New Year, Two Finishes

Yesterday I finished Plum Street Sampler's Garden of Eerie:

Garden of Eerie

Plum Street Samplers

DMC

32ct linen

Hand-dyed by Moi

Started January 2, 2010

Completed January 16, 2010

Someone and I can't remember who asked about the dyeing process and basically what I did was take my stockpot, I got one at Walmart for $13, it's black granite looking, you know like a stockpot you buy to take camping, I added water to about a 1/3 of the pot, I then mistakenly dumped a whole packet of RIT Golden Yellow powder dye into the pot, I should have used less for my intended look, I placed my fabric in the pot and stirred and let it soak for maybe 5 minutes. Probably another mistake since I wanted just a hint of yellow, I checked my fabric and it was GOLDEN. At this point I grabbed my big bottle of RIT Tan Liquid Dye and splashed some in the pot and started swirling the fabric around. I stopped, checked the fabric, added a splash more, swirled some more, checked it and decided to add one more good, solid splash of Tan, swirled, then removed my fabric and rinsed it like there was no tomorrow. At the time I was not thrilled with my results and annoyed that I didn't just order up the Lakeside Linen I needed, but I'm trying to lighten up, be more adventurous, figure things out for myself, use what I have-I'm not going to go all crunchy granola on y'all but I am trying to really let go of my tendency to be a slave to the chart. All that to say, I am really, really happy with my fabric. It gives the design an eerie enough feel and it's a bit different and up close and personal the DMC just glows on the fabric. That's the only way to describe it. It glows.

The big question now is will I ever be able to do this again and get a result that I'm happy with. I've attempted dyeing several times before and honestly my attempts were halfassed and I'm ashamed of that, so, I will learn patience, I will practice my mad dyeing skilz, and trying to explore my creativity that way.

Garden of Eerie is my second finish of the year. My first is the stitched portion of an ornament for my little buddy, John:

Santa Rides(Horse)

Prairie Schooler

Finished January 7, 2010

DMC

28ct Natural Linen

The ornament still needs to be ornamented. But I'll do that this week I hope!

The other night there was a knock at my door and the sound of people singing Christmas carols. I will admit to being a wee bit scared to open the door but then again my kids constantly remind me that we live on the most boring street in the world so against my better judgement I opened the door. My friend Pam and her kids were singing Christmas songs and Pam handed me my Christmas present(we don't hold to timelines around here, both of us being crafters we understand the belated gift, mine to her is still in progress, whoops!) I opened my package and what did I find:

Why this really cool bag she made for me. The words(the design on the front of the bag was stitched by Pam) say:

I collect floss and fabric

buttons and ribbon-

A stitcher's passion is

Pattern collection

How true are those words? Here's a peak inside the bag:

Pockets! How sweet is this bag? I love it. Thanks Pam!


And below you will see the statement that strikes fear in the heart of the men in my house:

Don't we all?
For one of your very own check out:
crossstitch naked tote by doecdoe on Etsy

Don't forget the Olympic Stitching challenge! If you want to join the team blog leave a comment and we can all stitch for the gold!

2010 Winter Olympic Stitching Challenge: What's Your Plan?

The Year Without a Santa Claus

On December 23rd I recieved an urgent dispatch from the North Pole. Santa was running short of time and gifts and he wanted to alert me to the fact that my kids had been bumped from the list this year. The youngest is fourteen so it was just a matter of time. He said they had all been good but there is that whole recession thing and he really thought he was going to get by here but it'd be better if I could just hook up the fourteen year old myself just in case.

Fortunately for Santa, the fourteen year old's gift had been purchased the Sunday before so I grabbed one or two things to add to that and called it good. When presents were put under the tree on Christmas Eve, the nineteen year old said, "Presents under the tree before Christmas morning? What happened?"

