I need a boat!

Wow the floods in New Hampshire! Honestly I'm not sure if I'd rather the moisture had come as snow or rain--at least with snow there would have been a gradual shift! But a Nor'easter decided to slam into the East Coast and stay for a few days. We had over 5 inches of rain in a little over 24 hours--wild! Dan and I ended up in the back yard, in icy water up to mid calf, digging a drainage ditch so that all the run-off and melting of the 5 inches of ice/snow that was already on the ground could possibly stay OUT of our basement! We're just about at the bottom of a hill, and all the melting from the woods behind us was ending up at the back of our foundation. We'll have to figure out a better drainage system sometime this summer! I have to say I'd rather fix my yard then deal with inches of water in the basement again!

Tory is on her second day of no school due to the flooded roads. I think my husband may have made it to work today--he was having to go miles out of his way though! The road damage around here is worse then even the Mother's Day floods last year. I wasn't here for those ( I was in PA loving on my godson for the first time! :) ) Hopefully T and I can survive another day inside! It's not actively raining now, which is great! I've nearly got my laundry caught up, since I had Dan to fetch and carry the heavy stuff yesterday!

I pulled out an older WIP yesterday to work on--I just didn't want to work on *anything* and really was fighting the urge to start something new. With 44 WIPs, I really don't need to start anything!! I pulled out Moonlight Orchid from Patricia Ann Designs. I converted this lovely piece into NPI silks and had forgotten just how beautiful it was. I had had to pull out the flowers once because my conversion just did not work, but I'm quite happy now!! I got several bands finished last night, and did some work on the everlasting border--smyrna stitches covering just 2 threads (TINY), and in between Algerian Eyelets and Rhodes Squares. Not a problem except it is all done in #12 perle cotton. I HATE perle cotton! So I'm working on the border a little at a time ;)

That's all for me today--off to fold clothes!

Not a lot goin on!

Not too much happening today... so I'm going to make this a picture blog! :)
Aren't you glad you chose to read today ? :)

Here's some fav pics of my family!
This is our close friend Jamie who visits us quite a lot! She's become an honorary sister to my kids and I got to teach her stitching, and she's taken to it like a duck to water!

Tory on her way to a soccer game! It's so funny because behind that mouthguard, she still had NO front teeth!!

Her first concert with the clarinet! She looks so grown up.

Dan and Tory snuggling with our Ginger Love Puddle, aka Simba!

My two goofball furbabies--they sleep like this all the time!

Finally my newest start--Ink Circles Cirque de Circles. It's stitched with Vikki Clayton Russian Sage Premium silk on Silkweaver's Meadow Mist Reflections. The floss is a bit more bright/pastel than I thought, and I'm debating ripping it out and changing colors to... something! Not sure what though. It's hard to tell right now, but I don't know how these colors will look in this big design.

Five Questions.. and Five Things...or...

Angi is crazy, one of the these!!

here's how this works. For the first part, 5 Questions--my dear readers can ask me five questions--either in comments or feel free to email them if you'd prefer. I'll answer them in the blog as soon as time allows.

For the second, Five Things About Me:
Here are the rules:

1. Get tagged
2. List five things that have not been revealed on your blog
3. Tag five other people

Wow, I am not sure what all to list. I found this on Jenna's blog, and since I still owe her not one, but TWO PIF's, I figured it'd be nice if I took a tag! :)

1: I used to desperately want to learn to dance. Real dancing, not just the stuff I'd make up in my bedroom or the attic and pretend with. We're talking around age 8 here, and no I never had lessons.
2: I've been engaged twice before finding and marrying my husband!
3: My maiden name is actually my adopted name. My mother's husband at the time adopted me, and no I have no idea who or where my birth father is.
4: I had mononucleuosis in my senior year of high school and missed 4 months of school and had to be hospitalized for it. Lemme assure you--NOT Fun! LOL And I didn't even KISS anyone !
5: I grew up in a teeny town, and graduated high school in 1989. There were 89 students in my class. We were the biggest graduating class in 5 years.

Okay that's my five! I tag Jamie, Cathy, Belinda, Sue, and anyone else who wasn't tagged!

Best Valentine's ever, sorta :)

What a lovely day--for the most part! Mostly because it happened the day before! We got hammered with a snowstorm on Valentine's Day, and so DH was stressed and tired. We didn't really spend any time together. However, the night before was lovely! I got my hair done, and I LOVE it! Then I got home to my Valentine's gifts from my hubby and daughter.

Tory got me a faery statuette. The most touching thing about it is that it looks like her in such an uncanny way that I burst into tears. It will be my most treasured rose forever:



My husband-who has a huge jewelry backlog after 5 years together and no real ability to buy anything other than our wedding rings, bought me earrings. They are small, but lovely and I again was in tears from the cards and the gift. I am so blessed!



been stitching away on the models, although I'm missing 2 colors of Anchor (not sure how that happened!) Hopefully with packing et al today I can move further ahead on the other model! Otherwise I'm just getting ready for the trip!

Peace..

This'n That

Not much new today--I shipped out my Spot RR, finished an ornie for Cathy's JN RR, and I've nearly got the green wrap done on Autumn Faery Spirit. I'll finish that up tonight and rotate away from it :( It's such a gorgeous piece!

Tory is back in school, and catching up again. I dropped all sorts of stuff at the nurses office--inhaler, nebulizer stuff, aerochamber, instructions etc. We have a great nurse!!

