To the next year

Heart Note Alley till part 10... I have still not got around doing the next parts, guess we are in #13 or #14 at the moment. We have time till August, so i am okay to be lagging.

The reason is i am still about half-way through Part 3 of Adriana. Well, let me admit this - not much stitching possible these days. Cant believe that i am not fully into it. There were times when no stitching in a day made me feel incomplete. And now, there are nights i just want to sleep. Like last night, there was this tiny voice inside me saying - get up, pick up Adriana. And i easily snuffed out that voice and s l e p t... The pic at least shows how big Adriana will be once finished! Did i tell you i love these longish ones...

While i have been a poor performer in stitching (what with no lilies for 4 months out of 12, less than 10 completed projects, and the disastrous (and unmet) target set to complete Frederick the Literate ), book-wise i did good. I did read 36 books this year. Here are the books i LOVED reading - I reccomend these books!

And finally some pics of my son...

Wishing you all a very happy new year... Hope you have pepped yourself up with enough stash enhancement, enrolled in wonderful SALs for 2012, and set some crazier challenges for yourself. Hope you have set time to indulge yourself. Here's wishing a better 2012 for all of us!!

An entry for November

Thanks a lot ladies for your comments on my last post. It meant so much to me...

I really cant believe what is happening, so i am 'mutely' taking it as it comes.

Feel like stitching, I stitch. Feel very sleepy, i sleep. If i have to choose between stitching and sleeping, oops i choose sleeping. With that said, let me show you part 2 of Adriana that i finally finished. This is a beautiful project, and you will know why, when you see the next part. There are two herons who are in the center of the design and most part of the first heron can be seen once i finish part 3. But that is a long way off, as i will now stitch Part 8 of HNA.

Still no lilies, and i am toggling between Adriana and HNA at the moment. My workload has increased immensely, so there is absolutely no room for more stitching or more stitching enthusiasm in the night. I am thinking it is alright though:)

In the sticklounge yahoo group, we had a surprise for one of the group moderators!! who got a surprise quilt for her birthday!! Each of us had stitched one square for this quilt, and sent to Germany, where the quilt was sewed/made and then gifted to the birthday gal. Here is my square:

My son's sleeping pattern has become quite challenging, lol. I am hoping it will settle itself soon. The good part is we read 3-4 books every night. (McQueen, Noddy, Clifford, Thomas the train are his favorites) I am so happy he loves reading, he does repeat the same books again and again though. Last night he decided we will pull out some of Mamma's books too, and he said he will read them for me. Mamma said, sure why not. The sweet thing opened a page, and ensured i realised he was reading, and after few seconds said Mamma, here is the handsome Prince.

I realise it has been ages since i put his pics, so to make up here is one more - a recent favorite:

Hope you all have enough stitching time to keep you happy and feel accomplished!!

An entry for October

I cant believe i have been away from blogland for so long... I have been extremely busy, and not getting time to blog-hop... There have been mind-boggling soul-crushing issues on the personal front too that have kept me in my Piscean shell, with little or no inclination to survive like i used to...

So no lilies, not yet...

Here is HNA part 7, when i started this part i was giving myself 3 nights to complete this part. 3 turned to 13 sadly

I see i have not yet shared Adriana 1 which i completed early October. This project is going to be grand. I have still not yet touched Adriana Part 2, hope to get needle and thread along there tonight.

I did venture into backstitching Frederick, and i am so not a happy camper... I cant even see the letters in gold in the two books in the bottom left

Hope you have enough stitching spirits!! I hope to get into blog-hopping soon and read your blogs and comment on them, I mean it... Take care

One more finish and split-rail dowel help

Purple Garden is a project designed by Angie of Angie Designer blog, tilted El Jardin Purpura. This is the original design.

For me somehow the inner piece was 'calling' constantly, and that is the piece i stitched. So here is my version. I am still undecided on the lavender/brown situation, so i have left them untouched.

Most of my readers have suggested lavender, and I agree with you - this brown is not going because all others are making brown kind of a black sheep, LOL. So, i will give it some time, some other 'family' color might flash to my mind, and then i will replace both OR probably go with lavender-to-replace-brown compromise. At the moment, no action taken. So that was the finish.

Heart Note Alley sailed along this month with the Lilies going into hibernation. I have now completed part 5. 15 more parts to go, and i think Part 8 is now the most current one. I am loving this longish fella.

Yes, fun can be had in many ways. So i present to you one more angle of HNA

I am going to mount (is that the right word for what i am saying?) this on the frame. I have split rail dowels, and i am trying to figure out how best to put the fabric on to the rods. So if you have any tutorial or any tips for me, pls HELP!!! And I did it!!