It never dawned on me that my family even paid attention to our routine. Santa has delivered everyone's presents and come to think of it I have never ever put presents under the tree before Santa arrived because for years and years when kids were smaller I didn't want them messing with the presents and it was just easier to rely on Santa to do the work. I didn't have to yell at anyone over the holidays for busting into presents and it was then that I realized that maybe that rule of mine that saved me a lot of grief took a lot of fun out of Christmas for my kids. There was no package shaking and rattling and guessing because mom and dad didn't buy gifts, Santa supplied them and my kids believed in the miracle of Santa much longer than most because my middle son or maybe it was the oldest pointed out that "of course Santa exists because we didn't have the money to buy so many gifts". Even now I'm reasonably sure they all still believe.

As my family has grown older I have noticed a shift in our traditions and things that were once looked forward to with excitement have been greeted with a rolling of the eyes and a comment along the lines of "seriously?" Solstice for one.

I have always embraced the idea of Solstice. It was something that no one else I knew did(we also believe as deeply in the Great Pumpkin as we do Santa Claus and not too many people choose that path and each of my boys have a cross stitched Halloween stocking but not a stitched Christmas stocking, I guess you can see where my priorities lay). Solstice was something for just my family and while it wasn't celebrated like Christmas it was just one more day that was special, sometimes with a fire and roasting marshmellows, sometimes just with a yellow cake to represent the sun and the longing for warm temperatures once again. It was never a big deal but it was just something a little extra. It was also an attempt to keep my kids in tune with nature, the cycles of the earth, but now it's just one more thing they can't be bothered with and it could be that I didn't make it a bigger deal over the years, and this year it just kind of slipped by me before I knew it Solstice had passed. This has been a strange holiday season for me. While I'm not a big time Christmas girl I usually fall in to the spirit of the season before Christmas Day, this year I don't know that I ever felt the joy, not once.

As the kids have grown up our family celebration has become smaller and quieter, and this year it even felt a bit empty and I don't know if that was me or the family or just that 2009 sucked from the very beginning.

It was sad to tell the fourteen year old that Santa sent a message that he wasn't hitting our house this Christmas Eve, so he left it up to me. The fourteen year old looked at me and said with resignation, "Let's hope you don't screw it up". He's a funny one that kid. He got what he wanted so all is well.

I'm planning to do New Year's Eve right, not with a drunken bash, but with a feeling of joy. Joy that 2009 is gone and that 2010 will be a better year for my family and everyone else too. I am going to toast 2009 and kiss it goodbye, I am then going to toast 2010 and welcome it with joy and a prayer that we start the year out right. I'm going to spend this coming week trying to figure out how to start the year out right, because right now it appears that 2010 is going to begin the way 2009 is going to end so I have a week to fix the mess and get some kind of balance back because life has been kind of out of whack the last three months. Somewhere things got off track and I need to get things sorted and organized and all flowing in the right direction because chaos is just not working for me.

Speaking of chaos, I need to sit and organize my stitching and various other projects. 2009 was the year of guilt free starts for me and now I need to figure out where I'm out on several projects and get my focus back. I have had no kind of plan for the last six months and I'd love to see some finishes this next year.

We also have Winter Olympic stitching to look forward to and I'll open up the Olympic stitching blog sometime in January *ok just set one up, here:

2010 Winter Olympic Stitching Challenge: What's Your Plan?

and we can all plan what we want to stitch while watching curling.

Hey my mood has perked up a bit just thinking about some Olympic stitching. I am thinking that Sonne Spotte might be a good Olympic project. Good thing I have some time to figure it out.

I hope everyone had a Blessed Yule, a Merry Christmas, a Happy Holiday, and that 2010 will arrive with a sack overflowing with blessings and joy for all your families.

Summer Olympic Challenge

And other things----

I finally got around to creating a blog for the Summer Olympic Stitching challenge. If you posted a comment that you were interested, I'll try to get an invite out to you today. My computer access this summer has been hit or miss. Every computer in the house decided not to work all summer except mine. That is why blogging has been so sparse this summer.

