Progress update and lunch with friends

     Well, I call them friends.  It was my mom and my great aunt Carol.  It was fun.  We always enjoy ourselves.  We went to Frisch's, and lunch was delicious.  I had a fish sandwich and fries with a soup and salad bar.  Oh, and hot fudge cake.  I was hungry!!!  Mom and I were talking about David and Amy, and Aunt Carol said, "Who's Amy?"  Mom and I looked at each other she looked at Aunt Carol and said, "Didn't I tell you David got married?"  Aunt Carol didn't remember being told.  (Honestly, Mom could easily have forgotten to tell her.  On the other hand, Aunt Carol could have forgotten being told.  LOL, six of one, half dozen of the other!!!)  I started it cause I took charts to show Aunt Carol some of my WIPs.  I took pics of my SALs, Beach Romance, and Midnight Hunting.  She looked through and was all impressed.  Mom and I had to explain how the chart worked, and how the symbols corresponded to the colors.  And then she was all amazed by the chart for Time To Go.  It's pretty big.  I want to say forty six pages off the top of my head.  So once she got it she asked how big it would be.  Of course, I couldn't remember, but I told her I can fit twenty eight stitches to the inch, and she approximated it from there.  (Totally not something I could do.  My math skills suck.  To the point of being atrocious.  I can barely add and subtract.)  So show and tell was fun.

     After lunch, we stopped by at Hancock's.  Mom needed to pick up a few things, and I ended up getting two pairs of scissors.  They're cute.  Pink and white polka dots, and green and white polka dots.  

They were on sale for three ninety nine each pair, and they are SHARP!!!  Be careful of your fingers kind of sharp.  Then we also stopped at CVS so mom could get batteries for her CO2 detector (it started chirping at her at seven AM, waking her up and not allowing her to go back to sleep) and ice cream.  (I'm tempted to spell allowed aloud because Julie was just complaining about people doing that, but she doesn't read my blog regularly, so I won't.  Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO like to torment her.)  Then I dropped her off at home, and came home myself.  I sat out on the balcony with YD for a bit (this spring, we've sat out there a LOT.  Ten or twelve days so far, which is WAY more than last year).  I worked on Noah's Sub.  I'm so enjoying this project.  We may go out for a bit more later.  But I had to come in and look for mom's receipt from Hancock's.  She couldn't find it.  (It was stuck to the foam she bought.  Silly woman, lol.)  Since I was up, I watered, checked the backseat, and now I'm blogging.  I'm still way behind on emails.  I haven't played any in three whole days.  I've been very busy stitching.  And on to the progress pics we go!!

     I'm not posting a pic of Noah's Sub (Stoney Creek) cause I'm still gonna work on it more today, and I don't think I got more than five rows done so far.  So no pic of that this week.  However, I do have another pic of Time To Go (Witch Stitch'n'Bits).  It has a lot of black still, and some brown.  You can't tell though.  The brown is very dark, and my camera's not really picking up the subtle shadings.  Still, I got a lot done on it this week.  

Another three hundred stitches or so.  I'm enjoying it so far, despite messing up the chart.  I just wish it had printed right, then I wouldn't have to be making ten by tens on the darned thing!!  And I couldn't get the dumb chart to print in color either.  Dorky printer.  It was dad's so I don't have any experience with it's quirks.  Eventually, I'll need to figure it out.  Luckily for me, that's a problem for another day.  Freak was happy that I'm working on his project, and not just gridding.  And that was a whole nother conversation, lol.  I mentioned gridding and he was all, "What's that?"  So I had to explain it to him.  Luckily, he picks up fast, so it wasn't too bad.  And luckily the gridding is done for now.  Yick!  It's soooooo tedious.  Still, TTG is working up fast so far.  I've got the first row of ten by tens done, down to the end of the page.  (It's weird though.  The last block is ten wide by six high.  And the last row of ten by tens is ten high by nine wide.  Strange, and I can see I'm gonna have all kinds of problems with it.  And there's also overlap on the pages, which I don't always remember.  We'll see how it goes!!)

     Next up is Bluebird of Christmas Happiness (M Designs).  

(I still think the name is dumb.  I'm sure they could have named it something better.  Happy Bluebird would have served much better, IMO.  And you see why I'm not creative enough to name things.  Anyways...)  He's coming along.  Because of lunch today, and because I generally don't get up earlier than noon, I went ahead and started staying up later each day on Sunday.  That way, I work my way around to being up in the morning so I could go to lunch.  BoCH suffered because of it though.  I woke up at one thirty AM on Wed morning, and hadn't worked on TTG yet.  I don't like to skip something, so I pulled it out and put in a few stitches.  Then I put it down for a bit, thinking I would come back and do BoCH.  But TTG was still calling me, and it was going so fast, so I did the brown on it too.  Then I went and did emails for a while, and eventually got back to BoCH.  But I didn't even get his whole hat done.  I was kind of disappointed in that.  I came home yesterday (after an outing with mom that I'll tell you about in a bit), and even though I wanted to finish his hat, I went to bed, cause I knew I needed to.  I was tired.  Eventually, I got up and took a sleeping pill (after laying there not sleeping (and not stitching) for three hours).  Grrrrr....  Stupid insomnia.  Finally, I fell asleep though.  Next week, I'll get better progress on my bluebird though.  I promise!

