I just got back from a 3 day vacation in Maine with Sarah. The 3 days included the drive up and back which is significant (just over 4 hours) but we got a lot of stitching done. We decided to continue the tradition of stitching on Celtic Banner which we started together in Maine 4 years ago.

Progress was definitely made!
This is the picture I took after stitching Sunday and Monday:
And this is after stitching on Tuesday:

The piece is getting very long and it's hard to show much of it since it is on scroll rods but it is 4 pages long and we are more than halfway through page 3!

While stitching we listened to Storm Glass by Maria V. Snyder (Glass series book 1). This is the same author (and many of the same characters) as a long time favorite of ours the Study Series. While the story was very interesting the reader was very distracting, mis-pronouncing almost every pronoun which was beyond frustrating. I was however motivated to go back to the Study series directly after and I'm happily more than halfway done with the first book in that series again.

A trip to California and some knitting.

My oh my where is April going??? I can't believe it's half over already! (just about). Last week I unexpectedly had to go to California for work - I hate last minute trips but it was a good trip and I got a lot done. And before I left I made sure to get my little Lamby all finished up! Finally some pictures!!!

Here's Sammy the Lamby!
Here he is on his side. I'm not sure the pictures really show it but this guy is pretty big!
I'm sure my coworker will appreciate it, especially as a matching gift to the sweater and pants another coworker is knitting in the blue yarn (the same yarn i used for the collar).

With that done I think my knitting is done for a while. I have to focus on wedding projects!

Speaking of wedding projects - the third flower girl dress is coming along, all I have left is the finishing (adding the zipper and doing the hand stitching) so I'm very excited. Hopefully this weekend I'll not only finish that dress but start the next one!

Well it's been a long night working so i'm going to cuddle up and read a book - I read 3 books last week between planes and hotel nights - better update my reading blog soon!

While I still don't have pictures to show of all my progress on projects I thought I would do this little reading meme. The pictures are now on my camera but haven't made it to my computer! Very soon I promise..

In the mean time here's a list of 100 books, I made the ones I've read bold and italicized the ones I'd like to read...

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Feel free to join in :)

No stitching last night....
because my books arrived from amazon! I read number 5 in the Sookie series - from 8pm-1am and some how still managed to rise this morning.

These books are so great. I also got the Fitzwilliam Darcy trilogy that I can't wait to start this weekend after I've finished all of the current Sookie books that are out.

More info on the sookie books (and others) can be found at my reading blog.

hmm.. it's tuesday, i have a ton of work to do - but all i can think about is reading.. not good!

Oh and I finally started some wedding planning. I won't post anything in this blog about it until I'm actually making things to show (such as flower girl dresses) but it will start taking a bit of free time to do the planning. So far we have a potential list of invitees... step 1!

A reading weekend :) I read the first 4 in the Sookie Stackhouse series and I'm completely addicted. I can't wait to start 5 but I have to be careful, I can't put these books down and I need a good 5 hours to read each. Of course I also don't actually have 5,6,7 in paperback form, I have them all in audiobook form and that goes even slower! I'm considering swinging by the bookstore and getting 5,6 in paperback (7 is only in hardcover) and then doing just 7 in audiobook. It really is a disease!

I did stitch this weekend - Finished all the actual stitching on Shepherds bush purse, just have to do the beading and my date/initials. I'll try to remember to bring it in tomorrow to scan a picture. This was a very relaxing piece and oh i love silks!

Next up in stitching is the neighborhood RR. Time to pull that out and plan what to stitch!

Public Service Announcement...

Due to unforeseen events there may be some delay in posting stitching/sewing/crafting related material to this blog. I am sad/happy/anxiety filled to announce that a new addiction has pulled my full attention away from above mentioned hobbies...

I started reading the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, first book called "Dead until Dark". The main character (Sookie) is telepathic and the series is about her and her life which includes vampires, a particular vampire she meets in her southern town. The book is very very very hard to put down... so hard so that I was up until 4am last night reading the entire book 1 straight through and now I haven't been able to stop thinking about starting number 2.

So that's my warning - there may be posts along the same lines all weekend if this addiction continues as strong as it has been!

Worked late... no stitching...

Last night I left work pretty early (4pm) and went and got my hair cut. Then I settled in for the evening to continue working. I just wanted to get home before we had people coming to look at the apartment. I ended up working until 10pm and then I read for a half hour before bed.

Ahh that reminds me, I wanted to start a reading blog... to keep track of the books I've read and if I enjoyed them etc. I too often get books confused with each other.

I am SO SORE today from lifting yesterday, it was great though and I'm so glad to be back on the diet and exercise and doing well. Tonight I need to run, didn't run yesterday but I can make up for that :)