If you’re on my reads list and don’t see yourself over there at the moment, don’t freak… I ALMOST have the new template ready, and I’ve sorted my reads by daily, weekly, and stitching-related blogs.
Should have things fixed by this evening… hopefully.
After weeks of trying to figure out how to do this, ugotnothin and I finally met yesterday. We were partnered together for a slam swap on one of our yahoolists, and she suggested that it might be the incentive we needed. I agreed.
I had a good time. I hope that she did, too. We chatted for a good portion of the afternoon and did some quick shopping in Downtown Crossing. Since I’m barely tapping into my penpalling and swapping supplies at this point, I just filled up my backpack with slams, and sorted through them to fill the swap I owed her at the table in Borders. That was partially due to the fact that I don’t have a lot of address labels at the moment to sign slams, either. (one of those little purchases I need to do one of these days…)
She jumped on the T around 4 because she had evening plans to attend to. Erich wasn’t out of work until 5, so I walked over to Chinatown to check my post office box (no mail today) and then walked over to the Boston Common to grab some lemonade and wait for him near the movie theater.
We saw “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” after he got out of work. I’m mixed about it. Some of the things were really good. Some of it were just… eh. Depp’s Wonka came off as a bit too Michael Jackson-ish to me, which creeped me out and honestly made me instinctively detach from the movie. I loved the nut room and the great glass elevator. The chocolate river was cool. I guess I just wasn’t convinced by a lot of the acting. Seeing the movie stoned might be a better option. From the reaction in the theater, it sounded like a lot of people were feeling the same way. There was a small smattering of applause, but a lot of uncomfortable whispers and mutterings as people left. I think I’d give it a 7 overall. As a Burton movie, it was beautiful to look at, and I honestly loved the background story of Wonka. The acting just.. *shrug*
We hustled over to the commuter rail to catch the 8:20 train back to Providence and got home just before 10. I played Sims. Erich played World of Warcraft.
And life is good.
Yay! I found my uploading cable for the camera. This is a good thing. 
So lots of updates tonight…
First off, I have two weeks of Stitchers Blog Questions to answer… for some reason, I’m not getting the questions in my mailbox, despite being set up for individual mail on the group. Gotta love free email sites. *sigh*
Anyway… July 20, ’05: Have you ever done a color conversion? If so, what did you think about your results and would you do it again? If not, would you like to try
someday? I have not yet done one, but definitely want to. Being a bit isolated in my stitching hobby until this year, I didn’t realize it really was possible to do them. But then I saw variants of The Castle by Teresa Wentzler, and absolutely loved them. While I doubt I’ll get around to it for many years, I’d love to do a conversion copy of The Castle someday on a dark fabric. At some point, I’ll definitely be trying it on some project.
July 27, ’05: What is your most unique/interesting stitching quirk? (This could be
something concerning the way you stitch, how you organize your stash, etc.) Since I really have nothing to compare it to, I’m not quite sure what my most unique quirk is. I suppose in the age of q-snaps and scroll frames, my preference for old-fashioned hoop stitching, perhaps? Or maybe the fact that I almost always stitch patterns upside down, and then flip them right-side up to backstitch (out of instinct). I don’t have a real method to my organization yet, given that we’ve only been in the house for a month. Perhaps I should readdress this question come December or so.
Okay… thus endeth the questions for this week… now onto photos of my last rotation, which lasted from March 1st until the end of May… and then I had a “floating” session on The Castle, which lasted all of June.
Egyptian Sampler restart after one rotation. The linen looks a lot better (and more authentic) than my original start. I’ll be working on this again come next week. Stitching on extremely uneven linen is tricky, but this piece is going to be worth it when complete!
The Castle after my normal rotation in April, but before the June floating focus. I’m now working on the rocks at the bottom. They dragged on this rotation.
The Castle after the floating focus in June… which included a 10-hour backstitching stretch, plus a lot of little color fill-ins in the rocks. The rocks didn’t seem quite as bad this time… but I didn’t have a lot of stitching time, either. The rock line is now down to the spine of the dragon tail in a few spots. I’ll be completing the rest of the rocks above the dragon tail in my next rotation round.
