 of ohio stars (ugggg) [Still NO]

7) Work on Website upgrade. [YES - almost up and running now!]

Finally, I opened up the practice exam for the GRE... and I got through 3 sections, or rather I skipped the first section and go through 2 other sections. Then my boyfriend got home and we had dinner.

Last night I worked till 6 again, which is nice in that there is less traffic but I sure am tired at the end of the day (I come in around 7/7:30 at the latest). I stopped by the grocery store and then cooked dinner - chicken parm with linguini. Yum. That was done about 8:30, my boyfriend got home at 8:40 and we ate. We then decided it was too hot in the livingroom to watch a movie so we moved to the air conditioned bedroom and I stitched while he continued reading Harry Potter (he keeps leaving it at the apartment during the week and then wishing he had it). By nine thirty I was falling asleep stitching so I put that away and went to sleep.

So I worked on Legends again, I'm getting a bit ahead now, I will not however start the 3rd dragon until Carol is ready to start it. I do however want to finish the border around magic and the word magic pretty soon. The border is now almost finished cross stitch wise, there is a ton of backstitching still to do. And now i'm almost out of my Waterlilies Storm Clouds floss which is what I'm using for the border. I still have the border around Wisdom that will need to be done so I think I will pick up some more floss tonight at stitch.

I plan on backstitching the border tonight and this weekend I think I will pick up Blackwork Dragon again, besides the time I will spend quilting and working on the website.

Ahh - lunch time, I think it's pizza for lunch again and maybe a bit of stitching!

My bookcase arrived!

Well no studying for the GRE's or cleaning happened last night. I got home and my bookcase was on the porch, unfortunately the box was damaged and that led to a few dents - which made me a little mad at first but the bookcase is so large that you don't really notice.

Then began the process of deciphering the directions and putting the bookcase together, this was tough. After about 2 hours I was starting on the second half and my hand was sore from the screw driver and hex wrench. Finally when I got the the mantel my hand was really bad and I started using packing stuff around the screw driver to easy my hand a bit.

Then came tightening all the large screws once it was standing (taller than i am by the way). This led to the hex wrench that came with the bookcase becoming completely stripped. I searched around and found my mini hex set, which had the right size but the wrench was so small it was really hard to tighten and this hurt my hand more (more packing stuff used). Finally everything was tight enough for me to feel like it was done. It was 10pm.

So then I started moving books, dusting bookcases and vacuuming behind them. Then began the process of putting books on the new shelves, I didn't really organize them as i had wanted but they have a bit of order. Once that bookcase was filled (yup the new bookcase is already full), i moved my good one into my bedroom and 3/4 of the way filled that (yup almost full). Then I moved the small cheap one i had in the bedroom to the hallway. Not sure yet what i'm doing with that, if it fits in my closet anywhere i may use it there.

So where did all this stuff come from??? Well I no longer have my boyfriend's law books underneath the coffee table and end tables. ALL books are on the bookcase. My bedroom bookcase holds my DMC stitchbow cases, and miscellaneous stuff that was on there before, some stitching, my jewelry boxes etc. That can definately be organized and more room created. I think my Stash of patterns will be moved out to my bedroom bookcase from the closet soon too which leaves more closet room for stamping stuff (and clothes). I do need to go through my clothes sometime soon as well and get rid of old stuff.

So that was my night, by 11 I had finished moving things around enough for me to feel done. The apartment however really needs to be cleaned now and my diningroom is full of boxes/packing stuff from the bookcases. So tonight my plan is to clean (vacuum) and take out the garbage in an orderly fashion. Then take a practice GRE. This should be manageable, i'd really like to fit in gym time too.

That leaves tomorrow to do a second GRE and go to the gym. Maybe get to work on the website but i'm not getting my hopes up. So today it's back to work, probably another long day since I have friday off, and i sure am hungry, i may be going out to get lunch today, i need some cash too, i wonder where the closest atm is...

