I’m planning to post the check-in a couple days before the full moon every month, partially so it’s available for our Aussie and Kiwi stitchers who start the posting date several hours ahead of me, and partially because I’m aware that not everyone has the picture-perfect schedule where they can post *exactly* on January 9th.

Important SAL announcements

Deadline to sign up – if you’re someone who hasn’t signed up for the WIPocalypse and you want to be “officially” involved or you have friends who you know are waffling on participating, the last date to sign up for the active participant list is January 15, 2012.  If you miss this date, you’re absolutely welcome to share your progress and check in on these official posts.  Please do not feel like you’re excluded.  The only difference is that you won’t be eligible for the stash drawing after the “end of the world” (aka the WIPocalypse final check-in post), and your blog won’t be on the official participant list posted via the links in the next paragraph.  Signups for this SAL have been open since late August, and I need to be able to focus time on my own stitching, so I just needed to have a cut-off point.

WIPocalypse Info – If you signed up months ago and haven’t been back by my blog in a while… I created an official group of SAL pages since they were starting to get broken up across posts in my blog.  There’s  a forum for chatting with your fellow stitchers (via Yuku), a button linky for your blog if you’d like to add it, signups for email reminders for check-ins, and various other information gathered from questions I’ve received over the past four months.

Cut-off date for this Full Moon – to have your post count toward THIS full-moon’s stash drawing credit, you must have it posted no later than January 31st.

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Please remember that this stitch-a-long is intended to be fun – so if you’re too busy to post, too busy/ill/etc. to stitch – no worries.  Post when you can and share what you have going, even if you’ve only been able to toss a single stitch into it.  It’s not a race or a competition – we’re all just here to cheer each other on with our progress.  :)

I know some stitchers were having some difficulty with my blog commenting system when signing up, so I want to try to make this a bit easier/more accessible for everyone.  You can check in in one of three ways:

• Auto linky form (you’ll see that below)
• Via comments (make sure you include your blog address!)
• Via email – to measiwitch(at)gmail.com, only if the other two options do not work.  Again- make sure you include your blog address.  I’ll add your post to the auto-linky if I receive it this way to confirm I received it.

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So far, the following pieces have been added to the robin:

• Fairy Idyll
• Winter Queen
• Rose Arbour
• English Roses

The pieces that have really caught my eye are:

• The Forest Goddess
• The Rose of Sharon
• Villa Mirabilia
• Ashley’s Roses
• Circle of Friends (leftmost lady)

What are your thoughts?  I’ll keep comments open until Friday.  On Saturday the 9th, I’ll start stitching the one with the most votes!

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The Eleventh Hour = 7
The Beast Below = 2
Victory of the Daleks = 4
Time of the Angels = 8
Flesh and Stone = 6
Vampires of Venice = 6
Amy’s Choice = 7
Hungry Earth = 4
Cold Blood = 4
Vincent and the Doctor = 10 (this was the only ep I really, REALLY liked)
The Lodger = 8
The Pandorica Opens = 7
The Big Bang = 4

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Destroyed yesterday by tornado. It’s a total loss.

Just… stunned.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/article_67d23270-7d01-11df-9d0f-001cc4c03286.html

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My house? Is okay. Two inches of water in the basement, nothing to worry about.

But getting anywhere near my house is hell. I-95 is closed because it is now part of the Pawtuxet River. (two exits south of my house). The road less than a mile south of my house is closed due to the Pawtuxet. The secondary road I’d use to get around said closed road is ALSO closed because of the Pawtuxet.

Basically? The Pawtuxet has taken over Rhode Island. Or at least a good portion of it.

I couldn’t take the commuter rail home last night because it couldn’t make it through the floodwater on the tracks. The commuter rail train cars are double-deckers, and the lower level’s floor would have been literally at or below the water line. So I took Amtrak home.

I watched a train create a boat wake last night. The water was ABOVE the rail.

9 inches of rain in two days. Sixteen inches of rain since two weeks ago.

So. Sick. Of. Water.

If you’re curious – here you go. Enjoy the psychotic photos: http://www.projo.com

/rant over

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(oh yeah… I spent them in front of the TV watching the Olympics and stitching…)

Ready for a long post? I haven’t done one of these in a LONG time. It feels good, actually.

Crazy, crazy month. It flew by entirely too fast. BUT – it was productive, in many ways. I’ll talk about stitching in a sec – but I’ll start with the general life stuff.

Erich and I have *gasp* finally gone bowling. It’s a bit of an in-joke, really. I mean, we’ve been together for nine years this May, and we’d never gone bowling. We’d talked about it – and we live within a mile of three separate bowling alleys (although one’s duck pin only, so that may not count), but we’d never gone.

Our best man and his wife thankfully changed that when they invited us to the Sunday morning bowling hangout they’re doing up in Brockton. So… 9:30 on Sunday morning, we’re now hanging out with them at the lanes, bowling a few games since there’s a special to rent lanes by the hour and bowl as many games as you can. Cheap morning – gets us up and moving (and getting some slight exercise, at least!)

We’ve also decided to start doing one other night of bowling per week down by us – the lane in Cranston just down Rt. 1 from us does dollar per game nights on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after 8 p.m., which works perfectly for us. So tonight we’ll go after we eat dinner at home and bowl 4 or 5 games.

I’m still playing pretty badly – the last time I’d been bowling was at the end of high school, and 17 years and about 140 pounds more weight (yeah… seriously *hangs head in shame) have completely thrown off my approach in every way. I’m rebuilding it from basics – right now focusing on the swing itself to get my accuracy, and then I’ll add steps into it. Right now if I do a step-approach, my swing gets thrown off because of the width of my hip, and I swing my arm diagonally across my body just as I do while walking. If I do a stand and swing, I have far better accuracy.

