Family & Friends, Life, Work, and All The Rest

Life Update as Summer Comes to a Close

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I haven’t kept up with my end-of-month stitching updates as I’d hoped for the past couple of months. While I work to sort out projects for status updates, I figured I’d do some life ones too. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a non-stitchy blog post. 🙂

Max at belt graduation August 2023 – photo via his training studio.

Max is a few days away from starting fifth grade. He’s eager to get back to school and to see his classmates. I can’t believe it’s the last year of elementary school. Covid has definitely not helped matters, but the six years at his current school have gone so fast! I’m so proud of him. He really struggled in kindergarten and first grade, but he’s blossomed into a smart, funny, extroverted kid who’s generally really well-behaved and fun to be around. He’s still in his martial arts program, and although I would not categorize him as devoted to it – he enjoys it, and is currently at apprentice black belt – green stripe rank. If he passes his progress tests on the first try to get the next stripes, he could be testing for his full black belt sometime late 2024/early 2025.

Erich started a new job in April and enjoys it. We’ve had to adjust to second-shift work, but it’s going well. I get to see my husband for lunch most days of the week before he heads to the office. Max and Erich have time together in the mornings where I stay out of the way, and I take over the after school parenting. Weekends are family time. Erich had also really been struggling for several years due to his work status at the hospital, so seeing him in a much better mental state also helps mine.

I’m still working a hybrid schedule – one day in the office, four days at home. I’ve been warned that it’s likely to change to two days in office early next year. I work better and more productively at home, but it is what it is. (shrug) I finally have a strong team working with me where the egos are left at the door and we just get stuff done. It’s so refreshing. I’m finally ending days with less things on my plate than when I start my days.

The first night of vacation – and a rare photo of the three of us together!

We had our first family vacation in five years in August. We’ve had some little travels here and there, but a lot of them have been only Max and me. This time it was a full week together. We went to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, where we met up with my mom, her partner Barrie, and my brother, Scott. Hilton Head was my childhood vacation spot every June with my dad and my brother, but I hadn’t been back in about 25 years. I was so excited to share it with Erich and Max, especially since Max is the same age I was when I was introduced to the island. Things have changed in many ways, but in many others – it’s still so familiar. The live oaks with the Spanish moss draping, swaying slowly in the breeze, the hard sand and warm water. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed it.

Scott rented a charter boat for the Saturday afternoon we were there to enjoy a four-hour sail. We went out to international waters and spread my dad’s ashes among the waves according to the wishes he expressed to my brother before passing in 2016. Max got a little weirded out by it, since this was really his first encounter with any sort of funeral. Otherwise, it was honestly perfect – quiet, peaceful, and just… felt right. I’m glad that he can spend eternity near the island where he truly was always relaxed and happy. Once we spread his ashes, I noticed quite a few photos from cameras having green orbs on them. I know it’s probably just a trick of the sunlight on the phone, but I’d like to think it was Dad hanging out with us.

Our friend and Max’s adopted uncle, Matt, moved back in with us this past week. His rent was more expensive than our mortgage is, which is insane. His driving commute is definitely not ideal now – but hopefully it will allow him – and us – to save a bit of money. Our house is still a mess as we sort through and do some reorganizing, but it’s going to be a comfy, somewhat crowded home with tons of geekiness. 🙂

Life is good as we move into the cozy autumn season. 🙂 If I feel cold, I have this final photo to just make my heart a little warmer. Max and my dad’s green orb, enjoying the ocean as the sun goes down.

Happy Sunday,
Mel.

Family & Friends, Life, Work, and All The Rest, Stitching, Works in Progress

April Stitching/Life Wrap Up

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Considering how wild April was around here… I got quite a bit done on my projects! I’m happy. April’s short-short version, in no order of priority, are:

  1. I’m back on track with WIPGO. Finished my stitches for March and all of April
  2. My husband got a new job, started his training, and today started his first regular shift – which means a total adjustment for Max and me in the evenings.
  3. Max passed his most recent belt test at martial arts and is now an apprentice black belt (yellow rank). 7 more stripe colors and he will test for his full black belt.
  4. Work was crazy… total chaos. But that’s April at my job every year. Now with just a bit of added zing as the department gets bigger.
  5. I got absolutely no writing done this month for letters. Very frustrating. Work stress just had me in a mood where in the evenings I needed to grumble and stab fabric.
  6. I did get quite a few postcards out for Postcrossing, though.
  7. My eye doctor has confirmed that I get to avoid bifocals for another year (yay!)
  8. Erich’s new job confirms that we can actually take our first family vacation this summer since Max was born because Erich finally has TIME OFF.
  9. Max is all signed up and ready to go for summer camp. (Day camp – not away camp).
  10. I’m now the Secretary for the Tudor Rose Sampler Guild, and loving the energy. Me taking minutes during meetings? Sold. Great way for me to be involved, especially as a long-distance member.
  11. What the heck Boston Bruins?!? Grrrrrr….
  12. Cities: Skylines is an obnoxiously addicting computer game.
  13. So is Dinkum – which is the Australian-themed Animal Crossing. Introduced to this one at PaxEast.

