Another finish for SOLAK

This morning I finished my third square for SOLAK. The pattern is "Black Bear" by the Stoney Creek Collection. I also started working on the pattern "Fox" by Jeanette Crews Designs. Not that you can see the fox yet, just the log it's standing on!

So, that's my work for today! Thanks for looking. :)

Black Bear, Almost Finished

Just another quick update to show my progress on the Black Bear square. Hoping to finish it tomorrow. We'll see! This is what I have done:

Black Bear

Just a quick post to update my progress on the Black Bear square. This is what I got stitched today.

Still frozen...

Today was no letdown in my recent series of adventures. I had my second shift at work, and when I got out at 2:00 the car was acting funny. I managed to drive to the middle of the parking lot, just far enough to get stuck in the middle of an intersection. AAA took almost three hours to get there from Manchester.
Which left me ample time to witness the rotten nature of humanity. People were SO rude and flat out nasty... As if I planned to stall my car on a whim. Yeah, I had nothing else to do with my afternoon except break down. It got to the point where if one more person honked or flipped me off, I was going to lose it. And the worst part is that it was mostly old ladies! Who knew senior citizens were so full of rage? Finally a young guy stopped and helped me push the car out of traffic, so at least there was one human being in Nashua today.
When the tow truck driver finally got there I could have hugged him. Partly because he was there to pick up the car and partly for body heat. It was 24°F out so you can imagine what that felt like.
Anyway, the car is now in the shop, hopefully to be fixed soon.
For stitching, I decided to start the Black Bear pattern for SOLAK. This is my work for the day.

Another finish

Tonight I finished my second square for SOLAK. The design is "The Hunter's Pace" by the Stoney Creek Collection. I am pleased with how it came out; I think it will be a nice addition to Tom's quilt. I haven't decided which square to work up next, so I'm off to look at my patterns now.
Thanks for looking!

An experiment

So I got my new phone today! In celebration of that, I am writing this post from the phone! Pretty cool. Anyhow, I worked on The Hunter's Pace and got quite a bit done. This was my progress.

A finish!

I had trouble posting last night; my text kept getting deleted/sucked into the internet void so I eventually gave up. However, I finished my first square for SOLAK yesterday. This is "Golden Retriever - Barney" by Country Cross Stitch. It was a lot more backstitching than I am accustomed to; I usually stitch HAED patterns which are all cross stitch! But I patiently stitched in every last blade of grass (in three shades of green, mind you!)
Then, I started working on the next square for Tom's quilt. It is a pattern called "The Hunter's Pace" by the Stoney Creek Collection. I am having to trim about 20 stitches off the top and bottom to fit the 4" requirement but I don't think they will be missed. You can see the tree, the deer, and the rabbit so far.

Sorry about the shadows in the picture. Hopefully the less than desirable picture quality problem will be over soon; I found out I was eligible for a phone upgrade so I just ordered my new phone which has a 5 megapixel camera in it. Which I thought was pretty awesome until Nate informed me his HTC Evo has a 12 megapixel camera. Whoopee for him. :-P

The waterfall in my bedroom has slowed but has not been resolved. Maintenance finally decided to show up this afternoon to take a look. They threw down a couple of trash bags and a new bucket (hooray, I can have my trash can back), peeled the popcorn layer off the ceiling, poked a hole with a utility knife in both rooms and called it a day. Apparently the apartment above us is vacant and was flooding with water pouring down the walls and "nobody called maintenance." Really?? Cause I'm pretty sure I called maintenance on Saturday night when I had the Poseidon Adventure in my room!! Ugh. According to maintenance, there's nothing they can really do until the snow melts. Today was therefor good and bad because it was sunny and (slightly) warm, so the snow was melting. Theoretically that should be a good thing, clearing the roof and running off. Unfortunately there is a veritable glacier on the edge of the building so instead of running off, the water is running down into the flushing and onto my bureau. Delightful. Supposedly they are waiting on a contractor from Pennsylvania (not exactly close to New Hampshire!) because there are so many homes here in New England having the same problems that no one local has time to do the work. (For those of you who don't live around here, we have had one massive snowstorm after another and there is well over a foot of snow and ice caked on the roofs.) So the saga continues.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Take care and thanks for reading!

