Archive for the Category »friends «

Sep
16

It’s that time! That wonderful glorious time of the year when five fantastic friends head off to a lovely house in the mountains of West Virginia to ignore diets, have pillow fights in their PJs, giggle, gab and knit, purl and make Xs! (Ok, maybe not have pillow fights, but you never know!)

Once a year, Kat’s parents graciously allow us to partake of their lovely home in WVa. Kat, Catherine, Debbie, Cindy and I then pack up our stuff and akin to college road trips, we giggle our way there and haul our stuff inside — again, just like moving into your dorm! Then we set up stands, lights, etc. and get super comfy!

It’s an all-girl all-crafty weekend and it’s all ours! It’s totally fun and it totally rocks! It’s amazing how well we all get along — no bickering, fighting, one-upmanship or anything petty goes on — it’s relaxing and fun!

I’ll be bringing two projects with me. My newly acquired handsome boy, Decko and Chatelaine’s Misty Morning Vineyard.

One of our traditions is to make s’mores… and Catherine’s famous Belgian waffles! Drooling yet?

Have I mention that I’m excited? *bounce bounce*

Apr
15

It’s Spring! *peers at the thermometer* Well, ok, so maybe not here. But it’s spring somewhere! My apologies to all my friends for the kerplunk of my blog. I figured while it was down that I’d ditch some legacy flab hanging around and spiff things up a bit! So please kick the walls, poke the buttons and let me know if any springs or other things go wonky on you so I can fix ‘em right away!

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? :D ) 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!

Feb
09

First I have to confess that Twitter has made me quite the slack at blogging. Of course this does absolutely no good for all those friends and family who don’t use Twitter, so I really look like a total slacker. I do have my Twitter updates shipped over to my Facebook page, so if you’re following me on Facebook, then you can see my Twitter updates.

The kitten (who is now looking more lanky and feline-like rather than like a ball of fluff), was taking quite the interest in alpha daughter’s pair of pet dwarf African frogs. (They’re tiny things that live in their own ecosystem and stay in water.)  So we decided to move their small aquatic world up into the room where her gerbils are to keep him away from them. (The doors are kept shut.) A few days after this move, Scott and I heard a loud thud and just thought it was the girls making their normal crashing and thud-ing sounds. As it turns out, one of the girls had accidentally locked the kitten in, you guessed it, the gerbil and frog room. He hopped right up on the dresser and knocked over the frogs’ small aquatic world. We had thought he had eaten them until alpha daughter discovered two flat dried up frog bodies that had hopped under the bathroom door to escape the frog-chasing kitten. Fortunately, she isn’t mad at the kitten. She is, however, quite sad that her first ever pets of her own are dead. Now she wants a turtle or a snake; preferably a snake. *sigh*

I’ve done a little bit of stitching since last time, including this bit which I’m going to leave as a mystery for my favorite girls to ponder a guess at. It is a HAED chart (and a full size one at that). It is an active artist and an active chart.  It is also an artist whose work I have drooled over but have never stitched… until now. She has been with HAED for several years, too! This is the middle of the chart and it’s part of a face.

Next up is my new start for the 5th weekend retired artist/chart SAL. I’ve been wanting to start this chart for a while and have tagged this as my guilt-free start for 2009. It’s Linda Ravenscroft’s “Serendipity.” While I’m not sure what is serendipitous about the scene, I love it anyway. I know I’ll be stitching this more often than every 5th weekend. There is something about Linda’s work that I find amazing. I have her “Mask of Colors” going around as a round robin. But other than that, I don’t have any of her other work in progress. I will be getting to part of the tattoo on her arm really soon. It’s next on the top right of my stitching!

My next stitchy picture isn’t all that exciting to see. It’s a square of sparkle and two shades of really pale grey. It’s QS Day Dreaming Fairy by Zindy Nielsen which is the piece I’ve chosen for the 2009 HAED Freebie SAL. I was torn on what to choose because stitching all these neutral colors will drive me bats, but it’s a new artist for me and she’s pretty. She is due to come out this coming weekend for some stitching although maybe I will pull her out a bit earlier.

Speaking of 2009, I’ve made two stitching goals for this year on the HAED front. One is to finish the QS I just mentioned above, and the other is to finish the top row of pages in Christophe Vacher’s Sacred Hour I’ve got about 2 1/2 large print pages to go and somewhere in those pages is a face! This was the first HAED chart I ever bought and it is the one I love most of all.

Dec
18

And on my keyboard. And in my stitching. And in my tree. And licking my face at o’dark hours of the night/morning. And stitcking his face into my glass of water. And… well, you get the idea. Maestro is everywhere! This is a common sight and picture of the energetic bundle. He’s into everything! He’s also chasing our other three cats around with glee. The two oldest cats are ten and just not much fun. But Nikki is three and she’s quite up to the challenge. They chase, wrestle and hey, how come he’s getting some cool new toys that SHE never got? Here’s a shot of them playing in a cabinet. Her favorite thing to do is to pin Maestro down and nip at his back toes and belly. He flops around and jumps at her with all his might. All five pounds of it. It’s quite the sight to see. When he was smaller and they played chase, she’d dash ahead and wait for him to catch up. No longer. She runs full out and occasionally jumps up to places where he can’t (yet) jump to so she can get a bit of rest. He plays until he’s exhausted and then he’s sound asleep. You can pick him up and move him and he’ll shift a little and lick your nose all without opening his eyes. Here he is after just waking up. That’s Princess Poogle he’s snuggling with. She’s a pink google. When he’s not napping, chasing Nikki or exploring his new kingdom, he likes to chase mouse cursors. He does this by sitting on our laptop keyboards and completely blocking our view. That is he used to until we put up The TREE! The Tree has sparkly things on it. The Tree has things he can romp in. The Tree is a playground meant for diving into. The Tree is likely not going to make it through his kitten-hood. (The Tree is artificial and 11 years old.) There is only one distraction from The Tree and that’s GerbilVision! Every once and a while we open the door to the Gerbil room and the cats can, under supervision, go in and watch Marshmallow and Cookie romp around in their habitat.

