Finally, WIP pictures!

Life has been so crazy. I know I've been busy, but for the life of me I can't remember what I've done... Picture heavy post, so you've been warned!

First up here, my sock! I'm very proud of my inch and a half of ribbing there. The yarn is Trampoline Stretch and my needles are sz 5 Clover bamboo. I love those Clover bamboo needles. I started this Thursday night at the Parrot Stitch.

That long strip of purple is the first strip of my knitted lapghan that I'm making. 7 shades of purple! Lots of baby yarn, and the fuzzy one is from N.Y. Yarns, the Cloud line. It is so unbelievably soft, like a cloud actually. Imagine that...

And this little thing is my square for the Hurricane Katrina quilt. It's the Saints fleur de lis. Living in Louisiana myself I just had to stitch it. The chart was in my Pattern A Day calendar that I got for Christmas. Done with plain ole DMC, a blend of 3820 and 725.


I also just realized that I never posted my latest blob of Alternative Reality. It's still very much a blob, and I haven't had it out since I got back from my Mimi's house. I think the green patch is turning into moss. This is the lower left hand corner.

SBQ- Fabric

I'm a bit late, lol.

Today's SBQ was suggested by Danielle and is:

What company produces your favorite hand-dyed fabric? Are there any
companies whose hand-dyed fabric you do not like? If so, why?


I can't pick just one favorite hand-dyed company. I'm addicted to hand-dyed fabric. Huge fan of Enchanted Fabrics, Silkweaver, and Sugar Maple. I've yet to come across a hand-dyed that I don't like, but I'm far from having tried all of them, lol. I do know that dyed lugana doesn't make me like the stuff, lol.

In fact, I'm going to do the St. Petersburg Garden on an EF fabric, Evergreen. Lori's fabrics are so soft and wonderfully done and she's a real gem herself.

I started my first sock last night!!!!!!!!! It's just a simple tube sock so I can get the hand of knitting in the round, and then I'll work my way up to heels. I'm being taught by a master sock-knitter (or at least she seems so to me, lol) and thoroughly enjoying myself. I have a grand total of one inch of ribbing done. Have a whole bunch of pics I want to put up sometime this weekend, including my sock. Have also finished the first strip of my lapghan. Whoo! 1 down, 6 to go.

A sad day in Louisiana

Chicago: 39
New Orleans: 14

But regardless of the score, it's been a season to remember. Beating arch-rival the Cowboys. IN Dallas, running plays there that have never been successfully run, made it past the first round of the playoffs, brought a shattered city and broken state back to life and gave us all something to hope for.

Next year, the Saints will be even more dangerous. This was a phenomenal accomplishment for any team to pull off. It's made all the sweeter by the fact that it was finally our turn.

Silly me

Wednesday came and went and I didn't get the SBQ question. Couldn't figure out why, since I knew there was one. It hit me just now. My email changed Sunday and I uhm, hadn't gone to the Yahoo site yet to change my email. I'm feeling kinda sheepish. I remembered to change all my other Yahoo groups!

So here it is!

Have you had a happy dance yet this year? If so, tell us about it! (Or
just point to the entry that talks about it.) If not, when do you
predict it will be?

Yes, I have actually. I stitched my square for the Hurricane Katrina quilt project. Started it Wednesday when I was home all day because the weather was too nasty to go to work, then I finished it Thursday. Will be taking a pic tomorrow and then I have to get it in the mail.

My next HD will be my brother's wedding announcement. Before April 20th, lol. Ordered the last batch of silks I need to floss toss, and they should be arriving middle of the week. Lots of Vikki Clayton silks! And I just had to get more than the 2 skeins I was after to make the shipping worthwhile. Ah, the hardships of being a silk addict.

Party time!!!

Saints: 27
Eagles: 24

PARTY!!!!!!! New Orleans is a madhouse of partying right now. Kinda glad I don't live down there, lol. The streets around the Superdome probably won't clear out before daybreak. Every bar in the Quarter will be open all night, there's probably impromptu parades going on too. And I kinda wish I could see it. There's a whole lot of people all over the state who won't go to sleep tonight.

This is the first time in franchise history that the Saints have made it this far. Next up the division title. Then actually possibly for real the Super Bowl. This just might be the year that hell freezes over. That's one of our state jokes, hell will freeze over when the Saints win the Super Bowl.

A fitting end to the day. I have proven that my Southern womanhood is still intact and successfully made chicken and dumplings. It was the first time I've made them in 10 years. And they came out almost perfect!

Fiddling around

With my Muvo that is. LOVE IT!!!!!! It came yesterday and I'm ripping music and loading it up. Whoo! For once I actually like Windows Media Player. Makes loading players very easy. Not to mention how fast it is at ripping music.

It's a great and eclectic collection of music. Broadway, rock, Big Band, Russian folk music, Buble.. I have very eclectic tastes. Now I just need to get my hands on my brother's Metallica CD's and rip my favorite one. I don't remember which album it is, just that it's the one with The Creeping Death and For Whom The Bell Tolls on it.

Was fiddling around with my laghan today too. I have to go find another color. One of the ones I have, a Bernat baby yarn, is going to be too close to another color I have. Also a Bernat baby yarn. I had thought the second one I was getting was a variegated. It's not, it's a self-striping. I tested it out on the 'ghan, but the stripes were going to be so far apart that it would end up looking almost exactly like the other Bernat color.