Cats on a Staircase after work in May. The stairs are the trickiest part, since it’s stitching white-on-white. I’ve been having a ton of problems with miscounts on this piece, and spent a good portion of the last round frogging stitches that I did four years ago. *sigh* Thankfully it didn’t destroy the whole piece, but it wasn’t fun.
Smoky Mountain Cats after work in May. Stitching this project is easy– it’s large swaths of the same color. However, the thread is craptacular and keeps breaking. And unfortunately no DMC options were given with the kit. So this might wind up being one of those frustration pieces due to the materials.
That’s the last rotation round. I started my new rotation on July 15th, and decided to get a couple small pieces into the rotation so I could perhaps see a finish sometime this year. It’s a bit disheartening to be in July of these rotations without a complete project to show for it… particularly since I technically haven’t had a finish since 1996 (eep!).
So this rotation, I’m doing this:
1) NEW: Elemental Dragons- Fire (Dragon Dreams)
2) Egyptian Sampler (Teresa Wentzler)
3) Cats on a Staircase (Bucilla)
4) NEW: Astrology Sampler (Witches Stitches)
5) The Castle (Teresa Wentzler)
6) Home is Where the Cat Is (Leisure Arts)
7) NEW: Apache Wedding Blessing (Kooler Design Studio)
The last piece is a wedding present for my friend (and sorority sister), Ivanna. It won’t be done by her October wedding date… but I’m going to be working as fast as I can on it so she can hopefully have it sometime next spring.
The Elemental Dragons are a freebie set of patterns on Dragon Dreams’ homepage (located under samples). I decided to work on the Fire dragon first, but have kitted all five. To my delight, it has stitched up extremely fast. This is eight hours of stitching, as of the end of my commute time tonight:
All of the cross-stitches are done. I’m now doing the backstitching, and should have my first finish by the end of the weekend. (yay!) I’m stitching this on Silkweaver’s 28ct. Golden Promise cashel linen. The rest of the dragons will also be on 28 ct. fabric… some evenweave, some linen, but all are Silkweaver.
Onto the next rotation!
Things I learned this weekend–
1) Rhode Island really is a small state.
2) I need to spend time over in Roger Williams Park and take pictures.
3) I will not want for stitching supplies while living in Providence
4) Rhode Island drivers are worse… slightly… than Massholes.
5) Roof patching material stinks to high heaven
The kitchen works, and I probably covered a quarter of the state in two hours…
Things I learned this weekend–
1) Rhode Island really is a small state.
2) I need to spend time over in Roger Williams Park and take pictures.
3) I will not want for stitching supplies while living in Providence
4) Rhode Island drivers are worse… slightly… than Massholes.
5) Roof patching material stinks to high heaven
On the big news front– our stove finally works (yay!). The electrician, after three weeks of phone tag, finally came over on Saturday morning to replace the plug, but discovered that the entire wire coming from the basement was in very bad shape (the casing was frayed to where we could see the copper… not good). So the wire and plug were completely replaced, and we’re now in business in the kitchen. Mac & cheese became the first official cooked meal in the house.
With a working stove, we finally could justify doing the first official food shopping trip for the house. Stop & Shop was doing some 10 for $10 deals, so we stocked up on side dishes. We decided to do most of our meat purchases at BJ’s Wholesale later this week. Since we have two freezers, we can save money by buying in bulk and freezing it. And since I could have pork chops for dinner half of the week in various styles, I want the ones from BJ’s since they’re very thick (and cook nice and juicy). It was one of those HUGE shopping trips, though. When the fridge in our apartment went dead, we were able to save some stuff, but some stuff didn’t make it. We also just had been winding down food shopping, so while we did bring down a fair amount of groceries, a lot of it was dry, long-term stuff like spices and tea.
I seriously can’t wait to have chicken, rice, and salad tonight for dinner. You have no idea.
After the electrician left, Erich left to play one of the rotating D&D games that he’s involved in with the Boston-turned-Providence crew. I wound up with a long day to myself, but with very little fundage to support doing much of anything out of the house thanks to a huge bill-payment catchup and some splurges on unnecessary lunches at work. I’m currently at a position where if I take any money out of the bank, I’m going to screw myself. (sigh)
So, instead… I spent the majority of the day organizing my stitching stuff. I had (and still have) dozens of skeins of embroidery thread to wind on bobbins and put away. I got through about half of them– I still probably have around 40 skeins to wind. In the early afternoon, I decided to do my one exploration of the day and search for the stitch shop in Cumberland that I’d found on Google months ago. When I mentioned it on a New England stitching group I joined on yahoo, I received some very positive feedback.
