Jan 29/10

I was cruising through my blog list the other day when I saw a design on Vee's (not me, but another Virginia!!) site. Here it is stitched on 18 count Aida and with colour variations courtesy on my mystery thread box:

I am going to take one to Newfoundland with me to give to my guy friend and another to Guatemala to leave with the orphanage I am going to visit in May. These little cuties can be stitched in a few hours if your needles are a-flying!

Jan 26/10 Part Two

The Lizzie Kate is done and in its frame:

Well worth the half hour I spent wandering through the mats and frames section of Michaels the other night because I just could not find a mat and a frame that suited both the piece and the recipients. Years ago, I used to go to a framer who was also a friend of the family. He always enjoyed working with me because my vision was always so very different than his when it came to framing my pieces. My visits to his shop to get a piece framed were never short and sweet, but the results were always fantastic. Unfortunately he moved to the West Coast about 6 or 7 years ago and then passed away. I have not been able to find a framer who can match both the quality of his work and his infinite patience although the last framer I went to may just be a match for me!

Back to the Lizzie Kate.....
And here is my poor finger that got sliced when I was handling the glass:

In the end, the glass did not fit into the frame after putting in the mat, the stitched piece and the sticky board so now I have to figure out how to dispose of the glass without slicing my fingers any further!

Jan 26/10

Whee! I was just waking up when my doorbell rang and there was the delivery person with my new natural light bulb!! Yay! Now I will be able to see properly when I stitch and I will no longer need to carry my bedside lamp back and forth from the bedroom.

Can you tell which one has been used almost daily for 8 years and which one has been promptly installed into the lamp? The $19 in postage was well worth getting the bulb replaced although I have since discovered that I could have saved some money by buying it off of eBay.

Once I get off the computer this morning, one of the first things on my to-do list is to frame the Lizzie Kate so I may come back to post another photo later on today.

Jan 24/10

There has been a fair bit of stitching going on around here even though I am still waiting for my natural light bulb to arrive. One of my cats broke the light bulb in my bedside table lamp that I drag to the livingroom each evening to use to see my stitching. She tried to crawl off the back of the couch and along the arm of the couch but was unsuccessful in her attempt to squeeze between me, the lamp and the needlework that was spread all over the place as I was settling in to stitch while watching "Dr Zhivago". The lamp went flying and the bulb was snapped off at the base so then there was a whole big expedition of retrieving the lamp and its pieces from the floor, unplugging the lamp, unscrewing the broken bulb base, scrounging around in the linen cupboard for a new bulb and properly wrapping the broken bulb for the garbage. Then, I settled back in to stitch and the cat eventually made her way back to the back of the couch where she likes to sleep behind my head.

The Lizzie Kate is stitched and waiting to be ironed and framed before being given to my newly-married friends. The Dimensions Snowman has almost all of the full stitches stitched so perhaps tonight I will get to the rest of them before starting on the half stitching. My craft room needs another decluttering attempt, but the basement needed to be done first as a friend may be renting out my spare room shortly and she would have been up to her ears in chaos when she stepped out of her room if I had not sorted and stored the boxes that were randomly strewn across the basement floor. It is amazing to me how much stuff I accumulate, but now most of it is nicely organized in the storage room, added to the donation pile or waiting for my next trip to the local recycling bins!

Non-stitching-wise, I am in the midst of organizing trips to Guatemala (May), El Salvador (November) and Newfoundland (whenever the work schedules for my boyfriend and myself coincide in such a way that it is worth the price of the flight to get there; he has just moved to NF and started a new job.). I was researching accomodations in St. John's, NF the other day when I came across this one: Monastery Spa. There is a week long package and when I saw that one, I thought, "Hell! Who needs a boyfriend?!". If I went in for a week long spa, I would never be seen again!

Well, time to head to the curling club to help out with the Little Rocks program before going to my Mom's to celebrate the January birthdays of my two brothers. Lovely way to spend a Sunday!

Jan 19/10

Whew! Where is this month going? Time is just whizzing by me although the blur may have something to do with meeting an amazing guy, working, curling and deciding to go to Guatemala in May. I did start some new stitching projects recently to take a wee break from the intensity of stitching HAED Iris. Not having my daylight lamp makes HAED too difficult to stitch and I need to do some quick and easy projects just to break up the monotony of stitching one huge project.

