Needlework Projects

I finally got this butterfly project done.  I will never do 18 ct. black Aida again.  I went a little rogue on it.  For one thing, there is supposed to be another circle around the main design, done in dark brown.  I was tired of dark floss against the black background so I blew it off.  I was also supposed to do a bunch of couching.  I get the concept of how to do it, but as the kids say these days, 'ain't nobody got time for that'.  So I blew that off and fudged it by using backstitch.  Not terribly crazy about the results but whatever.  The instructions also said 4 strands of floss for the French knots. Yeah right.  I did some and they looked awful so I cut them out and used 2 strands. The border around the circle was supposed to be just purple floss and the inside circle border was to be yellow floss mixed with thin, shiny gold strands.  I decided not to do the inner circle border at all, and mixed the gold strands with purple floss for the outer circle.  I'm just glad it's done!

This needlepoint kit was among the ones my mom's friend sent me, otherwise it's really not my cup of tea (see what I did there?), design-wise.  It's been quite awhile since I did needlepoint and I forgot how fast the design works up.  Despite all the different colours, this was easily done in about 2 weeks' time, and not working on it day and night.  One of my friends bought it!

I picked up that embroidery kit & those other bits and bobs at the church thrift shop in Bourne. I am thinking about doing this kit with a combo of beads and stitching...'beadpoint'.  Someone already started it but I'm planning to snip out all the stitches.

Cannot remember where I got this next cross stitch kit from....probably a catalog, but possibly online.  It looks soooooo easy, doesn't it?  Just white floss on a small piece of Aida.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  I got this quite awhile ago, at least 6 or 7 years ago.  I remember bringing it to work to do during my lunch hour.  That's when I started encountering trouble with it.  There are an awful lot of quarter stitches which are kinda hard to make come out good.  Then there are also an inordinate amount of French knots, which I have hated since my very first needlepoint kit in high school.  I struggled to find the center and a few false starts were due to being off by a row or two.  I've ripped this out & started over more times than I can count and the Aida lost all structural integrity. The pattern is hand drawn and I don't think they did a very good job with it at all. So it ended up sitting in my drawer at work for a long time.  Over time, lunch hour stitching projects came and went, and this bookmark just sat there till I started packing up all my personal effects to move.  It sat in my 'needlework' box in my craft room since 2011 till I finally started ferreting out projects I really want to finish.  I put it in the project queue, but kept passing over it to work on new kits.  Finally, I started this again and guess what?  I screwed it up!!!! Could. Not. Believe it. I was so careful, but I fudged it badly.  It's like there's some awful anti-stitching forcefield around it!!!!!

I like the idea of a bookmark and it came with the tassle and the felt backing, so I wanted to somehow salvage it.  I started to look through my various pattern books to find something small enough to fit.  These little celestial patterns were perfect.  I am a total math failure but somehow I managed to calculate correctly. This is absolutely the last time I will use black.  This one was 14 ct so easier to see than the butterfly, but still, it's not easy to work on black.

I will be starting a new Doctor Who-themed project shortly for one of my bffs.  Stay tuned.

Temporarily Sidelined

We recently came into a bumper crop of Snocaps candies, which was always my fave movie candy.  But I certainly didn't need 50 or 60 boxes of them so I started doling them out to my friends, esp. after a Triple Choc Chip Cookie recipe showed up on Pinterest, which called for Snocaps.  You can find the recipe HERE.  Let me just add that the raw dough is pretty darn delish too.  I substituted peanut butter chips for the white chox in the recipe.  They should be called 'Triple Chip Drops of Heaven'.  I got about 33 cookies from the recipe.  Oh, the peanut M&Ms are Russell's.

Peepers peepin'

It was my honey's birthday at the end of March.  

I decided to make him a pineapple upside down cake, from scratch no less.  I'd also bought the box mix as a backup plan.  What I liked about the scratch one was that the ingredients seemed much healthier, plus it was going to make a smaller square cake, not the 9x13 pan size, which neither of us needed to be consuming. HERE is the recipe for it, which is from the Betty Crocker website.  It came out pretty good....I only encountered one problem with a pineapple sticking to the dish but it flipped without breaking.  The brown sugar also kinda pooled around the sides and edges more than in the middle.  But hey, he loved it and that's all I care about.  This is, incidentally, the first from-scratch cake I ever made.