I found it fairly easily– no wrong turns to get there following google maps. I clocked it at about 20 minutes from the house, and almost all of it was on a limited access highway. The first thing I noticed about the store was its size. Most supply stores (save a defunct one in Salem that was THE BEST I’ve ever been to) for stitching are very cramped quarters, due to their limited audience. Think front of a drycleaning shop, or maybe a baseball card store (that does not carry gaming/hobby supplies). Very cramped, stocked to the ceiling with stuff, usually with a table in the middle out of necessity… but it makes it difficult to get around. With Heart and Soul is not like that at all. The cash register is in the lobby room of the store, but there are three other rooms. One has gift stuff (Vera Bradley bags, stationery, candles, etc.). The back room is a framing and matting room. But the main room has tons of stitching supplies– kits, leaflets, fabric (cut to order), fibers, beads, hoops and scroll rods, magazines, etc. And tons of finished works on the walls. It was a surprisingly large shop. Most of the patterns were samplers and traditional cross stitch.
I will not want for stitching supplies. At all.
Since I currently have enough patterns to keep me stitching for probably the next five to seven years (and possibly more), I honestly had no desire to buy more patterns on Saturday. I did get the skeins of thread that I was missing in my stash to prep Ivanna’s wedding piece. (I’m shocked at the chart price at the site I linked, BTW… I bought it direct from the design studio last week, and it cost only $6.00). I was only missing a dozen skeins– three of which were duplicates that I had some of in stock, but not enough for the two skeins called for (and to prevent dye lot issues, I just bought two new ones). Now I just need to match fabric from my current stash (which won’t be hard to do), and that project’s ready to start.
After I left the stitching store, I decided to drive back to where my path to Cumberland had veered off of Route 146. I remembered seeing that there was a drive-in theater in North Smithfield. Sara (our friend and real-estate agent) had mentioned that she and her husband had seen movies there, and that it was very close to the house.
Sure enough, just up Route 146, there was the Rustic Tri-View… in business nightly. $17.00 per car load. But it looks like they only do single-feature movies on each of their three screens. We’ll have to give them a try. Mendon is a wonderful place to see movies, but it is one that’s a double-feature theater… so it means it’s a weekend or vacation theater. If Tri-View only has one showing, we can do that on any night of the week.
I headed home after finding the movie theater, spending the rest of the day hanging out on the couch, stitching, and getting a bit of laundry done. Erich finally came home from his game sometime around 4 a.m. I was very glad I decided to sack out sometime around 1.
Sunday morning’s iced coffee run led to a forced round-about way to get home, thanks to a car accident. It turned out to be a pleasant little drive through Roger Williams Park– (which will become a photo essay entry next weekend). Once the weather cools a bit in late summer, I plan on taking some walks over to the park. Until then, the humidity will force me to drive to the park, but then I’ll walk around once inside. It’s only a few blocks away to the entrance, and just so beautiful.
The rest of Sunday was errands and chores. Aside from the grocery and cat supply shopping, we got new keys cut for the house and both cars. Erich’s original set of keys still has not turned up, so it was time to get that issue fixed. And for the first time since living with Erich, I have a key to his car (shocking). Erich patched the soffit over the Florida Room, which my phobia of heights would never allow me to do. We did laundry. We’ll do more tonight.
Thus ends my weekend adventure.
Days like today remind me why I occasionally…. rarely… hate New England. It’s near 90 degrees, and the humidity is so bad that not only can I see a haze in the air, but I can feel it on my skin, going into my lungs… ugh. According to the Weather Channel, the dew point is at 74%, which means it’s in the oppressive level.
No shit. I’ve taken two hits off my inhaler today thanks to this nastiness.
It’s 88 degrees, with a heat index of 96 degrees, and peak temps aren’t for another couple hours. And Providence isn’t much better.
I want to go dance under the waterspouts in wading pool at the Christian Science center for a while… probably wouldn’t go over well at the office for me to come back looking like a drowned rat, though…
*sigh*
Since my springtime goal list was fairly shot due to that unexpected OhMyGodWeBoughtAHouse event, I’m calling it a wash. Here’s my goals for the rest of this month…
1) Buy some summer clothes for work.