And onto the April stitchy updates. The theme of this month was “frogging and move forward.” Oh, so much miscounting that had to be fixed to get anywhere.

Picking up where I left off in March, I completed my stitches on the Halloween Candlestick SAL from Lakeside Needlecrafts. This was a SAL that I had a very, VERY small start on last October.

Halloween Candlestick SAL as of 4/30/23 – stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Pumpkin evenweave from Fabric Flair with charted DMC.

It turned out that my small start of only – 30? – stitches from the link above was already miscounted. That’s what I get for rushing it through during a short SAL! Thankfully I wasn’t off by too much. Repaired the count and moved it forward. It’s now starting to look much more like the center ghost-shaped candlestick. I can start removing some of those grid lines that I needed to center it. With Halloween Candlestick done, I could cross off my final WIPGO goal for March. Huzzah!

Next came Book of Ink Circles (aka BoINK) by Ink Circles. I joined a challenge on this one to stitch for Stitchy Clue in Semi Sane Stitchers, but had to bail on the game after only a couple days… just too much with everything else going on. One 600 stitch roll just killed my momentum for the game. I’m not a fast stitcher, even when I’m just doing lines like on BoInk. But hey… again, made some really good progress here:

BoInk by Ink Circles as of April 16, 2023. Stitched 2 over 2 on 28 ct Thunderstorm linen by Silkweaver. Outlining in GAST “Cinders”.

I added another row of squares at the bottom of the framing for this one. One more set of those large squares with the notches from the top row, plus the adjoining middle squares, and then I just have the edge work to finish for the full frame. And then the fill work will begin! My d20 needleminder is positioned in the exact center of this piece, just for perspective. It’s not as big as I thought it would be. I seem to say that about a lot of projects.

The next piece I worked on was Early Americans. With Betsy Ross and Molly Pitcher squares completed, it was time to move onto a new one. I decided to add one of the gents – John Hancock. It’s a much lighter square than the other two so far. I’m nearly halfway done already.

Early Americans: John Hancock by Little House Needleworks as of April 16, 2023. Stitched 1 over 2 on 40 ct Granite Dust linen by Silkweaver with charted threads.

Very brown, I know. But it moved quickly! After how long Molly Pitcher took me, it felt so good on this piece to get through a bunch of the block in one go. There’s a pretty heavy roof on this one, but it’s straight back and forth rows – so again, should go quickly. And then three down, six to go! Maybe Martha Washington will be the next, since that one is the one with the exceptionally large house.

I then took a break from WIPGO for a weekend online stitch-in with the Tudor Rose Sampler Guild. Members in the Dallas-Fort Worth area had an in-person stitch in, and I hosted the remote one. I decided to pull out my Temperature Tree SAL and start adding some leaves on it. I was able to get all of January and most of February’s high temperatures recorded!

Temperature Tree by Stitchin’ Mommy as of April 30, 2023. Stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Dreamin’ Lugana from Silkweaver with custom DMC temperature range.

Really, really liking how these colors are patterning so far! Eventually this piece will come up on my WIPGO this year. When it does, I’ll post my exact temperature breakdowns and the colors I’m using for each range. But the quick summary is that I have 4-temperature increments. I start at 23F (-5C) and below, and the highest is 96F (35C) and above. So far it’s clearly cold – but that’s January and February in New England! The colors will get much warmer in tone to deep reds for the summer. Each branch on this one is a month, and each leaf is colored to the high temperature for that date as recorded on Weather Underground. Knowing how fast these leaves stitch up, I’m going to plan to do some on other meetup weekends with the guild. This will definitely get done this year!

Next up was Live on Little by Plum Street Samplers. This was the second piece that needed some frogging work before I could stitch. The entire white line that starts running to the right at the roofline was miscounted. I had some legs going over one, some going over three. Really not sure what I was doing when I originally put them in, but I figure I may just not have had good lighting! So I had to carefully frog those stitches out.

Live on Little by Plum Street Samplers as of April 30, 2023. Stitched 1 over 2 on 40 ct Old Massachusetts linen from Primitive Hare with charted threads.

My floss was pretty ratty after that, so I finished off the end that remained good. I then moved back over to the bricks on the “front” of the house to do a little work there. But I didn’t get much done. That’s okay. Not quite feeling this one right now. But the correction work is done. That’s what’s most important. I won’t be stuck. I’ll get back to this one!

Finally, I stitched on Winter Welcome by Park Hopper Bart for a couple of evenings while watching Bruins hockey. I did some very good progress on this one, especially considering the evil Etoile thread. One more good round of stitching, and this one will be done!

