Birds Are Finally Finished!

I never would have finished this without the encouragement from BeckySC's Let's Stitch blog and the Friday night Stitch-A-Thons.



Once the birds were finished I celebrated by stitching this cute mouse by Casey Buonaugurio from the December Just Cross Stitch.



The day our power was out I sat by the window and stitched this cutie from San Man.

Birds and Vampires Again

Here is the photo of the birds just before starting the backstitching. It's pink due to the lights in my house but the fabric is actually white.

I finally saw the end of Twilight on Monday. I'm glad I went ahead and read the book though because although I really enjoyed the movie I liked the book better. I'm having a "teen" week I suppose since I've rented Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 and plan to watch both it and the first one while stitching this afternoon.

Birds, Work, Christmas Decorations and Vampires

I have finished all the main stitching and the birds are hanging in my bathroom drying! Usually I wouldn't wash something at this point but it was so dirty that I decided it would be best to wash it before adding the beads. Tonight I can begin all the backstitching and beading. I set a goal of finishing this by next weekend and I'm right on target at this point. I'll take a picture and post it before I start.

Thanksgiving was nice and the calm before the storm at work. We pulled out all the Christmas stuff and I've started decorating but I haven't done much. I've wrapped most of the gifts, put up lights and assembled the tree. I have been so tired from work so I'm taking things slow. I won't talk about my work specifically but think of it this way. It is normally not too busy. The regular customers are usually older, well spoken, well read and educated. While a few can be snobs they generally know how to act in public. Now the holidays come and you have a lot of customers who don't care how they behave. They are loud (screaming), rude, shoplift, messy and bring children to places where it is not appropriate or the kids are just bored. Not only am I tired from the extra customers I am tired of cleaning up after them, keeping things from getting stolen and asking people to behave that should know better. I don't work in retail and I can only imagine how much worse it is for someone who does. It doesn't help that we are worried about what will happen to our jobs after the holidays. Last night I came home too exhausted to decorate the tree. Maybe tonight I can get started.

I finished reading Twilight and enjoyed it. I had avoided reading it because the description someone gave me sounded incredibly boring. I was happy that the book didn't seem anything like their description. I want New Moon for Christmas.

Friday Stitch-a-thon and a Nativity Sampler

Last night I finished the blue bird and half of the greenery he's sitting on. Now there's just one bird and more greenery left. I'm starting to get excited about finishing this one. I tried to find out how long it's been a UFO but the oldest mention of it I have from blogging is a UFO list from December 2004.


Yesterday I bought a copy of the UK Cross Stitcher Issue 206 and it has this beautiful nativity sampler in it by Gail Bussi. It's going on my "to be stitched someday" list.

Birds Again

I've finally made a little progress on the birds. I had great plans to stitch all day Wednesday but I had a killer sinus headache that ruined that idea. I finally stitched for a little bit Wednesday night. Last night I skipped my usual stitching on Castle Sampler during Survivor and stuck with the birds. Speaking of Survivor it was one of the best Tribal Councils ever. Crystal yelling her vote "Forget you go home!" to the camera so everyone could hear was a riot.

Ugh...

Last night I had plans to stitch diligently on my birds but it didn't happen. Mike's cat Nikki was feeling sick after getting his shots. He was shivering, favoring the areas where they injected him, and cried when we picked him up. I felt sorry for him so I brought him to my bed and turned on the heated mattress pad. I sat down to stitch and after 30 minutes had done only about 20 stitches when I decided to crawl into bed myself. My knees and ankle were hurting from the cold, arthritis and standing on my feet at work. I woke up around 11pm and both Nikki and I felt a lot better. In fact Nikki was back to his old self. He can't fool me into babying him more either. The ladies (Abby Tabby, Callie and Mama Gus) tolerate him being in my room when he's sick but this morning they were back to growling at him. The only male allowed in this bedroom is my DH according to the ladies LOL!

This morning the second house for From Sea To Shining Sea was in my mailbox. It's the southwestern house and it's so cute! I want to stitch it now! But I made a commitment to finish those birds so the house will have to be a reward incentive.

Houses and Birds

Saturday and Sunday I worked on Sea to Shining Sea by LHN. Before I started I was a little worried by talk on the internet that there might not be enough floss in the chartpacks to stitch with two strands on my 32 count Lugana. When I finished this first house I had a lot left over. I could have probably even used 28 count fabric. Since the rows were not long I did not stitch each X individually which takes more floss and the variegation still looks nice.



The current challenge at Let's Stitch is working on Christmas projects. That fits in great with my plans. I'm going to set other stitching aside and try like crazy to finish these birds in the next 2 or 3 weeks. There are two more birds with greenery left to go and then lots of backstitching.

Weekend Update

We had a nice Halloween. No trick or treaters showed up and we didn't even see any out on the street. We watched some zombie stuff Mike had and I worked on the incredibly boring border for Sea to Shining Sea. By incredibly boring border I mean the white/cream boxes around the areas for the houses. It's not exactly something everyone is excited to see a photo of so I will wait until I get some of the house done.


I've decided I want to finish this old UFO for Christmas this year. It's a Bucilla kit I bought years ago when I was just starting to do a lot of cross stitch. It was one of the first designs I saw that had beads and charms back when only a few designers were using them. I've been stitching on it for the past 4 or 5 Sunday nights but I feel like I'm not getting very far. I thought taking photos might help inspire me.

DH and I are doing our on personal NANOWRIMO writing project this month. We aren't joining the official one, just doing something ourselves. I've had an idea for a story kicking around in my head for a couple of years now and I want to see if I can actually get something down on paper. I got two pages written last night that are pretty awful but at least it's a start.

Finally I am so happy this election campaign is almost over. It has been so long and ugly and I am sick of it. I will say one thing that has been good was whether you like them or not it was great to see more women and and an African American in the race. We've come a long way in my short lifetime.