A new Legends update - it's not much but I did work on this a tiny bit this weekend!
(click for larger image)
I'm just about to pick it up again for lunch today too, work on the border between Magic and Wisdom. I want to start the word Magic but I didn't bring the DMC colors for that with me to work. Plus I think i'm going to alter the colors to be a bit darker because my fabric is really really blue and I don't think they'll show up so well, i was worried about the purples on Majesty but they ended up looking fine.

This weekend I went to the fabric store and bought all the fabric needed for my new amish quilt, my boyfriend helped me pick out the fabrics so now I just need to wash them and start cutting. I do want to look through my small stash of fabrics to see if i have any that fit in better than the ones i bought as the selection wasn't great.

Saturday I went to stamp camp and had to order a few things with a discount we were given. We made two great cards and of course learned some new techniques that now I need to apply which means I need more supplies :) I also tried my hand at designing my own card last night with some of my favorite bug stamps.

well time for me to do some stitching!

I think I'm crazy...

I'm not sure how to start this posts, it's one of those days where there's a lot on my mind and it's all pouring out, and it definitely doesn't all make sense.

Okay - first. I was at my aunts, talking about quilts and how much I love my Amish quilt, which was inevitable seeing as I'm hand quilting each intricate design and each ones grows on me more. On top of that I really don't think I could finish the Amish quilt by it's deadline, I could if I quilted like I am this week but that means I get NO stitching time at all and I'm not liking that idea. So my mind started racing... could I make a different quilt for my boyfriend's sister, what if part of it was machine quilted (my aunt offered to help since that's new to me), and if I did that I could practice machine quilting on the small quilt I have waiting to be finished that I made with my aunt...

I resisted, thinking I could always make this quilt again for myself - but would I really?? Don't I want to work on something new, why would I do the same one again. Then I thought of a pattern that I really like and want to try making and my aunt has a quilt in this design (Amish quilt too), that she bought and I studied it and I love it. There's more piecing involved but it's strip piecing and the quilting (with the exception of the border) is all straight quilting which would be easy by machine.

The quilt is called Trip Around the World, you can see the idea here. I'm doing it in 2 colors (not sure what colors yet), each color will have one solid and then 3 or 4 prints that go from dark to med/light. The diamond will go from dark center (just one square), then light to dark to light and dark corners. The border will be made with the solid colors. This basically mimics the Amish quilt my aunt has and I will follow that quilting also.

Now the only problem is buying fabric, and figuring out what colors she would like. I'm excited to plan out a new quilt and the idea that I could get it done in a few months with machine quilting is just great. Plus I get to try a new technique!

I'm nervous still and not 100% convinced but I'm going to try the fabric shopping part, maybe I can borrow my mom's machine for a little while so I can start piecing it together next weekend. Once it's pieced I could use either my mom's or my aunt's machines and their expertise. Quilting the border is the only "hard" part I forsee and that's where the practice machine quilting comes in and I'll get to finish up some of my small quilts by practising. It's really a win win situation but I have to talk with my boyfriend to see how he feels about it and see if he can get her favorite colors or colors that will at least match her decor.

So I'm excited about this and the idea that I'll get to keep my amish quilt and not have a deadline on it so I'll enjoy it more is just overwhelming! Hmmm... can I really do this in time???

Half way there on the cross hatch triangles!!

That's as of lunch today, i got almost a half hour to quilt and finished the second triangle. Hopefully tonight I can find time and room to draw out the cross hatch on the third one and start it. I'm so psyched, maybe I can at least get 3 done this month!

Last night was horrible, I had no internet at all, I called comcast and they did something and it got the internet back on then I went to the gym and came home and it was off again! I reset my modem 5 times, leaving it unplugged for a few minutes some times. It still wouldn't come up, I called again and this time they didn't do anything, but I set up an appointment for someone to come check on Saturday since my boyfriend will be home then (I won't). And no internet the rest of the night.

