Nothing New

There's a new quilt store in town which carries those fine line blue water soluble pens. What an amazing tool for stitching, glad we found one. Other then that in the last few weeks there has been almost no stitching or knitting and only a little sewing. It's been mad crazy busy here.

Crazy

Life is so crazy right now, lots of stuff going on I can't talk about. I have done some stitching and a bit of knitting and will work on getting more pictures up. My dd is playing Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors and play practice is a bit hectic. My mother in-law is coming up the first week to see it and my dad will be here the second week. Now because of this the painting has been finished, daughters floor recarpeted. We still have kitchen to repaint, bathtub to finish and living room floors to finish in the next 3 weeks. It's just a mad house around here.

Good News vs Bad News

Good News: Really into both SAL right now. I finished two rows of the new one Treasures and really enjoying the eye appearing in Fragile Heart

Bad News: I was two rows off in Fragile Heart, not the one I thought I was. So I frogged all the black I had done back to row 50 or so. It was sad and slightly depressing but at least now when it'll be right and it won't bug me later.

Cleaning

Went through all my cross stitch kits, aka before HAED, and separated between want to do, will do and who am kidding I'll never stitch that. I also took out a pair of size 15 straight knitting needles and added all the not to keep stuff to a bag to take to the thrift store. I found my big fabric piece I was hooking a rug on and am currently working on that. Just trying to get stuff used up and out of the way right now. I have 50 rows left of my Mockery socks and the toe. I'm half done with page 1 of Winter and still haven't touched Fragile Heart. I figure I prolly won't finish the Winter goal this month but I should finish the sock at least.

Working Out

Got my program set up today at the gym. I'm a little sore but it was a lot of fun. I'm doing a beginning circuit setup and I think tomorrow I'll treadmill. Stitching wise haven't gotten much done. I started a new pair of Dangerous Turn socks with my hot pink yarn. When I finish the repeat of cables I'm on I'll switch back to my Mockery socks. I'm keeping this short as I want to soak my feet, they are sore from so much activity today. 4 hours of rushing through Sandpoint followed by an hour at the gym then another hour at the two stores here in town. Ouch.

Peaches

Last summer I took whole peaches and froze them skin on in my big freezer. I read about this on a blog and wanted to try it for smoothies. I promptly then forgot all about them. I think it had something to do with my month old blender lid disappearing. Now winter is over and it's hot today, 80 in the shade hot. At least that was the forecast and I forgot to look at the board when I drove home. I wanted something cold and a smoothie was it. Out came two peaches. I ran them under cold water and rubbed the skin right off. By the time the second was skinless I could chop them up and toss the pieces into the blender added milk till smooth. I thought it was great but hubby and daughter said I needed more sugar....I didn't add any. I threw in a packet of Stevia, the Walmart Version, and now it's more milkshake, sweet tooth begone like. Totally Yummy!

Day Dreaming

Today I decided I need to win the lotto. I want to buy a castle and run around in period clothing. Told my hubby he could buy truck and rv of his dreams if he'd drive me around to Renaissance fairs. My daughter was all for it, she's almost 17 and wants a castle more then me. If I ever did win though I'd prolly want to travel and see the sights like Glacier National Park and the Grand Canyon.

Gym

My husband and I joined the gym yesterday and did the walkthrough and made appointments to get a regiment or "program" set up. Today we went in to do cardio aka I walked on the treadmill and he got waylaid and had his program set up. It seems I was suppose to as well but was upstairs on the treadmill and so will next week. Now for my rant.....why do people look at me funny in the gym. Is this the one place people should be supportive of my weight loss? GRR.

On my goal front I finished the gusset of my Mockery sock and carded the floss for Winter. I found the two I was missing in my daughter's stash (her please buy these for me for my project that I may get to in the next year or so stash). I did some stitching but not a lot on her but I finally managed to highlight all the areas from when I first started her. So woot she'll be getting some daily work.

Monthly Goals

I've decided I'd like to give monthly goals a shot. I know my year long ones are mostly shot but am going to try baby steps.

June Goals-
- Finish Mock Cable socks
I have gussets and foot of second sock left


-Finish (Can)tab socks
I have second sock to knit



-Finish page of Winter
HAED QS by Sarah Butcher, this is my very first HEAD design I ever started. It was lost in the move and I found it a few weeks ago.


-2000 stitches on Fragile Heart
SAL on the HAED boards, I want to finish the first page but not feeling this project. I somehow messed up on the black around the bottom corner and don't want to redo it.

The Madness has ended

I'm out on round 3 of Sock Madness. I was on Team Needles of Fire which was a huge jump from the slow team last year. I just couldn't keep up with people who can knit two whole socks in under 15 hours. I'll post pics of the socks that did me in with all it's toe up, cabled front and back gloriousness this weened when I finish the second one. I'm giving them to the other Pam as a thanks for being a wonderful other mother for my child.

