July Recap:
1) Finish baby quilt [YES]
2) Work on Kindom Sampler [YES]
3) work on Peaceful Silhouette [YES-a little]
4) Start new piece![YES - Peace and Quiet]
5) Finish Leanne's quilt block 1 [YES]
6) Start Leanne's quilt block 2 [hasn't arrived yet]
7) select a new baby project to do for a friend (Pooh)[not yet]

8) WORK ON THE WEBSITE! [nope... :(]

I did finish Blackwork Dragon this month as well!

No stitching ...

I can't believe it, I didn't even touch my stitching this weekend, and that counts friday night as well! Friday night was wierd, I was ansy, wanted to DO something but couldn't figure out what so I puttered around picking things up here and there.

Saturday I got up and ran which felt great, then we went to CT to visit my boyfriend's sister and then my sister for the night. We went out, we ate, we talked, and finally I fell asleep the moment we put a movie on (UltraViolet wasn't very good is what I hear from those that stayed mostly awake) :)

Sunday we did some relaxing and left late, around 1, stopped at walmart on the way home and that place just traps you but we managed to get home by 3. After unpacking, going grocery shopping and watching Underworld Evolution (of course I never watched the first Underworld so I was annoyingly asking questions the whole time but we both liked the movie), finallY I went out and rotated my tires and changed my oil. MUCH NEEDED! Unfortunately rotating the tires didn't get rid of the annoying road noise I have so I will need to make an appointment at the dealership and get things checked out. There's no way I can drive all the way to atlantic city with that noise!

The rest of sunday was spent cooking, making a pseudo lasagna (i don't like ricotta cheese so it's not really lasagna when I make it) and cutting veggies and fruits, preparing for departure to maine on wednesday!!!
This morning I even packed my clothes so that's taken care of. That was really the easy part, the hard part will be packing my stitching and stamping stuff. We are mostly stitching Celtic Banner though so that should be easy :)

Now.. to do my July recap...

A nice long stitch night...

I stayed out MUCH longer than I normally do last night. I got home after 11! Considering I've been going to bed so early it was rough for me this morning and I did not run but I hope to run this evening when I get home. Anyhow, I did stitch ...


I finished the dragon, not much is showing anyway, and I started working on the tub which actually went much fast than I thought it would. There's still a lot left to the design but hopefully this weekend I will get some stitching time and I can show another update monday.

We're going down to CT this weekend to visit my sister, should be fun, other than that not much going on thank goodness. I have to go grocery shopping in preparation of my maine trip wednesday night, need to make a lasagna (never done that before!) and an apple pie! So monday and tuesday night I will be very domestic, cooking and baking so I'm ready to go :)

No progress pic, I have made some progress on Peace and Quiet but not much. I'm almost done with the dragon's tail. I really want to do the bubbles but I don't have my kreiniks with me (they are home someplace) so they won't get done for a little while yet. Tonight I'll probably start working on the shelf up above the dragon and more of the tub which is going to take forever!

Stitch night tonight with some friends. I'm looking forward to it but I'm going to have to leave early, I've been hitting a wall about 9pm and going to sleep by 9:30 so I don't want to be driving at that time!

A little stitching time last night...

I did lace Legends of the Dragons onto the board for framing so now both pieces are ready and i just need to figure out spacers and a backing maybe. It will be nice to have a few finished pieces hanging, currently I have 2 finished pieces on the walls, and 3 standing framed pieces, which is not very much considering how many I have finished...

Anyway, after lacing that up I settled in to work on Just a Little Peace and Quiet Please... and here's an update with the head all finished:


I'm actually not enjoying this fabric very much, I don't know if it's because it's opalescent or what but it's very hard to see the holes, it's only 32 count but the fabric threads are large and barely leave holes, which makes it very difficult to stitch comfortably with. Luckily this is not a huge piece.

Tonight I go to my uncle's house, I plan to work more on Peace and Quiet hopefully...

Kingdom Sampler SAL:


I stitched the little people and am almost done filling in the main body of the piece. Next week it will be a quick finish up of the right side and a start on the momentous clouds that may just take me forever :)

I'm really looking forward to the alphabet but I'm going to hold off, I think if I get sick of clouds I will treat myself to a few letters here and there...