Lizzie Kate's "Just Married" on 28 count linen with threads from my mystery box. The colour scheme chosen by LK did not fully suit the friends I am stitching this for so I am using my own colour scheme:


This one was actually started before I started the LK in an attempt to declutter my craft room a little bit. Even though I am not a fan of winter, I LOVE to stitch snowmen for some reason. They are just so cute and adorable and this world could use more cute and adorable!

Jan 17/10

Oops! Gotta' learn how to rotate the photos before I post them! Unfortunately, I have to run to work so the figuring will be for another time. Here is my most recent order from Cross-Canada Stitching:

I love snow men and could not resist these little guys! Plus, friends of mine were married on Jan 2/10 so I plan to whip up the Lizzie Kate for them.

In other news, the light bulb burned out on my stitching lamp. I could not source the bulb locally so I ended up ordering it directly from Verilux in the US. The shipping costs almost as much as the bulb, but at least I know that I will get ALOT of use out of it! :-) In the meantime I am using the lamp from my bedside table which is making me appreciate all the more the bulb that is on its way!

I had a wee stitching accident last night. I am stitching a Dimensions kit and have been using the needle from the kit. When I stitch, I use the middle finger of my right hand to push the needle through and I never realize how much I use that finger to do that until I do something stupid like pierce the finger with a needle and then proceed to hit the same spot umpteen times because I was too lazy to go find a bandage!.....There, I finally got smart and went to find a bandage! Now I am good and prepared for an evening of stitching if I do not fall asleep at this desk first.

Jan 10/10

I just spent the weekend at the Carleton Curling Club in Saint John and my home club, Hampton. My team finished 8th in a field of 18 at the Pictures Plus Bonspiel and good fun was had by all. We played three closely fought games against several supper women who were fun to curl against and fun to socialize with off-ice. Here is my prize:

the bandstand in Kings Square in Saint John.

After curling all day and hanging out in the wee hours with a great bunch of Newfoundlanders, I dragged myself to my home club to help instruct a group of young curlers. The kids were so awesome! They did not seem to mind that this was the first time that I had done any instructing and I had fun watching them get all excited about screaming "Hard!!" as they encouraged the sweepers when I let them play on a full-sized rink. It was so cool to see them get into a game that I so thoroughly enjoy. One little boy who had been a bit of a challenge during the session, but sorted himself out when I gave him lots of praise, came up to me afterwards and said, "That was awesome!". That compliment made being chilled to the bone worth it.

Jan 5/10

The new job brought a nice little signing bonus so I FINALLY bought myself a new tv after a year of thumping the floor to adjust the wonky cable connector. You can see the old tv that I bought in 1995 to the right as it has not made it to the basement yet. On the left, you can catch a wee glimpse of my cross stitch pattern collection:



Still stitching away at HAED Iris:


One added bonus of the bigger screen tv is that my eyes are finding it easier to flicker from the Iris piece (being stitched over one and being held quite close to the end of my nose as I stitch) to the tv and back. The old tv had a relatively small screen so my eyes have been taking a few seconds to adjust when I would look up.

Jan 2/10

Happy New Year plus one day! I hope that everyone has had a great start to the year and is looking forward to bigger and better things. 2009 ended with a break up email and me falling asleep at 11pm before the fireworks while 2010 started with me waking up when my friends came home from the party we had all gone to next door. We stayed up until 4:30am, listening to tunes and laughing until we could laugh no more. Not a bad way to start the year, in my opinion!

Dec 18/09

Here is my last batch of ornaments for this year. I glued on the felt backs a week ago and attached the cording the other day while I was home adjusting to life without Hayes who always sat with me on the couch when I stitched.


I finally managed to pick up the stitching itself the other night after at least a week and a half of being so emotionally played out that I could not even open the plastic container where I keep my stitching. HAED Iris is slowly coming along.....page 2 is underway!


In other news, I am underway with the initial stages of planning a Habitat for Humanity trip to El Salvador next year. Yay! Dating on the other hand is not quite as successful. Oh well!

Dec 15/09

Today I said good bye to my cat Hayes. The tumour came back with a roaring vengeance to the point where it was in her sinuses affecting her breathing and back around behind her ear into the lymph nodes there. The vet and her assistant were the same two who have been looking after Hayes since the initial assessment and they treated us so kindly. My heart broke to lay Hayes' lifeless little body into the ground and watch it be covered over, but I know that she is up in Heaven, muscling her way into the kitty food bowl and bossing all of the humans around!