All he said he wanted for his bday was a kiss from me, but I got him the M&Ms and a scratch ticket too.

We went to visit his family over the weekend and his sis treated us all to Seafood Sam's take out for his birthday lunch. "Himself" borrowing someone's reading glasses in order to see the menu and sticking his tongue out at me for taking a picture.

One brother and one sister weren't there but I still took a fam photo of his other brother Jimmy, their dad Jim, sister Grace, Russell and Ma.

Carrie and her adorable kids Katie & Abi were there, and my future sister in law Janice (she's married to Jimmy, and we went to high school together too; she was in Russell's class and her sister was in mine).

So anyways, I'm sidelined from doing crafts and anything else that requires the use of my right arm.  We had torrential downpours on Sunday and I slipped on the wooden deck and went down in a crumpled heap on my right side.  I spent that day watching a bunch of Harry Potter movies and weeping off and on.  Finally saw 'Deathly Hallows Part 2' and the floodgates really opened then.  Wow, that was a sad film.  The fall also affected muscles on the left side as well including a slight twist of my left ankle.  Back hurts, neck hurts, every goddamn thing hurts.  That means I can't craft, clean, grocery shop, or do anything else for that matter.  Taking the dogs out is really, really hard because I have to have both leads in my left hand and they are very strong dogs. I still can't go on any day trips yet because it's still icky off and on, and while there are sunny, clear days, everything is in that post-winter drab & yucky mode. Nothing's in bloom.  I have no further blog posts drafted at the mo past 4/3, because I haven't taken any new pics or done anything of import in the craft room.  I'm still working on the butterfly cross stitch and I started a new project, both on hold till my arm stops hurting.  I will be minioning with Tina's Terrific Team for Blogging from A-Z April 2014 but am not participating as a blogger.  I am sure I will get back to a regular posting schedule by next week, hopefully, but I just need to take a little break for a few days till I get better.

Much Ado About Nothing

The local media got the entire region whipped up into a panicked frenzy starting on the 23rd about the mother of all blizzards that was going to wallop half of Massachusetts and the greater Eastern Seaboard.  The speculation and breathless updates, especially by WCVB up in Boston, were ridiculous.  Then the National Weather Service and one of the Cape Cod sites piled on with their predictions and that made for a very uneasy area.  Everyone was talking about it and preparing.  I was upset only because I didn't want Russell caught on the road in it.  They were making it sound like we were going to have 21" of snow with hurricane force winds by the 26th. 

I spent Monday and Tuesday shopping, cleaning, doing errands and laundry...I ran into Sandwich real quick too.  I set up the generator and tested it.  I was as ready as I could be.  The weather people finally were able to get a handle on the various scenarios and it looked like only the Cape & Islands were going to take the direct hit. Which, by the way, was when WCVB's coverage dropped off significantly because Boston wasn't going to be affected.  The cutoff was literally at the Canal.  The wind woke me up around 2 AM so I took Pepper out but it hadn't started snowing yet.

This is what I woke up to at 7:00.  I called this picture 'Blizzards Bay'.  The snow was so fine and not accumulating but it was wicked windy.  My sweetie encountered no issues on his trip and was safe, and all my friends & fam were fine, so I was able to relax, finally.

It was windy all day and the lower Cape (Chatham, Eastham, etc) definitely had it worse than I did at my end.  Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard got the most snow and wind.

Snow stopped midday.  I spent most of the morning/early afternoon working on my cross stitch but I finally ventured outside to take some pictures around 4.  

Sun struggling to come out.

The plow made one or two trips down my street but my driveway didn't even need to be done at all, which was good.

The sun was out by 6:30 but the wind was still gusting strongly.

Dark clouds to the northeast.

But sunny in the west.

