August 28/07

I finished the puzzle biscornu last night. The freebie came form this site which took me a while to figure out because I do not read German at all, but the biscornu patterns motivated me to figure out how to get the patterns!!

This one is stitched again with mystery threads on a 28 count Monaco (I think, I chucked the tag out!). I did one side in green and the other side in blue to give a little contrast. I have done a couple of other variations that still need to have the final finish, but this was my favourite variation.

Aug 19/07

Another small finish. I think that I am addicted to smalls at the moment because I do not have to wait six months to see the finished result and I see definite shrinkage of the stash! This one is "Renaissance Bookmark" by Teresa Wentzler. The design was a freebie from her site. I do forget what I stitched it on, but I think that it is a 28 count lugana. ETA: I have just realized that this picture does absolutely nothing to show how beautiful the design truly is so I will have to try again to get a better photo.

Some sad news. I just heard on Friday that my LNS has closed. Admittedly, I have not been there in a while since the motherlode of a stash that I have has had everything I have needed for any of my recent projects. Now, the closest NS is over 100km away in Moncton.

This weekend has been rather busy, kicking off with a wedding shower on Thursday, moving books on Friday night for the Rotary club, a birthday party and a wedding reception on Saturday and I am off to my mom's here in a minute for a lunch with my sister and her boyfriend who are here from Halifax. Then, I need to mow the lawn and research a topic for my course on globalization for the second essay of the course. Thank heavens that Monday is a vacation day for me because I sure need it!

My heart sank this morning as I was waking up to the newscast. Another Canadian soldier has died in Afghanistan. Knowing that my brother is on-call on the notification team at CFB Gagetown this week made the news even more sad although fortunately (poor choice of words in the circumstances, for sure), the soldier was based at CFB Valcartier so my brother does not have to tell a family that their loved one has died. War sucks.

Aug 15/07

Here is the ornie I stitched for the July ornie SAL. He is called "Stuffed Snowman" from Better Homes and Gardens Christmas Cross Stitch 1996. He is stitched on mystery fabric with mystery threads from my mystery thread box and his arms are twigs from the yard instead of wire as in the pattern. His scarf is braided from the mystery threads because I have little or no cotton cloth in my craft room.

Aug 10/07

No stitching pictures, but I was playing around with my new camera yesterday and took some pictures as proof of my stitching addiction! May I introduce you to my stash (the shelves on the right contain my recycling centre):

and my pattern collection:

The thread drawers really make my stash look way worse than it is! Several years ago, my boss helped out a friend who was closing a craft store and sold off her inventory in our store. One day, I was in the stockroom and saw all of the DMC floss that was sitting out there so I offered to buy it up! I have long lost the total, but I got the floss for about 20 cents a skein and should have enough to do me for at least 10 or 15 years of stitching!

I am currently working on a freebie bookmark that I found on Teresa Wentzler's site. My stitching has been slowed a bit by a mega migraine that hit me on Saturday and lingered for 4 days as a nagging soreness on the side of my head. Stress and allergies are so not my friend!

Life has an interesting way of coming full circle sometimes. Last night, I had a couple over for dinner. Shawn is the brother of Matt Kidner who was here in 2001 as a Rotary Youth Exchange student. I visited with their family in Australia in 2004 when I was there on the Rotary Group Study Exchange. Shawn and his girlfriend Steph are here in Canada this year on a working holiday visa and are in this region for a month or two. It was so cool to be sitting out on my deck last night and talking about all of the people and places that we have in common.

July 30/07

May I introduce the first of the stockings that I am cross stitching for my family? My intention had been to do my mom's first, but there was a huge delay in getting the fabric because the order was lost in the mail from the supplier, but my LNS has yet to call me 4 months later to let me know if it has come in so I ordered it from eBay. The result is that my stocking is now stitched instead.

EDITED TO ADD: The stocking is a Dimensions kit called "Holiday Harmony".

July 26/07

Hold onto your hats, folks! I finally have some stitching pictures to post! These are my first biscornus and while I am proud of them, please do not look too closely at how badly I negotiated the corners when stitching them together!

The one on the left is one that I designed with my cross stitch pattern maker one night and the other is Protection from Lady Periphaeria (see the blog for Peri on the right). As part of playing around with my design, I stitched it using pink (DMC 223) on one side and a brown from my mystery threads container. I stitched Peri's with another thread from my mystery collection called Coron #222. The beads are Mill Hill.


