Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain all!
Archive for ◊ October, 2009 ◊
• Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
I’m very happy to have finished something this year. It makes me feel much better (particular with my fic writing problems).
While I hand-drew my copy based off of her photo (and made a couple changes.. including one counting error… whoops!), the original credit goes to Sherezada at http://handeyemindmouth.blogspot.com/2008/08/hand-han-solo-quote-cross-stitch.html.
Category: Misc. Musings
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• Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
Hooray!
It’s my first finish in over 3 years. It feels so good to have something accomplished. *bounces*
The original sampler was created by Sherezada. I hand drew my copy staring at my computer screen with graph paper. Erich requested a red lightsaber, and I decided to do a purple one… because purple is awesome. He wasn’t too keen on the heart, but when I suggested I use it to put my initials & date the piece, he liked that idea. (which is good, because I was trying to figure out where to date the piece!)
Hooray! Now onward to ornament stitching!
Category: Rotations & Goals, Stitching
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• Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
I figured I might as well cross-post it here. *shrug*
I’ve made tremendous progress on my stitching this month – I’m very happy! I’ve now moved another place in my rotation. Cats on a Staircase is done for this round, thanks to a very good week of pushing forward. As of October 17th, here’s where I am:
I’d have gotten much further, but discovered AFTER completing the bottom stripes of green stitches that I’d reversed the key code in my head… so a-frogging I went, pulling out five hours of work. *sigh* But it’s corrected, and I’m continuing to move. Next round I plan to add the cat that’s on top on that red box (his butt outline is visible next to the boxes) and continue along the bottom of the stocking.
Next, my progress on Elemental Dragon: Spirit, by Dragon Dreams. This one’s a quick stitch, and I imagine I’ll have it done in the next week or so. I’m using it as my commute piece – with three hours of stitching per day available on the train, this can get a lot of attention! Here’s where I was as of Oct. 17th… I’ve since moved further along on it:
Even though I had it in my rotation, I’m just going to keep working on it until it’s done. *shrug*
Next, I started Erich’s Star Wars sampler last weekend. This is from a pattern I found at another blogger’s site (need to find my credit for it… it’s buried somewhere here). It’s not my own design, although I did sketch this out on graph paper myself, so any variances from the original would be my own. Here’s my first night progress on it, on Oct. 18th:
This is another quick-stitch. I’ll do some more work on it this weekend during the Patriot’s game on Sunday, I think. 
And finally, my first update on my Totally Useless SAL (aka TUSAL). I had to get a container for this that was cat-safe before I could take a photo. IKEA to the rescue!
Part of my stitching this month has been to clean out my floss storage containers – I’ve traditionally tossed all of my orts in there as I go. So yeah, it’s a bit fuller than I expected.
Category: Stitching, WIP Progress
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• Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
This week has been absolutely insane at work, and I just haven’t had time to update my blog again… eep! I have a trip to Plymouth last weekend to talk about, too – but I have photos to upload for that first.
I’ve made tremendous progress on my stitching this month – I’m very happy! I’ve now moved another place in my rotation. Cats on a Staircase is done for this round, thanks to a very good week of pushing forward. As of October 17th, here’s where I am:
I’d have gotten much further, but discovered AFTER completing the bottom stripes of green stitches that I’d reversed the key code in my head… so a-frogging I went, pulling out five hours of work. *sigh* But it’s corrected, and I’m continuing to move. Next round I plan to add the cat that’s on top on that red box (his butt outline is visible next to the boxes) and continue along the bottom of the stocking.
Next, my progress on Elemental Dragon: Spirit, by Dragon Dreams. This one’s a quick stitch, and I imagine I’ll have it done in the next week or so. I’m using it as my commute piece – with three hours of stitching per day available on the train, this can get a lot of attention! Here’s where I was as of Oct. 17th… I’ve since moved further along on it:
Even though I had it in my rotation, I’m just going to keep working on it until it’s done. *shrug*
Next, I started Erich’s Star Wars sampler last weekend. This is from a pattern I found at another blogger’s site (need to find my credit for it… it’s buried somewhere here). It’s not my own design, although I did sketch this out on graph paper myself, so any variances from the original would be my own. Here’s my first night progress on it, on Oct. 18th:
This is another quick-stitch. I’ll do some more work on it this weekend during the Patriot’s game on Sunday, I think.