Ice on my car.

I really hope this was winter's last gasp cause I really don't know how much more of this I can take!!!!

Still Waiting On Spring

Wasn't amused to wake up to this on the 10th.  And again on the 13th.  In between the snow, we had mild days.  It's going from 20 to 50 every other day.

Sagan turned 9 on the 11th!  I can't believe it's been that long.  I got him when he was 9 months old and now he's 9 years old.  Getting a little grey on his muzzle but he still acts like a silly, goofy puppy.  Russell's really taken a liking to him, which is so sweet to see.  I tried, and failed, to get him to wear the birthday bandanna and hat.

The birthday boy and Bean.

Squeaky lips.  It looks funny when he looks at you with them in his mouth but he wouldn't look my way.

Pepper made a fort.

Sagan does this with the bed every day in the morning.  Gets it right on his head and tosses it around like a pizza.  It's hilarious to watch. 

On Saturday the 15th, I took part in the Worldwide Minute, which was organized by Paula Wallis Photography of Vancouver, BC.  The premise was to take a photo at 5:47 pm, your local time.  So all day there was a rolling block of pictures as new time zones appeared.  We went down to the beach near the house and waited for the appointed time so I could shoot my entry.  Got home and uploaded it to the page and it was incredible because Cape Cod made a huge showing of photos.  Nearly every photo uploaded for 5:47 pm Eastern Daylight Time was taken in this region.  

I've been spending the freezing cold days inside working on this butterfly cross stitch.  I will NEVER buy another kit with 18 count, black Aida cloth again.  It's too hard to see, especially when it also requires black and dark blue floss.  There are a lot of colour changes in this kit, floss colour combos, backstitching, french knots and couching, which I've never done.  Should be interesting when it's done.

Marsha gave me these killer socks.  So pretty!

My awesome stepdaughter gave me these.  I can't wait to make a giant rainbow cupcake!!!!!

Made this for Marsha.

And speaking of bracelets, here's my win from Krafty Max Originals!  The pics don't do it justice, but it's a really pretty purple.

Steampunked a small working padlock with keys.  Hard to see but the front has gears and a tiny key.

There are wings on both sides, and this shows the back.

St. Pat's Day was bitter cold and cloudy, with just a few flakes that fell around mid-day.  It was a pretty sunset though.

I got up a couple days ago with the intent of going grocery shopping but it was 11*.  ELEVEN DEGREES on March 18.  So I stayed in, cross stitched and make sugar cookies.  Note the maple leaf Canadian flags.

It's hard to believe that over half of the month of March is over....one quarter of the year.  This one's definitely going down in the record books as the worst winter ever.

More Goodies!

One of the drain pipes needs to be fixed and this giant icicle formed.

I had a real off week, last week.  Felt like crap, couldn't get warm, crying real easily and which culminated with a killer headache from hell on Sunday....just one of the lovely hormonal byproducts of middle age.  Like a beacon of light, I got that package from Tracy with the sugar cookie mix and the very next day I got another box full of flat backed glass blobbies from Kim!

PLUS chewsticks for my fuzzies!

Of course Sagan demolished his in no time, then sat on the couch, with his eyes flicking back and forth between Pepper still munching her chewie, and me, with a dejected look on his face.  I couldn't stop cracking up. 

I looked down at Bean and she looked up at me like this, which only made me laugh harder.

Eventually she tired of hers as it was rather large and Sagan left it alone for awhile which surprised me, but he finally finished it off later in the day.

So the day I had my headache, the only thing I managed to do was sew beads to this little doily bowl I made a few weeks back by spraying starch on it and letting it dry over an inflated balloon.  It didn't make the bowl as stiff as I wanted and it began to collapse under the weight of the beads.  So after they were sewn on, I tried spraying more starch on it but that still didn't work, so I coated the back with mod podge and let it dry.

Then I got up on Friday, checked my email, and was excited to see that I won another giveaway, on the Krafty Max Originals blog/Facebook page!!  I won a bracelet but I haven't gotten it yet. 

And then I got this from Michelle!