Winter Welcome by Park Hopper Bart as of April 30, 2023. Stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Winter Berry linen by Fortnight Fabrics with charted threads.

This project is very hard to photograph well. The fabric is a beautiful blue, but it just washes out in photos. The white floss is much more visible against the fabric in person. I’m guessing I may have about 4 hours left of work to wrap this one up. Not much at all! The rest of the “Winter Welcome” text on the bottom, a few smaller snowflake motifs in the center and on the side of the words, his arms, his carrot nose, eyes, and hat. That’s it!

So a very good month. I’m happy with the stitching progress. Now it’s time to settle into the insanity of Stitch Maynia. I want to film a FlossTube this week for Maynia. I’ll probably do it on Friday night since Max has a “parents night out” event at his martial arts studio and I’ll be free for about 3 hours.

Until then – happy stitching!

Mel.

Challenges/Stitch-A-Longs, Family & Friends, Stitching, Works in Progress

What I Stitched This Week – Jan. 9-15, 2023

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The past seven days have been a heck of a rollercoaster here in Measi Land. I celebrated my 48th turn around the sun on Wednesday with a wonderfully relaxing day off. Then it quickly turned sad, as one of my Stitching Sisters of New England friends, Carol, passed away early Saturday morning. She was older – I refuse to go down the “elderly” road – and had been looking frail over the last few months, but it still came as a shock. So my brain and emotions are all over the place. My stitching circle has had a very rough couple of years between members dealing with cancer, heart attacks, other hospital-related illnesses, two Sisters’ deaths, and the losses of loved ones. Somehow, though, we just keep moving, reminding ourselves to hold each other a little closer in our hearts. I’ve been a bit more distant from the group as a whole lately as I work through some personal emotional/mental stuff. This is my reminder to stop hiding, even when everything in my brain wants me to.

I’d planned on making a WIP Parade FlossTube this weekend, but it’s just not the right time. Sometime soon – once I take a little breath about everything.

(deep breath)

So… despite that rockiness, it was a pretty good stitching week.

ABCs of Parenting by Lizzie Kate – as of January 12, 2023 – stitched 2 over 2 on 28 count cream Monaco with customized DMC colors

I started the week with some work on my ABCs of Parenting by Lizzie Kate, which was the second of my four WIPGO pieces for the month. It also wound up being the focus piece for Week Two of “Choose My WIP” over on Semi-Sane Stitchers on Facebook. I featured it this past week with my “before” photo here. It stitches up pretty quickly, and I’m happy with my WIPGO progress on it. I may put this in as one of my monthly focuses later this year for WIPocalypse, because I could probably get it done easily if I just did a length or two per night on it.

Flying Lesson by Silver Creek Samplers as of January 14, 2023 – stitched 1 over 1 on 18 ct Hazelwood Aida from Fiber on a Whim with charted DMC threads

On Friday night I just felt like curling up with something fairly easy as Erich and I watched The Matrix Resurrections for the second time. I grabbed Flying Lesson by Silver Creek Samplers and threw some green and black stitches in to complete the header text and the very top of the witch hat. I fully expect to finish this piece for Halloween this year. Once I get that witch hat and the moon behind it completed, the rest of it will go super fast. Hopefully it comes up on an early WIPGO month and I can just devote a week to it or something. It may come up next week for Choose My WIP – it’s only down by one vote right now! Maybe I’ll toss it in the ring for Week 4 if it doesn’t win this week. I’d like to get that hat done so I can move on from black floss for a little while.

The Fruit of Plenty by Modern Folk Embroidery – as of January 14, 2023 – stitched 1 over 2 on 40 ct Antique Ivory linen from Silkweaver with DMC 800 and 840.

I’d originally planned on working on my 3rd WIPGO piece for Saturday and Sunday. After the news about Carol, though, I knew I needed a night to work on one of my pieces that she’d expressed a lot of interest in. Solid color stitching, some basic rows, and nothing complicated. It helped ground me and let me work through my thoughts, both happy and sad, as I stitched late into the night after everyone else was upstairs. On this piece, I added the light blue at the top (where you see the “2” outlined), carrying it down the right side of that brown-outlined triangle. This is the other piece that is currently up for Choose My WIP for week 3, winning by one. If it wins, I’ll be working the blue down to the right (to outline the “0”) to form the other side of the octagonal motif just to the left of my needle minder in this photo. For those familiar with how this stitch-a-long was divided in 2021, it’s the February portion. I have January’s complete and have moved down into April a bit to let that blue Assisi-style band flow naturally. I do plan on roughly stitching the piece generally in month-release order. Where it makes sense to skip around to form a motif across the month dividers, though – I’ll make the jump.

