dreaming of paradise

I haven't been doing much of this over the past week:

I have been too busy doing this:

and this (although my skin is somewhat less scaly):

and this:

and admiring these:

I was relaxed and happy.  And then when we got back from our vacation and I started doing this for a fundraiser for my son's school:

I am now tired again and ready for the fundraiser to be over at the end of the week.  Then I can go back to my regular life which includes much less data entry in excel and much more stitching.  I can't wait!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled stitching for this relaxation break.

I have no stitchy updates to give today. The last couple have days have been a blur of preparing for a sunny and warm trip to Cancum. Yes, Cancun! Woo hoo!! I am particularly excited because Southern California is currently stuck in a rainy cold front out of Alaska. Yes, it is as cold and wet as it sounds. Bleh.

I am not bringing any of my stitching with me since we are going carry-on only and I don't want to convince TSA that my tapestry needle and tiny scissors are not a danger to anyone.

So I hve three days with nothing to do except read. And sit by the pool. And on the beach. And eat yummy food. It will be rough.

Happy Spring!

Spring is in the air.  The trees are showing new growth and it is starting to warm up. 

Of course I live in Los Angeles, so most trees stayed green through the winter and there was a week of 80 degree weather in January, and it was in the 70s for the last couple.  Spring is a relative term.  

My husband and son are spending this fine first day of spring at a travel show dreaming of places to visit.  I am spending this very rainy first day of spring

finishing a book in peace, picking up some food for dinner, watching a movie on Netflix, eating some amazingly wonderful cheeses and bread

and looking forward to some cross stitching this afternoon.  This is what I am working on...

This is where I am so far...

Not too bad, if I do say so.  It is lots of fun to do and can't wait to see the finished product.  Today is a very good day.  ::smile::

Happiness is sometimes just being finished...

I finally finished my Droids For Sale piece on the weekend!  You can't see my happy dance, but please trust me when I tell you that I am doing it.  I cannot tell you how tired I was of it.  That is the intrinsic problem with stitching a piece that I have not chosen - it is just not as much fun.  I am just thankful that my son went with this design rather than Spider Man.  Droids was boring with many colors.  It would have been a total snooze-fest with only three!

I was a stitching maniac all last week.  All I wanted to do was stitch so that I would be that much closer to being done with this sucker!  I didn't find this terribly enjoyable to do, but it does look good finished!

finished with wrinkles

ironed and wrapped on canvas - here in earthquake
country I don't like to put glass on my son's walls

Now on to a much more fun project!  I am doing the sausage dog from CrossStitcher issue 235 from February.

My husband has absolutely forbidden me from making it into a set of pillows as suggested and since it is his couch too, I feel that I *should* respect his opinion even if it is wrong.

So I will take these ingredients

Aida 14 - pewter
(my local shop didn't have the right color of evenweave)
DMC threads
navy crafters felt
green with pink polka-dots ribbon

and turn them into this

We will see how that goes.  It is a bit more complicated than I am used to, but as long as it is just straight stitches on my machine, I should be fine.

And finally I got a happy piece of news this morning from Sadie over at Stitching up a Storm.  I won her  Spring Chart Giveaway!  I almost never win things so when I do I am very excited.  I am off to buy a lottery ticket to capitalize on my good luck!

It Came!

It came!  After 3 weeks, it finally came!

Happy dance!

Color Me Inspired

I got home from work today and found a package on my doorstep - the one I was waiting for from 123stitch.com.  I really do love them!  Seeing these charts is giving me my missing inspiration to get moving on Droids for Sale.  I mean, look at all of those colors!  Pink!  Green!  Blue!  Hardly any brown at all!  The faster I stitch Droids, the faster I can move on to these beauties.  Yipeee!

On the other hand, this weekend is turning out to be pretty busy.  This evening my husband and I are going to a fancy shindig.  It is one of those fundraiser auctions for our son's school.  It should be fun and I always like a chance to get dressed up.  However my good friend can't go as her daughter is sick.  So I will have to work a bit harder to be especially charming and make new friends.  Eek!

Tomorrow will include a trip to check out hot tubs (we are in the beginning phases of redoing our back yard), opening ceremonies for Little League and then another night out with the hubby to see Avenue Q (a Valentine's Day gift).  Whew!  Sunday will be a little more laid back, but there is still t-ball practice right in the middle of my nap time.  By the time Monday gets here, I will be ready for a weekend!

