I was so disgusted to get a notice about school uniforms with my daughter's report card. Been there, done that. The worst thing is it'll be a huge controversy and the school board will spend huge amounts of time trying to defend it's position. It's an easy out that continues down the road of squelching free-thinking and creativity.

I'm finally finished with round number 4. Here's Babysitting:


Click here for details.

I haven't worked up my next iteration yet, but I decided to start something new as my "anything goes" piece. And, surprise! surprise! I choose The Nostalgic Needle's Tree of Life with Dragon, one of the smaller designs I had kitted up. Since it's done over 1 on 32 count, it's going to be really teeny tiny -- 3.5 x 4.5 to be exact. I'm hoping working on something I have a hope of finishing fairly quickly might help with this funk I've been in. We'll see.

Labels: Babysitting

Proven once again. Thank you for the comments and good luck sent my way. Initially the prosecuter told me all she could do was reduce the charge. She seemed pretty set on that, but then out of the blue she changed her mind and dropped the charges. I truly believe that having those good luck thoughts out there for me generated a cosmic jolt to her conscience. I'm so glad to have this over with. I still get upset when I think about how that police officer treated me.

I didn't get nearly as much done on this as I would have liked -- and spent far to much time doing it. It seems I'm in a bit of a stitching slump.

Details can be found here.

If you are so inclined, some good thoughts headed in my direction tomorrow morning would be appreciated. I have to be in court at 8:30 am for on a suspended license charge. I'm hoping to get the charges dropped (since it never would have happened if I'd received notice from the DMV), and if not it shouldn't be too hard to prove that it was suspended only because I forgot to pay a ticket (which is a nominal fine). But I'm still a little nervous about it.

Labels: Revelation

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

This is a surprising result. Except for the big things part, anyone who's taken a look at my WIP list already knows that!

I did the test three different times, modifying the questions where I had more than one response and it came up the same all three times. I wonder if maybe there's a cookie or something that forces it to give the same result?

Although, I have to say that nothing really bad has ever happened to me (that I remember, anyway). I started thinking about this the other night when my furnace stopped working (on the coldest night we've had, no less). It was cold, but fortunately it wasn't windy, I've got a small space heater, and lots of blankets. We didn't have heat for about 36 hours, the temperatures were between 30-45 the whole time, and I'm colder now than I was at any point in that 36 hours because it's windy! And I didn't even have to pay to have it fixed because it turned out to be the gas company's error. So even in my misfortune, good luck does come my way.

Well, it is true. I do not exist.

My son played Torvold in a production of A Doll's House (link to picture and article) and there was one part where he tells another character that needlework is so much more attractive to watch than knitting and he picks up his wife's hoop and demonstrates a stitch. This was so funny to me because I have tried to interest him in my passion to no avail and he has in fact told me that he would rather die. So I used my fancy new cell phone to take a video and was planning on posting it here with much glee. Alas, after much time trying to figure out how to convert the thing to a usable format, I discover that there is no sound. Rat fishes!!!!! The very worse thing is that I didn't take any pictures of him holding the needlework because I was too busy messing with the camera phone video. Blah.

I still don't know what is under my house, other than my cats. They have decided they like it under there. Which has taken the hole from a little bothersome to a real problem. Hopefully I feel up to going to Lowes tomorrow and get some plywood or something to fix it.

I didn't get much done on Serenity. I haven't felt much like stitching and I went to bed early a couple of nights. Plus I finally got my PDA working again and downloaded some games. Big mistake! I get sucked in and waste soooooo much time losing at solitaire.


I'm using the recommended Crescent Colors and 34 count fawn Weddington linen. I'm not 100% happy with my fabric choice, but it's not so bad that I have decided to scrap it. The coverage is not as good as I would like and there is a lot of fabric show through. It looks particularly bad with the brown/green thread in the left-most motif. Although, I shouldn't say it looks bad, because that isn't really it. It's more that the colors don't appear quite as vibrant as on the cover image. I'll probably keep this one going, but in the future I'm going to be using the recommended fabric for Vilma's designs.

Labels: Serenity

I spent a wee bit longer stitching on this one than scheduled, but once I got started I decided to keep on with it until I got the full width done. So here is the top 30 rows of Song of the Dead by Stephanie Law charted by HAED.


I didn't have a piece of Monaco large enough, so I ended up using 25 count antique white Lugana. A bit of the fabric does show through, but when you step back it isn't noticeable. The detail is really incredible -- the picture doesn't even come close to doing it justice. I can't wait to get to some of the subtleties in this piece to see how they come out.

I'll start working on Serenity by Examplars from the Heart tomorrow. I don't know how much time I'll have for stitching over the next few days, since my son is performing in his school's production of A Doll's House tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday. Plus I'm working Saturday morning. Fortunately Monday is a holiday, though, I'll need the extra day after this weekend!

But for now I think I'll head off to bed and try to get to sleep before 3 am. Not sure how successful I'll be since there is a creature under the house that has been making attempts all evening to come up through a hole in my bathroom floor. Trailers suck. My cats are all in a tither, but have been keeping whatever it is at bay. I'll let them stay in my room, so the monster doesn't get me. Which will create other difficulties to disrupt my sleep. The female lays on me and the males get this sudden burst of energy in the middle of the night and chasing each other like tasmanian devils. I've gotten used to her using my shoulder for a bed, but when those boys jump on me, I always wake up (usually having suffered a puncture on some part of my anatomy). Of course, I may have nothing to worry about. I haven't seen the cats for a while. Perhaps they decided to take matters into their own hands and have gone down the hole to get whatever it is that's under there.

Labels: Song of the Dead

Now that Christmas has passed and I managed to stick with my budget (!!), I'm treating myself to Cirque des Cercles. I also wanted to the order the threads and so was searching for the Long Dog Samplers website (which I never seem to be able to find and always neglect to bookmark once I do find it!) which has information regarding thread usage and stumbled across this Cross Stitch Calculator on the Hand Dyed Fibers website. So awesome! I'm a huge fan of Vikki Clayton's silks and use her conversions for many of the samplers I'm stitching. I've been all over her site and have never seen this before -- probably because I'm a geek and have a fabric calculator set up with my chart info database, so I never checked it out. Stupid me, this is a great tool. Thank you, Vikki!