Because of our darling new addition, I’ve not gotten as much stitching in as I’d have liked. He loves it when I stitch. So much so that it becomes impossible for me to stitch. So I either have to try to time it while he’s napping or retreat across the street to Kat’s house to stitch. Of course, while I’m there I’m giving Max and Pete the adoration they muchly deserve! I’ve been working on Hubble Bubble, but right now it’s a blob of light blues moving into some light green.When I get to the tip of the sail I’ll post a picture. Thanks to a sweet lady in Tasmania I was able to start Starry Pooka Cat by Elaine Cox. This chart has few colors but they are all gorgeous terra cotta shades. All the “white”you see is sparkle. I decided to keep it in for this piece and I am using two strands of Glissengloss 000 and I am very pleased with the result! I am also pleased with Scott’s camera as it captured the sparkle wonderfully! The other WIP I have to show you is Spanish Rouge from Sampler Cove. I’ve completed 1 1/2 pages.

My final words are a bit of a rant about how annoying the systems architect who designed xbox live is. Thanks to him/her/them my xbox login is unable to communicate with xbox live thereby requiring me to create a new login and losing all my achievements (granted, I only had 3K points worth). So two nights ago I started over. It seems rather odd that I had to do this being as my friends actually DID see me login to xbox live. Oh well… I was planning on being evil in Fable II anyway. Now I have a place to take out my frustrations.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Oct
25

A bit over two weeks ago, a member of the Labrador Retriever Rescue rescued a sick feral kitten. He had a terrible cold that had his eyes swollen shut and his ears and nose covered in the normal joy that comes with a horrendous head cold. She promptly took him to the vet where he was put on antibiotics for his cold as well as other medicines for ear mites and worms in his tummy. He responded within a matter of days to the antibiotics and proved to be quite social. Learning this, she put out notice to the other LRR members looking to see if they knew anyone who was interested in adopting this kitten. Kat sent the mail to me and for some reason, even having never seen the little boy, I said, “YES!” He was taken back to the vet for testing for FIV and feline leukemia and with those tests being negative, a meeting place, date and time was made for the exchange. Kat and I came up with the same name for him on the drive home… “Maestro” as he looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo and we’re a musical family. As she has pointed out to me, it was love at first site and he is NOT going anywhere. MY baby boy… MINE! He snuggled with me all the way home from the exchange and hasn’t stopped snuggling yet! He’s incredibly social and loves people. He is still in isolation in our guest room until his cold and the worms are clear. I dubbed him “Darth Maestro” this past Wednesday as he had been off of antibiotics for several days but his cold had decided to relapse. So, off we went back to Dr. Rice where Maestro refused to allow any writing on his chart until he recieved the attention from the doc he wanted! Now we’re back on antibiotics (which we love the taste of), some really yummy Purina re-Flora’ing powder to help our tummies and yup, still on the deworming meds. I have had cats all of my life but never one with worms. It is disconcertingly gross.  We also had our first ever distemper shot. We’re not going to like our four month visit… that’s when the snips come out. (Uhoh!)

Maestro adores everyone in our family… and everyone in our family adores him. Our daughters read in the evenings with him and he scampers all over them and their books. He loves their long hair and never stops purring. Weighing in at a manly two pounds, he packs a lot of purr for his weight! His favorite toy — FEATHERS! What’s even better than feathers? His people moving the feathers for him. He’s also a rub-my-belly baby. I hope he keeps that as he grows up. Scott wears cargo pants and Maestro loves ‘em! He climbs all over them and uses them as his personal jungle gym. As for me, I’m Mommy. I play, I feed, I clean the litter box, I shove yucky stuff in his face and I’m his favorite place to sleep. When I nap with him or even spend the night, he’s either curled up on my shoulder or stretched out across my neck. At this current weight, he’s not a problem across my neck. However, it may be an issue at ten pounds. But that’s ok. And, like my other baby boy, Ziggy, he likes to lick my face. None of my female cats do it, just my boys.

Maestro also loves any toys my daughters have. He loves all the little fiddly bit parts and things that make up eight year old toys. (Think Barbie shoe sizes and smaller.) His little head and feet fit right in there to “help” and they have quite the time with him. Today I took  him into their bedroom to have him “help” them excavate out the stuff under their beds. I don’t think any kitten could have been happier. He was scampering all over the place diving from under one bedskirt to another discovering all sorts of cool girlie things to play with.

When he’s not doing that, he looooooves his whale. It’s a great place to play chase with his human-driven feathers, too!

I know there’s only one picture… he’s hard to take pictures of! I mean, good pictures of. We have lots of blurry pictures… and pictures of his fuzzy butt… and the back of his head… and of him jumping at the strap on the camera. The picture up there is of Scott holding him above his head so he would hold still! What about while he’s sleeping? Urm, well, he’s a kitten. He wakes up the instant you walk into the room and starts zooming around all over the place!

He is SUCH a sweetie — thanks Alesha and Kat for our new baby boy!

Category: family, friends, pets  12 Comments