So last night I didn't just stitch, when I first got home my pieces to be framed were calling to me, so I laced Going To Market onto the backing board, even framed it but I forgot about spacers between the plexi and the piece so I'm going to have to redo the framing part. No big deal considering the lacing and centering is the hard part and that's done. Tonight I'm hoping to lace Legends of the Dragons.

As for spacers, I need to figure out what to use. In the past I've used small pieces of cardboard. Other times I've just gone without glass but I do prefer glass so the piece is protected, not just when it's hanging but when I'm moving, I can put them all in a box safely. If there are charms or specialty stitches I do refrain however as I like to really let people look closely.

I stitch and I stitch... and finally I finish :)
Blackwork Dragon - stitched on Wandering Ivy 36ct Linen by Silkweaver using WDW Hunter:


I finished that little guy up late Saturday night (well 1am sunday morning).

I think I got a decent amount of things done this weekend. I finished the blackwork dragon so I can guilt free start Celtic Banner on Aug. 3rd and get back to Peaceful Silhouette at lunch time :) I also re-washed Legends of the Dragons and Going To Market so that I can frame them this week. They are now dry and ironed and waiting to be mounted and framed.

Sunday we had a stampin up party so I got to order a bunch of stuff from the new catalog and my order should be in next week before I go to Maine with my friend so we can bring some of our new stuff.
I also finally cleaned my apartment and sucked up all the spiders on the stairs to the basement so I will brave going down there again... uck!

Tonight is Kingdom Sampler SAL night! Tomorrow I will probably try to frame my two pieces and wednesday I want to work on Peace and Quiet and get an updated pic before the weekend since that's probably my piece for this weekend as well :)
AND i got up and ran again this morning - and I ran saturday.. so I got 4 days in last week and I'm starting out strong this week, hopefully I can keep this up!

note to self:
Walked on friday.
Ran on saturday (2 miles total).

Stitched on Blackwork dragon Thur, friday.

Every once and a while food just hits me the wrong way...

So last night was going smoothly, I walked with my aunt and uncle (didn't run but that's just fine with me, a good 45 minute walk). Then we ate, then I felt sick. It just happens sometimes, it's not the food specifically, it's just me.

So there was no stitching last night, we watched a movie which distracted me enough and by 10:30 I was feeling better so I went to bed and read for a while.

Today at lunch is stitch & stamp! It's scrapbooking day so I brought in all my goodies and I'm planning on making at least 1 scrapbook page and just overall planning out my scrapbook a bit.
Tonight is stitch night - probably I'll work on blackwork dragon but I might surprise myself and work on Peace and Quiet since I got the face finished on her yesterday at lunch and she needs some more details :)

hehehehe.... i just ordered some fabric... i'm so bad.

I just ordered 2 solos and a piece of Ametrine from Silkweaver, the Ametrine is for the purple conversion for the Petal Fairy. Now I can't wait to stitch that piece soon...

Then I signed up for HeavenLee Creations' fabric of the month club, i almost signed up for a second silkweavers' but i decided to mix it up a bit. I miss dyeing4u, hopefully HeavenLeeCreations will be good, I loved the Dragon Myst fabric I used on Legends...

Stitching round up:
Currently Stitching --- after it's finished ---
-----------------------------------------------
Blackwork Dragon --- Celtic Banner
Kingdom Sampler --- Petal Fairy
Just a Little Peace --- Shepherd's Purse
Peaceful Silhouette --- probably never finish this ... :)

Of course that's just at this moment, the only definite is that i'm starting Celtic Banner soon... oh yea and there's Elemental Cosmos I want to stitch soon...

Well I guess yesterday at lunch was the only stitching time I got yesterday :) Last night was pretty rough. I have been feeling off the last few days, kind of just in a bad mood, so last night when I got home I just wound floss while watching some more Felicity (which just makes my mood worse usually as those characters are always cheating on each other or hurting each other or something, but I have 2 more disks left of the entire show and i have to find out what happened...)

