Barnabee is home and some goals

Yeah, I was able to finish Barnabee’s Quest last night!!! I really enjoyed stitching this piece. I plan on finishing it into a wall hanging and need to go through my fabric to see if I have a pretty pattern for the backing.

And now on to goals. April was another poopy stitching month for me. I wasn’t able to get into a good groove until the end of the month. I found I felt a bit overwhelmed with obligation stitching this month. I have a lot of that with round robins this year, but I think the rest of the year’s maildates are spread out enough that it shouldn’t be too bad. Finishing Barnabee certainly made me feel pretty good too:)

Here were my April Goals:
1. Finish all the side pools on Potager du Roi-Nope
2. Finish Bordeaux Sampler through part 3-Nope
3. Stitch on Stargazer-Just a teeny bit
4. Finish Barnabee’s Quest-YES!!!
5. Finish Part 2 of German Garden-Nope
6. Finish Spring Dragon-Yes
7. Finish Mystery ExchangeYes
8. Baste fabric for Neighborhood RR and pick a pattern-Nope, but I have given thought to which pattern

And now for some more realistic goals for May:
1. Finally finish all the side pools on Potager du Roi
2. Finish through half of part 4 on Bordeaux
3. Finish page 2 of German Garden
4. Stitch on Stargazer
5. Stitch and mail my Neighborhood RR
6. Start Summer Dragon on Jenna’s RR.

Barnabee’s Quest is almost over…

Hopefully by next Friday, Barnabee will have made it to his destination. He has been a busy little bee. This weekend, I made it all the way to the bottom of the sampler. All that is left before adding embellishments is to add a little to the boarder, stitch some bees and backstitch the honeycombs.

And now for some obligatory kitty cuteness. It was a beautiful weekend in DC, so we had all the windows open in the house. The cats were sooo excited. Zoe especially didn’t know what to do with herself. I am pretty sure she sat in every window this afternoon. Here are Cooper and Zoe kissing. Don’t tell them I shared this pic…I am pretty sure they don’t want anyone knowing they like each other!

And here they are watching kitty TV.

I hope everyone had a wonderfully relaxing weekend! Allen and I had some time to enjoy the beautiful weather. I spent my afternoon tackling the evil Ivy that is trying to eat our mailbox. It does not want to give in. I would love to be able to get it all up without the use of chemical plant death, but after it ate Allen’s pitchfork this afternoon, I may have to change my tune on that one. Hopefully next weekend will be just as nice and I can get another crack at it. Unfortunately, it is back to work in the morning and I will have to waste most of another beautiful day stuck in an office building/school. ICK!!

ETA: For those who enquired, my spring dragon was designed by Cross My Heart. You can get it as a kit, a pamphlet with a few other dragon patterns or download just the seasonal dragons from Patterns Online. I will probably be starting on summer dragon in the next few weeks.

Still alive.

Yes, I am still here. I think the lack of Spring like weather lately hit me hard and it was difficult for me to get back into the swing of things at work. Subsequently, I have been coming home so tired, I haven’t felt like much stitching. The little time I have spent stitching has been focused on finishing up a Round Robin and Exchange that needed to get shipped out.

Here is my lovely Spring Dragon all finished and ready to send to Outi. I just wish it were acting like Spring around here. Instead we are getting huge wind gusts, dreary days, cold temps and rain. Only a few degrees colder and we would have had a bunch of snow this past weekend.

Okay I had a better pic, but wordpress just doesn’t seem to want to upload the nice one today. Bad wordpress!!

Despite all the tragedy at Virginia Tech this week and the stress that has caused at work, I am feeling a little more with it at home. Hopefully that will mean more time stitching and less time wandering aimlessly around the house not quite knowing what to do with myself:) There should be more stitchy posts to come later in the week. Yeah!!

A Meme

I found this on Anne blog this morning and it looked like fun. So here goes…

10 Firsts
1. First best friend - Melanie, she lived down the street from me.
2. First car - Plymouth Neon bought after my freshman year of college.
3. First love - Bobby
4. First vacation - Florida where my dad’s family lives.
5. First job - As a summer nanny
6. First piercing - my ears
7. First concert - sadly enough, New Kids on the Block
8. First record/cd bought - Cyndi Lauper
9. First real love - Allen
10. First screen name - Ralphy36 for one of my kitties.