And finally, my first update on my Totally Useless SAL (aka TUSAL). I had to get a container for this that was cat-safe before I could take a photo. IKEA to the rescue!
Part of my stitching this month has been to clean out my floss storage containers – I’ve traditionally tossed all of my orts in there as I go. So yeah, it’s a bit fuller than I expected.
So that’s it for stitching updates. Other updates to come tomorrow night!
Category: Stitching
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• Monday, October 19th, 2009
The Star Wars sampler has begun. I’ve actually made progress since this photo, but here’s the first night’s progress (taken on Saturday):
At the rate this is progressing, I may have it done by the end of the weekend.
Category: Misc. Musings
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• Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
One year ago today at about this time (factoring in time differences), I was in England and just arriving into Stratford-upon-Avon. A few hours from now (then) I’d be curled up in awesome front-center balcony seats to watch David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in Hamlet.
Man, how time flies. I still remember most of our vacation last year as if it were yesterday. Since it’s as good a time as any, I’m going to type all of my travel entries into my blog over the next couple weeks. Might as well relive it through my own words.
So a few little things to ramble about this morning. The bad thing of the week is that our furnace is being pissy and won’t kick on. Erich called our oil company (who does a service contract for us), and they were able to come out right away. The service guy found a nozzle that sprays oil into the burner was all gunked up and replaced it for us. Matt then ran the furnace for about an hour, and it was doing fine.
Then last night, it decided not to kick again. So with a low of 35 degrees last night, we had no heat. It was a very painful morning to be walking on wood floorboards today.
Erich’s calling the company back today to see what the next avenue is. We are due for a standard cleaning – maybe that will help the problem. The good thing about it is that we do have hot water. And the furnace definitely is able to kick over, per Matt’s test yesterday. Something’s just getting gunked up along the line. Hopefully it’s just that the filter needs to be replaced so badly that it’s not catching stuff.
The other good thing – it’s October, and not January.
So hopefully that little problem will be solved soon.
King Richard’s was a lot of fun on Sunday. Weather was perfect – sunny, but somewhat cool. That always makes wearing full period dress a bit easier due to the layers. I forgot to take pictures (d’oh!), but one of the folks in our group did… so hopefully I can get a copy from her. The faire was absolutely PACKED on Sunday. I’ve never seen it so busy. So people either are doing better financially around here, or they just saved up any of their spending money to go to the faire. It’s not a cheap day by any means.
Stitching updates…
I did do quite a bit of stitching this weekend on Cats on a Staircase - only to discover I did all of it in the wrong color, and it’s not something I can work around. Grrrrr. So a-frogging I’m now going. Five hours of work, all being picked out.
I’ve also been doing some stitching on my evening commute on Spirit Dragon. She’s coming along nicely – I may have her done in a week or so of train stitching! I’ll post update photos either tonight or tomorrow, I think.
Still fighting my cough – I’m now on three weeks and it’s incredibly annoying. The cold is not helping it at all. Nor did Faire dust. Since I don’t have any signs of infection, I’m hesitant to go in to the doctor on it, though. Past experiences have been a waste of my time – they just tell me to drink fluids and be careful about over-exertion and wait for it to run its course. So… that’s what I’ve been doing this time anyway. It’s not a particularly bad cough, as far as my experiences go. It’s dry, and I’m averaging a single violent coughing fit every day that makes me sick to my stomach. But compared to what I normally go through? Not even close to worrisome. It’s just annoying.
Not to mention that I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the GP I went to this year. I’m going to keep my appointment with him next year since it may have just been a bad first-impression, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in the concerns I brought with me on my physical. He wanted to focus entirely on my weight… which yes, is an important issue – but so are my concerns about my dermatographia and digestion problems. Grrr…
We’ll see.
So that’s my thoughts in a nutshell today… more later once I get some projects cleaned off my desk.
Category: Family & Friends, Geeky Stuff, Life, Work, and all the Rest, Stitching
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• Saturday, October 10th, 2009
My office is closed for Columbus Day, so I get to settle into a three day weekend – a much needed three day weekend. I’m still coughing from the cold I got during my vacation week, but it definitely is improving. Hopefully I can get a couple of the things done around the house that have been lingering the last few weeks.
