A Witch's Best Friend Update

I worked on this for 2 days and boy did I want to pull my hair out.

It's Joan Elliott at her best!
Each part consists of many colours and the design is very busy.

But I love the finished design and I am sure it will be worth it, if I survive.

Too Many Distractions!

Firstly 99 Bottles is coming along great.  It's such a fun stitch as you feel accomplished everytime you finish a whole bottle, and it makes the fact that you have 99 to do, much more manageable.

I cheated a bit and worked on it for 3 days, but shhhh don't tell my other projects that:-)

I then worked on A Time For Giving for 2 days and lets just say that not much happend in those two days.

Before:

 

Now:

 

 

It looks like I accomplished a bit over 2 days, but honestly there was a bit more added after my last update and I never blogged about it so it just looks like more.

 

I didn't do much stitching the last two days as I have had far too many distractions.

 

Distration One:

 

I was watching S1 of the TV Series Arrow.

I love the story line of the series, but I tend to love any of the Superhero movies, so it was a given that I would enjoy this.

 

My problem was that I would put on an episode with stitching in hand and would all of a sudden realise that I have watched the whole episode and my stitching was just left lying in my lap.

 

I just enjoyed watching the main character of the series way too much to miss any of it.

 

 

Distraction Two:

 

It started out innocently (as it always does).  I was just looking around for new blogs to add to my reading list when I came across one that does English Paper Piecing.

 

I thought that it looks interesting and so I read some more. 

Then I thought:  Wow I would love to make a table cloth for Christmas with that technique.

A couple hours later I had read blogs and watched you tube videos and technique pages.

 

And today I popped into the fabric shop and bought some quilting fabrics:

 

 

 

I am not sure about the brown one on top working with the colours, but I really just couldn't resist those cute and tiny motives on it.

 

I really don't need another project and probably spent a bit too much money on the fabrics (sorry hubby) but I really just couldn't resist.

 









Distraction Three:

I spent a big part of yesterday sorting out all my WIPs and new starts.
I have put them in their own individual folders, which includes my working copy, the fabric and any threads needed for that project.
Now at any given time I just have to pull out the file to be ready to stitch.

I still have the last 3 projects to sort out and will show a pic of my storage solution on my next update.

I had grand plans for today with my stitching.
Daughter has a friend visiting so she is happily occupied, hubby left very early this morning to help a friends nephew move.   This meant that I had the whole day to stitch with very little interuptiions from daughter and absolutely no guilt from feeling like I shouldn't be stitching because hubby might think I am being lazy.

Instead I have tidied house, being sorting out my projects and spent a fair amount of time at the fabric shop and then this update has taken forever.  Hubby should be home in about 3 to 4 hours so hopefully I can get my butt in my chair asap.

PS I apologise for the weird spacing in this post and the previous one.
I have no idea why it is doing that and the extra line spaces don't show up under the html and that means I can't fix/change it.



Attempting A New Rotation

If you look on my right side bar you will see a new list up.

This is a list of all my WIP's and also any new starts that I already had set up (already had fabric for).

I will stitch each project for 2 days and will work down the list in Alphabetical order.

I worked on 99 Bottles for the 2 days, also worked on A Time For Giving yesterday and today.

I will do a update on both of those tomorrow morning.

I am hoping that this will allow me to stitch guilt free as all projects will be worked on and I will only have a short amount of days between the times that I stitch on them.

I have decided to resurrect my projects on 18 count.
I spent the money on the fabric, and also spent a bit of time on stitching and I just don't like to see them being wasted.  The progress on those will be slow and I am sure not much progress when it's time to update but at least they are not gonna be chucked.

Honestly I also like the size of the christmas stocking on 18 count.  It's nice and big to put things in but not so big that I have to have alot of stuff to fill them with.

Hocus Pocus Update and (yet another) New Start

I have been working on Hocus Pocus for a few days now but it was mostly catching up on half stitches and backstitch so it would of been more like "spotting the difference" than anything else.
So I waited until I had a significant difference to show in my update.

I last worked on her a few months back when we were on holiday.

This is the last update pic: 

 



And this is her now:

 



I have been watching Debbie as she stitches on her 99 Bottles wip.  I have had this for ages and I finally gave into starting it after seeing her progress.

I didn't have 14 count so I am trying 18 count again.  I have solved the issue (hopefully) by making this a daylight project and working on HP in the evenings.