Finally I made dinner but I didn't even feel like eating so I went and just layed down in the dark for an hour (migraine). I did manage to get up and pit all the cherries so we could have our regular smoothie this morning and then I read for a half hour. A really unproductive night but kind of relaxing.

Tonight I go to my uncles, hopefully we'll go running before dinner and after dinner I can work on Just a little Peace and Quiet or Blackwork Dragon. I also have lunchtime to stitch :)

Day 3 - got up and ran, I'm on a roll. It was harder to get up this morning to run but I did it. Kind of hard having skipped dinner last night, but it can't be helped when I get a migraine. Tomorrow I won't run in the morning as I'll be at my uncle's but friday and saturday will close off my 5 days of running week.

surprise surprise - i just got a good hour of work on Just a Little Peace and Quiet... at lunch today, she has a good amount of face now :) Maybe I'll continue on here tonight.

Well I just about finished the dragon, I didn't stitch his eye or the little bit of yellow, instead I finished the mountain range to the left of him. This scan really shows the fabric color well though and I'm loving this piece:


I'm not really looking forward to the one huge cloud but I am looking forward to doing the people and filling in the area by the people next week. Not too many weeks left to go with this piece. The border will go fast, not sure about the alphabet but I can definitely see this finished before the end of august at least.
Carol made some awesome progress yesterday! These things just work out perfectly sometimes, last week I had some extra time and this week she did!

I got a great treat in the mail yesterday, I bought frames for both Going To Market and Legends of the Dragons. They are perfect. The one I got for Legends is actually metal but it has this neat painted effect I really liked, it's not as blue as I was hoping, a little black looking because it's so dark but I think it will work just fine. The one for Going To Market is a dark brown wood frame with some awesome detailed work which compliments the design perfectly. I'm hoping to frame these this weekend! I think they both have to be washed, which I'm a little nervous about but i can wash them friday night, let them dry over night, iron and frame them saturday and show them off sunday to my friends. We'll see how it goes ...

Tonight they're calling for storms, if that's the case and I miss my friends' concert again because of it I will work on Blackwork Dragon some more I think, I'd love to finish this piece up before starting Celtic Banner on Aug 3rd!

Still waiting for my second Leanne's Quilt block of the month to arrive...

Not a lot of stitching this weekend, definitely not as much as I had planned, it was a VERY hot weekend!

Friday night we went up to my uncle's to just relax and watch tv. Saturday we went to the beach with my little cousins, so my attention was taken the whole time, no reading time or anything. Saturday night I did read and I actually got up pretty early (6:15) and read for an hour to finish up Between Two Worlds before going back to sleep for 2 hours! Loved the book!

Sunday was a relax and really not do much because it was too hot day. We watched a few movies and finally in the afternoon I pulled out Blackwork Dragon and worked on that:


I also did some beading, at least one thing on my todo list :)

Tonight is Kingdom Sampler night, I'm hoping to stitch the dragon at the very least, dinner tonight is tacos, not a lot of prep work involved so hopefully it's an early dinner and then on to stitching. Unfortunately I have to go to bed by 10 now, I got up and ran finally this morning and I'm going to try to keep it up which means an earlier bedtime!

A stitch night with no stitching ...

That's what friends are for :) I made it to stitch night on time last night even with tons of traffic! We ordered dinner and ate, then we decided to play a game instead of stitch so no stitching actually got done, but I had a great time!

By the time I got home and got dishes and garbage taken care of it was after 10 already so I settled in to read a little and go to sleep. Tonight we decided we'll go out to dinner and tomorrow I have an errand to run in Andover and then it's off to the beach for the day. I can't wait to just sleep in though!

A normal night.

Well last night was a nice normal night, i hit traffic coming home again but my boyfriend had dinner ready when I got home so all I had to do was dishes. Then we sorted through some photos I just had printed and decided what to frame and what to scrapbook. Finally I got a nice relaxing 2 hours of stitching time! That's much more normal than monday night where I took a good 4 hours to stitch.

