My Stitchalong

I've been happily working along on Home of A Needleworker for the last week and I made some good progress: I have noticed, however, that my fabric seems to be a bit small and I could not, for the life of me, figure out how I screwed it up. I checked my calculations for the size of the finished design. I had measured the material three times before I cut it. That's a little OCD , I know, but I've saved myself from mistakes by checking just one last time. Where did I go wrong? Then, last night while I was watching a James Bond marathon, it came to me. I know that I need to have three inches on each side to allow for framing for a total of an additional six inches for the lenght and six inches for the width. I was thinking three inches, not six. So, instead of adding six inches to the size of the fabric, I only added three, half as much as I needed. And as I was thinking about it, I realized that I had done the same thing to the blue fabric that I'm planning on u

Last time I posted I asked for your opinions on which is better: making clear progress on a WIP, or the thrill of starting something new. Well, I decided that I needed to have my cake and eat it too, so I did both! I guess I'm just one of those girls who wants it all. The first panda from HAED is becoming along and he almost has a head, which is really exciting: Lots of blues in the top of this design and the bottom has lots of greens, but it's nice to see progress being made on something so big. Now, on to the new starts and things that I've kitted up. The new start is from Little House Needleworks and is called Home Of A Needleworker: It's being stitched on 28 count off white evenweave with the Crescent Colors that are called for in the design. I love LHN designs because they are usually quick to stitch, and with two big projects on the the stitching bag it's nice to have something that is smaller to work on. The next piece that I've kitted up is by Han

In my last post I said that I was getting tired of the ornaments, but had no desire to stitch on the two projects in my stitching bag, which left me with the option of rooting through my stash looking for something new to work on. Something that shouts to me that it needs to be taken out of the closet and worked on. I got alot of comments from people telling me that starting something new is great fun, which I agree with, and how much fun it is to look through stash to see what could be the next project of the day. But then, while I was cleaning up the den I took out the HAED piece and looked at where I was on that and somehow, that piece was the one that started calling the loudest. I spent Friday afternoon while the kids were at school and all day Saturday stitching on those pandas. I haven't had a day like that in a long time. With young kids it is hard to be able to do that, but somehow on Saturday all of the stars were in alignment and I got in a good stitching day. Or m

Each week Z's class focuses on a color of the week. They learn to spell that word, sound it out, and do class work that includes that particular color. On Friday each child is to bring in a secret object in a bag, stand in front of the class and describe what they brought and the other kids have to try to guess what the secret object is. So far, it's been easy finding something that Z has that is the color of the week. Blue week was a blue Power Ranger. Red week was a Lightning McQueen car. Brown week was a brown Matchbox car. Easy, right? The color of the week this week? PINK!! Now, if I was the mother of girls pink would be no problem. I'm sure we would have a My Little Pony, or something belonging to some type of doll that was pink, but the good Lord chose to blessed me with boys and, to the perfectly honest, this house is sorely lacking in pink. There really was not anything that he had that could be considered pink. This morning we were still trying to fin

We have a winner of the Noel Christmas ornament!! Here are all of the names, written on paper and mixed up in my pretty crystal bowl: MJ was reading a bed time story to Z, so we had a substitute name chooser: M! And the winner is (drum roll please)..... More drum roll please..... Renee G!!!!! Congratulations, Renee. I have already sent you an e-mail asking for your mailing address. Once I get that from you, I will be able to send you your ornament in the mail this week. We were upstate this weekend visiting M's brother and his family. They have two boys who have birthdays in the beginning of November, ages 6 and 1, so we were there celebrating two special birthdays. We had a good visit and were making great time getting home. We just get over the Tappan Zee bridge when Z tells me, "My chest hurts." Well, I didn't think much about it. The kids were rough housing with their cousins over the weekend and I thought that maybe he got a knee in the chest. Then, ab