I worked on Adriana for a week this month, and will resume stitching her for another week starting tonight. Again i have taken the recommended colors, luckily MOST of the colors were available locally. 3 of the colors could be 'borrowed' from the Lilies treasury(!), and for 1 or 2 colors, i did a close-call. This is where i am at the moment. Whatever is she stitching???!! Wait till the herons come, you are going to love this one!

So, these are my current projects HNA, Adriana, and Lilies once i resume her next month. Frederick is still 'inside'. For those of you who are wondering what i am talking about i have a confined-to-closet project Frederick the Literate (Dimensions, Charles Wysocki) who has hardly seen any light of day this YEAR.

Coming to books, I had a great journey reading The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey. A wonderful book on a person suffering from Alzheimers. Recommended read for all you book lovers out there. Currently reading Rosie Thomas's Moon Isalnd.

Wishing all a great weekend and sanity through stitching!

Changes in my Stitching

A major change actually, if you had understood my penchant for Lilies. I was on vacation till 5th September, so i did not start Lilies on time. 6th had to be a rest day. And the following night, well I just decided to park Lilies for a month, and instead stitch on my Sticklounge projects. I have chosen two biggies to stitch, and am kind of lagging behind in one of the SALs. So i decided Lilies could remain in vacation for at least one month.

I think it will be fair, if i mention here that there have been moments when i have thought that the Lilies project can be 'deemed' completed. There are several reasons for this

1. My son has been sleeping late

2. I am feeling sleepy (mentally tired) earlier

3. I am now finding doing 4288 stitches in two months daunting.

This last reason is really a weird one because i have done tougher (4992 stitches in a page) in about 50 stitching nights. But i think it is a combination of all three that is now troubling me and my Lilies. So all in all, i decided i will give it a break and i will give me a break too.

So giving Lilies their due respect, let me move on to the Sticklounge projects and post some pics:

I finished Freundschafterz last month, and here is how it finally turned up:

And here is Heart Note Alley. I love stitching this one, i love the various colours and keep admiring and imagining how the whole Alley will turn out and admiring again. Isnt that what we stitchers do anyway? Take a step or two back, relax and just imagine, LOL. Hmmmm. This is a longish one, the stitched area when completed will be 147 by 312. Lovely, isnt it? The designer of HNA is Kathy Bungard if anyone is interested!

We have recently started a heron project in Sticklounge called Adriana, this will be a 6-part SAL, each part is quite HUGE, if you ask me. This is 119 by 298. Crazy to take up another biggie? Well, I fell for the herons. I think we get one part each month, and then (i think) 2 months more as buffer.

Hope to stitch on Purple Garden in the weekend. I have a wee bit remaining to conclude this one:)

So that is it from me on the stitching front. It is the end of the week, and hope all of you have had great fun doing what you like doing. Wishing you a great weekend

Good Time to Dance!!

Presenting Lilies, pages 15 of 20 completed, 70200 stitches of 90300 completed, 234 (of 301) X 300 completed. I completed the page on 20th August, and took two hours of the 21st to handle all the loose threads. I first took a picture of the third ROW as i call it,

and then removed the coverlet to get the entire pic... Well, giddy was what i was and almost in tears too...

The last couple of weeks have been very tiring, as my son sleeps later than usual, and i pick up lilies much later than usual, and my quota gets over after midnight every night. So, i have ended up very tired and dark-circles-under-the eyes'd. Is there anyone out there suggesting i stop, and call it a day? or should i stitch the remaining 5 pages?!! Hmm, see i did pop that question.

Here is Purple Garden with another part completed. The next part will be my final part, and i finish another project.

I am also showing closeups with the brown color in the left side and the lavender color in the right side. The brown looks different in the pic than in original though, LOL. I am interested to know which color would you have gone with please??

I also have the last part of Freundschaftsherz to complete, i did pick it up for a bit on Monday night and have completed at least 30% of the final part. But last night, I was tormented by a devil of a headache, so i treated my head with a pillow as soon as my son treated his. So no pics of that yet.

I now aim to put the remainder of August nights for Heart Note Alley. Others are with part 6 of the SAL i think, and i am trailing way behind at 3. I am also starting a new project in Sticklounge, another longish one! This will have two herons, so watch out:)

Hope your week so far has been great and you are getting enough stitching time!

Mid-Month Milestone, and Help Needed

Middle of August, and i have been on a bumpy road this month stitching the Lilies. My son's sleeping time has changed, and my stitching has gone awry...

So his sleeping time has moved from 10PM to close to 11PM, sometimes even beyond. Looks to me this will continue as he has to use up all that energy and what better way than to have Mamma read umpteen bedtime stories, and then some coloring, and water drinking and general playing around all amounting to sleep-delaying tactics. I love his penchant for bedtime stories, and i hope it leads to good amount of reading on his own later. I enjoy this night time with him, although i admit i inwardly groan after 10.30PM.