Pale Comparison

Working on a new HAED. I'm hoping the 18 count in the dark days of rain and snow will help reduce eye fatigue and headaches. So far so good. I was just working on the SAL Fragile Heart but I don't really like the pattern. Sock Madness is in full swing, I've made it to round 3 and am waiting for it to start.

as of 4/1/2011


Round 1 of SM5


A purple version of same pattern


Round 2 socks. Andi is getting both pairs so far. First pair was a bribe to do the cooking but the second pair bags on my ankle and drives me batty. I could prolly wear them with tennis shoes but I'm a fan of clogs and sandals.

Finished!

She's finally done and I'm back to watching Lie To Me and stitching on Annabelle. I'm taking Midnight Secrets on the plane with me Thursday for my trip to Hawaii.

Almost Done

I was trying to stay up and finish this page of Witchy Wendy because I'm soooooooo close to being down to one last partial page but I'm falling asleep. So tomorrow I'll post pics of a finished page and I have a sock finished that looks like a snake to me with the pink toe. I liked it so much I started it's match instead of a new sock like I had planned.

Squeezed in 400+ stitches before sleep started to overcome me. I'm so very toasty warm and tired right now. Just gonna post my progress and head to bed.

Mathmatical what?

It's bed time and I just remembered I didn't post yesterday either so I scurried down the hallway to take a quick pic.....and started counting non colored squares. Why you might ask. I wanted to know how close I was to being done with Witchy Wendy. It's 3,856 squares which turns into sometime like 15.8% left before I'm done. I've stitched 20,564 stitches so far. Woot! I asked my dh what I should work on next and he said the deer picture. It took me a moment to recall what he meant but I am now to tired to dig through floss to see how many of the 123 I'm going to need to purchase. I want to finish page one of the Fragile Heart SAL before I do a new start though.

What a day. I'm finally headed to bed again after squeezing in some stitching before passing out. It helps to calm my nerves. Tomorrow is going to busy. I have to clean out and move everything in my craft room so we can take the wall down between the living room and my craft room. We're putting in a pellet stove and turning off the furnace since dh gets free pellets from work. The advantage of working at a place that makes them. He's worried about layoffs but I'm trying not to stress over stuff we can't change. Here's Midnight Secrets (by Selina Fenech and graphed by Heaven and Earth Designs)

I made myself sit down and work on Witchy Wendy tonight. It helped that the neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking making my dh grouchy and trying to sleep. It's amazing how little you can do in 2 hours but still fill like you accomplished something just by filling in spaces. I'm also knitting a pair of monkey socks and finished the gusset while watching Grey's Anatomy tonight. Great episode, glad to see Christina practicing medicine again.

Secrets

Finished up all the bobbin winding today. I underestimated my supply because I'll have to buy some more bobbins but that's alright as I need to get the rest of thread for daughter's dragon project. I must have almost a complete set by now. Every time I see I need another color I think wow, really? Tonight I worked on Midnight Secrets. It was out and easy to work on. Poor Wendy really needs to get finished so she may be all I work on for the rest of the week.

I was just to tired to finish the blocks, benadryl does that to me.

Nada

No stitching today at all. Andi and I purchased all the thread we needed for the SAL and then a few extras and I've spent the last hour wrapping thread onto bobbins. There are 50+ to wrap. All the thread I've picked up this year and you'd think I'd have a whole set by now. Maybe I should check a checklist for DMC and see how close I am.

After 2 days of working on Fragile Heart I have just over 2 columns done.



Tomorrow is payday so I'll be working on Witchy Wendy after I pay bills and grocery shop. I watched Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole twice today. It's fantastic and on my buy soon list so I can watch it again. It even has Owl City singing in it and I love that too!

I made my 2011 goals on the HAED board today. They were:
1. Finish Witchy Wendy (really want her to be done already)
2. Finish Masquerade SAL (love this chart and put it off so I could work on Wendy)
3. Do 2 Pages of Fragile Heart SAL (I'm hoping for much more then this as so far it's an easy pattern to follow)
4. Finish 3 pages of Midnight Secrets

On Masquerade I'm just a bit farther then the following pic



This is Midnight Secrets, it's one of the charts that got me started on HAED and I'm done with the row that's shown.

I think I'm going to switch daily between Fragile Heart and Witchy Wendy. I'm so close to being done with Wendy but it feels like I'm getting no where after spending hours on the confetti bits. Fragile Heart is the 2011 SAL from the HAED boards and I'd like to actually finish page 1 before I get page 2 this year.

Witchy Wendy

Fragile Heart