Blah...

Christmas is so much harder as an adult...with children. I'm so tired LOL and I'm ready for Christmas to be past and it seems like it justs keeps getting farther away. Stitching has been put on hiatus for a little while.

Sneaux 2008

Congratulations! You get a picture intensive post!

First the snow (please understand it hasn't snowed this much here in something like 60 years)






Yes, that is my child that is out in the wet and cold in shorts LOL If you'll notice in the next picture she does have pants on. They must have changed clothes about 20 times. Lauren and Maria watched the goings on from inside mostly.

I also stayed inside for the most part. I curled up with my Stitching Girl socks from Marjean and I think they were magic. LOL I finished up the band sampler RR that was due...yesterday. (I'll mail it express to make up for that) She wanted TW bands so I did the center part of the Renaissance Bookmark. And I also finished up the Bluebird of Joy or whatever in the new Ornament Issue. I used Fuzzy Stuff in the hat and some Mill Hill snowflakes.





And finally to reward my hard work LOL Instead of working any any other number of WIPs or Obligation Stitching, I decided to start a new project. The Peacock from Dessins DHC. The fabric is 40 ct. Atlantic Storm from Silkweaver. Threads are Carrie's Creations Slate Blue and Valdani Threads Seaside

SNOW DAY!

It's actually snowing for real in South Louisiana. I've taken a lot of pictures but haven't gotten them off the camera yet. I got the girls all ready for school...we backed down the driveway and went about a block down the street and I decided that was enough of that. We turned around and went back home. Our neighbors apparently did the same thing LOL So the girls are staying home today and getting snuggly warm.

Surprise!

Yesterday I was reading an article about the new JK Rowling book (The Beetle and the Bard) coming out and I remembered looking at it on Amazon, and wondered briefly if I had preordered that or not. I decided I hadn't. But, when I got home, there it was! Apparently I did LOL Anyway, it was a cute little book. A quick read. I read it cover to cover in a couple of hours. I'm also reading Lost by Gregory Maguire. I got about halfway through and still wasn't "getting it", but decided I had invested that much effort I needed to finish it and be done with it. Finally, about 3/4 of the way through it got interesting LOL But, I was too tired to finish it up last night. I'm hoping the last little bit doesn't totally suck and ruin it all together.

And the winner is...

Dianne! I don't have pictures or a randomizer to prove that, so y'all will just have to trust me LOL

Dianne...if you could email me your address at autumn.crochet@gmail.com I'll work on getting your package together.

300!!

Yes, I love that movie, it's serious eye candy. But, this time it refers to my 300th blog post! That thrills me! Took quite awhile to get here. So to celebrate I think I'll do a giveaway. I don't know what it'll be yet. I think I'll kind of personalize it a bit once I know who wins. I'm not going to do anything fancy like link backs or challenging questions LOL Just post a comment to this blog entry before....let's say 8 pm (my time) Wednesday evening.

Weekend Review

We had a pretty good weekend. Saturday was a lazy rainy day. We took the girls to see Bolt. I really liked that movie. The girls enjoyed it. I had a lot of time to stitch and managed to finish up this little ornament. It was a freebie from Plum Pudding Needle Arts.

Sunday we took the drive out to Covington to see my sister's new house. It's a very cute house by the way. We also took portraits for Christmas. It was outdoor which made it interesting because it was quite cold and very windy. The girls helped her decorate her Christmas tree...which translates into sort of watched her decorate the tree while her boyfriend showed us how to play various games on their Wii.

Then they took us to a park near their house to kill some time until it got dark so we could see their enchanted forest. They cleared a bunch of paths through their wooded lot and strung it all up with lights. It was really awesome. The girls loved it.

And we got to meet her new dog Shelby. They have two others. Shelby is a great dane that is not quite albino, but has some pigment issues as you can see from her eyes....and she's deaf. I got a laugh out of her Hitler moustache.

Thanksgiving

We had a pretty nice Thanksgiving. Maria made more pumpkin muffins and Eva made sugar cookies (that translates into I made muffins and cookies and others took the credit lol). I was bad and started a new ornament yesterday while I was waiting between batches. If I work on it tonight, I might finish it tomorrow.

I'm going to brave the early morning shoppers with my oldest daughter and mom. Should be interesting. I'm going get a Nintendo Wii for the family Christmas present. Sam's has a good price on a family bundle so we're going to get there early and take advantage of their complimentary breakfast.

Christmas Tree

We put up our Christmas Tree over the weekend. We were going to be busy for the next few weekends so I decided that we could go ahead and put it up. We go with the artificial trees. My old 5' one had pretty much bitten the dust last year. The cats liked to climb up in it and the limbs aren't meant to carry that much weight. We got a 9' tree this year. Yikes! Thank goodness for cathedral ceilings! I can't put the angel on top. LOL I need to figure out how I'm going to do that. (for you people that check out picture backgrounds, that's the tree box in the hall and the corner of Lady of the Flag behind the tree lol )

And I got myself a few peacock ornaments this year. Here's one that I think is really cute.

