And! A finish!

Well, I actually finished Love, Joy, Home! I finished it last night around 7 in the evening! And here it is: This one was started September 25th of 2005, and was completed November 23rd of 2006. it was stitched on 18 count aida, with DMC floss. I am so glad to have another finish for the year, a largish finish! This one and the November Quilt one I did for my mom were the largest finishes for the year. But, I am super excited, because this one is for me! Now I just have to have it stretched and framed! I made out a list of WIP's, and I am going to try to have some of them finished up this next year. Most of them are large, infact all 13 of them are at least as large as Love, Joy, Home. So, I will probably only see about two more finished in the next year, for as long as it has taken me to get the two done this year. My next goal is to finish my dad's Snow Valley Express. It was going to be for Christmas, but I just don't see it happening! Maybe for his birthday next year! That gives me about 6 more months, I'm sure I can get it done in 6 months, if I stay on top of it! That is the hard part, continually stitching on a piece you, yourself don't enjoy. Maybe I need to set some smallish daily goals concerning that one, like work on it a minimum of 1/2 an hour a day, that way it is getting done, at least a little each day. I don't know, I'll have to evaluate my rotation and see what I can do. Maybe if I set it as my primary focus piece, for the first month then then next month I can give myself a break.
This morning I already put about an hours worth of work into "The Abbey". I am really enjoying this one now that I have switched out the fabrics. I can see it progressing well since I restarted. I did set it aside the last two days in order to put my full attention to LJH, but now that that one is done, i can work on other things.
Well, I must be going, FIL is leaving and I have to go say goodbye,

A Re-start

I have decided that I wanted to start "The Abbey" over again. I didn't enjoy stitching on the fabric I had chosen, something that was TINY, and white, with one thread stitching. YUCK! What was I thinking?! So, out went the 5 hours of work I had on it, and I pulled a light blue piece of 18 count aida. And! This means I don't have to stitch all the blue in the sky! I know! I am cheating, but there is a lot of stitching and I don't want to spend all my time stitching light blue sky- hundreds and hundreds of stitches in the same shade of light blue! Ugh! So, I have a new start, so hopefully I will actually be motivated to work on it now. I have a goal to finish it in January of '08. So, we shall see if that actually happens.

On another note, I went to the oral surgeon today for my pre op appointment as I will be having two teeth pulled (a wisdom tooth and the one next to it) next Monday! I am so not looking forward to it, however, I will be getting three days off from work, the day of the surgery and the following two, so granted I am not in too much pain, and not knocked out on drugs, I am going to stitch those days away.
"Love, Joy, Home" is coming along really well, I am completely finished with the four squares with the baskets in them to the right hand side, and I have finished the motif right next to it, it looks like a carpet or something, and am so close to a finish I am guessing another two or three hours, and that is it! So, I will wait until I finish to show it on here again.

And let the holidays begin!

Well, FIL ended up showing up yesterday, he called and told us mid morning that he was going to be here earlier than he thought. Yikes! It sent us in a flurry to get groceries (After being gone for a week, the cupboards were bare!) and getting the house in some sort of order, laundry done up, the spare room somewhat tidied up, and the guest bath cleaned from ceiling to floor! Phew! It was crazy! and our room is still in piles of laundry (both dirty and clean) that either need to be washed or folded and put away!
But, he showed up and we went out for lunch, and had a great visit. He will be with us until probably Friday sometime. I didn't get any stitching in at all yesterday what with trying to get things ready for our visiter, but this morning I was able to sit down for a bit with "Love, Joy, Home" Which I need to post a photo of. I am really happy with the progress on this one, and I'm at the point now where I am towards the end of a project and that is all I want to work on in order to finish it, because I can see the end in the near future. Given I have time this week to devote to this piece, I will probably have it finished by the end of the weekend. Keep your fingers crossed for me! And here is my progress:

Ps: Bethann! Thank you so much for the beautiful scissors!!

A whole lotta stitchin' goin' on!

Just not a lot of blogging, and posting of the pictures of the stitching itself! Ikept with my rotation everyday this week, even my dad's piece which I alwasy find a hard project to pick up. The only day I did mess up a bit, which I have already confessed to is I worked on my ornaments for two days and Fright Night Friends only one! But that is alright, I had Tuesday off from work so was able to catch up a bit on it!

Well, this week I am supposed to start a new job so I don't know what kind of time that will allow for stitching. I am not looking forward to it, but I have to do it. It's not a real job, per se, but I have to finish my practicum to get my degree in addiction counseling. And I have 100 hours to do, and I want to get that started this week and get that out of the way, I should have done it WAY before now but I am the worlds largest procrastinator, and so I HAVE to do it NOW, because if I don't I won't be able to get my degree. It shouldn't be too bad. If I work 25 hours a week there, then I should have it done by the end of Nov. in one month's time, I will have it done.
Anyway, enough about that junk, I am going to try to show you some progress photo's. The first one is Love, Joy Home. I actually got a bit done on it today, although I ended up having to frog a bit too, I was off count by two threads at the bottom of the four squares with the baskets in them. but I did alright on it.









