An Early Winter

With Baby Saunders’ arrival expected in about 9 weeks (give or take a week or two), I am doing my best to get all my obligation stitching out of the way early. Before I found out I was pregnant, I had signed up for two Round Robins that had a maildate on December 1. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but with my due date being only a few days before that I was starting to get nervous about getting everything finished and mailed out in time. Due to some good karma, I was able to get hold of Outi’s fabric for the final round of our Dragon RR a little early and made a start on it this weekend. I hope to finish it in the next few days and then will stitch on the next round of the Neighborhood RR as soon as I receive it from Nicole. Hopefully I will have all my 2007 obligations stitched and mailed out by November 1 at the latest. Then I have until February 1, 2008 before my next official mailing. Yeah! I feel much more comfortable knowing everything is taken care of in advance.

With that in mind, I spent this weekend on an early winter with Outi’s dragon. She sent us a fabulous hand dyed purple fabric to stitch on and the greys and lilacs of the winter dragon look amazing on it. I would say I got about half way through all the main stitching. Hopefully I will finish the crosses tomorrow and tackle the backstitch on Tuesday. Then this will head back to Jenna when I go to mail my Neighborhood piece on Friday.

Well, it is getting late. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend:)

Speed Posting

Just a quick post as I am really tired and there is tons of stuff to do today. I did want to make sure I got a picture up of Carol’s neighborhood RR before I forgot. I stitched a modified version of Daisy Lane Cottage by Country Cottage Needlework.

I really like how it came out… a nice simple house…just the way I like it:)

Painting and Gardening

Wow, has it been an increadibly busy weekend. Allen and I have been going non-stop since Saturday morning. I found out last week that the baby’s furniture had arrived at least four weeks earlier than we had expected. This is good in that we now have plenty of time in case we have to return any damaged items, but was bad in that there was still a ton of things we had planned to get done before there was furniture in his room. The two big things I wanted to get done was repainting his room and having our upstairs carpets cleaned. Thus, Allen busted his behind to paint the room this weekend so that I would only have to take one day off work for carpet cleaning and furniture delivery. Here are some pics of the room. I wish I had taken some before and a few more progress pictures. This room was the bedroom of the previous owner’s teenage daughter and was a mottled peach/orange/brownish color. Now it is a grey/blue.

Here is the room after it had been primed and Allen started making his way around the edges.

Here is a view of the finished room. The baby’s room is at the back corner of the house. He will have a lovely view of woods and the neighbor’s pool and basketball hoop. I just hope he can nap through the sound of the thud of basketballs on concrete.

And here is the hardworking guy.

While Allen was busy painting, I was busy trying to get all the rest of the upstairs ready for the carpet people to come. I think I made pretty good progress. Just the clean up in the baby’s room and the study to hit this week and a quick vacuum.

I also got in a couple hours stitching on LTDs German Garden. I am trying out a new rotation in the hopes of hitting all my WIPS and getting in some finishes. (If you are interested in seeing my rotation ideas, check out the tab at the top of the page) I would say I am at the 40% completed point on this piece. I really like stitching the circular bed on the left side this afternoon.

Now it is back to RRs for a night or two. I hope to have Carol’s house done by Tuesday night by the latest and next weekend my goal is to stitch Winter Dragon on Outi’s Dragon RR as part of the Stitch-a-thon weekend. I would like to have both pieces ready to mail by the end of the month.

Carol’s Neighborhood RR

While I was away visiting the inlaws last weekend, I made a very good start on Carol’s neighborhood Round Robin. I am stitching Daisy Cottage by Country Cottage Needleworks. I had Allen pick all the hand dyed fibers for the piece. I think he made some fantastic choices and I am really liking how this is turning out. I just need to finish the daisies and maybe add something to the sky.

This week I have been working on a new rotation of sorts to try and get some time in on my much neglected WIPS. This week it has been German Garden. I will post a pic of my progress in the morning. Right now I need to go tape some trim. Allen is going to start painting in th baby’s room tomorrow. We just found out the crib, etc is arriving about six weeks earlier than we expected. Hope you all had a fabulous Friday.

More Stargazing

Alright, I was supposed to get started on Carol’s Neighborhood RR this week, but I totally got wrapped up in working on Stargazer. I absolutely fell in love with working on her. I am now more than 2/3 done with the stitching and about half done with the whole piece (including the beading). I am really looking forward to the beading, even though there is tons of it.

As of tomorrow night, I will be back into Round Robin mode for a while as I have one that I need to get done by the end of September and a second I would like to have done by then. I am also working on a new rotation in the hopes of making some progress on my numerous WIPS. There are several pieces that I really like in my basket, but just haven’t gotten to in a while. Stargazer will be my focus piece to start and I will work on her between rounds of my other WIPS. When she is finished, I will pick one of my other smallish WIPS to be my next focus piece. I am thinking about picking LTDs German Garden next.

If you like kitties, you’ll love this post!

This evening after Allen got home, we caught both of our kitties being extra special cute:) They both have always had a “thing” for feet and enjoy sniffing shoes and socks but they took it to a new level tonight. Allen had left a pile of socks for me to wash and after he added todays pair, Cooper and Zoe went wild.

Here is Cooper when he first discovered the pile of goodness.

And here he is rolling around.

And Cooper hiding from the camera.

After he gave up on the socks, Zoe discovered it.

And just another gratuitously adorable pic of Zoe.