The plan next paycheck is to buy our own bowling shoes – just a few times at the lanes will pay them off (and they’ll be ours, not the worn out rental ones that god knows who has used). I’m seriously debating buying a pair of tri-color bowling shoes… because they’re bowling shoes - it seems like it’s a requirement! I’ve honestly always thought the rental shoes at the lanes were cute in a ugly rebellious sort of way.

So… hooray for hobbies as a couple!

Other stuff… Doctor Who is back on air in the UK on Easter weekend, staring here in the States on Apr. 17th. So my weekends will now be full of geekery again. I’m nervous but excited about the new Doctor. I will miss Tennant a lot in the role, but hopefully Matt Smith is fantastic, too. Steven Moffat is amazing, so if nothing else – I know I’ll enjoy the storylines.

Work’s been busy – quite a bit of overtime lately. Some parts of it are still annoying as hell, but meh, that’s work. I have a job and for the most part, I enjoy it. I work for a good company. The things I do in my job are enjoyable, and most of the people I work with are, too.

Oh… and since I’m in New England, I saw no snow in February. No. Really. All of that crap that dumped on the Mid-Atlantic? Never saw it. We had a decent amount of rain, but that’s all. The first storm that gave Washington almost 30 inches or whatever? The weather forecasters up here actually apologized on air for their bad forecasts because they wound up being absolute duds. Everyone called off school and declared snow emergencies, and we barely got anything that day. Boston even offered to reimburse fines and towing fees for cars that had parked on the street – THAT was how badly off they were!

Stitching Stuff

I’ll get my final Stitching Olympics photos up late this week once I know what our weekend schedule is. The final tally, however – 10 projects worked. I managed to put stitches into all but two of my UFO projects (which I define as anything that has sat untouched for 6 months or more), plus a couple WIPs, plus started a piece for an exchange for the Life’s A Stitch board called “Hush Hush.” That’s due to be mailed out on the 15th, so I’ll be focusing on that piece until it’s done and ready to go.

Two projects are now within a couple hours of finishing – Home is Where the Cat Is (finally!) and Elemental Dragon:Spirit. Both essentially have maybe 90 minutes to two hours of backstitching each. They’re both on my radar for March.

So I’m very pleased… even if my goal list for February went extremely askew:

For February, my goals were

1) Rotate through all of my WIPs and UFOs at least once No. I was a few projects short. But I DID get through 10 projects last month, so I’m very happy with the progress I made.
2) Finish Home is Where the Cat Is So close – I just ran out of time at the end of the month. I’m 4 hours away from finishing, max.
3) Finish Spirit All but the backstitching. So I’m about 90 minuts max on this one from finishing.
4) Put together the individual progress pages on my website One of these months, maybe I’ll get to this. But it hasn’t happened for 3 now. So… yeah. I’ll just focus on some stitching and call a mulligan on this.
5) Finalize my rotation that will start in March Yep.
6) Remember to photograph the TUSAL this month. OMG I finished one of my goals this month!

Seriously though, I’m pleased with what I did this month, even if it didn’t match the goals.

For March, I want to…

1) Finish Home is Where the Cat Is
2) Finish Spirit
3) Get my Hush Hush exchange out on time
4) Get my UFO RR mailing out on time
5) Rotate through my new rotation once by the end of March

Rotation for this month will be:

Hush Hush project (finish and mail by 3/15)
Cats on a Staircase (for Yoyo’s Christmas SAL)
Elemental Dragons: Spirit (will finish)
Egyptian Sampler
Apache Wedding Blessing
Home is Where the Cat is (will finish)
Legends of the Dragons (for the TW board SAL)
UFO Round Robin – Round #1

Ah yes… the UFO Round Robin. I’m seriously excited. Our first mailing date is on March 15th, and it’s looking like it’ll be a fantastic robin. Lots of diverse projects that are going around. We’re stitching as one group of eight, and the robin will take nearly a year before it’s over.

And I’m modding this shindig. Heh. I never thought experience with modding friendship book and slam swaps would come in handy!

I’m sending my Magical Night piece, which I adopted from (I believe) Annette back in 2005 or 2006. Due to the proximity to my wedding, it didn’t get the work hours I’d hoped it would. And since I have a glut of Teresa Wentzler pieces (being insane as I am), I decided sending one of them around was probably the best choice. This one’s probably the least far along – so sending it for a robin will give it a very nice push.

Here’s where it currently stands:

Like I said… it’s not far along. But next year, hopefully it will return with a nice amount of forward progress!

Until next time…

- Mel.

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Even though the snow is blowing today, I have proof that springtime is, in fact, right around the corner. I found these little pop-ups in the beds of the new parkland that divides Atlantic Avenue.

For those who’ve been to Boston, but not for a few years… this park is where the elevated portion of I-93 used to be downtown… the highway was put underground during the Big Dig, and a long stretch of parkland now runs the city from North Station/Hanover Street all the way to South Station. It’s fantastic.

Anyway… I’m thrilled. They’re only about an inch tall so far, but there are tons of them – and since Mother Nature knows best, I know that warmer weather is only a few short weeks away.

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Even though the snow is blowing today, I have proof that springtime is, in fact, right around the corner. I found these little pop-ups in the beds of the new parkland that divides Atlantic Avenue.

For those who’ve been to Boston, but not for a few years… this park is where the elevated portion of I-93 used to be downtown… the highway was put underground during the Big Dig, and a long stretch of parkland now runs the city from North Station/Hanover Street all the way to South Station. It’s fantastic.

Anyway… I’m thrilled. They’re only about an inch tall so far, but there are tons of them – and since Mother Nature knows best, I know that warmer weather is only a few short weeks away.

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http://measi.net/measiblog/2010/02/15/stitching-olympics-progress/

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