Dec 8/09

Not much stitching has been going on here because I have been emotionally drained by the time I reach my usual stitching time in the evening. My weekend was filled with being there for my brother while he looked after his best friend and grieving for Jeremy's family. Last night I drove by the accident site and felt compelled to pull over to pray for his family as they go through this terrible time. I know that the old adage is that these things happen for a reason, but I could not understand the reason the other night when I was looking into the eyes of his grief stricken parents and siblings.

On the other hand, the bookmark has been given and he reports that he is already using it! We had a lovely time on Saturday over brunch and driving around the area so that I could show him my home town. Because my life is just one dorky moment after another, one of my neighbours just happened to be delivering Christmas cards as he was walking down the driveway. She kept me on the doorstep for a good 10-15 minutes trying to get information out of me about him. I was both freezing and frustrated because I was standing there without a coat and she had interrupted my happy dance in the kitchen after he had kissed me good bye!

Well, I should get back to the paperwork that I have been avoiding. Once the paperwork is done, then I can tackle the Christmas stuff that has not been done yet. Sigh!

Dec 4/09

Not sure why God looked down last night and decided to take this young man home to heaven, but it happened. Jeremy is the brother of my brother's best friend and I used to babysit him when I was younger. His family welcomed us when we moved to New Brunswick in 1975 and our brothers have been best of friends ever since. My heart hurts for his family.

Nov 25/09

So, the new guy in my life likes to read historical fictional and the red hair betrays his Irish heritage so I thought that this bookmark might be a cool little gift.

It is a Teresa Wentzler stitched on 14 count Aida (not my ideal fabric, but the colour works for the skeins)and backed with a golden raw silk. We are still trying to figure out plans for this weekend so I hope to give it to him either on Friday or Saturday. I know the dating rule books all say to not do last minute planning for dating, but between our work schedules and his visitation schedule with his kids, flexibility is necessary!

Nov 13/09

The cross stitching is done on the Army crest, thank heavens! The design is big and things like the maple leaves were difficult to count. I get a brain block when counting large areas in a single colour. After struggling through the first two leaves, I did the third one in blocks of ten squares and that greatly reduced my frustration level! The backstitching remains to be done, but I have switched over to stitching a bookmark to give my head a break from this one!


Here is an update photo on my kitty Hayes.

The sutures holding her left eyelids together were removed a week ago and the wound is healing nicely although it looks like she scratched herself recently, causing a little scab to form. So far, she is holding her own and I can feel no signs of the tumour re-growing just yet. She has gained a half pound or so since her visit to the vet last week and she spends her time sleeping and demanding affection, food and water. In other words, life is as usual around here!

Nov 10/09

The cross-stitching is almost completed on the Army crest. Taking a picture would require picking my sleep deprived butt up off this chair and walking through the house though. For some reason, I thought that a venti Americano at 8pm would be a good idea----I was on a date and obviously not thinking clearly----and the caffeine surged through my system ALL NIGHT LONG!

These little goodies arrived in the mail yesterday courtesy of Cross-Canada Stitching:

My closest LNS is 150km away so I rarely get there even though I try to support the smaller local retailers whenever I can. Michaels supplies me with my DMC skeins and it is only 30km away so my pattern shopping tends to be done on-line, mostly through eBay. Including shipping, my bill at CCS was $37.54 (Canadian) and the service was prompt. I plan to be a repeat customer!

Nov 8/09

Between it being Sunday and having something do a dance all over my immune system, I am enjoying my coffee and listening to Stuart MacLean on CBC radio. As Wednesday is Remembrance Day here in Canada, Stuart's show was a beautiful reflection on remembrance. As I was listening, I was struck once again at how wonderfully lucky I am that I have never experienced war. The only gunfire I have ever heard is that of hunters out in the woods during duck and deer seasons. My country has not been invaded, I do not live under a dictator, my brothers were not forced to take up arms, I do not experience racial tension or hatred. I live in a country of peace.

My only experiences with war come from books. As a child and teenager, I read extensively on World War II as I tried to understand why my Japanese grandparents were interned. As an adult, I have read on Bosnia to understand why my brother and his fellow soldiers were there as peacekeepers, El Salvador to understand the barbed wire and continued militia-like atmosphere, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq to understand what is taking our Canadian soldiers once again into war and so on.