Here's a link to the blog itself- Summer Olympic Stitching Challenge

Feel free to leave a comment in this post or email me at gulfskye at aol dot com and I'll send your invite ASAP. 13th Colony Bay is coming out of the baggie today, YEA!!!!

Things I've been enjoying this summer:





This is Ree's Veggie and Cheese Bagel. It's been my lunch of choice for the last two weeks.

Below you see my breakfast of choice:




I know, the picture isn't appetizing but there is nothing I love more than eggs scrambled with zuccuini and onion. Yum! I saute the zukes and onion in butter, a little garlic, salt and pepper, then move them to the side of the pan, add in my eggs, start scrambling then as they get a little more done I start mixing in the vegetables. Zucchini was born for eggs. I like my zucchini to stay crisp so I don't saute it for very long.

And now for the Puppy Monster:

This is Sidney-licious(it was Sid Vicious until we had nothing to fit his neck but this pink collar)my oldest son brought him home for us to dog sit for "two weeks" while his friend relocated. Uh, she relocated, lost her phone, slipped through some vortex or worm hole, I don't know. When he came to live with us his name was "Killer" I changed it to Sid. He looks like a Sid to me and I absolutely refused to call him Killer. Anyway he's a pit bull, we can't keep him and are looking for a responsible home for him. He's only about four months old and is already really rough with my Polly and I can't have him hurting her even if only in play. I knew saying yes to dog sitting was a huge mistake, but I'm a sucker and his friend is pregnant, her apartment was broken into and I didn't feel she needed any more stress so I said yes. A 12 week old pit bull isn't scary like a one year old pit bull, I expected him to be gone by now and now we've gotten a little attached, he's a good dog, smart and sweet and DESTRUCTIVE! But I can't keep him so the search begins for Sid a new home.

Twilight

Ok I'm reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I've had the books for ages and am just now getting around to reading them before Breaking Dawn is released in about two weeks.

I realize that everyone reading these books is IN LOVE with Edward. I'm not, I adore Jacob. I want Jacob to be Bella's true love. I understand that Edward is a vampire but I don't get the warm fuzzies about him like I do with Jacob and the movie trailer--the actor portraying Edward appears as miscast IMHO as Tom Cruise was when he portrayed Lestat. It's what I hate about books being made into movies. The illusion is gone and you forever see the actor as the character in the book--then again I never bought Tom Cruise as Lestat, that casting was so horrible in my opinion that I see Anne Rice's Lestat in my mind, not Tom Cruise. But you tend to see the actor instead of what you mind has created from the author's descriptions. I do understand that Edward's type of beauty may not exist on this earthly plane and we must make do but still, I had a vision in my mind of Edward and he's not the guy in the movie.

Olympic Stitching

I'm going to try to set up a blog for the Olympic Stitching challenge. I've been trying to come up with a banner for the blog. I hope to have it set up by the end of the week and we can make it a group blog if anyone is interested.

I am definitely saving my 13th Colony for the Olympics. I have plenty of other projects to work on between now and then.

Now we will forget this little rant when I write a book and sell the movie rights. Let's just hope I have a casting approval clause in my contract. Oh yeah, I dream big.

Olympic Stitching: Are You Ready?

Ok my life has finally gotten a little bit back to normal, whatever "normal" is. So the Olympics start 8-8-08 according to all the commercials. The way NBC chooses to air the events who really knows, but does anyone feel up to an Olympic stitching challenge this year?

What project have you put on hold? What project would you like to see finished? Let's get excited, pick up those needles and hoops(Qsnaps? In hand?--guess you'd be picking up those fingers right?)

Ok you have a few weeks to set an Olympic stitching goal so start pondering what you might like to finish over the Summer Olympic season.

Right now unless I manage to finish it before the opening ceremony is to finish 13th Colony Bay. If by some bizarre twist of fate I finish it before the first of August I will either get back to work on Village of Hawk Run Hollow or Sonne Spotte.