     Up next, Beach Romance (Janlynn).  

I got a lot in on it.  And in this photo, I sharpened it up and changed the photo's temp (someone out there in blogland recommended Picmonkey, and it's awesome to play with) so you can actually see ALL the stitches, including the ones that were, in the beginning, invisible.  I was happy about that.  I did a lot of little things on Sunday.  I put in a few stitches here, and a few stitches there...  Not quite confetti, but shading towards it.  I worked on it for a couple of hours, then put it down for a couple.  (That's normal.  A couple of hours of work, and then I'm on to something else.)  But then I went back to it, and stitched another couple of hours.  I really love the shading in the waves.  It's really pretty.  And I haven't had any more problems with the material (knock on wood, lol).  And I really hope I haven't just jinxed myself!!!  I hope to show it to David and Amy soon.  (For David and Amy, read Amy.  Cause she cares.)  I'm working on the first page above the fold.  It has a fold halfway down, and I started below it, but it's easier to not have to keep flipping up and down, so I'm just doing the top now, and I'll do the bottom later.

     Last but certainly not least is Midnight Hunting (Dracolair Creations).  

It's finally coming along well, because I decided to fudge it the other way.  Let me explain.  It has a border around the outside.  Very pretty, and very intricate.  Then, there's an inner border on the corners that runs out from the corner medallion and reaches towards the circle, which is centered.  I was having a HUGE amount of difficulty with the inner lines.  They just didn't want to WORK RIGHT!!!!!  I know, I know.  Doing the awful, fractional stitches is no problem for me, but doing straight rows has me pulling out my hair in clumps.  (I'm like that at pool too.  Hand me my cue and make me do a behind the back, half off the floor shot and I'm good.  Give me a straight across the table shot, and I miss.  Go figure.)  So I'm fussing and cursing and turning the air blue, when I finally get a clue:  Do the circle first, and fudge the lines.  So that's what I'm doing.  I haven't done the fudging yet, in this photo, but you can see a couple of white areas leading up to the curve that need to be fudged.  Yes, the circle is in the right place.  Finally.  And thank God for small favors, you can't see where I had the circle in the wrong place and had to pull it out.  Not a fuzz left, yay!!!  I loved doing the circle.  All those fractional stitches on the diagonal were so cool to do.  It's hard to see, but it looks like little diagonal railroad tracks.  The fractional parts of the stitches make up the railroad ties, and the whole parts of the stitches make up the rails.  Really fun to do, and cool looking effect.

     Now, mom's and my other outing.  We went to see Jerry Wed afternoon.  Jerry is the guy at Hobby Lobby who does all my framing.  He's awesome.  She took in Jesus (she totally didn't like the tray once she got it, so she decided to have him framed differently.  Twenty bucks down the drain, because she wanted him cut down too, so not even the lacing could stay), an old print that needed to be cut down, and a new print to be dry mounted and matted.  She wants to be able to change out the large print above the TV.  So she had them both matted and she'll have one for Autumn and Winter, and one for Spring and Summer.  I liked them both.  Jerry went though and played with different mats, and different frames and composed several interesting combos.  She picked mats for all of them, frame for Jesus, and glass for both print (it only needs one glass even though there are two prints) and Jesus.  And I picked up...  (drumroll please)  Randi's Cat Lessons for People.  

It turned out great!!!  I love it.  Jerry picked the frame, and Randi picked the mat, so I really did nothing but approve stuff, lol.  I love the way the frame picks up highlights of the colors in the stitching.  Randi left about half an inch on the left side, and he still managed to lace it properly.  He's a wizard, lol.  Now I have to figure out where to hang it.  We'll have to see what happens, and if I can find places for my brother to come over and put screws for me to hang my stuff with.  I have wall space.  I just need to make decisions.  I'm not good with that.  Eventually, I'll find places for stuff...  (Maybe after I've lived here for a few years, lol.  It's been over a year and a month already, and I still don't have anything hung.  Procrastinator???  ME???)

     And yes, I haven't forgotten my giveaway.  I'm hoping to pick a name this week sometime.  I didn't get many entries though, which surprised me.  If you haven't entered yet, it's a few entries back on my blogspot blog.  Go to http://www.juliesandyesdearsravings.blogspot.com, and it's about three or four entries back.  Yes, you CAN enter by posting to your Multiply site if you don't have a blogspot blog.  I'll take anything I can get at this point.

     Lastly, yes, I have noticed I'm at two hundred plus followers on my blogspot blog.  And yes, this is an occasion for a giveaway.  I'll be sorting that out over the next couple of weeks (but I'll probably do another giftcard to HAED or 123.  Winner's choice.  I just can't afford to do two in one month), and I'll post when it's sorted.  Thanks to all my followers, and most especially, those who comment on my blogs.  I love to talk, and to know what y'all think of what I'm doing.  (Also, I just preen at all the compliments, lol.)  You guys make me feel great, so thanks!!  And on that note, I'm off to stitch some more.  Y'all have a great night, wherever you are!!