Apache Wedding Blessing as of January 15, 2023 – stitched 2 over 2 on Antique White linen with charted DMC threads

Finally yesterday I started on my WIPGO piece, although I have to admit I’m just not feeling it. It’s one of my oldest pieces and all I have to do is backstitching – a LOT of backstitching – and a bit of fill-in repair where my stitches were way too tight. This was my first piece ever attempted on linen, so my tension was way off in a few spots – and I think that is part of my mental block about getting it done. I’m just annoyed with my stitches in the top left where I first started. I need to add a stitch over the originals to fatten them up here and there, and they’ll look much better. I’ll be doing a bit more work on it tonight – backstitching, and then it will sleep for a while. One of these days I’ll just suck it up and push through the rest of it. For now? No. I’ll just do what my goal was for WIPGO, which was the entire point of my goals. Some of these pieces I won’t be feeling as much. That’s okay. WIPGO will let me at least touch them for a couple days so I can remind myself where I am on everything.

So what’s in store this week? Apache tonight to complete my WIPGO goal. Tomorrow night I’ll be joining Abi Bellastitch on her #StitchYourAlphabet SAL. She’s working ABC Hornbook by the Primitive Needle. I’ll be working Alphabet of Stitches by Morning Glory Needleworks, since I have that fully kitted and partially basted. Wednesday/Thursday/Friday will be Choose My WIP focus, which will lead me into the first 24 Hours of Cross Stitch Marathon next weekend and a batch of “whatever I want” chaos.

A busy week – both past and upcoming! Hope all of you have a good week – see you next weekend!

Family & Friends, Life, Work, and All The Rest, Stitching

Quick Life Updates

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Taking a little time during my lunch break to catch up on some general writing, blogging, mini-project updates. I hope if you’re reading this that you’re doing well, and that your loved ones are doing well too.

Things here are pretty good. We have a few friends we’re worried about, who are dealing with positive test results, but I obviously will not mention their names here out of privacy. My immediate and extended family is also heavily active in medical care – nurses, PAs, workers at assisted living facilities, hospitals, etc. So while everyone in that circle is still okay, there are daily worries and prayers for everyone involved.

I’m now at the beginning of week eight of working from home. Max is on week 7 of remote school. He will officially be finishing his first grade year remotely. That makes me both relieved and sad at the same time, for obvious reasons, just as it does for one of my cousins who is graduating from high school this year – and sorority sisters graduating from college. It’s just so hard to see kids lose out on all of the rhythms of school that I took for granted as part of just what happened.

Max is doing pretty well with school so far. Each week it gets a little easier as he gets used to the system – and his teacher gets used to it, too. I know the teachers are having meetings, and I’m sure they’re sharing ideas of what they’ve found that works. I continue to be incredibly impressed with how adaptive his teacher has been, even as I can hear the exhaustion during her zoom meetings because it really just is an impossible thing. Trying to have a full class of 20 1st graders on a zoom meeting with various technology capability is just… rough. But she’s doing the best she can, and the kids are, too. I have learned that Max, unlike me, does NOT like to write. He tries to resist every writing project he’s given. But on the other hand, he loves doing math and is already at the stage where he doesn’t need to show his work – but after he answers a question, I have him go back and show how it would be done.

Work for me is going a bit better, too. It’s still very hard to balance the time demands of school, my usual job, and training others to help take some of my workload from me. I hope I’m doing okay and just keep plugging along. So far no work needs have gone unfilled, so I guess that’s something. I won’t lie – I don’t mind avoiding my commute! For the first time in fifteen years, I’ve had a sane commute. When we eventually go back to Boston, it’s going to be hard for me to get back into the swing of things. I wonder, though, if this will change things permanently as far as remote working goes. Will companies (including mine) start to think differently about needing people to be present in the office? Maybe we start sharing space a bit more?

Erich and I are making slow, steady progress through some house purging projects we’ve wanted to do. One whole room is now done, and bits of two others are, too. I figure if we focus on one room per week, we’ll have almost the entire house worked through by the 4th of July. The basement will likely take a while, though – there’s a lot down there. It’ll feel good to get it done, though. The only problem right now is that all of the locations we’d normally donate through are closed for both pickups and drop-offs. For now, we’ll just have to keep donations sorted on one side of the garage so we can get it all ready to move later.

Stitching has been a definite social relief. I’ve continued connecting weekly with friends on Zoom. I look forward to it every week, and actually make some good stitching progress! Nothing finished recently, but I have a couple pieces close.

If you didn’t see my last post, I’ve finally jumped into the “FlossTube” pool and made my first video. You can find my channel here. For now, I’m going to plan to update on Friday afternoons, and once I’m back at work that’ll likely shift to Saturdays.

And that’s about all going on here. We’re doing fine, keeping on keeping on. I hope the same is happening for you and yours.

Hugs to all, and May the Fourth Be With You,

Mel.

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