So I worked on Just a Little Peace and Quiet, sorry for the bad scan, you can't even see the fabric but the stitching shows up fine:


It's a fun piece to work on and I think at stitch tonight I'll either continue on that piece, starting the head of the dragon or work on blackwork dragon.
It looks like we *might* go to the beach this weekend, i really hope so, our weekends are pretty booked this summer but i'd like to get out o the beach at least once before our vacation!

nothing like a night of not stitching.

it was very hot last night! I got home (late due to traffic), and my boyfriend had dinner under control, so I started the regular putting away of the "things" from work and such. Then with the pizza in the oven I started on kitchen cleanup and cooking some rice to go with some leftovers for lunch this week. With the oven on and the stove going it was slowly getting even hotter in the kitchen!

Finally the pizza was done so we ate and took a break from the kitchen heat. ... Then I had to return! I needed to bake brownies (more oven!) and pit all those cherries, so I did both, drinking as much water as I could. By 9 I was exhausted from the heat but I was done in the kitchen so I settled in to wind some floss and relax. I decided against stitching as I just couldn't get into it being so hot.

So no progress to show from last night. Hopefully tonight is different, dinner should be easy so hopefully by 7 I can be settled in to stitch on my new dragon or another piece if it draws me :)

A SAL night :)

Yesterday was great, at work I actually got a lunch break so I stitched the left cloud on Kingdom Sampler, I couldn't resist :) And when I got home I placed the center of the design in my q-snap and filled in everything I could. It really went fast because it was all half stitch and solid areas of stitching, I tend to "outline" the border of a solid area and then just fill in so I don't have to follow the pattern as much.

I'm loving this piece and next week I get to work on the dragon! My goal next week is to stitch most of the dragon and maybe start the people. It will be back to full x's so it will take longer again.
This is actually a good picture, the color of the fabric is pretty true.

Last night I went to the grocery store and bought a ton of fruits and stuff for some smoothies we're going to try out. Most of the fruit is simply wash and dry and then freeze but the cherries have to be pitted - ugg! I've never pitted cherries before so I washed them last night and tonight I have to cut them all and freeze them. Also tonight is my friends' band concert so I hope to go to that after dinner, if it's not raining or wet maybe i'll work on "Just a Little Peace and Quiet" while I'm there!

Finished!
The baby quilt for my friend is finished..

I finished adding the binding last night while watching movies.

Let's see - a busy stitching weekend I had :)
Friday we went and saw Pirates II and really had a great time (a friend and I), it was good, a bit gruesome and definitely a lead up to the third but still thoroughly enjoyable.
Saturday I relaxed in the morning and then went over to the same friend's house and spent the day stitching and watching movies! I made some progress on Blackwork Dragon (man does this move slowly sometimes!)

Seriously, for some reason it's taking forever but my hand was cramping up a bit too.

Then yesterday after spending a long morning reading (i'm now more than halfway through Between Two Worlds - i should probably update my sidebar...) My boyfriend got back from his weekend back home in NY and we watched some movies while I worked on the quilt a little, blackwork dragon a little and just plain did nothing - it was great :)
Then .. after dinner I remembered I was going to start a new piece this weekend! So .. Just a Little Peace and Quiet Please by Dragon Dreams .. on Solitude by Dyeing4U fabric:

I know it doesn't look like much yet but I think this will go along quickly! The fabric is sparkly pink and blue!

So now a new piece is started .. but tonight is Kindom Sampler night and I can't wait! Clouds here I come :)

Pirates. Tonight we are going to the opening of Pirates II :) I can't wait!

Last night was a great stitch night with friends, and a little dragon progress to show for it:

It seems to be slow going but I think I'm doing the most difficult part, it's really filled in along the spines, the face and neck however should go faster and therefore maybe I'm almost halfway done??

Let's see - this weekend - what am I doing?? I think I will try to get the binding finished on the baby quilt and get the personalization patch embroidery started since I know the baby's name now. I think I may have to start a new piece! Right now I really only have:
Kindom Sampler - monday nights only
Blackwork Dragon - probably about 1/2 done
Peaceful Silhouette - work piece

Really that's it right now .. besides some small pieces I wanted to do, i think i need another large piece started :) Celtic Banner will get started Aug 3rd on my weekend away as a SAL with my friend. I have fabric ready for 2 pieces, one a Witches Stitches piece on black and the other a Sweetheart Tree piece on white... but there's always a bunch of new ones I just got too.... what a fun weekend this will be!