Coming back to Lilies, i need to switch gears on the Lilies night-time gala stitching that i have enjoyed these couple of years. Probably i should put a timer (impossible if you ask me) to stitch till midnight only. I do not have a stepmother though, LOL, so am not sure if i can be as obedient as Cinderella. The silver lining is that i have some 700 stitches lesser in each of the pages to come. So that should allow some slack, eh?!!

Coming back to the subject of this post, net net this page of only 3432 stitches is still not completed, you will see the little bit of area still unstitched. Having said that, I am going to now reach a very good milestone in this project. Started on 1st January 2009 (20 odd days before Obama's inaugural speech),i will in another couple of days complete 15 pages of this 20 page project. 

Here is the not so clear picture... I hope (and hope to remember this as well) to take the next picture in proper daylight.

Here is Purple Garden, and am not sure if the variegated pink is helping. So i have tried red too.

The dull purple that i did here proved to be a big no-no to me, but the pink is no good either:(, and red kind of wins in the 'elimination' way.



But i am not a happy camper yet, any one has any recommendations pls? Pls pls suggest what color i could stich the inner motif with?

I am now reading a Maeve Binchy book - Copper Beech, and as usual it is a journey i am enjoying, i am not liking it as i did Tara Road or Scarlet Feather, but still a good book.

Here's wishing you all a great week, with enough stitching time to keep you happy and refreshed.

Month-end Milestone

Slow again this month - as i was working on my specialty projects. Now 31 days later i am not even 60% done. I think subconsciously i have lowered my level of diligence on this. Hope to finish by mid August, we will see how it goes. So. Enough of that, i am supposed to enjoy what i am stitching. And i am:) Just that these statistics turn round and round in my head.

All pics taken were kind of blurred, i have doctored them a bit. But i do wish i could take fresh pics.

I could do quite a bit of PG, still not completed the part though, LOL. And then there is a beautiful project starting in Sticklounge this month which i am enrolling for. I sometimes wonder, when will i ever stitch something from the kits i bought from ebay/etc. I have hardly done justice to Frederick the Literate....

And here are the quilt books i promised i will show you. Mind you, i am not ready to go in that direction, not yet. But when you go to book exhibitions, it is better to buy these books than marking for later... Some day, i hope to get there (in quilt land i mean), but not yet...

Wishing you all a great week. I am not feeling the best right now, some issues on the personal front... Pls do pray for me thanks.

A giftie quickie post

A quickie post. Since the gifts have been shared, i can now show them here:)

First of all the train, actually two two train (to use my son's way of phrasing!) as there is a train in each side. So here goes:

and the other side.

The gift to my husband. Today is his birthday and stitched him this Margaret Sherry Alphabet L - a freebie from last year, from Cross Stitcher Magazine.

and the other side. This contains leonine characteristics that I see in him:) (We Pisceans see the world through rose coloured glasses, I am told, LOL). My son has not yet seen the Leo, i am thinking the birthday boy should have his gift for himself for at least one day;-)

And some bit of the Purple Garden too, although i have NOT yet completed this part. I think what i am currently stitching is the May bit, and we are in end of July... [inserting big sigh here]

Next time i hope to show the 2 Quilt books i purchased recently. And some framed projects. I promise.

Thanks for all your comments ladies. Hope your rest of the week goes great, given you stitching time every day or night just as it suits you:)

 

Mid-month Milestone

First, let me show the lilies. Page 15 seems to be, again, a good page. All in good shape so far, i will be taking time off lilies for couple of nights - have to stitch something else for couple of more nights. But i will still be comfortable to finish this page, as there are 3432 stitches only in this page, and i have done 1400-odd stitches already.

So very soon you will see the whole beauty from ROW 1 to ROW 3 as i will finish the third ROW by early August.

Here is Purple Garden, i am way behind with this one, but i know i will catch up once my July specialty is completed. PG deadline is December this year, but as i am doing a part of the whole, i should be fine.

July is when my husband's birthday falls (the specialty), so there is something being stitched for him, and now since my son is also seeing what all things his Mamma is up to, i decided i will stitch a li'l something for him too. So here are some pics:

Important Note (to self): My son has seen me stiching both, and thinks both are for him.

Book-wise i am still with Everything You Need. I should finish this by tomorrow. I have loved LOVED reading this book. The lead character has been developed so well, i was close to tears ever so often while reading. A great sip-kind of book. You have got to take small doses, that was my case at least.

Thanks ladies for all the comments. Yes, you are right, I can see the tip of the heart too, i wanted it to stand out better, LOL