Stitching has been progressing well – I’d forgotten how much I missed it! Egyptian Sampler is now done for this round (per my last entry). My Elemental Dragons by Dragon Dreams are my “traveling” piece – they’re nice and small, so easy to bring on the commute train with me. I finished Fire back in 2005. I’m now working Spirit. Here’s where I started this round on Oct. 6th:
It’s not the greatest photo, as it was taken with my cell phone. (the color on color doesn’t help, either). I’ve already made some significant progress down the right wing.
This afternoon I’m going to start my rotation on Cats on a Staircase. I’m somewhat meh about the project, honestly… but since I am on my initial round, I figure I might as well put a few stitches in to see how I feel about it. It’s currently here:
Since it’s the piece up in my rotation, I’m going to use it as my piece for the October SAL via Facebook’s Cross Stitch SAL group. They pick a weekend once per month for a mass-SAL. This month there are about 150 people “attending.”
On non-stitching news…
We’re heading to King Richard’s Faire tomorrow for our yearly visit. We didn’t go last year, since we did the “real” faire – going to England and Wales for two weeks. (I seriously can’t believe Monday marks a year since we were there… time flies!) My garb is all set – although I’d lost one of my corset strings. *sigh* The corset has kind of funky fat shoelace style strings in a deep navy blue. I’m going to ask the vendor that sold them if she has any replacements tomorrow. In the meantime, I picked up the wide laces for hockey boots to lace it up. Doesn’t quite match the look, but it’s the lace up my back, so I’ll just hide it under my shawl. If the vendor doesn’t have any more in that color, then I’ll have a year to track something down. Worst comes to worst? I get white laces and hand-dye them myself.
I’ll have pics up of that on Monday, I imagine. I’m looking forward to the Faire, but we’re going as part of a loosely large group… and there’s now a lot of kids. As one of the only women left in the collective group who doesn’t have kids, and as someone who’s probably not having kids (a long story that I’m not quite ready to go into), it’s a painful thing to be around them. I imagine I’ll be trying to head off and wander on my own as much as possible. It’s really the only thing that’s dampening my excitement about tomorrow. But it should still be a fun day.
That’s about it – I need to go handle Colley, who’s been meowing non-stop for attention now for 30 minutes. *sigh* More later as I have pictures and news.
Category: Family & Friends, Geeky Stuff, Rotations & Goals, Stitching
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• Sunday, October 04th, 2009
Posted over at my journal…
http://measi.net/measiblog/2009/10/04/egyptian-sampler-rotation-progress/
Category: Misc. Musings
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• Sunday, October 04th, 2009
I’ve completed my goals for Egyptian Sampler this rotation round. It’s now being put away, and I’m moving on to Cats on a Staircase. I did approximately 15 hours on her.
Beginning of rotation on September 27th:
End of rotation today:
I feel very good.
Category: Stitching
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• Sunday, October 04th, 2009
I’m plugging away and already feeling much more relaxed. I’d forgotten how sinking into the stitching groove really helps me feel better. My monthly goals for my projects are as follows:
September goals were:
I had no set goals for September other than to get stitching again.
For October, I’d like to:
1) pick out and finish an ornament for the TW Ornament exchange
2) Finish the over-one cartouches on Egyptian Sampler DONE!
3) Update my stitching website pages with photos and progress
4) Stitch 10 hours on Cats on a Staircase
5) Stitch 10 hours on Floral Bellpull
The last two cartouches took me all afternoon yesterday, but they’re done. My eyes were NOT happy yesterday afternoon! I do use a magnifier lens with my floor lamp, but I have difficulty finding just the right angle to use the thing. Maybe it’s because I’m wearing my glasses, and the two sets of lenses play tricks on my eyes. *shrug*
Anyway, today I’m going to finish the scarab on top of the central panel of Egyptian Sampler, and then put it away for this rotation. I’ve done about 12 hours on it, and the goal for this first rotation was 5… so I’ve definitely made progress! Photos will be coming – I’ve misplaced my camera connection cord… again.
Other than stitching, not much is happening. I’m still fighting off this stupid headcold – now firmly into the coughing up crud stage. I’m sick and tired of it 10 days in. Erich is, too. Friday I thought I was doing much better (slept through the night without a coughing fit), but then Saturday I felt cruddy again. Today so far seems like middle of the road. Hopefully it’ll knock it off soon – I’d rather not go to King Richard’s Faire next weekend still hacking and coughing. 
Category: Rotations & Goals, Stitching
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