I have made some headway in my christmas stocking. The backstitching is almost done and then it is on to stitching my name before attempting to assemble it.

July 23/07

Here is a photo of my brother and his son with his university diploma. When I was about to take the photo, his son pointed to the diploma and asked, "What's that?". I replied, "One of the two things in the world your daddy is most proud of."


Me and my nephew, or The Helmetheads as my mom called us that afternoon!


The most use my exercise mat has seen in a while!

July 19/07

The biopsy procedure went well yesterday and now we just have to wait for the results to come back in the next two weeks. Both of the doctors involved are on holidays over the next two weeks so we have no choice, but to be patient. The patient is in a little bit of discomfort, but I knew that things would be fine when the second thing she said to me was, "Can we stop at Tim Hortons on the way home?". Canuck, through and through.

The daughter(me), on the other hand, is exhausted. I went into work at 3pm instead of my usual 1pm for an evening shift because I just could NOT get it together and get out the door. The stress of the past week or so caught up with me and floored me. I still do not feel great, but hopefully another good night's rest will help because I begin my weekend shift tomorrow! Work sucks and will continue to suck hard for a while yet. The new pharmacist is supposedly starting at the end of July, but she is unavailable for most of the month of August so guess who might get one day of vacation during the month of August to squeeze something that might look like a long weekend. I have not taken any vacation time since last November and have only been away from work for more than 2 days once in that time period because the schedule has rotated in such a way that my weekends to work have fallen on 3 of the 4 Canadian summer long weekends. Something is going to break sooner or later and I suspect that my sanity will the thing to break. Stress is not my friend and my anxiety and upset about all of the recent bad news that keeps making itself known to me has me feeling really fragile. Oh well, the more I dwell on it, the worse it gets so maybe I should just go to bed.

Tomorrow, I am going to pick up my brother's engineering diploma that I had framed for him as a graduation gift. I am very excited about it because he has worked so hard to get this degree and I am very, very, very, very proud of him!! I am also dropping off two boxes of materials left over from my renovations to the ReStore which is on Rothesay Ave in Saint John for anyone reading this who has materials that they no longer need. The store will be opening as soon as they have an adequate inventory.

July 14/07

I am in a slightly better head space today. Funny what a good dose of sunshine and a good night's sleep will do. As soon as I turn off the computer, I am going outside to work on staining my decks and weeding my flower beds. My shed also needs a little attention as everything is just haphazardly thrown in there and there are some things in there that can go to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. For instance, there is a bag of nails leftover from when the shed is built and several bits of lumber that I will never use, but maybe someone else can use them.

I put some stitches last night into the biscornu that I designed so hopefully within the next week I will have finished pictures of the biscornu that Peri designed and the one that I attempted.

The website that holds my UNB course on globalization is down this morning so I could not get any reading done there despite my best intentions. My original goal had been to finish it in July, but here we are mid-month and I am nowhere near being done. The thought of writing papers has been somewhat paralyzing to me, but the thought of the $500+ tuition that I paid for the course keeps me slogging away at it.

July 13/07

So, this week has kind of sucked. On Tuesday, my boss finally told my co-workers that he has prostate cancer. Four of us were told a month and a half ago, but we were not to tell anyone else until he had several tests to determine exactly what he was facing. On Wednesday, my mom called me at work to ask me what I had been diagnosed with last year when the lymph nodes on the right side of my neck swelled last May. She had just come from an appointment with a surgeon about the swollen lymph node in her armpit and he used the phrase "It looks like a lymphoma" when he examined her. She is having it removed on Wednesday morning at 8am so I hope that everyone reading this sends out a little hope and love on behalf of my mom. This all on top of the death of the wife of my town's mayor. She was a friend and the mother of a guy I grew up with. She will be greatly missed.

Needless to say, not much stitching or course work has been done this week because I can barely get home from work and eat before taking a nap just to stay awake until bedtime. Stress is so not my friend.

July 5/07

The rain today put a little dent into my plan to stain my deck and stoop today. The sinus headache that went migraine-like also put a dent into my plans today. The only reason why I crawled out of the house at 9am was because I had to meet up with a fellow Rotarian so that I could get a plaque that needs to be engraved. I am sure that I looked so graceful and beautiful when I had to pull over to throw up on the side of the road. Needless to say, it was back to bed for me until the meds could kick in and the sinuses could unblock. I began my day for the second time at noon.