9 Latest
1. Latest alcoholic beverage - Bahama Mama two weeks ago
2. Latest car ride - yesterday running some errands
3. Latest movie watched - I watched Eragon yesterday
4. Latest phone call made - Just got off the phone yesterday
5. Latest jacuzzi bath - probably on our honeymoon in Hawaii
6. Latest played cd - Soundtrack to Elizabeth in the car
7. Latest time you cried - I teared up a bit while watching Lady in the Water Monday night…I don’t know why
8. Latest meal - a bowl of cereal for breakfast
9. Latest curse - I am pretty sure I had a few choice words for Allen this morning when the alarm went off.

8 Have You Ever
1. Dated one of your best friends - Nope
2. Been arrested - Nope
3. Fallen in love at first sight - No
4. Been in a TV program - No
5. Had your heart broken - Yes
6. Said you love someone without meaning it - Nope,
7. Made a prank phone call - Yes, all the time in college.

7 Things You Wear
1. Dress pants
2. khakis
3. Yoga pants
4. my wedding ring
5. watch
6. t-shirt
7. Cat hair

6 Things You’ve Done Today
1. Slept in
2. Made breakfast
3. Watched TV
4. Read blogs
5. Bothered the cats
6. Called Allen at work

5 Favorite Things
1. My husband
2. My cats
3. My family
4. My stitching
5. Chocolate

4 People I Can Tell Anything
1. Allen
2. My mom
3. My sister
4. My kitties

3 Choices
1. Black or white? Black
2. Summer or winter? Summer
3. Chocolate or chips? Chocolate

2 Things to do Before You Die
1. Have a family
2. Travel to England

1 Thing You Regret
1. I really can’t think of anything I regret enough to make it the one thing I regret.

A Week’s Worth of Stitching

Ok, maybe today WordPress and my internet connection will let me upload some pictures. Keep your fingers crossed. Yeah it worked and I can finally share some progress pictures with you.

First, I spent some time stitching rhodes and over one grapes on Bordeaux. To keep myself from either getting too frustrated with the over one grapes or completely ignoring them at all, I am committing to doing at least one length of them each time I stitch. I would really like to get to part 4 by the end of this month.

Sorry I can only put up a thumbnail. When I try to do a full size image, it only shows a tiny corner of the picture. Strange.

Later in the week, I worked very hard on Barnabee’s Quest. I finishe part 2 and got about half way through part 3. I won’t be working on it this weekend as we are going away, but hopefully the next time I pull it out, I will finish it. I will be adding some Round Robin stitching in its place for a while.

Speaking of Round Robins, my Seasonal Dragon is almost ready to be mailed on to Outi in Finland. All that is left is to monkey with some blending filament and do the backstitch. There will be a lot of open areas on this dragon for a while as we will be waiting until the RR returns home to add the beads.

And last but not least this week, I actually made some progress on Potager du Roi. I almost finished three of the pools on the side of the piece. I hope to have all four, plus the staircases on top of them done this month. Should be an attainable goal.

Well, now on to some fun for the remainder of the day. This is spring break for our school district. I went to work yesterday, but I decided to take today and tomorrow off in addition to the freebie vacation days we get at the end of the week. I have some chores and stitching planned for the next two days and then we are spending the four day weekend making the rounds of Allen’s family.

BTW Cooper is trying to help me write my post and says PURRRRR!

March Progress and April Goals

So here is my progress for March. As I had suspected, my trip to Boston and unexpected shoulder issues really hindered my stitching this month. I made good progress, but didn’t quite meet my goals.

1. Finish two pools on Potager du Roi-finished 1 and a half
2. Finish Bordeaux Sampler through part 3-Almost
3. Stitch on Stargazer-yes
4. Finish Part 2 of Barnabee’s Quest-yes
5. Finish Page 2 of German Garden-no
6. Stitch Spring Dragon for Dragon RR-About 2/3 finished
7. Stitch a Christmas Ornamentno
8. Stitch one hour on My lady’s needlecase-no
9. Start Mystery Exchange-no

And here are my goals for April.
1. Finish all the side pools on Potager du Roi
2. Finish Bordeaux Sampler through part 3
3. Stitch on Stargazer
4. Finish Barnabee’s Quest
5. Finish Part 2 of German Garden
6. Finish Spring Dragon
7. Finish Mystery Exchange
8. Baste fabric for Neighborhood RR and pick a pattern

Now off to try and finish my Spring Dragon. I should have some good progress pics later today.