Oct 22/06

Part of one Christmas present is complete! My brother is a soldier in the Canadian army and I have his name for our family Christmas present exchange. I found this pattern on this site and stitched it on some plastic canvas that I had in my heap. He loves to read so I think that it will make an awesome book mark.


So, that makes finish #9. Only 41 more to go!

Oct 19/06

Some more Christmas card finishes:


As you can see, I have been practising some of my hardanger skills (or lack thereof) that I learned recently! There are actually two of the heart shaped, Emie Bishop designed cards that I have completed, but I could not fit all three cards into the scanner so you will just have to believe that I have truly completed projects #6, #7 and #8! The nordic design is a combination of part of a sampler pattern I found in a magazine that I bought at the Rotary book sale and me playing around with some hardanger stitches.

I think that I am going to concentrate on Christmas cards and small projects until the New Year. There are several large patterns that I have collected over the past few years, but I have not decided when I will do them and in what order. Doing the small projects is giving me some time to play around with different things and perhaps this playing around will point me in some sort of direction. Seeing the stash lists that other people have posted makes me feel less quilty about the stuff I have amassed over the years because there are others out there with much more stuff!

Oct 15/06

A little bit of mea culpa here. While I am diligently stitching away at my 50 project challenge as I attempt to reduce the madness also known as my cross-stitching stash while not buying anymore patterns, I kind of succumbed a little bit. My Rotary club held its annual booksale this past weekend and someone had donated a stack of cross-stitch magazines. Yup! You see where this going. At 25 cents a piece, it was hard to pass up so I came home with 7 new-to-me magazines. It was a moment of cheap weakness as I just could not pass up such a great deal! In my defence, there were several really cool patterns that I had noticed at Michaels when I was there last and after standing in front of them long enough that the staff was giving me the "potential shoplifter" eyeball, I walked away emptyhanded.

Also yesterday, I met with most of the team that is going to El Salvador on the HfH program. Everyone seems very interesting and well travelled. This being New Brunswick, it turns out that one of the other women is someone I graduated from high school with! One of the other women had a huge back of soccer balls donated to her so I have to figure out how to deflate three of them and tuck them into my backpack along with all of the other stuff I have to pack before I even think about clothing!

As I type this, the news is on and they have just reported the names of the two soldiers killed yesterday in Afghanistan. My brother is graduating from ROTC this December and is that much closer to being posted overseas so this kind of news makes me so sad. I believe in the work that our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan, but the thought of my brother possibly paying the ultimate price is too difficult to even begin trying to digest. To do what I can, I have a yellow ribbon decal on my car and I wear red on Fridays to show my support for our soldiers.

Well, I should get out into the beautiful day we are having to tackle some of my autumn yard work that needs to be done before it is too late and things get buried under snow.

Oct 8/06

Oops! I started out with the wrong date because a peak at the clock tells me that it is now past midnight. My body clock is a little awry because I am sleeping 10 hours a night to regain any energy at all as I recover from bronchitis.

As part of my long weekend sloth session, I worked on some projects and finished 3 cross stitch Christmas cards:





Apparently, I have a little to learn about uploading photos because something is not lining up correctly, but you get the idea. So, that means that now I have completed #3, #4 and #5. Only 45 projects to go. Already this is excruciating because I found a magazine at work that is chockful of great wintry designs. The magazine is hidden in my stash at work so that one of my siblings can buy it for me after we do the Christmas present name draw this weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving! gobble, gobble!

Oct 5/06

Well, it is hard to believe, but in 23 days I will be well on my way to San Salvador, El Salvador to participate in a Habitat for Humanity program. How cool is that? It all still feels very surreal to me even at this stage of the game as I pile up stuff I need to cart with me and make arrangements for malaria prophylaxis. Here is a link that the HfH group sent us volunteers to check out some of the places we will be.

As always, I hope to check out pharmacies and the needle work of the region as I do on every trip.

My own needlework and running and everything else that I enjoy doing in my spare time came to a screeching halt for the past couple of weeks as I battled the stomach flu which morphed into bronchitis. Today, I wheezed out 3km as I finally felt well enough to even put my sneakers on my feet. Now that I can actually come home from work and not pass out cold from exhaustion, I shall pick up the threads of my life again (pun intended!).

