Thursday, December 27, 2012

Holiday Slush

Yesterday was a very wet and cold day. A fire was more than in order in our home. I spent the morning running my son's car for repair and it was in just plain old bitter wet Alabama slushie snow. I do not have lovely photos of snow covered yards. I didn't even bother to take a photo of the mush coming down. It was wet and cold to the bone. My cousin lives in Alaska and she always says it is colder here than there in the winter. DS gave us a gift of an accordion style garage door and matching scared roof top on his car as he showed signs of his impatient father and distracted mother both and backed into the garage door before it was fully opened on Christmas Eve. At least school is out and we can get it repaired before he has to go back so no more driving in circles running him around for me, silver lining number one. The second silver lining was that after the deposit was made at the auto repair shop I was able to stay hold up with the fire and STITCH! It has been a slow week or two for stitching so I welcomed the rest with me and DS watching a Castle marathon. I know the show has been on a while but I just discovered it and one can never have enough murder mystery shows on the DVR. DS really didn't watch much but he did come down for periodic feedings and would chat a bit. We have a balance between interaction and solitude when we are home alone that is wonderful. Such a good gift from God my son has been. He is talking craziness of not living at home for college. I am just not ready for that much less of him.The empty nest is still more than a year away and I can develop a bit of a panic about it with minimal effort.  
It is really hard to see them on the spun silver linen but there are 3 so far with 4 to come soon. That is actually an entire skein of white floss. It may take 2 before the fat snow-woman sings.I'm sure it will show better once I fill in some color on them but right now it a fair amount of bland. 

We were able to travel to visit my step-daughter for Christmas. It was a quick trip but we were able to visit several family members and made it home Christmas Eve in time for DS to crash the garage door...Christmas Day we stayed at home and enjoyed each other. We watched The Christmas Story first up with coffee in bed and then migrated to the living room for a very lazy day. We snacked most of the day and topped off dinner with a non-traditional hamburger.All in all a relaxing family time. We have always traveled on Christmas Day and never feel very rested but this year was nice. 

Hope you have had a blessed holiday time,
Pam

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Merry Christmas


I got a couple of goodies in the mail this week. I got a package from Teresa it was a very chocolate themed package. Tons of see's candies. Each one more yummy than the last. Also some chex mix which there is no photo of because I ate all of it. And some travel snips for plane trips. I have been needing some and failed to purchase them for myself. Some winter white earl grey for my tea cup.There was also a lovely angel that did not quite survive the shipping. I think she will be mend able but I need a minute to work some magic. The cookies were de-lish as well. Notice the past tense again. Truly I was doing well until all the treats arrived. After a month in the gym I am down 6% on my body fat. We will see how next month looks. It should be easier to focus with the Holidays behind me. 
April sent a cute ornament and some finishing prettiest as well as more chocolate and a snowman chart that I desperately needed. I am about snowmen the way most people are about santa's. they live in my house more than just at Christmas too. Last year my husband made me take the one down in April. What was he thinking? The ornament says Alabama Christmas and has the cutest jingle bells. It went straight to my ornament tree! 
Finally, it has been a slow week for stitching. Not much time free for my current project but I hope to have some time tomorrow and Monday to fill in the second snow-woman. I have her bottom section about half completed and can hopefully get at least the top finished and on to the third. I am saving all the little birdies for last and all that fabulous backstitching.

Have a blessed Christmas,
Pam 

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Thinking Snow

This is small amount of progress on the snowman. I took the photo last night so it is a bit on the dark side. The one I took this morning is a bit on the dark side as well. You can see he is starting too look like a snowman. I have some birds and the nose to fill in and then it is on to page 2 of this one. I am not in love with the way the pattern is placed as a chart but it is older and I am sure more limiting software and such back then. 

I have thread pulled and fabric for Dorothy Walpole and hope to start by the first of the year. I am a bit afraid if I stop on the snowman piece it will get lost in the UFO abyss. I will forge onward and hopefully can complete it by the end of the year. April pointed out to me that last week it was in the upper 70's and I was trying to cool off by stitching snowmen. This week it is cooler. Hopefully it will stay cool for a few days. Just never know about the weather in Alabama. 

Hope you all have a blessed day,
Pam

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Small Progress

I know it doesn't look like much but this is about 10 hours of progress on the snowman piece. Only 3 colors have been introduced so far, white and 2 blues. This is about 2/3 of the way through the first page but there is a lot of thread changes ahead before I can move to page 2.Over dyed thread have made me a lazy stitcher and all those thread changing for definition seem like so much work but this piece really needs them and I don't see any fudging with the over dyes or the miles of back-stitching.  

The Stitched Tree ended up in my entrance way this year. I am finally not embarrassed about how bare it is with the addition of the assembled ornaments from years past.It also has a few hand painted gourds and some glass snowmen from my mom's collections of ornaments. 

I am feeling better but coughing up some amazing stuff, spoken like a true medical professional. I hear this will be the lasting part of this little infection. Everyone says it is really difficult to get rid of the cough. Just a little something to look forward too. Thankful I did not get my husbands flu. He was the only one in the house that got that and we were all glad to let him be an overachiever and contract it first and hopefully alone. 

Hope you are managing a little time with the needle and thread. 

Thanks for stopping by,
Pam

Saturday, December 1, 2012

SL Stash arrived

Last night when I finally made it home after an all day class and a trip by the fabric store I walked in to a wonderful surprise. My charts from SL had arrived. I have joined Nicola and Jo's Scarlet Letter SAL. Hop on over and join the insanity. They are having some amazing drawings through out the year. I will just be wonderful to have a bit of motivation to stitch one of these at last.  I am still leaning towards starting Dorothy Walpole but it would more than likely be the only one I have any hope of completing. 
Back to that trip to the fabric store. A while back April was kind enough to introduce me to Sullivan's cotton floss. I started the snowman piece this week with the white she sent me. I wanted to see if I they held up to her no-tangle clam. I had purchased some DMC for the Fred's and have been rather tired of the knotting and shredding that has followed. You see I gave up DMC several years back when I fell in love with silk. But the woes of this economy force me back to the dreaded DMC. I found the Sullivan's to be all April said they were and headed straight to Hancock's Fabrics to acquire the needed floss for the snowman piece. While it is a bit of a pain to get to the store I decided to get what I needed for the Fred's as well. I'll finish out the color I'm on with the DMC but the rest shall be Sullivan's. At any rate I needed 103 of them. The poor lady at the register might just be a bit more OCD than me. She actually had to sort them by color before she would ring them up.... 103 of them. I felt so normal after leaving there....  
Aren't they lovely? So April, see what you have started? As if I don't have enough stash organization issues. I now have an additional thread line to deal with! :) Does that look like $39 to all of you? Still a bargain to me compared to silks.

My husband had the flu this week and I managed to get a cold rather than the flu. I have just felt a bit sluggish but we must all stitch on. 

thanks for stopping by,
Pam