Finally went kayaking! We rented a two person kayak, which was good and bad, since it was our first time it was good because in a single I would have badly lagged behind. Bad though because it was difficult to both paddle. We were not very good :) Then it started to RAIN .. not just rain .. pour! We headed back when we saw lightning and as it really started coming down and we could see the rental place and people were swarming it, we decided to hide under a bridge from the rain and wait it out. It worked out great, there was this adorable little duckling I got some pictures of and eventually the rain let up and we headed in.

The rest of the evening was spent just relaxing, I finished the embroidery on Leanne's Quilt Block 1 so now that's finished:


I didn't work on the website as I'd hoped but I decided to bring my laptop to work and I'll work on it at lunch time the next few days if I can. I updated my cross stitch database to include the new charts I've bought in the last few months and put them in my alphabetized binder system :)
I like my stash alphabetized, it always surprises me what's next to what and I love looking through it all!

Tonight I brought the baby quilt to work on the binding some more, I need to write out the personalization as well so I can embroider that soon and it will be all ready. Tomorrow at stitch I'll work on blackwork dragon and so far I've kept this weekend pretty open, I'm hoping to work on a few things. Plus I finally measured all my finished pieces so I can buy frames if I can find them affordably and do some framing sometime soon!

Quick picture update...

Since I won't be online tomorrow most likely, I figured i'd pop on and update my Kingdom Sampler SAL pic:


Finally got to start working on those half stitches a bit. And I noticed the clouds are half stitches so I'm looking forward to maybe starting those next week! Now it's away for another week and tomorrow maybe I can pull out Blackwork Dragon :)

July Goals:
1) Finish baby quilt
2) Work on Kindom Sampler :)
3) work on Peaceful Silhouette
4) Start new piece!
5) Finish Leanne's quilt block 1
6) Start Leanne's quilt block 2
7) select a new baby project to do for a friend (Pooh)

8) WORK ON THE WEBSITE!

The horror of it .. a non-stitching weekend!

Seriously, no stitching this weekend - we were just too busy! Friday night we went up to NH and I did get some free time to make some jewelry so I made a bracelet for myself and a pair of earrings for my friend's birthday sunday. Then the guys got back with the fireworks and we were up until 1am setting them up, connecting them all and timing them out and everything.

Saturday we were up early with the little ones, and just spent the day playing with the kids and eatting and visiting with all the family. Saturday night of course was the fireworks show! It was much better this year, we sat back at a safer distance and nothing fell over and shot toward the crowd since we screwed them all to a board this time (last year we used glue and nails and one didn't hold) :)

Then we stayed up playing poker - and got up early sunday with the little ones again. I was exhausted and the day hadn't even started. We got home and I got ready for our next party which was a birthday party for my friend. My boyfriend fell asleep before we left so we were a little late (I just hated waking him up), but we went and stayed for 3 hours - getting home at 6 and I'm not kidding - we went to bed! I slept from 6pm to almost 7am this morning!

It's not the lack of sleep this weekend so much as the constant attention of 3 little kids who were up too late to see fireworks :) The party sunday was much more relaxing and we had a great time, I just felt horrible because I was so exhausted that I couldn't have been much fun :( But it was a great weekend and after I get through work today I get tomorrow off!

And tonight is Kingdom Sampler SAL night - I can't wait! I've hardly stitched on anything since last monday, except for the embroidery on my quilt block, but cross stitch wise I think Kingdom Sampler was the last thing I worked on :)
I'll try to post a picture tonight since I'm off tomorrow to hopefully go kayaking!

This is our first time going kayaking, we're going to rent as it's a hobby we both want to take up but don't want to buy kayak's until we've tried it. We'll just go on the Charle's River since we live practically on it. I'm sure wednesday i'll have more to say unless it rains tuesday!