The self-striping one will eventually get made into a blanket of some sort. Either for a baby or Project Linus. Probably Project Linus since nobody I know will be having a baby anytime soon. That I know of anyway, lol.

Man do I love Sing, Sing, Sing. Though I beg to differ with that article and I say that the definitive version of Sing, Sing, Sing was recorded by Gene Krupa. Benny's version is terribly UN-danceable. The tempo changes too much. Gene's is much smoother and also doesn't go on forever and a half.

SBQ- stitching dreams

Today's SBQ is:
Do you dream of running your own LNS/ONS? If so, tell us about your
dream. If not, tell us about your cross stitch dream… maybe you dream
of designing, dyeing your own floss or fabric, etc.

I do have a dream of running my own LNS. I think it would be both, brick and mortar with a good website. It would be called, surprise surprise, Romantic Stitches. I would specialize in romantic designs and feature Mirabilia and Passione Ricamo. I would also have a large selection of hand-dyeds from Enchanted Fabrics, Silkweaver and Sugar Maple. Also in stock would be silks. Lots and lots of silks! Dinky Dyes, Vikki Clayton, Waterlilies, etc. I would definitely have the full color range of Dinky Dyes in stock and on display.

If it were possible, I'd also sell Venus threads. I really wish they were sold in the US, they're far superior to DMC, IMO.

Plugged in

Just ordered my MP3 player. And I didn't get the Zen. ZipZoomFly had the Creative Labs MuVo 2GB for just 10 bucks more than the Zen AND free shipping. Too good to pass up. Twice as many songs, same features, drag-and-drop loading, direct USB connection and AAA batteries. I think I done good. And for only $1.99 shipping, I'll have it Friday and I can load it up this weekend. :D

I will need to track down a case for it, but that shouldn't be too hard. If I can't find one locally I'll just get the one from Creative Labs.

Besides, nobody has a purple Zen right now! *pouts*

What's in a name

The town I live in is called Ball. Whenever I go to the Weather Channel website to check the temp and where the rain is, the "sponsored ads" crack me up every time. Apparently, people who live Ball should buy lots of balls.

I spent last night in a writing workshop over at Dancing Word. The "speaker" was Susan May Warren, one of my favorite authors and a former missionary to Russia. She's an amazing writer with an incredible gift for breathing life into her characters. She does it through dialogue and internal monologue (their thoughts). The workshop was all about crafting dialogue.

Boy did I learn a lot! I'm eagerly waiting for the transcript of the chat so I can print it out and mark it up with a highlighter, lol.

At the end of the workshop, she opened up the floor for the attendees to post a scene or paragraphs of dialogue for her to crititque/make suggestions. I did just that. It was the first time that anyone has ever seen a piece of my serious writing. And it was wonderful! She has the same love of all things Russian that I do, so it was surprisingly easy to share part of this particular story.

Her comments were most helpful! I was stuck at one scene in the beginning, and I couldn't shake it loose. She made the simple suggestion of changing the setting, and all of a sudden, there it was! Nearly the entire first third of the book is now sitting in my head, waiting for me to connect the dots and get it down on paper. Or in this instance keyboard to word processor. I also had an amazing spiritual paralle present itself in regards to trains and how far the east is from the west. The story opens in 1962 Russia, with one of the two main characters being seperated from his family. By train. He's going east- to Siberia, they're going west- to the US. It's also given me more ways to build scenes around the title and how important the character's hands are. He's a violinist.

It's really going to be a wonderful book, and is going to be getting a lot of attention from me. I'm ready to get truly serious about my writing and start carving out time for it. And I'll be starting by focusing on this story. It's got so much potential and I just can't let it down. Starting Monday, I'm going to be off in the mornings. I'm going to set aside at least one hour of every Monday morning just to write. I never feel like writing in the evenings, I'm too tired after the events of a full day to let my imagination run wild.

I'm expecting my readers to hold me to that!

Setting goals

It's that time of year again. Time for the annual setting of goals at the HAED BB. I've set my HAED goals there, so here I would like to set goals for my other WIP's.

1: Finish the stitching on my Iris pillow and then actually make it into a pillow. And enter it in the Silkweaver Showcase.

2: Finish St. Basil's Cathedral. Will be entering it in SW Showcase.

3: By the end of the year, have a rotation slot freed up for the St. Petersburg Garden.

4: Do my darnedest to finish up at least one page of Through A Mother's Eyes. (If I can just get past that mountain of fractionals in the mirror I'll make it on this one)

#1 is doable if I'll just work on it regularly. It's not a big design, 8x9". I can do it if I'll just work on it more than once every 6 months. Part of the reason I don't like working on it is the stupid color chart. It's a Paula Vaughan. As much as I love her designs, I will never do very many of them because I simply hate the charting. Color charts drive me bonkers!

#2 is also doable I think. St. B is a quick stitch when I'm working on it. The chart is 4 pages and I'm nearly done with a whole page. I've only got about 6 weeks worth of stitching in it right now. Would have made more progress at Mimi's last week if I had remembered my blending filament... Plus the fabric I picked is giving it *exactly* the look that I wanted it to have, which makes stitching on it sheer joy.