August Goals Recap:

1) Finish Kingdom Sampler! [YES!!!]
2) Start Celtic Banner [YES]
3) Work on Just a little Peace and Quiet [YES]
4) Work on Peaceful Silhouette [YES]
5) Finish Leanne's Quilt Block 2 [nope, haven't started but it arrived very late]
6) Start new Pooh piece [haven't even picked one]
7) Get Petal Fairy ready to start [nope, not yet]

8) work on website [nope...]

Well if i had prioritized then I did pretty good :) This weekend is all camping so I doubt there will be much stitching and class starts pretty soon but there are a few things I want to get done this month at least ;)

Thank you everyone for the comments, I really enjoyed stitching this piece with Carol !

Last night I got home late and of course the headache had started (but not a migraine this time), so I popped a pizza in the oven and settled down to watch Strong Medicine (the first 2 episodes). No stitching, I was kind of drained and moved on to just reading a bit before going to sleep. I can't believe it's only Wednesday! This week is dragging.

But tonight I go to my uncle's and hopefully a little stitching will happen :) I have been getting a little stitching time on Peaceful Silhouette at lunch time the last two days, hopefully I can keep that up!

Kingdom Sampler:


Stitched on Silkweaver Solo 32ct. Sorry it's crooked..

So there it is, finished in 2 months which is amazing since I thought this piece would really take a while. Now I can focus on Celtic Banner and Peace and Quiet a bit and I will definitely be starting a new piece soon once I catch up on some other things.

Again no stitching last night, probably none tonight as I have grocery shopping to do and general organizing of things around the house.

Excedrin Migraine saved the night last night, I was fighting one all day but took it before going over to my friends, luckily the caffeine wore off around 9:30 so going to sleep wasn't a problem (besides dealing with migraine side effects like feeling sick to my stomach). I have to say it was the best migraine night i've ever had though and hopefully my body has adjusted to being back at work and I won't get any more :)

more to come...

I haven't scanned in Kingdom Sampler yet but I did finish it last week (yipee) so I will share the pic probably tomorrow. I'm very happy with it and just have to add initials to it and find a frame that's suitable.

Atlantic City was awesome, we had a great time, I didn't stitch at all (I finished Kingdom Sampler the weekend before), but I did a lot of reading. I've finished the first 2 McCaffrey Pern books and I'm about to start White Dragon next. I started listening to Jodi Piccoult's Plain Truth. My boyfriend and I listened to The Shining unabridged (that's 16 hours), finishing it at 10pm last night.

I'd say the best part of vacation was that the annual Atlantic City Air show happened to be going on Wednesday while we were there and this year was the Blue Angels AND the thunderbirds! Tuesday the Blue Angels must have been practicing or something because they were flying all day, it was great!

Tonight I'll be visiting with friends and this week doesn't look to be free for stitching since we're camping next weekend I have a lot to do around the house before we leave for another 3 days. I'm ready for a vacation from vacations :)

Pictures tomorrow...

Still here :) Just busy at work - always happens before vacation!

I worked on Kindom Sampler last night at stitch, I finished the clouds so all I have left is the alphabet, which I'll probably finish this weekend so I can work on Celtic Banner down in Atlantic City (if i get to stitch that is).

Leaving work at 3:30 today to pamper myself a bit. (manicure and pedicure) Then I have an evening of packing and cleaning to do so we can leave by 10am to go to a wedding in NY and then the rest of the weekend to just relax... oh how I love vacation!

I will be bringing a LOT of books with me, hopefully dragonquest will arrive in time for me to bring it since dragonflight is just about finished, might finish tomorrow in the car.
I'll be offline until Monday the 28th!

Thanks for all the great comments :) I picked up Kindom Sampler again last night to get a start on the gigantic cloud :)
I don't know if I will have stitching time tonight or not but if I do I will try to finish the cloud. Tomorrow night is Celtic Banner night!

And the countdown to vacation is getting small! Techinically our vacation is Mon-Fri but we're going to a wedding back in NY saturday and staying at my parent's sat-mon morning, with no work to do I can call my vacation starting friday night with the manicure and pedicure i just set up! (Want my toes in good shape for the beach :) )

No reading last night, I resisted, I knew if I started I might just finish the book completely, we'll see if I can resist tonight or not :)

Not finished like Carol :) But I got the backstitching done and some alphabet. The alphabet really does go fast, with just that and clouds left to go I will definitely finish this soon ;)

Trying out blogger photos again so hopefully this works fine. I am really loving this piece and I can't wait to have it framed along side Legends of the Dragons. Speaking of which -- Legends is still not framed because the board and glass they sent me were too large for the frame so I have to cut them down myself which means re-lacing Legends - UGGGG!

So much to do .. still have to add the patch to the baby quilt with the personalization, and do my Block of the Month 2 for Leanne's quilt... and i'll be on vacation next week so that's not going to happen, maybe the weekend after :)

Sometimes I feel like I never have anything to show :) No stitching again this weekend, it was a camping weekend and we had a great time but definitely no time to stitch.

I did get to read in the car a bit and I'm loving this book (Ann McCaffrey's Dragonflight) and i'm looking forward to reading the whole Pern series.

Tonight is Kingdom Sampler SAL, I am hoping to work on the backstitching, *maybe* finish that up and start on the clouds that I keep putting off ... I think this will be finished up in the next week or two. If I do finish it next week I won't be able to post until the 26th when I'm back from my first week long vacation! One week to go until we leave!!! I don't know how much stitching will happen since this is a beach/casino vacation but hopefully a little stitching at least!

Well work is busy busy and with next week off I have a lot to do this week!

No stitching again... but it was a nice night of playing cards with my aunt, uncle and cousin :)

I worked from home yesterday and got my boyfriends car around 5 (they never called when they were done). Then it was the regular go to my uncle's night and hang out with them.