2) Unpack the rest of my office
3) Clean out cabinets and put down fresh contact paper.
4) Write notecards to friends and family regarding move
5) Finish unpacking boxes in living room
6) Triple-check all credit cards, bank accounts, subscriptions, etc. to make sure address is correct
7) Gardening…
Clean out email
9) Finish Blogger template
10) Buy new T-pass on June 29th
11) Take photos of stitching and reformat stitching web pages
I think that’s enough….
I finished Half-Blood Prince yesterday afternoon. Around 4 hours, which makes sense since OOtP took me a bit less than six. I enjoyed it. Still digesting it, since there are the plot turns like all of the other books that need to be thought about. I’ll probably start putting some comments behind a spoiler filter on LiveJournal tomorrow (and can email discussions for anyone who isn’t on LJ but wants my views…)
But without giving anything away– I really did enjoy it, and so far, I like how the story is progressing.
(I can say safely, at least!)
+ + + + + + +
I did a bit of work last night on the revamp of my journal. Blogger’s tags are a bit confusing to me, and my knowledge of CSS is at a “if I cut and paste this, it seems to work…” level, so it’s going slowly. By no means is it finished, but here’s my working copy at the moment. I have a lot of .div tags to add in there, as I improve the text colors and such.
Hopefully by next Friday, it’ll be ready to go live.
+ + + + + + +
We have a D&D game starting around noon today. Erich’s running his campaign. So while I’m not busy in combat, I have plenty of backstitching to do on The Castle. Once I get the backstitching rotation done (probably today… since the game will go for at least 10 hours), I’ll start my new stitching rotation…
1) Egyptian Sampler (TW)
2) Cats on a Staircase (Bucilla OOP)
3) New start- Astrology Sampler (Witches Stitches)
4) The Castle
5) Smoky Mountain Cats (Pegasus)
6) Home is Where the Cat Is (Leisure Arts)
7) New Start- Elemental Dragons (Dragon Dreams)
*) Backstitching: The Castle (floating slot for whenever our next game is)
#6 should go quickly… I expect to get it nearly done in one rotation round. IT’s very small. Once that’s complete, I’ll most likely start on the wedding sampler for Ivanna & Joe.
Oh… and I received my fabric-of-the-month from Silkweaver yesterday. My pieces were two of the new colors they’re releasing in August: Poltergeist (a grey swirl, with just a hint of purple to my eyes…) and Coral Reef (which is, as it sounds, coral pink). I’m on the “random fabric” plan, so this month, I received 32 ct. fabrics… the Coral Reef is Lugana, and the Poltergeist is Belfast Linen.
Not sure what I’ll use the Coral Reef for yet. Poltergeist I have a plan for– that fits the season, of course.
+ + + + + + +
Thank Goddess for the inventor of portable air conditioners. I wouldn’t be sleeping otherwise. It’s rather muggy up here on the 2nd floor.
Off to game…
I’ve lost count, honestly… but regardless of how many ways I love him already… today, he added another one:
Around 5:20, when I’ve missed my train to South Station to meet up with him and am waiting for the next one to arrive, he gives me a call.
“Just wanted to call you hon– I bought you a copy of The Book.”
Absolutely no other definition was needed. I knew what Book he spoke of.
“How on earth did you get it?”
“The news stand at South was selling them. I got the second to last copy.”
He doesn’t ask me beforehand. He just sees it, and buys it. Never mind the fact that the place was selling the book illegally… or for a slight mark up.
I got to South Station about ten minutes later, and he placed the big thick green covered book — with purple metallic lettering — in my hands.
“You have something to read on the ride home now.”
Damn skippy I do. I’m already about 40 pages in. There are 652 pages total.
Ooooh….
*drool*
But seriously– it’s weird knowing that I have what amounts to an illegal copy of the book. Two days early? I have what millions of children (and adults) covet. Very, very odd.
And yes, I promise to keep all comments behind cuts. On my LJ. In fact, I’ll create a filter for them. So if you want to know about it, befriend my LJ, or let me know to email you the entry.
*happy dance*
~ Mel.