Sept 25/06

The rain and wind were something short of ferocious yesterday and I was/am still recovering from a lovely bout of stomach 'flu so I stayed in and finished project #2:


As soon as I get around to getting a photo of my piece, I will replace the picture I have posted that is from Teresa Wentzler's site. The embroidery part was been completed for a couple of years, but somehow it got stashed in my basement and was recently uncovered as I was moving things around for some renovations. Yesterday was spent either hunched over my ironing board or sewing the thing together. I did choose to not put any backing on the bell pull as was suggested in TW's finishing directions because I place alot of importance on the niceness of the back of a piece and I want to be able to admire my handiwork.

Sept 24/06

Okay, after much back and forth, I decided to attempt the 50 projects challenge as well. I do have some things that are coming from eBay so for me, the challenge starts after I had bid on those items last week. With that being said, I finished my first challenge piece last night (I scanned it in so I apologize for the quality of the image!):



This piece was completed for a class on Hardanger that I took recently at the Count On Us store in Saint John. The teacher was June Bull.

Sept 17/06

I really must get myself hooked up with a digital camera because that certainly is half of the fun in reading the cross stitch blogs that I have wandered through. Because of the other bloggers, I have looked and bought some awesome stuff like HAED where I bought a beautiful pattern of irises.

Not much to report in terms of my current project of baby bibs and a receiving blanket. I have almost completed all of the cross-stitching and will hopefully soon be backstitching the receiving blanket. There is a bit of urgency to get these things done ASAP because I am leaving for El Salvador for two weeks to participate in a Habitat for Humanity program at the end of October and I am also involved in the organizing committee for the 2nd Annual Hampton Pharmasave Skins Spiel. Oh yeah, and I still have to work, sleep, eat and shower in there some time as well.

On this blog, the blogger refers to a brilliant idea that another blogger came up with and that is to buy no more patterns until she has finished 50 projects. Intriguing, but I suspect that I would almost immediately be an abject failure because I just can not stop myself from buying patterns even though I would have to retire now to ever have a chance at completing the patterns I have already accumulated. My craft room was severely culled over 6 months ago when the flooring was re-done in that room, but patterns, sweet patterns! How does one resist the urge?

Sept. 4/06

Last night, I finished the three bibs that I was making for three new babies in my life. The bibs will be soon winging their way to Sweden, Norway and the last one will be given to a friend here. I used Charles Craft bibs and stitched a free design from DMC:

The design was quick and cute. Depending on the sex of the child, I stitched the bow in either pink or blue or both in the case of the baby whose sex I do not know.

My next project will be a receiving blanket with the same bear for my friend having the girl.

August 23/06

Well, it is that time of year when the cross stitch magazines start coming out with the Christmas projects to remind us of the upcoming December insanity. I started some of my cross stitch cards recently to send out as cards/gifts to a select few. The current batch are from Design Works Crafts which I picked up on sale at Lewiscraft in the past year. These small projects are most enjoyable in between bigger projects because the cards take less than a week to complete.

Before starting the cards, though, I made sure that I was done stitching the Marks and Kattens table runner so as to not violate my rule of only having one project on the go at a time. One thing that I have noticed in reading the blogs of other stitchers is that most people seem to have multiple projects on the go. My craft room would be more out of control if I did that and I would lose my focus on the different projects if I bounced back and forth. Oh well, different stitches for different folks!

My stitching time has been greatly curtailed these days because of training for the local 8km run called the Hampton 5-miler and the flooring renovation that is underway in my basement. There are just not enough hours in the day to get everything done and sleep, too!

August 7/06

Scanning through the various cross-stitch blogs that I have tagged up in my favourites has reminded me of some new-to-me patterns that I have acquired recently. It will be a few weeks before I can seriously think about starting them because I am finishing up a hydrangea table runner that I bought in Sweden, a Marks & Kattens design. Their website seems to be down for updating, but I will add it to my links for when it does come back up. Once the table runner is completed, I have 2 bibs to do for friends who are preggers and due in the next few months.