So what did I do? Well I didn't get home from the gym and grocery shopping until 8 anyway, so I watched the 2 episodes of Alias that I had left (now i'm just waiting for disk 4 to arrive). And I worked a little on the Woven Butterfly from Stitcher's Hideaway. I'm still wrapping bars but I've at least made decent progress on that now. Then I read for a bit, add that to the time I read at the gym on the bike, I got a lot of reading done.
I'm reading Compulsion by Keith Ablow It's pretty good too :)
Next I am going to read The DaVinci Code Decoded. That should be interesting. Not sure what's after that but I'm sure it's one of the many books I just bought :)

Tonight I'm off to my aunt's, in about an hour actually. Work today (and yesterday) has been halting, running into annoying problems here and there, hopefully tomorrow is a much smoother day. Not sure what I'm going to work on for the last hour, not a lot of time to get started on something new, so maybe I'll just review some stuff. And off i go...

A Headache night!

Well I worked on the website last night, I should be happy because I got the database transferred but the site still didn't work locally, so as I was debugging it I got to a possible root cause and that's a missing directory that I went to download and kazaam my internet was down again. This is getting ridiculous! Everytime i need to use the internet it's out, i shouldn't be paying 40 a month for this kind of service. I will be calling comcast tonight i think.

Anyway, besides that I watched a lot of Alias which ended up giving me a headache (or it was using my monitor at home which kind of quivers, i need a new monitor at home). So I went to bed with a headache and of course woke up with one. Luckily with some tylenol it's very minimal right now and i'm in the lab to work and if i get a lot done this morning i will feel loads better than i did last night.

Let's see - I quilted at lunch yesterday, working on the second triangle of cross hatch. I hope to continue that work today at lunch. I will keep it with me tomorrow too and maybe quilt at my aunt's house. By thursday I will be really happy to just stitch so I may pick up Legends again finally for stitch Thursday night. This weekend is starting to get packed, going out friday night, stamping on saturday... and some where in there I will get to put together my new bookcases that should arrive friday!!!

Alright back to work!

Stitcher's Hideaway this weekend!

I drove out Friday morning and came home late Saturday night. It was a great weekend, with lots of stitching time and on Friday we got to see some of Sturbridge Village's antique needlework collection which was a real treat! I have really enjoyed both Stitcher's Hideaway events now and look forward to going to another sometime soon.

So Ellen Chester was our teacher and we had a project called "Call of the Sea". We only had 2 hours of class on Friday but Saturday we had another 6 hours of class time. I shopped a bit at the stores that set up and bought a few new patterns and some gingham fabric. I also shopped at Sturbridge's gift shop and bought some candles. So without further ado, here's some pictures.

Here's the first project, the front of the scissor case stitched Friday and finished Saturday:


And the second project is the ship, each sail is a different stitch. This was stitched saturday:


And the accessories that came with Call of the Sea. I bought the scissors and needlecase and the others came with the kit:


What I won as a door prize!!


The Butterfly designed by Sue, I have finished cutting and removing threads and I just started wrapping bars, the last step in the butterfly part is needleweaving the actual butterfly before stitching the border on the outside.


So the trip was great. Of course when I got home I went right to sleep :) Sunday my boyfriend and I went to barnes and noble and bought some books and decided we definately need a new bookcase so we shopped online when we got home and bought a double bookcase that's 5'4" tall with 5 shelves. We're hoping it arrives by next weekend and we can set it up. Then my current bookcase that my dad built me will move into my bedroom where we have a tiny one from walmart right now which we can then either get rid of or bring home to my parents if they could use it. I just can't wait to reorganise my books and fit all of my boyfriend's law school books on the shelves instead of under the coffee table!

So no progress on Legends. But I did quilt a bit last night and finished the first cross hatched triangle. I also started the second one and hope to work more on that at lunch today. We started season one of Alias last night, it's a tough show to stitch during, but after the first double episode I was able to quilt since I learned the character's voices better.

