Feb 25/07

Just a little update on the El Salvador Habitat trip. I will be flying to Toronto in May to do the Habitat for Humanity leadership training so that I will have a clue as to what I am supposed to do. Rotary-wise, a committee is going to be struck at the next Rotary club executive meeting and I am going to speak to a neighbouring Rotary club on Mar. 5/07 to tell them my story and to encourage them to become involved. My boss approached me the other day and told me that he wants to make a contribution to this project. My article in the NB Pharmacists Association newsletter has been read by my colleagues around the province as evidenced by the comments I have received when chitchatting with them. My approach is to create awareness and hope that the money and materiel will follow.

Buenas dias!

Feb 8/07

These cute little snowmen are from "The Cross Stitcher" December 2004. Four of them are stitched on 14 count cornflower blue Aida and 2 are stitched on 14 count Delft blue Aida. I did not have enough fabric to stitch them all on one and the intention is to give them away as Christmas gifts so I was okay with them not all being on the same colour. The only things I changed are the colour of the berries on the wreath which were supposed to be lemon yellow (DMC 307), but that did not appeal to me so I switched them to DMC E321 and I added snowflakes to all of them. The original pattern only called for the snowflake to be stitched in DMC 932 on the snowman in the middle of the top row, but it snowed here last weekend while I was backstitching these cuties and I decided to stitch snowflakes on all of them with DMC E3747 to give the snowflakes some shine.

There is a funny back story to this set of ornaments. Two weeks ago, I was almost done all of the cross stitching when I ran out of one of the colours and could not figure out a way to substitute anything on hand without ruining the final snowman. Being sick with a sinusitis infection and bronchitis at the same time and having to work overtime because all 3 of us pharmacists at the shop were sick, I could not find the time or the energy to drive even a half hour away to pick up the floss. My youngest (6 foot 2, 280 lbs) brother lives a few blocks away from my LNS so I asked him to go pick up the floss and bring it out to Mom's for Sunday dinner. He called me from the store saying that the colour did not exist (he had written down 392 instead of 932) and I could hear the 2 shopowners twittering in the background so I figure that it is a rare occasion to see a hockey bruiser in the shop! :-) Then, he proceeded to forget two weeks in a row to bring it out to Mom's so I went to work on the previously posted project until I picked up the floss from his apartment last night when I was in the city for my Spanish class. The upside is that I got the floss for free because he felt like such a dork for forgetting it twice when he is usually quite conscientious when it comes to his older sister!

Projects #27-32/50

Oh yeah. I forgot that I must admit a mea culpa about the challenge. In my defence, I did hold out until I was at least half way through the challenge and I have gone a whole 4 months without buying ANY patterns. Well, my friend and moneysucker eBay had Teresa Wentzler's Four Seasons Fairies and I am a sucker for TW designs so somehow the bid button was clicked and the pattern just fell into my mailbox. Please let me be strong enough to regroup and not falter again!

Feb 5/07

As I was going through my boxes and baskets of patterns this past weekend, I came across this one that I purchased in a shop in Robinvale, VIC, Australia. The company is called Red Brolly and the pattern is "Christmas" designed by Bronwyn Hayes. It is stitched on a piece of muslin that I found in my fabric stash. The whole thing took about 7 hours to trace and stitch, mostly because my concentration on cross-stitching has made my embroidery stitching skills a bit rusty!

Project #26/50.