While my blog has been taking a break, I haven’t! I’ve got a few stitching pictures for you. First up us the finished second page of Sampler Cove’s Spanish Rouge. I’m not sure how long I will be able to stand the half letters to the right of that page before I will have to finish them up. *fidgets* You can see a picture of the finished product here and if you want a drool-fest Diane is sure to please! Have I mentioned that Maestro, the kitten who now has quite the pudgy kitten belly, can be sound asleep under the sofa but as soon as I so much as pick up my stitching, is wide awake and ready to chase my floss as it goes in and out of the fabric. *sigh* He’s not ripped anything yet, but he has slowed down my stitching!

Speaking of Maestro, during February’s HAED Freebie SAL, he knocked my glass of water on to my Day Dreaming Fairy. I missed that month’s SAL and neglected to notice that the water had caused the dye to run on the fabric (it’s a Silkweaver hand-dyed solo) until the March SAL when I had to soak the whole thing to get the water marks out. So, I missed two SALs and had some ground to make up. Here is where I am now – I finally got some Xs into her hair. The picture turned out dark and yup, those are hoop marks. QSnaps and I are beyond peace talks. I have found some really nice German wooden hoops and am not going back!

Next up is a big red eye! Jasmine paints the best eyes in my opinion. And these are red! I meandered my way down to a knobby dragon scale because I was itching to see how it stitched up. The charting is amazing in that it captures the subtle shading on the dragon’s hide and the reflections in the eyes are just totally amazing. Whenever I get this piece out, I always stare at it for a while because it’s mesmerizing.

Next up is the first HAED chart I purchased: Christophe Vacher’s Sacred Hour. It’s a study in shades of brown and I find it very soothing. One of my goals for this year is to complete the top row of pages. I have 2 1/2 more to go. They are the large print sized ones, so I may just manage it. Somewhere within the column I am stitching, there is a face. I can’t see it in the chart, but there should be one there. It’s really subtle. I may just have to tear myself away from my latest start/addiction (see what I’m stitching up there? ) and get back to my browns.

Last picture, I promise!! This one is for you, Sonya! I was doing really really well. I had all the blue done down the left side of all of the first page and nearly all the grey. That is until I found out that I can’t seem to count to ten. *mumble* (At what point do my blonde moments become senior blonde moments?) I ended up frogging nearly 200 stitches which was all of the grey and a good portion of the blue. But I will not be deterred! The Two Fluffy Kitties will be back in my hoop very soon!

That’s it for this post. There will be a Chameleon update next time!

Duh.

Pictures coming soon! (after I chase the frogs away)

So now I have to decide if I want to stitch this. I think I’ll stay away from it for a while and spend some quality time with the xbox and my DS for a bit. *whimperwhinesob*

The princess of the house has/is (hard to know exactly when as she’s a shelter baby) turning three this month. One look at this picture and you can see why she’s the princess, empress, resident goddess, supreme being, one-to-be-reckoned-with and lady in charge!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Nikki!

Happy 10th Birthday to you too, Fluffernutter, you scared ball of fluff!

I smacked myself on the forehead.

I had stitched all of the Xs in the wrong direction!

*insert primal scream here*

I’ll unleash the frogs tomorrow. *grumblemuttergrump*

I told you reading was hard!

DH is out of town… so it was all up to me to wake up, sneeze a few squillion times (a very appropriate Vicky-ism) thanks to the outrageous grass pollen counts around here, get the girls off to school, make Mike and Kathie’s dogs go bonkers because I rang their doorbell (oops!), head to the PTA meeting at school which lasted forever, do a boatload of “paperwork” (it was all electronic, but still just as tedious), head back to school to do my weekly stint in Maggie’s computer lab, do that kiss and ride pick up thing with the girls in order to get to Lindsey’s ballet class in time (the bus is too late to make it), stop at the grocery store because the aforementioned paperwork took too long… fix dinner, and then help with homework, spelling and reading.

Through the whole day, I have had this blistering headache at my temples. I took ibuprofen for it twice today and it refused to go away. About half an hour ago, I took the headband I was wearing out of my hair and whaddya know, the headache is all gone. *rolls her eyes* Can you say dingbat? I KNEW you could!