On Remembrance Day, I will be at the local cenotaph with my family, looking at the stoic faces of the veterans and silently thanking them for their sacrifices. I will be thinking of those families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan as I look at my brother so handsome in his dress uniform and his son who adores his daddy. I will be thankful that I could have been born anywhere in the world, but circumstance and fate found me here in Canada. I will renew my personal vow to share peace and love in my own way to help make the world a better place.

Nov 7/09

This morning I was just checking through the list of blogs that I follow and came across a finished version of a breast cancer ribbon project from Ink Circles. Sigh! So many patterns to stitch, so little time in this lifetime!

Hayes had her sutures removed at the vet yesterday and the vet seemed happy with her status. I on the other hand was not overjoyed to see that she only weighs 6.0lbs. This cat has been affectionately known as "Fat Cat" for 14 years by those who know and love her. Now she is known as "Bag of Bones". We stopped into my mom's on the way home from the vet to share our apple pie and Mom did her best to fatten up Hayes by feeding her half a can of tuna. Gramma is not a cat person, but she loves her grand-kitties because her kid does!

My youngest brother is probably still not thrilled with me like I am with him, but he did take my old toilet into the Habitat ReStore yesterday for me. I replaced the toilet a month or more ago because a connector rusted and caused a leak/flood. The old toilet has sat on my lawn for all this time, waiting for him to come pick it up and drop it off while he is in the city for classes at the community college. I did bleach it very thoroughly, but he did not want any "yucky" water to splash into his car trunk. Not that I blame him, but I am thrilled to be one degree less redneck now!! Every time I saw the toilet on the lawn, I could hear Jeff Foxworthy saying, "You might be a redneck if......."

Nov 5/09

Today's thoughts are brought to you by apple pie:

A friend of mine emailed me last night to say that she wanted to make me an apple pie so who was I to say no! She has been following my Hayes the cat saga on Facebook and as a fellow pet lover she wanted to do something for me. I had been a kind ear for her a couple of years ago when her dog got sick and had to be put down so she is returning the kindness. The pie is yummy and Hayes has been enjoying it as well as last night I mistakenly put the plate where she could reach it and I turned around to see her licking my piece!!

Many people are really anti-Facebook, but at times like this, it has been great comfort to me. Hayes has had good health wishes from friends as far away as New Zealand and Norway and so many people stop me when I am out and about because they are following her story. The same thing happened a few years ago when my mom was critically ill in the hospital. A simple expression of sympathy or good wishes really does go a long way for the receiver!

I did some more stitching on the Iris last night, but my concentration was limited so I did not make a great amount of progress. Being a health care worker, I have been vaccinated up the ying yang this past week. I had the seasonal flu and pneumonia shot on Friday (I am prone to pneumonia and bronchitis) and the H1N1 shot on Tuesday. The icky ache and cough that hit me yesterday could be either side effects from all of the vaccines or the actual H1N1 virus as I know that I was exposed to it at work before I took this time off. I must say though that apple pie is a great method of treatment!

One last thing I want to share today. My cousin was in Moncton the other day for work so my brother and I met up with him for supper. My brother introduced me to a drink called a Monkey's Lunch. Now, you have to know my brother. Picture a George Clooney look-a-like (his nickname is Clooney!)in a Canadian army uniform. I started to laugh when he ordered his drink and instructed the waitress to not bring it to him with an umbrella or in a daiquiri glass. I stopped laughing when he let me have a taste of it. Kahlua, banana liqueur and milk! Yum!

Nov 3/09

Not the greatest photo as my hands were shaking from too much caffeine, but I thought that the berries on my burning bush were absolutely gorgeous the other day. I am trying to take in all of the beauty around me while I am off work for a couple of weeks, a taking of time to smell the roses as it were.


This photo of Penelope makes me laugh because she is such a funny and affectionate cat.

We had some bad news from the vet yesterday regarding Hayes. The tumour is malignant and aggressive (I forget the exact name of it!) and the vet had not been able to remove it all the other day so we truly are playing a waiting game. The vet and I talked about how many times Hayes can go under anesthetic to keep removing the tumor as it grows back and what things does she need to be monitored for (tumour re-growth, weight loss and liver enzymes). We will just keep taking every day one day at a time and I know that I know when the balance will have tipped between her quality of life and my not wanting to let her go. She on the other hand does not seem to be the least bit fussed by it all as she goes about her usual daily activities of demanding food, water and attention and assuming her spot on the bed at night, curled up against me.

Some more stitches were put into the Iris yesterday after I came home from some retail therapy. Gasp! I bought a Christmas gift yesterday!