Not much stitching in the past few days because I have been busy reading through my online course notes for a course on globalization. Today's reading included the transcript from a speech that US President Wilson gave in 1918 where he outlined his Fourteen Points to create international stability. He concentrated mostly on problem spots in Europe, but it struck me as ironic because his 14 points are still very valid today if we just substitute Middle Eastern countries for the European ones he used. Plus ca change, plus ca reste le meme.

Things I am up to this week: Strawberry Festival at the Bloomfield Hall (good food + old friends and neighbours = good times), getting my brother's engineering degree framed for his graduation gift, helping out at a Habitat for Humanity site on Saturday(my friends' house is being torn down and HfH is salvaging whatever they can sell in their ReStore) and having some co-workers over for a BBQ on Sunday.

July 2/07

Life has been busy with work and family so not much stitching although I am working on my first biscornu called Protection from Periphaeria Designs. Stitching over one thread has been a challenge and is slowing me down because I am having to adjust where I place my needle and how far to swing my hand as I stitch. The end result will be cool, I am sure!

My El Salvador trip has been confirmed for March 1-9, 2008 and I have a trip code which has not yet been posted on the Habitat site to accept donations. Now, I just have to finish building the team!

Yesterday was Canada Day here in Canada so I went to watch the town fireworks last night with my family. My nephew managed to stay awake until the end, but I would bet that he is rather bear-like this morning! He loved the little Army helmet that I bought for him at the Citadel in Quebec City because now he looks "just like Daddy!".

June 24/07

For the ornie SAL. I found this Scandinavian-inspired motif in a book called "Traditional Needle Arts Cross Stitch" by Katrin Cargill and decided to "finish" it by gluing it onto some card stock that I had left over from the cards I made for Christmas 2006. The motif is stitched on a mystery piece of 14 count Aida with DMC 304.

June 18/07

Not much to report from the stitching end of things because I have been working and then I drove off to spend 4 days in Old Quebec City in an attempt to see more of my country. Plus, it adds another UNESCO site to my life list. I had a great chat with my advisor at UNBSJ the other day as I plan out the courses that I want to take this coming year to get ready to apply for the Masters in International Development Studies. Afterwards, I was a bit dazed at all the potential jobs I could be involved in after the Masters program. Dr. Jeffrey is so enthusiastic and helpful and she just loves the fact that I have a pharmacy degree. She was sympathetic to my worries about writing papers (I only ever wrote one paper at Dal), but she has made suggestions about how to get on with that.

In lieu of stitching photos, here are some photos from my yard that I took last week:
Lilacs:

Lupins:

My yard is bursting into bloom! Yay!

June 11/07

Better late than never:


A Debbie Mumm kit for Dimensions called Christmas Adornments.

June 3/07

I did alot of stitching on my ornaments yesterday while at the symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension in Moncton. I figured that it would keep me awake since I never stay awake during seminars. The symposium and the NB Pulmonary Hypertension Society are the brain child of my friend, Jennifer Gendron whose son has been diagnosed with the condition. The group's website can be found here. No piccies yet because the camera is still at Mom's although I could shove the ornaments in the scanner, I suppose. The skin on the tip of the middle finger on my right hand got worn off during all of that stitching so I will have to wear a bandage if I want to do any stitching tonight.

After the symposium, I realized that I was just a few blocks away from a cross stitch store that I had heard about, but never knew how to get where it is situated. Yes, maps are good things, but that would be too organized and efficient for me. The store does not have a website so I can not give a link to check it out. I am now a huge fan of the store because it was so cool to see all of the leaflets from all of the designers that all of the other cross stitchers have been talking about in their blogs that I read. So, if you are in the Moncton area, I would recommend that you check out Because You Count at 164 Collishaw Street in Moncton, New Brunswick.

I managed to restrain myself while there and only came out with 3 patterns: Lizzie Kate's "Love Crazy", Teresa Wentzler's "Knotwork Bookmarks I" and the 2006 JCS Christmas Ornaments edition which I was too slow to purchase when the two copies were quickly sold off the magazine rack where I work. Lest you think that I have great strength in not going crazy with pattern buying, I have just purchased 10 patterns from one of my favourite eBay sellers who is closing her shop.....Looks like she has closed her shop as the link is no longer working. Plus, I also gave up waiting for the LNS to find its wayward order from Wichelt so I found some pieces on eBay that may just do the trick and I am waiting for those to arrive in my mailbox along with the exotic and endangered animal booklets that I ordered from that vendor.