THEN, it will be on to the Fairy Tale Sampler by Jennifer Aikman-Smith of Dragon Dreams. The saying on it is perfect for a friend who is going through a divorce from a moron. I also recently purchased a book about Christmas stockings called "Christmas Stockings" from the David & Charles Cross Stitch Collection. The family stockings are a tattered mess after many years so I am considering making a new set of cross stitched ones. That is an ambitious project so I may just end up doing one for my nephew instead! Last, but not least, I found a beautiful design of maple leafs in autumn by Foxberry Cottage Crafts of Nova Scotia. I am always thrilled when I find beautiful Canadian designs because they are hard to find.

August 2/06

Okeydokey, tomorrow is my birthday. It is hard to believe that I will be 35 years old tomorrow. Jeepers! Where does the time go?

I am looking forward to a nice, quiet day tomorrow. My big plans are to have a bunch of building suplies delivered from Kent's to finish the flooring in this place and to visit my dog's grave. Jessie went to puppy heaven last week and I am missing him more than I thought possible. He was so sick towards the end and I spent so much time fussing over him that I was at a loss for a few days because that had been my life for so long. My two big consolations are that I got to say goodbye to him the way that suited the both of us and he is no longer sick.....And here I thought that I would not cry again......For a 14 year old dog with arthritis, a heart murmur, cataracts and an itchy skin infection, he never once moped or whimpered about how crappy he was feeling.

Some things I am looking forward to: the QA convention in Toronto and a trip to Halifax to visit with my sister. Good times.

July 6/06

Today was one of those days that I could not have predicted the end at the beginning. Mind you, I started off the day trying to figure out why all of our prescription refills were showing expired when they had not expired. A call to technical support and some playing around with the computer led me to discover that somehow one of our terminals was showing that it was November. Once that was changed, our problems were solved.

Work was work and I left early to go deliver a thank you card and to get my haircut. Mom and I went to a strawberry festival at our usual time and place so we ran into alot of people from our old community. We had some interesting dinner companions and had quite a chat with someone that Mom described as a "character" afterwards. I thought that he was cool, but I was also wishing that he was about 15 years younger!

I was supposed to go out for a run tonight, but I had to review a continuing education program because I had forgotten about the review and it is due tomorrow. The program was boring as hell and my dial up connection dragged out the agony. By the time I finally quit (70 minutes into it and still a couple of sections to go.....), I woke up enough to hammer out a not so favourable review. Now, I sit here thinking that I should go to bed so that I feel like running tomorrow after I take the dog to have his toenails trimmed. Such an exciting life, eh!

June 23/06

Hmmmm...I was just thinking that it has been a while since I updated this blog and boy, was I right! So much has happened since the last entry that it is hard to know where to begin.

Most recently, I spent 2.5 weeks in Scandinavia. Spending time with my longtime penpals was awesome as was the stopover in Gothenburg and Frederikshavn. Alot of thinking and navel gazing was done during that trip and now, I am feeling good about some changes that I need ot make in my life. Having a cancer scare a few weeks before that trip also brought my life into focus for me. It sucks that it takes something like that to realize what is important and what is useless jetsam that is bogging me down! One result of the navel-gazing that I can share publicly is the de-cluttering of my house. I had kind of started getting rid of stuff a few months ago when the floors were being re-done, but now I am being ruthless. If an item is not extremely valuable or absolutely necessary to my existence, then I add it to the yardsale pile. That pile contains stuffed toys with the sales tags still attached, a gift set from the Body Shop given to me by someone I am not keen on, a wooden dishdrying rack, and little bits and bobs of craft projects I have made over the years. The difference this de-cluttering has made both in my mind and in my house has been huge! The stuff and the maintenance of the stuff was weighing on me. Divesting myself of useless items is freeing me on so many levels. I am able to see much more clearly these days.

Nov. 13/05

The last of my 10 day antibiotic course was choked down last night and I do not have much use anymore for the 2 inhalers that I was also prescribed 10 days ago. My mom has many of the same symptoms so I am saving the inhalers in case she needs them. Yeah, I know, I am going against the advice that I give people all of the time about sharing medication! Besides the lack of energy and the fever, the worst of the bronchitis had to have been the incessant cough. For a few days there, I coughed around the clock despite the puffers and the hit of codeine cough syrup that I would take before going to bed.