Well here's my Spot RR. I didn't do much but the border, which is from Indigo Rose's Catherine Agnes. I'll fill the specialty stuff in when I get it back! The purple varigated is SNC Wild Violets,the green overdye is Dinky Dyes silk Rainforest. It's 4-sided, but I couldn't get a great picture of the whole thing, at least not that you could *see* it. I greatly enlarged the border as charted, since it was just 100x100.

Baby, it's cold outside!

Well we're in the middle of this deep chill, with more to come apparently! Not a good time for Tory to be struggling with her asthma again. She's home from school again--yesterday and today. Dr. put her back on prednisone and zithromax, and did a strep swab--the rapid test was negative. We're stepping up nebulizer treatments again, and I've got to take some stuff to the school in case she has problems there. Though nighttime seems to be her worst time!

I've been stitching, and I've got my Spot RR ready to go out, and I've finally figured out a layout for my Mirabilia RR. I need to get a HUGE piece of fabric for it though, 28x35 at the least. That's one massive piece of fabric!! I have planned to do the top part of Mirabilia's Rose Celebration, and then there are 8 sections around her for the other RR members. Hopefully I can get the fabric soon, so I can have it ready for the April 2nd maildate.

My other love right now in stitching is Passione Ricamo's Autumn Faery Spirit. The colors are absolutely stunning! I'm stitching her on SMF's Snickerdoodles, which is perfect. I've found it VERY hard to put her down, but I forced myself! I may up my goal time on her to 10 hours though, she's so pretty!

Hopefully everyone is warm!

adding some pictures for update on the Autumn Faery Spirit WIP and my kitty!

February Stitching Goals

I got out of the habit of setting goals lately, and I can tell! So here's the ones for February:

1: Finish Shop Models!!!! Both of them.
2: Ship out Spot RR on time
3: Stitch JN RR
4: Stitch 5 hours on Autumn Faery Spirit.
5: Stitch 2 ornaments
6: Start laying out Mira RR

Brrrrrr

First of all, I want to thank everyone for their supportive comments! It really helped a lot :) We have met with the principal/teacher/counselor multiple times each year. They are all pretty clear on the understanding of what we will and won't tolerate, to the point we've even brought up the bully law in NH. We could file charges, if this gets out of hand again. We've also had DD in therapy for a while--she's 6-9 months younger than her entire 4th grade class, but she's also far advanced academically. She just has issues with the social aspects, thus the therapy.

In other news, I do believe winter has finally arrived with a vengence. I hate cold. I hate ice, snow, icy wind and the grayishness of the sky. Yeah I know, I moved here because I fell in love with a man, not the weather that's for sure. I could happily hibernate, every year. Unfortunately lol I can't do that if my family is to eat!

I got some more done on the border of my Spot RR sampler that is due to go out Monday. I may not have the spots I wanted to throw in there done, but I'm confidant the border will be done! Now I have to start planning my Mirabilia RR--what type of look do I want... it's something I need to ponder :) I missed the first Ornament SAL this month of Jan due to being busy. I'll try to do two in Feb!

On the Girl Scout cookie front, DD sold 355 boxes! She's 145 boxes shy of her goal of 500, but she'll get a few more credits with the booth sales. Of those 355, she alone sold 101 boxes to send to the US Troops!! I'm so proud of her!! Also, it's not too late--if you want to order cookies or donate to the troops, we can still take 'catch up' orders, with money due in early March :)

Peace...

Blah days...

January is always a 'blah' month for me--not ever sure exactly why. This Jan seems to be no exception, and with the weather not having a clue what it is doing or how it's behaving--sheesh! I mean I love 70 degree weather, but not in January!! Seems that today and yesterday the weather remembered this is New England, and our wind chill temp right now is 8 degrees. While I don't like it--brrrrr-it is *normal* LOL!

I tend to combat my blahs with new starts, etc. So last night I picked up our mail and in it was the Dragon Blood floss from Vikki Clayton for Mary Queen of Scots by Papillion Creations. I was stunned that I could find no one has this as a WIP? No pictures, etc. Sooo I've decided I'll have to post lots of pictures! It's quite the large piece-16.5"x25" on Belfast-so it'll take me for*ever* lol! I also plan to do her complimentary chart The Three Emblems, which is the companion piece, as a biscornu in the same floss.

Passione Ricamo did it again! There's new designs I LOVE Love LOVE! My Lady of the Snow and Make a Wish (Little Wishes Line). I already have a few of this designer, but I can see these being added to my wishlist! I've started Enchanted Faery and Autumn Faery Spirit as part of my January starts... her faeries are getting more and more stunning!

Well I think that's about it for today--hope you and yours are well!!

Peace

BIG Finish!!

Now typically I'm not an advocate of staying up all night, especially when you have not just one child home on break, but two of them. Actually is twas the prescence of the second (older) child that allowed me to make that choice! When 1 am came and my DH had to go to bed since he had work this morning, I was headed into the home stretch of the beading on Stargazer. This hasn't been a simple prospect since I've changed all the beads, and then ran out of one and the replacement tubes weren't a match! Yes it's been an adventure! So when he saw where I was, he said "Why don't you just stay up and try to finish?" There are many reasons I love my husband dearly, but his canny understanding of "Finishing Frenzy" was tops of the list last night! So I cued up the next "History of Britain" DVD from the set DH got from his mom for Christmas (more on gifties tomorrow!!)and settled in to bead. Well as is per usual, it never takes the "short" time I think it will, and at 6:30 this morning I finished.

Without further delay, here is my biggest finish this year, my first Mira finish in 3 years and my pride and joy as of now!:



I also had help with the picture again! Smudgers is my trouble kitty! But according to my husband, Smudgers can nearly get away with anything because he's my favorite. I won't admit to favorites!! *winks*