I don't think I'm going to finish all 4 triangles this month on my quilt, I do plan to at the very least finish 2, and then in August finish the other 2 and start the green border, that leaves the rest of the green border for September and the blue border in October. This is definately not enough time but I have decided that if I can't get the quilt to her by the wedding, maybe by Christmas will be okay??? I'm not giving up hope yet.

A really long night....

Well I watched my cousins last night, and at first it was great, I had them all in bed sleeping by 8, with no problems. Then my boyfriend and I watched Hitch and headed up to bed by 11. Then the baby woke up, I tried to let her fall back asleep but it wasn't happening, so finally I went in and layed her down again and she seemed okay for a bit. But soon after she was screaming and calling "mama" over and over. I finally had to go get her and I brought her downstairs after 15 minutes of rocking her and her not falling asleep, just crying. I changed her diaper and layed on the couch with her crying and me trying to sleep.

Finally the oldest woke up from the crying (what I was trying to prevent). That calmed her sister down a bit and I brought them up to their parents room and we all went to sleep on the bed. By now it's 1am. Finally I put the baby in the crib and she was fine. I picked the 5 yr old up to carry her to bed and I hear a little voice (it was the 3 year old - almost 4 - saying she was scared). So I brought them both into their room and layed in bed between them. Finally at 1:40 am I heard the door downstairs and I went to get up but the youngest was still awake and strapped to my arm. Luckily their mom came up to check on them and I was able to escape with her scooping up the 3 yr old.

2 minutes later I was out in my own bed, and awake by 6 :( I am exhausted to say the least, I haven't been up that late since new years and generally I get to sleep in later when I do stay up. It was a long night and I have a headache from the baby crying too. I can't wait to go home and it's not even 9 am.

So today I work until 4:30, we're going out to lunch because a coworker is leaving the company, today's his last day. Otherwise I would skip lunch and go home at 3:30 so I could take a nap. Then it's stitch night tonight, but it will be a short night for sure, I will go, maybe stitch a little on blackwork dragon or something (not sure I'm up for starting anything new, I will save that for next week). Then go home and pack for Stitcher's Hideway! (then sleep)

I will be gone all day friday and saturday for Stitcher's Hideaway in Sturbridge, probably wont' be online Sunday but I will have details on Monday and maybe i'll remember to take some pictures this time!

Well here's an updated picture from stitching on Legends last week. I was very good last night and stuck to my quilting as I had planned. I'm close to finishing the first triangle with cross hatch, more than halfway done now for sure (that leaves 3 more triangles to go!)

So here's a pic: (Sorry it's not clear - it's scanned in, if you click on the image it should come up clear -- larger)

That is about 63 hours of stitching time. I'm looking forward to making progress on the border, but I'm not sure when I'll have time to pick this guy up again. I think my quilt is going to be my lunch time piece next week too if I want any hope of making my monthly goal!

Tonight is my quilting get-together, unfortunately I have nothing more to show than my amish quilt again which isn't much farther. But I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else is working on. Maybe I'll quilt while we talk too - since it's just straight lines.

Well another busy day, but hopefully I can take a lunch break again today and quilt, I've been managing my time well and I can leave by 5 with a lunch break which means after a quick stop home I may even be on time tonight!

No pictures :( I hope tonight to get some, last night just wasn't a night to be on the computer. I had a lazy weekend.

Friday I finished going through my boxes of mementos and widdled it down to one hat box plus a box of pictures later to be scrapbooked (some of them anyway). Then I watched Hotel Rwanda and tried quilting but it was just one of those movies I had to pay attention to, and it sure is a sad movie. I may end up buying it now that I know how good it is.

Saturday my sister and her boyfriend and my uncle and 3 cousins (the young ones), came to visit, my uncle worked on my sister's car and we all played with the kids for a few hours, we had lunch and then we took them to the park down the road for an hour or so. It was a great time, sure was tiring though.

