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!

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.

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!

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!

It is clear that he’s homesick, though. He always goes right for the car when we go into the garage, making us think that he wants to go home, even though his house is right across the street. Silly, Pete!

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!

Speaking of Fudgey, has she tempted you with Periphaeria Designs’ Spanish Sampler Mystery SAL yet? She caught me with it and I’m bouncing all over the place fiddling with fabric and silk trying to decide if I should spend my certs now and order things, or wait it out until part 1 comes out March 15th… and then order and then stalk the mailman waiting for my fabric and silk to arrive. I’m torn! I so want to start something new! While I’ve been looking at lots of fabric, this linen is the one that I have always come back to and I’ve been thinking that Vikki Clayton’s Natural silk would go well. Thoughts?

And finally, the girls were off from school last Friday thanks to (yet another) “wintery mix” storm. So they rummaged around in the game closet and came out with one of Nikki’s favorite games. No sooner was the lid off of the box when she was right where she wanted to be! Think the mice were scared that lazy afternoon? (And of course we didn’t chase her from the box when we were done playing… we left her there until she was done with her nap and then put the lid back on the box!)

Last week we had our usual February “wintery mix” weather. This equates to something that starts off as snow and then meanders through snow mixed with sleet, sleet, sleet mixed with freezing rain and then freezing rain. Sometimes we get snow after that. Last year we got a lovely near foot of that stuff and Mike aptly named it concrete as it took over a week for some of us to be able to get out of our driveways! Last week, however, we ended up with freezing rain. This was unfortunate as it my daughter ended up breaking her arm in ballet class that afternoon and we spent several hours in the emergency room only to emerge with her newly splinted arm to find our car completely encased in ice. (the orthopedic doctor she visited on Valentine’s Day had to put a cast on it — she chose bright pink!)

The next morning, Scott risked life and limb to take some lovely pictures… this is the part where ice can be lovely. Fortunately, he didn’t need any casts, Ace bandages or other boo-boo mending gear. These are some Crape Myrtles. We live far enough south that they love growing here. Of course, after they burst into bloom, we usually get a wicked windstorm and all the flowers blow down the street… or into the pool. *sigh*

Some of you may recall when the white pine tree fell on our house last year. That was due to wind and shallow tree roots. Of course, it doesn’t keep me from worrying that another one of the huge pine trees around will do the same even though the arborist has assured us that the remaining pines are stable. They really droop when weighed down with ice, but in this closeup, they don’t look so menacing. In this area, residential power lines have to be underground, so I don’t have that worry on my property. Whew!

We have a myriad of shrubby things around outside and when we built the house, our landscaper was very good about having the tags left on things, but that would still require me to either trapse outside into the cold and try and find the tags on nine year old shrubs or dig out the landscape plan and translate his really long latin-y names into the more common names that we know. So instead you just get my swell description of a hibernating bush with ice-covered berries on it. It’s still quite pretty!

Meanwhile, inside the house, life goes on and my Ziggy sleeps through everything without a care in the world… not even that there’s a stuffed bunny (affectionately called “Bun Bun” by Lindsey) perched on his back. Ahhhhh, to be able to relax like my ZigZig! He does curl up next to my head in the morning so I can rest my cheek on him so I have a purring pillow, so life is stripey and purrrrrrfect!

Speaking of exciting, some of you may remember the picture I posted of my elusive Fluffernutter. Her name is really Stardust, but since she’s part Maine Coon cat and very fluffy and also one crazy cat, I’ve taken to call her Fluffernutter. She’s very shy. I think it took 3-4 years of visiting regularly before Kat saw her face and not just her backside as she bolted away to hide. You can’t tell from this picture, but those feetsies of hers are big. Maine Coons are great mousers. Anything under the covers on the bed counts as a mouse. She loves that game. But whatever you do, don’t try touching her feet! All Scott has to do is waggle his fingers and walk towards her and she bolts because it’s become the “Muahahahahhaaaaa! I’m coming to get your feet, kitty!” sign. She is also quite possessive of her Mommy. When I was pregnant and confined to bed rest, she always kept an eye on me. She refused to leave me one evening… and wouldn’t you know, that was the night I went into labor. When it’s just me at home, she’s out and about and lounging nearby. (Maine Coons like to be near you but not on you.) So, I asked her to smile for me! Here’s my pretty little Fluffernutter and her adorable pink nose! She has a big fluffy tail that she likes to hold up high in the air which reminds me of Pepe LePew. *giggles*

And finally… big big *HUGS* to you, Nic!

First off, congratulations to Jenni and Scott!

Kathie and Mike are currently on their way to Naples… Sheba is here and just spent a lovely afternoon in the pool… and while I’m not wishing their trip to end, I certainly miss them! *whines*

Vicky has some gorgeous pictures of her trip to Sydney which you simply must see!

Fudgey has finished Elenia and it’s gorgeous!

Happy Father’s Day to all you Daddies and Daddies-to-be out there… and finally, I have a Curly Tailed Rosy… do you?