Crummy Day

Today wasn't the best of days; I have been exhausted for days and I had to leave work sick after a few hours and have been sitting at home miserable since. The only upside was getting a little more work done on my Thanksgiving challenge ornament.
I don't think I'll have it finished by tomorrow, (have to work from 10:00am - 9:00 pm) but I should have it done by the challenge deadline of November 30th. More to come soon!

Seasonal Ornament Update

I used part of Friday 11/21's SAT to continue working on my current seasonal ornament challenge. Yesterday was one of two days off so I also spent quite a bit of time working on it, as well as having a little movie marathon with Nate! (Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Pirates of the Caribbean 1 & 2) So here is the progress on the little plaid pumpkin:

I am so pleased with how it's coming along and I'm hoping to get it done before Thursday! Can't wait to share the results with the rest of the group
I also made some marginal progress on the Ireland House piece, but I am getting overwhelmed. Thank goodness for the support at Let's Stitch! Everyone is so encouraging.

I am planning to work more on it during the next SAT, and probably all the rest til Christmas. Wish me luck!

Two Updates and a New Start

I haven't been great about posting the last few days, so I have some updating to do.

Friday was the 6 hour stitch-a-thon over at Let's Stitch and I worked on the Jasmine piece as previously posted. It was so much fun to work on my stitching while knowing there was a whole group of others all over the place doing the same thing at the same time. I am looking forward to this week's SAT!

After the SAT I decided to rotate onto another sizeable piece, the Ireland House picture/Christmas gift for my Aunt. I have stitched over 110 hours on this piece so far and I still feel like there is a long way to go. I think I will work on this during the SAT on Friday. I am getting frustrated with some of the color changes etc. so I could definitely use the group encouragement!

Last but not least, I joined Vonna's seasonal ornament stitch-a-long blog. The idea is to complete a new stitched ornament every two weeks, for each season and holiday. I am really excited for this because I have lots of decorations for certain holidays (namely Halloween and Christmas) and not so much for the rest of the year. It will also be satisfying to have smaller scale projects to finish up... should balance out some of the big bad projects! The current challenge is to stitch a Thanksgiving themed ornament. I chose to use a portion of a Harvest-themed design from the October 2005 Stoney Creek magazine. It is a little plaid pumpkin and I think it will make a great ornament!

Speaking of which, I am going to go work on the ornament now!

More work on Jasmine, scheduling thoughts

Lots of time spent stitching yesterday, but I didn't get around to posting my work. Once again, I worked at the Love Quilts block for Destiny. I have put in about eight hours of work thus far between preparing and gridding and stitching. I am pleased with the results so far!
I have been thinking of starting a rotational system again, to get work done on multiple projects (read: UFOs!) in a timely fashion. I like to track my work in a notebook (so using a blog is very exciting for an obsessive documentarian... pictures!) and what I would usually do was work on a given piece for say, fifteen hours, then pack it up and move to the next, complete fifteen hours of work, and so on. Once I had gone through the original rotation a few times I would allow myself to add another project to the mix. It was a good way to balance things out. If I do this again I may have to adjust my time allotments due to time strictures (e.g. Ireland House is a Christmas present, Love Quilt blocks are due in January and then February, etc.) but I will have to think about it...

Jasmine

Not much progress today, but Nate and I had our only day of the week off today. We spent the morning covering up the pool and raking leaves which promptly blew back all over the yard. This afternoon we headed over to the mall for some people-watching and to get my phone replaced at the Verizon store. I was eligible for a free upgrade with my contract renewal, so I got a nifty new phone. It was quite the fiasco trying to actually get the new phone activated and the new contract set up, but the salesman was a great help and the situation was eventually rectified. And the new phone has a much better camera!
Now we are back home, just finished watching Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd, which was marvelous, not that I had any doubt. Let me add that Helena Bonham Carter's gowns were absolutely amazing!! Anyway, now we are watching Ocean's Eleven and I am working on the piece I wrote about last time. The theme for the Love Quilt is "princesses" and the colors purple and pink. Not anything like my usual subject matter, but it's for a good cause. The pattern I put together is a picture of Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin. If you use your imagination maybe you can see the picture coming together... ...Maybe not yet. Like I said, I haven't put much time into it yet, I'll post more tomorrow.

