Talk about confetti! This design is full of it, but the fine details are worth it. It doesn't look like much, but if you know what you're looking for, you can make out the rear wings of a moth and a bunny ear.
Details can be found here (I hope!).

Next up is another HAED design, Rose Tinted.

Labels: Princess Asleep

I'm at work and so incredibly bored. Not so much to do in Admissions now that classes are into their second week. Blah. I can't file because I slammed my hand in a drawer yesterday, it still hurts, and filing would just rip up my fingers even more. So I'm checking for applications on transcripts and SAT score reports that didn't have apps when they were received. Blah. And when I couldn't stand another second, I switched to my daughters ex-boyfriend's MySpace and read a little of that. Can't really consider that snooping since it's out there for anyone to read, right? But now I'm done with that...

In a few minutes I'll go to lunch and then only 2 1/2 hours to go. Somedays it just seems endless.

I am totally in heaven -- I finally broke down and purchased season 1 and 2 of Northern Exposure. I was a little concerned because reviews on Amazon were saying that the original music wasn't included. If you've ever had the pleasure of watching this show, you know that the music was a big part of what made it special. I've watched the first 3 episodes and haven't noticed anything amiss. While some of it may have been changed, the important parts of the sound track seem to be intact.

I'm going to try to hold out on watching any more and have a big NX watching frenzy over Labor Day weekend!

I'm a little stitched out after the HAED stitching competition and so thought I'd work on my web page a bit. Somehow or other I managed to annihilate it! I'm able to view it with my web software, but it won't load at all in Mozilla. IE is a bit better, but all of the image sources reverted back to my hard drive. Ugh. Rather than continue to try to figure out what the heck I did, I'll just have to bite the bullet and start over from scratch.

Thanks to the HAED stitching comp, I had a wonderful marathon stitching session today. It's been a very long time since I've done that! I worked on her for 12 hours and got almost 1500 stitches done. Would have gotten more done, but I decided to watch a French comedy on IFC, which turned out to be quite good, and so I spent more time reading subtitles than stitching!

I'm stitching her on 25 count cream Lugana, full stitches one over one.

Charted by Michele Sayetta, Heaven and Earth Designs. Artwork by Linda Ravenscroft.

Labels: Babysitting

Link to Knoebels Amusement Park


My lovely daughter, Kelsey, gearing up for the day with a Cappuccino.










Injured bald eagles who have found a home at Knoebels. The female has lost a wing and cannot survive in the wild. The male has lost part of a wing and also suffers from a leg injury. Since eagles mate for life, these may have been rescued together and are being kept together even though the male can still fly. Although sad to see these majestic beings caged, I felt honored to have the opportunity to get a good look at them. They truly are breath-taking!

Kelsey and her cousin, first in line, waiting for the Phoenix roller coaster to open. The Phoenix is the best roller coaster I have ever been on and consistently ranks among the top ten coasters in the country. The line got horrendously long toward the end of the day (which is our traditional riding time) so I only rode it seven or eight times. It was a blast!




This is me and one of my nieces on the Fandango. It's basically just a big swing that also spins around slowly. Also like a swing, it doesn't quite make it all the way over. It's an awesome ride!




Here are my girls on the Grand Carousel. You can still grab the brass ring which is what Kelsey is doing. I've never tried it, because you have to lean out a bit, and I'm afraid of falling off!



Not the best picture, but this is Randi on the High Speed Thrill Coaster. She's in the front with her hands in the air. The kids loved this ride and went on it three times in a row. I only managed it once -- it is horribly wrenching and not quite so much fun for those of us who aren't as young as we feel! Once we learned that the littler kids could ride with the bigger kids, I bailed. My sister had to ride it every time, though, since there weren't enough bigger kids to go around. She's sitting in the last car, holding on for dear life!

Here we are on the Ferris Wheel. It's a big one and scares me a bit. But the ride is relaxing and the view is incredible. My sister was in the car ahead of us with the boys and I sat with the girls. I tried to get a picture of my mom, who was in the car behind us, but this was the best I could do. I think the blur is a smudge on the lens, since it showed up in a bunch of pictures. Sure does look like a spirit, though, doesn't it?