Pretty Peacocks

This was a quick stitch. About 3 days of stitching. Probably less if I hadn't been quite so distracted. It's Pretty Peacocks by Sallie Ann Designs. There are supposed to be beads in the tail but I'm leaving those out. I'm gonna use the band across a pillow. It's 27 ct. Natural Banding and I used 3 strands of...ummmm...it was a Thread Gatherer silk, but I can't remember which color it was.

Blogger

I love the new "Following" feature. That makes things soooo much easier! It's such a nifty little feature especially in the wake of Blogrolling apparently biting the dust.

Yesterday was Eva's 7th Birthday Party. She really had a lot of fun. A lot of kids showed up and and she got a lot of cute presents. I was a little worried whether or not she'd actually like the little purse I got her but turned out she really liked it. So Yay Me!

Now I need to start focusing on Christmas. I have the luxury of not having to worry about Thanksgiving. We're just a "show up" family LOL That's not true. I usually bring something, but it's not something that's usually a big deal to cook.

All Done

Finished the Twilight Saga. I read all 4 books in what? 2 weeks? LOL So they were pretty good. I really enjoyed the story. I found some aspects to be a little predictable, but maybe that's because I'm an adult and they were geared more towards teens. Not to give away anything but I kinda felt like the end left it open for another series to be created with 2 different main characters.

I got Sophia's RR in the mail yesterday for the band sampler RR. She's doing a TW theme. I'm gonna do the middle out of the Renaissance Bookmark. I've done that in the past when I was in a TWRR. It turns out beautiful.

Slow Day

Work is a little slow today. I'm feeling a little better. I knew it was going to be slow so I brought my active WIPs with me. I thought I'd share some pictures.

First...which really ought to be my priority...but I always seem to find something else to work on. Kaye's Mirabilia RR. That's Fairy Flora. Not too much left to do on it, but there are a ton of beads on there.

Next up is Violet from the Pixie Couture Collection. I have some negativity associated with this piece. If I finish it, it will be a miracle.

Something is going wrong with my camera and my fabric here. This is my start on "Something Wicked This Way Comes". The fabric is really dark brown. Not green. It's like dirt brown. In fact...it's from Silkweaver Secrets of Nature series called Earth. But it is heavily mottled as the picture indicates. I thought it was fitting for the pattern.

Finally I started the Sweetheart Tree Holly Fob, but I think I'll be using it for an ornament instead of a scissor fob.

Ink Circles Ornament

I have a terrible cold and an ear infection I'm pretty sure. However, I'm trying to tough it out and cut down on my antibiotic use. I'm doing a little better today than I was yesterday. I did finish up this little ornament this weekend. It's the Ink Circles 2006 Ornament. I'll send out the chart to whoever emails me (autumn dot crochet at gmail dot com) first. The fabric is 32 ct. Tobacco (I think) and the thread is Carrie's Creations Raven.

Peacock

I have a slight peacock obsession. Peacocks and Scissors. Those are my two "things". Generally I go for the graceful, elegant type peacock designs, but I ran across this kit on ebay and it made me smile. It only took about 2 days stitching. I used the thread from the kit, which wasn't DMC I don't think. It was actually a fairly nice thread. I wondered what it was but the instructions and everything was entirely in Russian so I don't know. I used 22 ct. hardanger fabric so it would be fairly small. It's about 3" by about 4".

Twilight

Well I read the first book in about a 24 hour time period. It's safe to say I'm addicted now LOL Dammit I hate when I get on bandwagons!

New Glasses

Eva failed her eye test at school so we made a trip to the eye doctor. Poor kid was fairly blind. Fortunately the doctor said that aside from having astigmatism, he felt like her other problems would eventually go away through further development of her eyesight. So we picked out glasses. She looks so adorable in them. They're black, but they have a thin purple line around the edge so it makes them look dark purple and the color is really flattering to her. Thankfully she really enjoys wearing them and loves all the compliments she gets on them.

Lauren of course had to get in on the picture taking. That child is a camera hog.

And just to make sure all is fair....here's a picture of Maria and I

I'm dealing with a personal difficulty, that I'd really rather not discuss, but it's a frustrating situation for me. I'm trying to bury myself in anything that might take my mind off of it. Any new books or movies I should watch? I still have so much stitching to get caught up on, but that's just not doing it for me right now.

Sweetheart Tree Round Robin

Ok, this was a round robin from a while back. I think it was stitched in 2006/2007, but since I actually finished it up in 2008 I thought I better put that date on it. Wouldn't want to cheat or anything like that LOL Sorry about the wrinkly fabric. I don't trust my iron right now. Until I get a new one there will be no ironing of stitching.

What Have I Been Up To?

In a word (or two) not much. I don't think I've finished anything since E. I've been working on Mirabilia's Violet pixie. I got a little burnt out on it though. I'm doing another round robin. Any designer band sampler this time. I got a pretty good start on it. Enough to send it out anyway. First mailing isn't until the 29th. I also started Beloved but I can't decide if I'm happy with it. I'm using one strand of Belle Soie Noir on PTP 36 ct. Fog. I'm debating whether or not I like the coverage.