WIP Updates and Finishes

I'm averaging, what, 3 months per update? The camera's memory card has been found and here are some pictures. First up, the two finishes...



"Winter's Grazing" by Lois Winston

From The Cross Stitcher, Feb. 2007. On 16ct Grey Aida, using DMC threads. Approx 93 hours to complete.

wXSw (Wonderful XS World) mystery SAL, created by Helga Mandl Designs and Barbara Ana Designs

On 14c Oatmeal Aida, with DMC threads (comparable Light Effects threads substituted for white, 334, and 818). Approx 66 hours.



And the WIP updates...

The Tree Skirt as of Sept. 19:


"An October Box" as of Oct. 11:


The younger terror's blanket as of Nov. 24:


DH's bookmark as of Aug.5 :


BoINK as of Aug. 30:

Hurricane Ike - Back to the "Civilization", Pt. 1

We survived Hurricane Ike with no major losses. We just got power back last night, so I'm catching up with bills and replenishing the groceries. I'll get an update on the past week as soon as I find the time.

The Best Laid Plans...

That's 2 Hurricanes/TS's down...how many to go?
Thanks to being prepared, once again we are getting squat from the storm. Which is perfectly fine with me.
Hubby finished fixing my dryer and I went on a laundry rampage; got a weeks worth of laundry done in one day. Woohoo!!! No need to worry about until later in the week now. Since I'm still getting used to the schedule, my guess is I'll spend that extra time catching up on sleep and/or reading.
I just finished reading "The Snow Queen" by Mercedes Lackey. Good upbeat fantacy story, even if it was predicatable, thanks to the fairy tale premise.
Now I'm in the middle of reading "Dreamsong II" by George R. R. Martin, and found a couple more books, that he had a hand in, which I'll need to add to my To-Read list.

It's the beginning of the month , so back to the monthly reports.

Tropical Storm Edouard

Now that my broadband provider finally got my network up and running again, hopefully (it's been up and down since Saturday), I find out there is a tropical storm making a bee-line for Houston.
No worries, my friends, I will be offline for the next couple of days preparing for the storm (today) and weathering it. Don't expect to hear from me until Wednesday at the earliest.

Way past my bedtime

OMG...I am so tired!
As many may (or may not) know, the newest book in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer was released at midnight last night. Bookstores everywhere had releaseparties, and my daughter convinced me to let her go, and to top it off, I volunteered to chaperone her and her friends.
What was I thinking! No chairs to sit in while I waited, massively over-crowded...well, hello clautophobia, how are we this evening.

Actually, other than the teenage girl screaming (cough, and some teenage boy screaming...really, it happened) and the press of bodies, it wasn't too bad. I only had to leave the store once because of my clautrophobia, and once I knew there was a quick and easy way out of the store, it didn;t rear it's ugly head again. Also, I have to say, Barnes & Noble had their act together. Once midnight hit (wish I had ear plugs for that count down), the line moved very fast; we were out the door with the book in about 30 minutes. In addition to getting "Breaking Dawn" for my daughter, I was able to pick up "The Host" for me; both hardback copies for about $30 total (Hello sale! and Love you Membership card!).
I got home around 1:30 AM. Which wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't woken up at 8 this morning! Really, I NEED 10 hours a night to fuction properly. Oh well, I should sleep great tonight! House cleaning, here I come...

How to Change Colors in a Cross Stitch Pattern

Paula of Paula's Needlework Addiction wrote a great explanation of how to change color in a pattern. She mentions using the DMC Color Card for help, when you are missing a color in your collection. I'd like to add that I find mine indispensable, and you'll want the card with floss swatches and not the one you print out.
These are fairly easy to find at various online shops for around $10. Just Google "DMC color card". Also you can check with your LNS to see if they have any in stock. You won't need the most up-to-date card with the "new" color variations, etc., just the one with the regular DMC line, so you might be able to find a really cheap one on EBay.

Slowly Getting Back to Speed

Not a lot of stitching has been happening over the past month thanks to both the PC crash and some massive knots in my upper back and neck. Give ya' three guesses where I store my stress!

BUT...I got the camera software loaded and pictures taken!

First up is "Book of Ink Circles" (BoINK):

I am loving this one! I put in about 30 hours on it before I got 'sick' of it. Then after 2 hours into the next project, I wanted to pick it back up again!

I'm up to 200 hours on the "Winter White Tree Skirt":


And "Winter's Grazing" is still almost done:

I'm thinking about 20 - 30 more hours to complete it.