Tedium

I am making good progress in Droids for Sale.  I've been working on it for a month now and am ready for it to be done.  It is a very tedious piece with wide expanses of brown.  The droids and Jawas are very detailed with many colors in them.  I spend much of my time stitching the background by planning what I will do next.  I still haven't decided, but I do know one thing: It will NOT have any brown in it.

I don't prefer large, intricate designs.  I need to see progress.  I need to see a finished product every few weeks.  Otherwise I will get bored and discouraged and the piece will go unfinished.  And I hate starting a new project if I have one that is still unfinished.  If that happens, I know that it will never get done.  I am contemplating doing a quick, one day piece that will be a nice interlude, but then think that I should just stay on track and stitch through the boredom so that it will be done and I can move on for good.  ::sigh::

However, it is exciting to see it develop and I know that it will look great on my son's wall!

Wishful Stitching

Have you ever heard of Polstiches Designs?  In addition to some wonderful patterns, kits, and other stitchy supplies, they have the most beautiful hand dyed fabrics!  They dye their fabrics into these beautiful, swirly patterns of blues, purples, pinks, yellows, greens.  I have my eye on Icy Waters: blue with just a hint of purple and white.  I love it!

They come in Aida 14 and 16 counts as well as Lugana 28 and Jobelan 26 and 28 counts in a variety of sizes.  The prices are pretty reasonable too, for what you are getting!

I am still looking for just the right design to stitch onto it.  I haven't yet found a US distributor, so when I am ready, I will have to go straight to the source, but I think it will be worth it!

Snow!

It snowed yesterday.  Now in most of the country, that statement is not a reason for pause.  However this is Los Angeles.  Angelenos can usually count on one hand the number of times they have seen snow fall in their yards in their lifetime.  Unfortunately, it did not snow at my house.  We only got a few minutes of hail.  Nothing like at my friend A's house.  I LOVE this photo she took in her front yard.  It just makes me smile!

Current Work

Droids for Sale

pattern by Joy Egan

DMC threads

I am so bad at noting what fabric I am buying so I cannot give any insight into that.  I believe it is 28 count, and I am stitching over 2.  My son is so excited to watch it develop and can't wait until it is done!

Brit-Envy

Now for my daily bit of whine...

I am so envious of the Brits!  Not only do they get the Royals and these fab marriages (complete with the day off work), they have a great cross stitch community.

Have you seen the amazing magazines that they have over there?  I haven't found an American mag that is as good.  To get these awesome magazines, I have to go to my newsstand where I am asked to pay a minimum of $9.99  And I do because they are so great!  (And then I share them with my mom to feel like I am getting more out of it.)  Unfortunately my local newsstand does not regularly carry them.  So I got tired of waiting and decided to suck it up and get a subscription to Cross Stitch Crazy.  But now I am waiting for  for the issue to show up, weeks after Royal Mail delivered it.

They have tons of group and shops.  The Los Angeles area has a handful of shops and no groups that I am aware of.  Everyone around here knits.

And I know no one my age who cross stiches.  I feel like I have a secret.  I am 35, soccer mom, school volunteer, with the hobby of someone who is twice my age.

Now I know from reading blogs that there are many young Yanks who also cross stitch, I just wish that it was a little more common - or that you all lived closer to me!

Thus ends our period of whining for today.  I will now have a sip of wine and contemplate which wedding announcement project I will do for Will and Kate!

I just can't stay away...

My love affair with cross stitching can be broken down in three separate phases of my life: when I as a girl stitching with m granny.  These projects were of the child-friendly variety.  Unfortunately, I do not have any of the projects that I did at that time.  The second phases was after I finished my schooling and I was married.  Projects from this phase were gifts.  Similar to the first phase of my cross stitching development, I do not have any projects from this time.  However I know where to find them.  They are in the homes of my girlfriends who had babies at the time, my mother-in-law, and my mother.

I have recently entered into the most recent phase.  I was visiting my mother last fall and watched her stitching.  I got the itch again.  But I decided to do it differently this time.  This time I am stitching purely for my own enjoyment.

I am not focusing on what I will do with the completed projected.  I am only focusing on stitching whatever catches my fancy.  Even if that means that it then remains in a box.  I am here to enjoy the process: picking out my next pattern; deciding which fabrics to use; which color threads.  Deciding if this pattern will be framed, made into a bag or a pincushion, or if this one will be just for the tactile and visual enjoyment while I am working on it.  This time it is all for me.  And I am loving it!