Well, I should finish the laundry and then sun myself on the deck for a few minutes before heading to my Mom's with the outside planters that she wants. More clutter going out the door! Yay! The birdfeeders also need to be refilled. I have debated with myself about having birdfeeders and letting my cats outside, but the bird population seems to be reviving and my cats are so lazy that they rarely do further than the edge of the deck.

May 28/07

Just waiting for my soup to heat up so I thought that I would post. I heard some distressing news on Saturday night when I was at a fundraiser for a women's shelter. Apparently, the women's shelter in Saint John, Hestia House, is closing. I do not know the details, but I assume that it is a funding issue. Um, it is not like the need has disappeared. Our provincial government can find the money to give million dollar tax breaks to corporations who make quicksand promises about creating jobs in our province, but the government can not find the money to adequately fund things like women's shelters. Let me see, the government will give a 3 million dollar tax break to a company who promises to create say 100 jobs in a call centre. More times than not, those jobs fall through in a few years. Would it not be more cost effective to properly fund women's shelters in the province so that those several hundred women and children who find themselves in them annually could get back on their feet and get ahead?

I did put a few stitches into my Christmas ornament, but I will wait until later this week when I get the camera back from Mom to post a picture. The weather was gorgeous here this weekend so I spent my time working around the outside of the shack.

Oh yeah! One of the entertainers from Saturday night made a joke that I must share. He said, "I am about to sing our new national anthem" and then he proceeded to sing "Alberta Bound".

May 26/07

Not much to report on the stitching front except to say that I am busy doing the back stitching on my stocking and filling in those little pesky cross stitches that I missed the first time around. This weekend is Christmas ornament SAL so I will do that on Sunday since today is busy with running 6km, dyeing my hair, a fundraiser concert for the Sussex women's shelter and a birthday party for a friend. I need to weed a flower bed and wash both the car and my Adirondack chairs at some point this weekend.

I think that I have figured out how to do an indoor vermiculture compost bin with minimal fuss and muss. Ever since my little rat invasion 2 years ago, I have stopped putting any food into my home compost bins out behind the shed and send all the food bits off to the landfill composting facility. Rats horrify me! I have been trying to figure out how to do the vermiculture thing because it seems counter-productive to the whole environment thing to ship the compostable materials away by gas-driven truck to save space in the landfill. I have the bin and the compostable material, so now all I need to do is collect some wrigglers after the next big rainfall. My brother referred to me as the "Recycling Nazi" when he lived with me a few years ago so maybe I will not mention this little venture to him any time soon! Heck after 30+ years, he should be used to my kookiness by now!

My decluttering efforts are teetering along. One brother got rid of 4 boxes of junk at a fleamarket at the curling club and made enough money to take his girlfriend and Mom out to lunch at Holly's that day. The other brother took a garbage bag full of household items and 6 sets of blinds to use in his new place at CFB Gagetown. Then, on the other hand, I have bought several new items of clothing as I update my summer wardrobe, but I am enforcing the "1 item in, 1 item out" rule as I keep adding to the donation pile.

Well, I should get to my other environmental cause of running! My thought is that by losing weight (or 60 lbs or so!), then I decrease the gas consumption of my car and wear smaller clothes, using up less resources! Plus, it makes me a healthy being because my stress levels drop as I clear my mind and my body gets stronger.

May 18/07

Not much stitching to report as I was in Toronto last weekend and then been working in between sleeping since I have come home. I had planned to stitch alot today, but my allergies played havoc with that. The sinuses on the right side of my face were so full that I was dizzy and nauseated when I woke up this morning so I spent a good part of the day asleep since even reading in bed was a challenge. So much for tackling all of the stuff I had planned today like paperwork and errands. Oh well, it is a cold and overcast day so at least I do not feel like I lost a nice day to boot. I hope to get the last of the cross-stitching done on my stocking so that I can switch to the back and half stitching soon.

The Habitat for Humanity seminar was really interesting. The people and the topics were very interesting. I did learn something about myself-----I am terrible at navigating despite maps and explicit directions! Oh well, if we had not missed a turn or two, Jay and I would not have ended up having supper at a great pub in Bolton ON before heading back to where we were supposed to be! In my defence though, I did manage to find my way downtown with minimal "being lost time" after discovering that the 401 off-ramp I needed was closed for construction for this past weekend only.

May 11/07

I almost forgot to post my April ornament. I found it on the Michaels website.