On a different note, I was enabled last week. Could it have been something small? Heck no! I don’t ever get enabled with something small… it’s 429 x 429!
It’s from Nouveau Encore and called “Tribute to the Old Masters.” I will be stitching it on 36 count “Misty Rain” Vintage linen from Lakeside Linens (wohoo, I remembered the word, Kathie! *bounces*) with Belle Soie “Elegant Eggplant” silk which is a gorgeous purply-blue sent to me by the same adorable imp who enabled this whole chart purchase in the first place. {{{Fudgey}}}

I have now tucked my little darlings in for the night and am off to go take a looooong bubble bath. And no, I’m not putting my hair up with one of those blasted hair bands! *giggles*

Ok back to my sampler… I finished the first band in an hour… and that’s only because Nikki ran off with a piece of my rubbery shelf liner stuff that I use to help keep the fabric (because it is kinda thin) from slipping in the QSnap and hid it under the chair. Here’s that one.
It has an “Alternating Double Backstitch” in it, where the top leg, the one that goes \ actually goes over two Xs worth. It sort of creates a herringbone look. In case you’re squinting for a closer look, here you go.
After that, I moved on to section two which is entirely cross stitch. It’s two colors of Vikki Clayton’s OMG Red series. *grins* This is only half of the pattern, but it is the full height of the second band. The fabric is all loosey goosey and my tension is loose so the Xs look a little wonky. No, it’s not me being an untidy slacker of a stitcher, it’s the way my stitching looks on this stuff. Rest assured that once the framer stretches and frames it all, it’ll look peachy. Oh duh Sue, I didn’t actually show you that picture yet, did I? See? I toldyas I was really blonde today. Here we go!
It got a little washed out from my flash so you can’t see how rich the reds are and you can’t quite see the vintage-ness of the fabric, but it’s there, honest it is! As a side note, at some point while I was typing all of this up, Maggie came in here and put a small stuffed snake on my shoulder for me to “babysit” for her… I don’t actually remember her doing it… but I now have this cute little stuffed snake sitting here watching me type. Wow do I have bubbles for brains. *shakes her head* I think I need to go do some more stitching.

Having friends who live right across the street who are taking a year off is a totally awesome thing because they can 1: be home when the topic-of-my-week falls on the house and 2: can stand in their second floor hallway and take “Wow!” pictures like this one! (Thanks, Mike!)
Thanks to our next door neighbors, we were able to save our lawn and borrow their driveway onto which what looked like a small truck-like thing was driven. Well, when this thing was unfolded, there was one huge crane there as you can see! There was a guy on our roof who tied the tree to the crane, and then the tree was lifted to a vertical position at which point it was chain-sawed through at it’s base. Then my girls, from within the house, bellowed, “TIMBER!” as the tree was gently set down on our lawn. Then the chainsaws had at the tree and all that was left was a stump. Oh, right… and some holes in my roof. No need to squint, Mike has a great zoom on his camera, too!
What you can’t see clearly of the large hole on the bottom is that it’s actually a gash of sorts, where the tree branch pierced the roof and ripped downwards. OUCH! That had to hurt the house and the tree! What’s even more sad is that there was a second pine tree that was next to the one that fell that also had to be removed. It had a fungal growth at it’s base that had weakened the roots on the side next to the house. So we could have gone through this again during the next wind storm. (That’s a big no thank you!) So what I see when I look outside and down from my sunroom window now is two piles of white pine wood chips which are all that is left of the stumps.
This is actually quite sad. I do have a lovely view, but having a lovely view framed with pine trees was even better. *sigh*

But, enough about my trees. I’ve blogged it out and I’m done talking about it. I got a hug from up north!! *bounces around* Mermaid Thinking arrived in my mailbox yesterday from Sonya! Thank you thank you thank you thank yooooooooooou!! *giggles* I sent Sonya this thank you card that says “You deserve a million thanks!” and it has these two cute little guys talking and saying “thank you” over and over and over in different voices… and I mentioned to her that if she waited for them to say it all 1 million times that she was more blonde than I was! My guess is that between the two of us we did hear all 1 million thank yous because those little guys are cute! Thanks a bunch, Sonya!! *super big HUGS!!* I cut the fabric and printed the chart and then had to de-Nikki and de-Ziggy fur the fabric because the phone rang as I was cutting it and they decided to sprawl on it… but you get the idea… I’m all bouncy!

Hey, it’s CC on 3! Did everyone dig out their Character Creations projects?