I just remembered the pharmacy story that I wanted to share this week. One of the things that irritate me the most at my pharmacy is that people feel free to lean over the vitamins and ask me questions while I am filling prescriptions. It is like they totally forget in their rush to have THEIR question addressed that I might be doing something like filling prescriptions if my head is down. One lady did that to me the other day and then she got annoyed with me because I made her wait until I was done the prescription for a customer who was waiting and then came out of the pharmacy to address her question. She wanted to talk to me over the vitamin shelves even though she was not even as tall as the shelving and I could not talk loudly because of the bronchitis. Then, she asked me a question about one vitamin and before I could spit out more than a word or two in answer, she waved an herbal product in front of me and asked a question about that. My poor exhausted brain could not handle it and my lack of sleep had made me irritable so I stopped and asked her what she was asking me about because they were questions about 2 completely different things. Every time I tried to answer her questions, she kept talking and repeating herself until I finally said, "Look! Here are your options. You decide." and I walked away because I had to cough. I know on one level that it is not good customer service, but I refuse to let the customers run roughshod over me because they feel a sense of entitlement as the customer. They would not appreciate the attitude in return if I behaved in the same manner towards them in their work place.

Nov. 3/05

Being sick these past few days has given me time to think in between sleeping for hours on end. It has also reminded me that I probably will be one of the crankiest people ever if I develop a chronic, debilitating disease. Not being able to function normally for a few days has made me irritable as I consider all of the things I would have been doing if I was not shivering in bed. The worst was not being able to have coffee with my best friend because she is a nurse and does not want to get sick and pass it along to her patients.

The other day, I was reading the blog of the medical student which is highlighted on the blogs of note list and I got to thinking about some of the craziness that goes on in front of and behind my pharmacy counter. My favourite this week was a woman who showed me her patient instruction sheet from her physician. Keep in mind that she has just had a hysterectomy and had developed a UTI and likes to ask questions for the sake of asking questions. The sheet said that she was not to have sex for 6 weeks. In all seriousness, she looked at me and said, "What does that mean?".

My other favourite this week was a woman who wanted to ask some questions about her prescriptions. No problem, until she hauled the items out of her purse and they had labels from another pharmacy.

I was asked to check on drug interactions for one of my customers. I was appalled that one of the manufacturers involved did not bother to do drug interaction studies when they brought the drug to market, especially since it is used for rheumatoid arthritis and anyone who is familiar with RA knows what a cocktail of drugs those patients usually take. Glad to see that HPB is looking out for us.

Oct 18/05

Daylight Savings Time has just been adjusted back to Standard Time here so I am enjoying a lazy morning, chuckling to myself that my sloth is okay even though it is past noon in my biological clock. Oh well, the lazy morning is giving me time to ruminate over my to-do list for today which is not getting done and other little things that are going on in my life.

I recently started reading "Acadien pour de bon", a children's story about living in Acadia. The interesting part for me is that I am reading the french translation which I found recently in the books being donated for the Rotary annual used book sale. Apparently, the six years of french immersion are still stored somewhere in my brain because I am reading it without translating to understand although I am reading very slowly.

One of my neighbours had her house egged last night. I came across one our local RCMP officers who was walking around her property as I was out walking the dog.

My brother, his 2 year old son and I carved some pumpkins yesterday in preparation for the ghouls and goblins tomorrow night. We have not done that since we were kids, but it was lots of fun. I have to assemble a costume for work tomorrow and do some decorating to welcome the little tricksters at the door tomorrow evening.

Oct 10/05

There have been alot of thoughts rumbling around my brain about the truths as we see in ourselves and what we let others see. My pen and ink diary entry last night was an exploration to the true answer as to why I am not married and the answer I give publicly versus the answer I know to be the full truth. Alot of the musing has been provoked by something else dealing with someone else who is unable to see some truths about herself and I was blamed for her current state of unhappiness. Pretty vague in the telling, I know, but.....

Why do we lie so much to ourselves and others? All it achieves for me is a feeling of being twisted up into emotional knots and spending a great deal of time trying to see my way through the self-induced fog. Some one once said to me that with me, what you see is what you get and I took that to be a compliment. Falseness and deception are things that I try to avoid. Most times, it means that I do not play the social game very well, but that is okay if it means that I am true to myself.