May 31/09

Yesterday was a rainy, grey day so I rented some movies, downloaded these patterns from the Michaels website and stitched up these bibs as part of my campaign to reduce my stash! No babies in sight for me or any of my friends at the moment, but one never knows!

May 28/09

Nothing too exciting to post about at the moment besides the usual craziness of my life. I have my tickets booked to Mongolia in June and am now trying to finalize all the rest of the details for the trip. There are some personal things that are in great flux for me at the moment. Who knows what the next few months will bring for me!
My next big cross stitch project is going to be QS Iris. I recently repainted my living room with Benjamin Moore's Desert Mauve so a few accessories that used to match Louisbourg Green do not go so well with the new colour, one of them being a mirror with a green leafy designed frame. In its place, I plan to hang the new cross stitch when I finish it in the next 6 months or so. The colours of the threads are so beautiful that I can not wait to start working on it, but I need to finish the Teresa Wentzler bookmarks I started as I have a golden rule to only work on one stitching project at a time.

May 24/09

This stitch was a quick and easy Dimensions kit that my best friend gave me for Christmas. We have commiserated and laughed over many a cup of coffee over the years! I am working on some small projects like this one and some bookmarks as I try to decide what to stitch for my living room. The room has just been repainted and some of the decorations no longer work with the new colour so I was trying to think of a cross stitch picture that could replace the mirror that is hanging in there now. I think that a design called "QS Iris" that I bought from HAED may just do the trick.

May 17/09 Part II

Mom lent me her camera so here is a piccie of the finished stocking!

May 17/09

The lens on my camera is causing me trouble so unfortunately I have no pictures of the stocking I have been stitching for my mother. What a moment that was to put in the last stitch and to be able to think about the next stocking!

I have been doing some reading in the past week or so about the Middle East and Haiti. Jared Cohen has written a compelling book about the youth of the Middle East in a book called "Children of Jihad". Once again, I was struck by how the people he met were "just folks". They want the same things that we do here in Canada and the US: good living conditions, friends, to enjoy life, education and employment and to live life without repression and fear. He looks below the hysteria of media reports and takes the time to really understand the people. "On That Day Everybody Ate" by Margaret Trost follows the journey she made after the death of her husband to find herself and how she founded an organization called What if?. It is haunting to me how children are starving to death on our literal doorstep. Haiti is not that far away from the US and yet unfortunate historical events like the US-led embargo of Haiti after the successful slave revolution have led Haiti to the disaster that is happening there now. The US was still engaged in slavery at the time and did not want Haiti to succeed post revolution because it might have inspired the American slaves.
I just took a look at my Kiva account and I see that I am inching closer towards my goal of having enough loans repaid each month that I can start a new loan. I currently have ten loans on the go and about $15 was repaid this month from five of them so I am $10 shy of starting another loan. My only criticism of Kiva is that I have not been able to find any loans for women who are single parents. Having watched my mom raise a family of four kids with no help of any kind from my dad has given me an inside look at how hard it can be even here in Canada.
So, hopefully my camera will sort itself out or I will remember to borrow my mom's camera to take photos of the completed stocking. I hope that my Canadian readers are enjoying their Victoria Day long weekend!

May 9/09

I was looking for some books on Chapters Indigo a few weeks ago and checked out the cross stitch books to make up the order to $39 to get the free shipping deal. This heart comes from a book called "Stitch Graffiti" by Heather Holland-Daley that caught my eye while ordering from Chapters. She included an alphabet at the back of the book so I decided to add the word "dream". I used her photo as a guideline for the colours as I used up more skeins from my odds and ends box.

Hmmmm.....so I did not accepted to grad school for September. I had applied to some universities to do a Masters in International Development Studies, but was not successful. There has been a little struggle going on in my head these past few months as I grappled with the fact that I may not get accepted (this was before the rejection letters came in the mail) and about whether this is the path I want to follow or not. These thoughts are still there although the figuring out the life plan thing is pushed into the background until I finish the Habitat trip to Mongolia. Who knows where I will end up? I certainly do not!

May 1/09

I finished these ornaments last night. Sorry that the photos are so dark, but it is grey and rainy here and I could not wait to post the photos! The ornaments are double-sided.
Side 1:

Side 2:

They are stitched on 14 count Aida that has silver threads woven into it. The silver gives it a snowy sparkly effect. The threads are from my miscellaneous box so no two ornaments are fully alike because I was playing around with the colours and most times, I only had enough to stitch just one ornament. The designer is Alma Lynne and the designs are from a booklet called "Snow Folks at Home".