20,000 Leagues Under the Ceiling

So this is what I woke up looking at this morning:I suppose I should be more detailed. At about 12:00 am I was sitting on the couch stitching when I heard a noise from the bedroom as if someone had turned on the shower. Disturbing, yes, but a few weeks ago our sink accidentally overflowed and leaked into the first floor apartment and maintenance caught it before we did, so I thought maybe the same thing was going on from the third floor. Never did I expect to see what I did.
Water was gushing from the ceiling next to a vent, and the popcorn layer was peeling and bulging away. My bureau was soaked. The clothes in it were soaked. The 20 or so books and magazines I keep on the bureau were soaked. The floor was wet, the hamper was wet, even my bed was wet. I called Nate and he said to call maintenance.
In a panic, I dug out our apartment community reference manual. There is a page about the "24 hour maintenance" staff we have on call, and an explanation of what constitutes an emergency and thus an emergency call. The second item on the list is flooding. Ok, water pouring through the ceiling, check. So I called the number.
I was connected to a woman from the answering service who could not have been less interested in helping me. I don't know if I interrupted her midnight game of Ms. Pacman or what, but she got my apartment number wrong, asked for my phone number repeatedly, and clearly just wasn't paying attention. When I explained the nature of the problem, she asked if it was something I could "stave off until tomorrow." When I replied no, there is water pouring into my bedroom, she said she would have maintenance give me a call.
Now I felt at least somewhat reassured. Maintenance has a little cabin on property and they are usually just a golf cart ride away. Or so I thought. At 12:26 the phone rang. It was maintenance alright. The man on the line greeted me "Hi, this is ---- from --- ----- Maintenance, how are you doing?" When I answered "I've been better..." he sighed and said "Yeah, me too." Now hold on a second. I am usually a very empathetic and appreciative person, especially toward those in service industries. But frankly, when it's after midnight and there's WATER POURING FROM MY BEDROOM CEILING, I don't really give a crap how the other guy is doing! Don't complain to me!!
Next, I was instructed to "poke a hole in it [the ceiling] with a pen and put a trash barrel under it." I was silent. I thought I was misunderstanding something. Was he coming over to poke a hole in the ceiling and put a trash barrel under the leak? Was he joking? He goes, "Hello, are you there?" Finally I said yes. He told me "That's all we can do for now." Confused, I asked "So you're not coming over?" "No." "Is someone coming over tomorrow?" "We'll probably be able to send someone over on Monday to assess the situation." I was flabbergasted. Probably? Monday?! His parting words of comfort were to tell me "there's a lot of this going on." Oh great, so you're not just blowing me off, you're ignoring my neighbors as well! I got off the phone and started to get really angry. I had already been able to figure out to put a basin under the leak and had put towels down in the affected area, but that only does so much, and now there was a leak in the second bedroom where I keep my valuable book collection. I called Nate back to update him. He called the answering service repeatedly and was unable to get any further information. Maintenance refused to call him back.
So we slept uneasily all night next to a rapid leak in the bedroom ceiling. The bulging was getting worse, and I fully expected to wake up to another waterfall when the ceiling let go again. This morning the damage is worse, as shown in the photo above. Still no help from maintenance. The books and electronics from the bureau are destroyed. I have no idea what will happen next, but I am extremely unhappy. With what we pay for rent, I fully expected maintenance to respond to an emergency. But apparently it's too much trouble for them. Let's wait til Monday and see if the ceiling, walls, and carpet all end up destroyed. Maybe then they'll decide to send someone over.
Maybe.

Golden Retriever (SOLAK)

Last night I began working on my first square for Stitches of Love and Kindness. The pattern is "Golden Retriever -Barney" by Country Cross Stitch. You probably can't tell yet from the picture what he has in his mouth but it's a camouflage hunting cap. The quilt is for a man named Tom who loves hunting so I am stitching several squares with hunting dogs and game animals. I also went to Michael's today (with a 20% off coupon-score!) to pick up some more 14 ct Aida and a few colors of floss in anticipation of starting the pirate's alphabet.
Well, that's my progress for today. Back to work!

The Cure for Frogs

After several frustrating hours of frogging my large project ("Wolf Countess") I have still not made a lot of progress. In fact, I was in something of a selfish snit over the whole ordeal. However, I was lucky enough to receive two emails today, one from "Stitches of Love and Kindness," and one from "Stitch for Pleasure, Stitch for Charity," accepting me into their respective groups.
Am I crazy? You might be thinking... taking on more stitching. But I feel like this was exactly the encouragement I needed. It is very enjoyable to get wrapped up in a large project of one's own, but there is something truly special about being able to reach out to the world around you with your stitching. It will both break up the time whilst I work on the larger projects, and it will allow me to give something back.
For Stitches of Love and Kindness, ("SOLAK",) I will be stitching two squares for a quilt for a man named Tom who is suffering with cancer. He loves hunting and motorcycles, so I will be stitching one square with a hunting dog, and one with a poem called "The Hunter's Pace."
For Stitch for Pleasure, Stitch for Charity, I am taking on a fairly large project made up of small stitched squares. It is a "pirate's alphabet" quilt. The designs come from a stitching magazine in the UK I believe, and they are a riot. I expect this to be lots of fun to stitch.
There are many good crafting charities both here in the USA and abroad, and I encourage you, if you are reading this, to join one, even if it is just for one square. Both of these charities accept squares on a constant basis, so if you are deadline challenged, it's no problem. Here are the links for the groups I joined:

Stitches of Love and Kindness

Stitch for Pleasure, Stitch for Charity

Thank you for reading, and happy stitching!

A plague of frogs

Well, I spent all day yesterday and all morning stitching the top of the banister on "Wolf Countess," only to realize 8 rows from the top that I was one row off on everything from the bottom of the page! ARGH!!! Now I am picking out stitches, during time I was hoping to stitch. Don't you hate when that happens?
Tonight I am starting at a new part time job, just so I can bring in a little money. I am nervous but hopefully it will go well. Have to be there at 5.
I'll probably post again tonight to let you know how that goes, and hopefully with some stitching progress!

Wolf Countess

Just a quick post to update my progress on "Wolf Countess." Working on the banister next to her. In other news, it finally stopped snowing! Not looking forward to digging out tomorrow...

This is becoming a pattern...

So, I finished page 9 of "Wolf Countess." And, we are in the throes of yet another massive snowstorm! They are predicting 20"-25" of snow between now and Thursday. It's starting to become a real problem around here, because we are running out of places to put the snow. The roads are becoming narrower, the snowbanks are looming high overhead... there is one mound at the Loop mall in Methuen, MA which was 65' tall as of yesterday. Ridiculous!
So here is my stitching so far... I finished the work on this page in 11 days, which I think is a record for me! I'm going to shoot for the two week mark again on this next page, though it will probably stitch up more quickly since it is just background.

Well, that's all for now!