Tonight is stitch night! I have to stop home to get Celtic Banner as I might work on that :)

No stitching last night... I did upload a pic using blogger to test that out so we'll see how that goes.

Last night was spent figuring out what to do with my boyfriends car, resulting in me working from home and gearing up to run (yes actually run) over to the place to pic his car up this afternoon and go in to work for about an hour. We'll see how the running bit goes, i may end up calling a cab but i've never done that before either. The run would be good for me.

Then I started looking at new laptop stuff in case I decide to build a new one. I can't find a barebones system with enough features I like to get rid of my trackpoint though so I'll be sticking with my ThinkPad for now. Then I checked Ebay for the prices of Razrs as I'd like to get a new phone but I don't want to spend much more than 100 on it so I may wait it out a bit longer since my phone works perfectly fine as is.

The rest of the night I continued reading Dragonflight, i'm not very far and it's kind of hard to understand all that's going on but I'm liking it so far. I think I'm going to really like this series and may buy the second one soon to read when I finish this one.

The audio book I enjoyed over my vacation was Poison Study by Maria Snyder, Magic Study the second in the trilogy comes out in October so I can't wait for that! I definitely recommend this first one!

Just testing :)

Kingdom Sampler SAL ... finished the border...



Not much else but I did get the border completely done and get a tiny start on the alphabet. With 3 mondays left to August I think finishing this will be no big deal. I will start the backstitching next week and either more alphabet or start the clouds. Then I'll have just alphabet and clouds to do. Loving this piece :)

Last night we settled in and watched the new Pride & Prejudice which was definitely not as good as the 5 hour A&E version but I still love P&P. My boyfriend liked the 5 hour one and we both had some comments about how much they condensed some things and some of our favorite parts were left out so I think a 5 hour run with the other version will be coming up soon :) The anniversary edition comes out very soon so I think we'll get that and spend a saturday watching it again (lots of stitching time then!!)

We also watched Prime last night which was good, a little strange at the end, maybe I'm just slow but it took me a while to figure out what had happened but all in all it was a good movie.

Tonight I hope for more movies and stitching, Just a Little Peace and Quiet has been neglected for a while now so maybe I'll pull that out.
Back to work!

FINALLY!!!
Autumn in my Garden is out!!

I'm BACK!!!

but where did I go??? Well I wasn't quite sure where I was going as it was all coordinated by a good friend. This is the view I have had for 4 days:


What an amazing 4 days. I won't bore anyone completely, but we were up in Maine, in Brooklin I believe which is past Blue Hill, down by a bay (on a peninsula). My friend's family owns a cottage on a plot of land that's part of a group of plots, all owned by family. We had the cottage to ourselves and the beach usually as well. We stamped, we stitched, we listened to audio books and we ate lots of yummy food.

Starting Thursday night we started Celtic Banner, by Saturday night this is what I had:

This is a green conversion and I'm loving it, the fabric is a light yellow and the border colors are Waterlilies Jade and Celadon. I'm having a blast stitching this. I didn't take a picture of where I am currently as I had to scroll all that up and I continued the border down. I haven't started the next group of letters yet.

This is my first time using scroll rods and for this project I'm happy with them. In general they are too long for me and I prefer my q-snaps but for this they are perfect and not too heavy.

After a long 6 hour drive home last night (due to traffic) I got a good nights' sleep and now it's back to work. I have 2 weeks of work until our vacation to Atlantic city but we are also going camping this coming weekend with my family back in upstate ny. This is real camping, in a tent, with an outhouse and nothing else. But it's only one night and I grew up doing this so hopefully I will survive :)

Oh goodie -- it's kindom sampler night, hopefully I don't have much to do tonight and can work on this a bit. I have a few movies I want to watch this week so maybe I'll get a start on those!

No stitching.. but i'm ready to go :)

Last night was a busy and HOT night in the kitchen, I got the apple pie made and in the freezer ready to bake when we get up there, i also baked up a few other items and finished packing in general so I'm all ready to go, just have to pack the cooler and leave. I'm very excited, Celtic Banner is in my bag, I double checked the threads I need and I'm all set!

I'm also bringing lots of other things, we're planning on doing some card making so I have some stamping supplies, a few books to read, all that good stuff. 4 days with nothing that i HAVE to do - it will be great!

I won't be online until monday and hopefully I'll have a great Celtic Banner pic to show .. hopefully more than just the top of the border but who knows!

August Goals:

1) Finish Kingdom Sampler!
2) Start Celtic Banner
3) Work on Just a little Peace and Quiet
4) Work on Peaceful Silhouette
5) Finish Leanne's Quilt Block 2
6) Start new Pooh piece
7) Get Petal Fairy ready to start

8) work on website

that's not ambitious at all :) I have to get my stitching in now because my next graduate class starts in september - it will be monday nights 6-9 and sounds like a lot of work!

The busy nights just keep coming!

Last night was a little busy, I got pretty much everything I need packed besides my stitching bag. I think I'm pretty much ready to go besides all the baking I have to do tonight.

I also finished preparing most of the non-baked items last night and I baked the "lasagna" so that's ready to go. Tonight I have to make an apple pie (not bake it though), muffins and corn bread. That should be doable. Probably won't stitch though.

Last night I made myself stop at 7:30 and sit and stitch while watching "In her shoes" which I thought was really pretty funny. So here's my Kingdom Sampler progress:


I finished up the right side and then just worked on the border since it was mindless and I didn't feel like following a pattern for the clouds. Next week I'd like to get a start on that huge cloud though!

I was really worried Carol would be flying ahead on this piece with her birthday off but she very kindly saved stitching on it until the evening :) We have stayed very close on this one and I think August will be the month we finish it!