Next is Fright Night Friends. Which I wanted to have in time to be up for Halloween, but that is in like 16 days, so I don't think so, especially with the way my time is going to be diminishing here soon.
But you can see that I finished all the stitches int he orange pumpkin costume, and started the backstitching on him, and also worked a lot on the Lettering in "Happy Halloween". So, he's comin' along! I still have not been able to get the thread for the fence, and I am not sure now with having to do this internship that I will have the time before I want to have this finished to get it done, so I don't think this is a goal I will be meeting this year, and yet! I may surprise us all!
And lastly I want to share progress on Midnight Watchman:
...or not. I think Blogger has had enough of me for the night, I guess I will have to post the midnight watchman some other time, for now, though I am off to bed, to read a bit, and then go to sleep! Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Sampler and Patchwork bears

Here they are! progress pictures of Patchwork Bears, and one you haven't seen for a long time, one I haven't even seen for a long time: Love, joy home. I worked on this one mostly yesterday. I think if I were to work on it soley for two or three weeks, I would have a happy dance, But I doubt that will happen. So, I am going to put a dead line of Oct 1st for it. My goal is to be finished with it by oct 1st. so, we shall see if I can do it! You know the one that seems to be nagging me the most right now, and it is totally off season, but it is my Easter bellpull. I could probably have it done in a few hours if I would just sit and work on it, but I have not, for a long time, and I should. Maybe that should be a primary goal for right now, to have that done by next Friday, Love Joy Home done by Oct. 1st, the top half of Patchwork Bears done by Nov. 1st, and my father's Snow Valley Express done by Dec. 10th. We shall see if I can actually do this! Yay! I have set stitching goals, maybe this will keep me on track. Wish me luck!

Another long relaxing day...

so, who says mondays have to be terrible? mine wasn't! I got today off, and I feel like I was pretty productive, plus i had time to get bored, now how does that happen?!

This morning I returned our Cable box, as our company has changed owners and now my cable bill was WAY too high to justify the tiny bit of watching that I do, the main reason also was because somewhere betweent he time I went to California and the time I got back, my work out channel was removed. So they want ot give me less and charge me more?! I don't think so! So, there is about 60$ I get to save per month. (Can you say "Extra Stash cash?") ::evil grin::

Well, I do have a few photos to post, if blogger will be nice and let me. Lets see? Hey!! it worked! I got both photos to download! Well, whatdayahknow? so this is my progress from just yesterday. On Love,Joy, Home and Snow Valley Express. Hereby after will be referred to as SVE. However, I did work a little more on Love, Joy, Home, so this isn't the current status on this one, this is just what it looked like after the last time I worked on it, which was a long time ago, those of you who have followed my blog for awhile will remember this one. This is a "For Lana" piece, as I haven't done much for myself in awhile. So, anyway, not much else going on here, I have been browsing Amazon to see if I can find DVD series of my favorite shows, so I can have something to stitch to now that I no longer have cable. The list is LONG!!! And if I were to accumulate all that I want I shouldn't have to pay for cable for a very long time!!! Well, I am off to get some more stitching in before I head to bed, or! maybe I will read. I haven't done that for awhile. Since I was on the plane home from Cali. (OK, only 4 days, but still) bye!

progress picture already!

Well, this is the work I have done on this piece in the past two days! I have been going to town. I even had to do some frogging, on the 3 flowers on the upper left hand area, if you scroll down to my previous picture you can see the flower is one square away from the border, well it is supposed to be touching the border like it is here, so I had done a bit more of the flowers than you see in the previous picture and I started working on the border and got to the top and realized it wasn't lined up properly and figured it out, so I had to go back and take those lil' flowers out and redo them. It didn't take too long!
To answer you Faithann, This piece will only be about 8x10 when finished, this is the top half of the piece. This is what it will look like when finished:
Sorry it is crooked, I took it off the magazine I am using for the pattern and they had the picture tilted on a little pedistal, so it looks slanted because it is that way in the picture. So, you can see I am about half way done. It is by ursula Micheals, one of my favorite designers, it was featured in The Cross stitcher Magazine, June 2005 issue. I am stitching it on 18 count Aida. I loved the colors too, and the symetricalness of it. and it sorta has a bit of busyness to it. I have been playing with the idea of doing another one, with reds and grays, and a third with another color scheme, but we shall see if that shall fit in the grand scheme of my stitching agenda for the year, I'm sure I could squeeze it in, but we shall see how I feel when I finish it if I want to move on or if I'm up to the challange of a color conversion. Well, that is all for now, just wanted to show you my progress on this one.
Thank you also Von for commenting!