The girls on the Merry Mixer.











Two of my nephews, my daughter, a niece and my sister on the Pioneer Train. My mom and another niece were also riding, but I couldn't get everyone in the picture. This train is great. It's a mile and a half ride through the woods. We saw some squirrels, I was hoping to see a deer like last year, but no luck. We also saw some trees that were uprooted during the flooding at the end of June. There are two tunnels and it also goes under the Twister, the other roller coaster at the park.

Two of my sister's kids, two of my brother's kids, and my daughter taking a break to watch the swans in one of the creeks that flow through the park. I had a lot of fun with these kids, my mother, and sister. The kids are close in age and were getting along great. It was just as much fun watching them ride as it was to ride myself (maybe more, even). Plus it gave us adults a chance to rest!



My daughter was the oldest of these three and was having a grand old time being the biggest.

I dubbed these three the spice girls because my niece had wanted to be called Ginger the last time I saw her. At that time we had nicknamed Randi Freckles, but we changed that to Cinnamon. And when my brother's daughter joined the group I called her Nutmeg to fit in with the theme.


The question of which sex is the better driver has been answered! My nephew and niece both took a ride on these mini go-carts. My nephew's group was all boys and my niece's all girls. The boys had much more difficulty maneuvering than the girls. They could drive okay, but they seemed to have trouble noticing obstructions in the road and kept running into things, including each other. Perhaps they thought they were on the bumper cars! The girls, on the other hand, managed to avoid collisions of any kind.

And here we have the ladies, my two girls, my sister, and her two girls. Although ladies is questionable. Women for sure, though.









I hope you enjoyed the revisitation of my Knoebels trip. As always, we laughed, we screamed (and I cackled) , we walked, we rode the rides, we walked some more, but most of all had a lot of fun.

Since I have 65 active WIPs plus another 35 or so fully kitted WIP wannabes and I'm horribly impulsive (like you couldn't figure that out!) and unable to stick to a simple 1-65 rotation AND am unable to remove any of my lovelies from said rotation, I have had to work out some way of ensuring that everyone get a turn while allowing me to give special attention to those who are currently screaming the loudest. And, oh yes, I would like to finish something once in a while as well. And so was born my rotational theory. Which I actually managed to stick to for a whole month. Well, mostly. The poor dear in the final slot (which was one of my favorites, even) was sorely neglected. After actually finishing something I was feeling entitled to do whatever I pleased and resented being "forced" to work on a certain thing.

I did a little rearranging so that after the finishing slot I allowed myself to work on whatever I pleased. And wahlah!

First, all my WIPs are divided into two main categories. HAEDs (30) and Everything Else (35). The plan is to get to each of these at least once before starting the whole thing over again. It will likely take years but at least I can pretend I have no UFOs. I also have two designations which get special attention: BAPs and Favorites. Again, I plan to go through all the ones in a certain designation before starting over with that designation. I plan to rotate each project for 4 days and have 7 slots which should get me through a round each month. So for August:

1. Anything goes - Land of Enchantment (HAED)
2. Favorite - Babysitting (HAED)
3. Non-HAED - Noah's Sub (Stoney Creek)
4. HAED - Princess Asleep
5. Favorite - Rose Tinted (HAED)
6. BAP - Bookkeep (HAED)
7. Finish - Peacock Majesty (Just Nan)

Hopefully this will be flexible enough that I can stick to it without resentment and structured enough that the anxiety that mounts with a screaming rotation of 65 projects will be alleviated. Very HAED-heavy, but I've been feeling a bit deprived and the withdrawl certainly contributed to the neglect my poor Houses of Hawk Run Hollow received.

If you're not an obsessional stitcher you're probably wondering why the men in the white jackets haven't come to get me a long time ago. But those of you are, you know exactly what I mean!

Labels: Rotational Theory