New Project

This morning I spent a few hours working on a section of the Irish house piece, but after all the black I needed a change of pace. I recently discovered the Love Quilts project (http://www.lovequilts.org) and decided I would like to contribute some stitching time to the cause.
The group was organized in order to bring different stitchers' talents and creativity together on individual blankets for terminally or chronically ill children and their families. A theme and color scheme are selected based on the child's interests and stitchers can sign up to contribute a 9"x9" block within a given timeframe. Once the blocks are submitted, quilters wash and assemble the blocks to form a quilt top and then finish the blankets, which are then presented to the children and their families.
I am going to be stitching a block for a young girl named Emily and one for a girl named Destiny. Today I started working on the latter; no pictures yet since most of the time was spent prepping the fabric and pattern. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a bit of progress to show!
I was excited to receive an invitation to join the blog Let's Stitch Too, which is moderated by BeckySC. I can't wait to participate in the stitch-a-thons, challenges, and to get to know other stitchers.
Well, that's all the news that's fit to print, as they say! Until next time...

I don't have much time to write today before I head to work but I spent most of the morning stitching away on the Ireland house piece. Still stinky picture quality but hopefully it still shows the progress.

I am not sure whether I will keep stitching after work tonight or do some reading... my fiance Nate picked up my library books for me yesterday so I have two new books to start that I have been waiting on for a couple of weeks. Either way it will be a good way to relax at the end of the evening!

To begin at the beginning

Well, here goes! First post. I have been staring at the blank screen for several days now, wondering how to begin, then going off to the trivial things... what color a hyperlink should be, or where italicized print is appropriate... garbage, essentially! Just need to start writing and it will fall into place from there.

To introduce myself, my name is Carolyn and I live in Massachusetts. I grew up here and don't think that I could live anywhere but New England. I absolutely love the fall and Halloween and wish it was lasting a bit longer this year... we have had a great season with beautiful weather and gorgeous foliage but one can definitely feel winter in the air some recent mornings!

My background is in Emergency Medical Service, of all things, but I had to give up working as a paramedic due to some health problems. I am currently working as a cook, which I really enjoy, and I am hoping at some point to attend culinary school and work as a pastry chef. I have always been a creative, visual person, from drawing and painting to theatrical set and costume design, to cross stitching and quilting, and it is surprising how much of that translates into the preparation and presentation of food!

The free time I have is spent reading (anything and everything I can get my hands on) and crafting. My primary interest is in cross stitch. I love to design my own patterns, both by hand and using the PC Stitch software. I have too many projects in progress to count and one of my goals in starting this blog is to get some of them finished! I love to read other people's blogs about stitching and see their projects develop, so I am hoping to likewise motivated myself. I stitch everywhere. Literally. In the car, while watching TV, at parties, in Doctor's waiting rooms, etc.

My focus at the moment is on a planned Christmas gift for one of my aunts. She is something of the family historian and has been delving into every record available to learn our family's past in this country and overseas. It helps that my cousin is attending university in Ireland, which has allowed her some trips there for firsthand exploration! The pattern I am stitching is based on a photo taken (by another aunt) of my great, great grandfather's house in Ireland, which was taken last year but has since been demolished. It is somewhat slow going because I created it in PC Stitch which I love but tends to make lots of tiny sections of color. Here is the photo and a recent shot of the stitchery to compare:

My apologies for the horrid picture quality on the stitching... taken from my camera phone. Boo! Hiss! I will try to borrow my fiance's digital camera for future endeavours.

I recently started quilting which was something I had been interested in for some time. The push I needed to get going was when my dear friend Melissa announced she was expecting! We now know that it is a little girl coming in March, but at the time we didn't know, so I headed off to the fabric store with a general crib quilt pattern idea to dictate yardage. I found a soft flannel print with baby jungle animals on it to use as the backing, which set a nice neutral green and yellow pallette.

I dragged that bolt of fabric around the store with me until I found suitable matches and when I got home, totally changed the layout of blocks! This is what I have finished for the quilt top so far:

And for now I will leave you with that, because this has become a very long post indeed.