I've also restarted the Project Challenge. My goal is 15 or more project finishes before I splurge buy again. I had to take advantage of Cross My Heart Inc, going out of business sale. I have the "Earth Dragon" and wanted the other three elemental dragons before they became impossible to find. The good news, however, is I used the money I made off of the stash I have been selling to buy them. Bonus is that it makes hubby happy too. (He like when I buy for myself on occasion, but knows how our finances have been lately.)
On that note, hubby has picked up a full time job to supplement our income. For those who did not know, he is a real estate investor, and his income was affected by the housing crash. He had to change strategies (yeah, commercial property), however commercial property has a longer turn over rate (at least in regards to money coming in to feed and cloth the kids). So now my poor man is working 120 hours a week.

Now about this year's swimsuits. After two stores and 20+ different suits, I've found that manufacturers think everyone is an 'A' cup (including plus size women) and we want to cover the nipple only. Seriously, I get better support and coverage by going topless! On the up side, I got a new pair of shorts and they are a 10! (Yes folks, that's down from an 18 at the beginning of last year.)

Anyone know of any stores that sell swimsuits that have coverage and support? I'm talking 'XL' top (think D-cup)and 'L' bottom. I don't mind showing off cleavage. Just not down to my navel. Oh, and no bikinis, please. Trust me, no one wants to see these stretch marks.

The Good News!

In some freak coincidence, it turns out I have not lost several things that were going to take a long time in recreating. I had saved a coupe of things on a memory stick so I could work on them, on a laptop, while I watched TV. So the list of what I have:

• My stitching To-Do list - this will make it a little easier tracking down the freebie patterns I really want.
• A pattern catalog of all the cross stitch magazines I have (this was the big one I was dreading recreating), now I just have to add the magazine itself into the stash software.
• List of everything on my Stash to Go Blog (along with the list of everyone who has bought from me).
• My resume - I even have the latest copy of it, so I won't have to track down my old, not updated for 5 years, hard copy, which is somewhere in the house...I think?
• Some web links - unfortunately no cross stitch links, but I think i have most of those memorized anyway (GRIN)

As for The Gift of Stitching, it turns out I had not moved this year's issues from my work computer to my home yet, so yeah! Also Kristen has contacted me about replacing the ones I have lost (2006 and 2007) at a discount. Kristen, consider yourself hugged...like a bear.

All the critical software is loaded, bills have been payed, and I will load miscellaneous software as I need it, so I am up and running 75%.

Thank you everyone for you well wishes!!

I've lost everything, almost.

My home computer has been giving me problems for the past month or so to where it reached the point I decided it was time to reload the OS. This is not a problem for me. Reloading the OS is a yearly (practically) event, and I keep all my data on a secondary hard drive, as well as backup my settings, so recovery is never an issue.
Until now...
I followed the directions reloading the OS, select the hard drive to be formatted, load OS, etc., but every time I'd boot up after the reload it would come up with the original load. How is this possible when I'm completely erasing it?!? I was getting frustrated until I looked at my drive in Windows; I had been reformatting my spare data drive. Yep! I deleted all of my data, files, pictures, and most importantly, the backup to everything!!!
Can you now imagine how pissed off with myself I was? The one thing I always remember, I forgot. The spare data drive is the larger hard drive, so (hardware wise) it is set as the primary drive. When running the OS install, it see the primary drive as the drive to load the OS and automatically 'names' it C:\. So whenever I reload the OS, I disconnect the primary drive (inside the PC) and force the secondary drive to become the primary, load the OS, then reconnect the primary again.
Never an issue.
No Important Data Ever Lost! Until now...

Stupid techie move on my part. This all occurred on Friday (hence the no pictures of cross stitch updates), and I have been rebuilding the PC since then. I've resigned myself to starting over from scratch on everything...stash database, finding my links, searching down those free patterns I had downloaded, my stitching to-do list, household books (OMG, if you order a download from Quicken, they keep it in your user profile and you can reload the software with out issue....YEAH!), getting all my passwords reset for those I don't remember, pictures...the list is long, but it was not going to cost me money, just time. This morning I remembered something else, as I was continuing with the OS updates and loading the essential softwares, I just lost two years of an online magazine, The Gift of Stitching. Something I'd go ahead and write off if it wasn't for the fact there are projects in them that I want to do. Projects that are spread out over several issues, and getting back order copies aren't free. So much for it not costing me monetarily.

I wonder if the Physical Therapist is going to notice an increase in muscle tension?

Damn I want to whine...

What do you do when your husband laughs evilly...

You get banished from the house so he can set up a surprise party for you.

I knew he was up to something, but it really was a surprise as to who all showed up. But boy are we all tired today. Although it was great seeing the teen girls grouping together and giggling over the band-boys they have crushes on. They can certainly clear a room of all other adult males!