I was planning on doing 1 bottle a day but these take more time to stitch then I thought they would.  Yesterday I finished a bit of the shelf and one bottle.

I planned on doing one bottle a day but today's bottle had a few colour changes and I never managed to finish it.  So I think I won't push myself and will just do an update once I finish 2 bottles each time.

I have a bit of frogging to do on the first bottle though.  I am used to designs that have the symbol . which means white.  So I subconsciously just grabbed the white when I saw the symbol but today when I worked on the 2nd bottle I realised that white is actually : and . is a yellow.  So the white you see in the pic needs to be frogged and replaced.

I am sure I will be back tomorrow night with 2 bottles correct and finished.

Cute Cat Update

I have been working on Hocus Pocus for the last few days but it's slow.  I am adding half stitches and backstitch etc and so the photo doesn't look much different from the last time I worked on her.

I will wait till significant progress has been made to do an update.

But I thought I would share a few cute pics of my darling kitty, who is going through the "teenager" phase atm:-)

Remember this bundle of fluff: 

 

 

Oh how I miss those big ears!!

 

Well she is growing too fast even though she isn't even close to a year old yet.

She has already had her operation so that she can't have kittens.  It was bittersweet sending her for that one, as I would dearly have loved to have seen kittens being born just once in my life, but there are too many stray cats and abandoned cats at the SPCA that I just couldn't send out another few kittens into the world and not knowing what would happen to them and wondering if I chose good homes for them when I gave them away.

 

 

 



31 Day Blog Challenge Days 9 &10 and a Finish!

Ok lets get the challenge done first.

Day 9 is "Worst Habits"

This is a hard one as a person doesn't like thinking of their own bad points.
1.  My temper is a bit too short (can one call this a bad habit?)  I always think of how to make myself better in this way so I would think it's a habit because one can work on changing it.
2.  I leave everything to the last minute.  I always tell myself that there is time, until there just isn't any time left.
3.  I don't have much money sense.  I spend before I think about it and always regret if I overspend.

Okay even though there is probably more, I will leave it at 3:-)

Day 10 is "Best Physical Feature"

I am not a "pretty person".  I would say I am on the average scale.  My face is round and I have no bone structure but I must say my best feature would have to be my mouth ( at least in my eyes).  I have a bottom lip that is much fuller than my top lip.  I know that a few years ago it was all the rage to have your bottom lip made fuller by collagen and I was always chuffed that mine were like that naturally.  Think Angelina Jolie's lip and thats what I mean.

I have another finish as of today.

My Glass Aglow is done!!!

I made a list of all my WIPS and planned starts (that I have the fabric for) and ther are a total of 8.  I ran the numbers through the Random Number Generator and it gave me # 1 as the result.  So next up I will be working on Hocus Pocus until it is done.

I am hoping to get all the wips completed this year so that I can start 2014 fresh.  I plan on making a list of at least 14 things I want to stitch in 2014 and will add them to my sidebar closer to the end of the year and will use the RNG to choose one each time I have a finish.

31 Day Blog Challenge Day 7 & 8 and new stand (sort of)

I missed yesterdays blog challenge so I will do both today:

Day 7 is "Pet Peeves"

I think my worst one is when someone invades my personal body space.  You know if you are standing in a line somewhere and someone literally has their body shoved up to you and is actually physically touching your back or keeps on bumping you.

I also dislike it when you go to the bathroom only to realise that theres no toilet paper in the holder because the person who was there last finished it and never put a new one on.  The worst is that you usually only realise this once you actually need the paper.  Sadly my family does this all the time:-)

Day 8 is "whats in your handbag"

Okay luckily for me I cleaned out my handbag awhile ago, and this is not as embarrasing as it would normally have been.

My wallet
Tissues
Lipstick
Keys
Cross stitch
Notebook
Pen

I am such a happy woman right now.  I have been wanting a proper cross stitch fame/stand for ages now.
I have looked into getting one from 123 stitch but the import tax that the post office would charge was a bit too much.
I looked at ordering one from DMC until the local shop told me that it would cost over R2000.00 and I couldn't ask hubby if I could spend that much on it.

I was looking at a online auction/buying site a few weeks ago and saw a scroll frame for a measley R80.00!!! I bought it immediately and yesterday hubby spent the day in his workshop and made me a stand for it.

Now I have this absolutely stunning thing:

 

I am truly happy right now with this that I keep on just walking past it and looking at it:-)