My boyfriend and I spent the rest of the evening watching movies, Mean Creek (that was a tough one to watch) and National Treasure which was okay. Again I tried to quilt but not much got done.

Sunday was a really unproductive day. I slept in late, we went for a walk (really really long walk), then we went and bought/rented some movies, picked up dinner and spent the rest of the evening vegging. We watched Lemony Snicket - wow that's a crazy movie, and then we played Civ Conquests on the computer for a few hours. The rest of the evening was tv movies and ice cream. I was pretty much laying down all day (after 3 anyway).

So no stitching at all... and hardly any quilting. I brought my quilt to work today though and stitched for a half hour during lunch. I realized I need to pick up the quilting pace big time so I'm sure my stitching is going to get neglected. Thursday at stitch night I hope to start the next Ever So Little, not sure when I'll have time for either of my dragons this week.

Tonight I will quilt and work on the website (hoping for a quick trip to Joann's too!), Tuesday is my quilt get-together, Wednesday I'm babysitting (the 3 little cousins), Thursday stitch night. Friday and Saturday - STITCHER'S HIDEAWAY!!!

I haven't even mentioned that coming up. It's in Sturbridge, so it's really close. I was looking at the schedule recently and it's packed full of events, I'm really looking forward to the idea of being in Sturbridge Village again, haven't been there since 8th grade on a field trip!

So next week I'll have a whole NEW project started but hopefully it won't distract me too much from what I'm already working on :)
It's going to be a crazy three days at work as well, today is already starting to get that way and I should be leaving in 3 hours - we'll see if that happens. I best get out to the closed area and see what I can do.

What a horrid world we live in. What is wrong with people?


No stitching last night at all. I started going through all my old mementos, saved in shoe boxes and stacked in my closet, I threw away a lot. All my old letters from girl friends gone now, some old journals and birthday cards. I saved pictures and special things, anything I may scrapbook as well. I still have a box with letters from old boyfriends that I haven't gone through, maybe I'll leave that.

So I have a ton of things to scrap book and I'm getting pretty excited about that, got out all my stuff. Tonight I will continue going through things (old sports things need to be thrown out or saved somehow). I may need a few more scrapbooks, I only have 1 empty one and I may do one that's sports, one that's friends (middleschool-highschool) and then one for current things (after highschool). So i need to buy 2 more scrapbooks.

My friend did come over last night, I made up some chicken parm and we talked for a bit. She left pretty early because she had a lot to unpack still and she had to get up early today. That's when I started pulling things out of my closet. I did widdle down enough to throw out 4 shoe boxes!

I'm not sure if my boyfriend is coming home tonight or tomorrow, that will really determine whether I start scrapbooking this stuff tonight or not.
Now it's time for some work. Going to be a long day I think but I"m not taking a real lunch break so I can leave by 4 hopefully!

Magic is finished - I finished backstitching him last night. I don't think I'll be ready to start Wisdom by the end of the month but definately sometime in August I will be starting him. That means possibly in the October/November time frame I could finish this piece... unless I'm spending ALL my free time quilting my amish quilt.

Amish quilt - I haven't even started the purple triangles for this month, hopefully tomorrow night that's what I will focus on.

And tonight is stitch night! If my friend is back from Maine and wants to come over that is. If not then I will work on the website and maybe quilt a bit.

What is in the air today?? My allergies are acting up (even itchy eyes) which is strange for the morning since I take my Allegra at night, usually the only time I get bad is around cats or late at night when my allegra is wearing off... why today???

Another day ... and it's wednesday - I get to go to my aunt's tonight ;)

Of course I completely forgot to bring Ohio Star 10 so there's no way that's getting pieced tonight, but maybe i'll cross stitch a bit. Speaking of cross stitch, it's lunch time and I haven't yet. Hopefully I will be back at my desk in 15 minutes or so and just have a late lunch stitching wise (12:45-1:30) or until I get interrupted as I was at noon.

Last night was a lazy night, I made dinner (tacos) and watched tv, then I got my linux computer up and running and finally online! That was a huge bonus, and I got mysql installed on it. Unfortunately the database I need to import is too large (3 MB) to import in a single file so I need to do each table individually. What I'm doing is getting the current website up and running locally and then upgrading it to the 4.0 version, that way I get it completely functional and tested and then I upload that to the live site. We'll see how long this takes, so far I'm just getting the site running which may be hard since my php version is too new for the site but first is the database.

So no stitching or quilting last night (a bit of a bummer) but I did do yoga. Tonight I will hopefully stitch a bit and tomorrow I will stitch if my friend comes over, otherwise I will work on the website and quilt. I don't have too much more backstitching on Magic to do now, I've finished his tail, hand, and bottom in general, all that's really left is his wings and neck I think. Then it's onto the border which I'm looking forward to now :)

Well - back to email :)

Halfway through 2005 - let's see how I'm doing on my goals:
2005 Goals for the YEAR:

Stitching:
1. Finish Winnie the Pooh for Robin YES
2. Start/Finish Precious Moments for Grace's quilt YES
3. Finish Herbal Sampler YES
4. Finish DD Wisdom (virtue series) Not yet
5. Finish Mystic Retreat piece by Jeanette Douglas YES
6. Start/Finish 2 pickle ornaments for aunt Not started yet
7. Make progress on piece for Ryan YES
8. Start a new project YES (Legends of the Dragons and Blackwork Dragon)
9. Finish It's Winter Saving for Winter time

Quilting:
1. Quilt and Bind Sampler Quilt Not yet
2. Make Amish quilt for boyfriend's sister Working on it
3. Finish Herb Quilt No progress yet
4. Make Pooh Wall hanging for Robin YES
5. Finish Teapot Quilt? No progress yet

I think my quilting goals are a bit ambitious as I'm hoping mostly to finish the Amish Quilt by November, that leaves only 1 1/2 months in the year to meet any other goals, probably I'll go back to my sampler quilt and continue on my ohio star quilt. The others will be next years' projects :)

All in all I'm not doing too badly for the year.

WIP Update!

Okay, I didn't work much on Legends :( He's still not finished, I think this is 30 minutes more of backstitching than the last picture but it's of the whole piece so I figured I'd update it anyway (at 61 hours):



And my new project :) Blackwork Dragon (at 5 hours):


Hmm.. not much stitching this weekend.. Thursday night I started Blackwork Dragon at my stitch night, I bought the fabric, I only had 28ct grey fabric and I was advised to use 32 at least since it's blackwork and there will be a lot of trailing threads. So I bought some fabric, it's not hand dyed, I think it's Wichelt but this is a simple piece and it's coming along quickly for sure. I'm using an overdyed WDW thread that isn't too variagated but it's a dark purple and I love it.

This weekend we had a BBQ up at my uncle's in NH complete with Fireworks Saturday night, it was a great day. Sunday my sister and her boyfriend came back to our apartment in the afternoon and we all went into boston for dinner and a movie. We saw Batman Begins - best movie in a long time, we all loved it!
Then back home my boyfriend and I watched Spanglish which was also a very good movie. Yesterday we watched Calendar girls which was really funny and a great story in general. Finally getting some stitching time yesterday I worked more on Blackwork Dragon.

This week is a bit odd since it's tuesday already, tonight I will set up my computer again and maybe get working ont he site. Other than that it's back to the amish quilt and Legends at lunch time.
Speaking of lunchtime - that's what it is now so I better pull it out and get backstitching on Magic :)

July Goals:

1) Finish Magic (including word Magic)
2) Work on Blackwork Dragon
3) Start and Finish Ever So Little - Chimps
4) Start Stitcher's Hideaway piece in Sturbridge

5) Quilt Purple Triangles of Amish Quilt
6) Finish piecing block 10 of ohio stars (ugggg)

7) Work on Website upgrade.

I hope Sturbridge doesn't mess up my quilting, i really need to get that done!