2016 June Wipocalypse

The full moon and Summer Solstice!!!! What an interesting time. The heat has come out which means I am not a happy camper. I prefer the cool/cold weather which leads to our question of the month.

Do you find yourself more productive with stitching in summer or winter?

Well I like to stitch year round and I can usually get the same amount of time to stitch. since I do not like the heat, I tend to stay indoors to keep cool. That means stitching time.


What have I been doing stitchy wise??? Well lets see.
My HAED Christmas Cottage has another page finish. This makes 20 pages done.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast is getting closer and closer to a finish. Along with Whooligan's Hangout from Glendon Place.

 

 Saturday I finally pulled out my canvas work JOY and got a bit of work on it. I was at my LNS with my stitching group. 

 

I also have a new start. One of the groups I am with on Facebook has an SAL Challenge. The theme was Treasure Stitch, you were to pick a design that  had something in it that you would find in/with a Treasure Chest....... ie; jewels, gold coin, crowns, keys, pirates, ships, islands and so on. My design has jewels in it so I am stitching her. Minerva by Nora Corbett. I have made a few changes already the black in her dress and hat are now a dark hunter green. All of the beads, so far, are changed to metallic Glissen Gloss and Rainbow 2 greens and the rust on the tree limb. The tree is 4130 DMC and the moon is Caron Collection Lemon/Lime. And on the owls eye I made them half stitches and use DMC Neon E980. The pictures will not show it well but the fabric I am using is mint green.

 

 I have 2 new finishes I have my owl who sets by the front door. It was a fun little stitch and the finishing was something new for me and that was to use an old wooden hoop that I got from my MIL. The second finish is for a friend. She is going through some really intense cancer therapy and I wanted to send he a gift to lift her spirits and show some support .  I finished it off as a card with some fun fabric and ribbon.

 

I have recently bought some new patterns both cross stitch and quilting. 

 

I have gotten a bit long winded with this post I hope you are still with me because I will leave you with a picture from a couple days ago. I live in the country and we have deer in the fields around use. Well they like to come in and eat the rose bushes. I got a really good picture of the doe. We also have a young buck, but he is harder capture. 

I hope you have a nice summer with lots of stitching and many fun days. See you next month.

 

 

Trip pictures and Story

 I want to show you some pictures of my trip to Australia but it is going so slow. For some reason my computer does not want to upload my pictures on to my blog. 
We arrived in Sydney to a warm and sunny day. Picked up by our friend and headed north to Scone. Yes they really do drive from the wrong side of the, on the wrong side of the road. Well it is not wrong fro them.  :-)

While we were in Scone I saw these birds just about everyday. There were about 6 to 8 0f them. Not sure what they  were but they were beautiful and had a sweet song.

 

 We spent 2 weeks in Scone working. We did not do alot as it is pretty rural area and when we were not working we just rested.

We then went up to Sydney and spent a few days exploring the city. Our motel room was directly across from the Opera House.We also were very close to Sydney bridge.

The park and St Mary's Cathedral

While we were in Australia they celebrated ANZAC Day.....their Veteran's Day. Because of this we visited the Memorial that is in Sydney.

 We then moved on to Melbourne to visit with friends. That is when we got to see some native animals at the Healesville Animal Sanctuary. We saw kangaroos... I was even able to pet one of the females. They are so soft. They feel like a bunny or a very soft cat. There were also koalas, tazmanian devils and a bunch of birds. I was so disappointed that we missed getting a picture of the Lyra bird. He sang beatifully but we had missed his feeding by just minutes.   

 

More animals on the way home. The whole hill was full of these woolies.

Then on to the Melbourne museum, what a great place. Spent two days looking around. The highlights for me. Phar Lap, sewing machines, a carved and gold wall plaque and the country symbol life size.

Now you are going to think I am crazy but all over the city they had these amazing metal ornate trellises.  I wish I could have got more. But it was hard to get them as we were driving by.

Finally the time to come home and you can read that adventure in my other post. 

Well I finally got all the pictures to attach. not sure what the issues were but here you go. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

2016 May Wipocalypse

I was not home during last months posting so I will have to get you updated for 2 month. But first the question of the month. 

What were you stitching this time last year and have you finished it? (via Jo)

Well let see what was I working on????  1 HAED Dona Gelsinger Christmas Cottage. No I am not done with it but I have made good progress. I have finished 6 full pages and 3 partial pages the last columns of the rows. I think I also was working on 1 of the Cottage of the Month from Country Cottage Needleworks. I finished all of the series so yes I did finish that one. I finished all of the projects I had going at that time other then my HAED. I do not have any UFO's. All my work is kept in my rotation until it is finished. I hate having something started and then not finished.

And now what have I been doing for the last few months?????? Well we had a trip to Australia. I wrote a post about our adventure coming home. If you are interested you can read that other post. and I will be making another post once I get my pictures sorted out. So come back in a week or so and you can see those pictures.

Stitching I took my HAED with me and finished a page and a half. You can see the progres in the above picture.

I started a new project. A friend of mine is going through some really hard times. She has a rare cancer that is very fast moving. The doctors operated and got out all that they could and then they put her on some very intense chemo and radiation. I already sent her a card but I want to give her something to lift her spirits so I am making her this. I found an inspirational charm to add to the center when I have the stitching finished. 

 I have updates on all of my WIPs Beauty and the Beast, Little Owl and Whooligans Hangout.

I hope to have the heart finished in the next couple of weeks so I can send it to her. The rest are just part of my on going rotation and will be finished whenever I get it done, no pressure. 

I am enjoying these monthly updates from all of you. Until next Full Moon!!!!!!

Trip home from Autralia

Yes we are home and it is so good to be able to sleep in our own bed and eat home cooked food. It was a great trip and we saw so much. I was surprised by some stuff and other things they are very similar to things we do and have here in the states. The trip home tested every once of patients I had.
Got up at 5:30am as we had to be to the airport 3 hours early for an international flight. I get that. So we get to the airport and check in, deal with baggage and find the correct gate. We decided that since we were to be fed on the plane we did not need to eat much so tea/coffee and a piece of toast was breakfast. We were to load at about 8:40, we were flying on an Airbus 380 (like the one pictured)

there was about 563 people flying (I know this as I heard one of the flight attendants talking) At 9:15 we were suppose to be taking off, at 9:30 they made the FIRST announcement saying they were working on the plane and please be seated for a bit and they would let us know what was happening soon. 20 minutes later they say the fuel regulator in #4 is not working they need to have parts flown up from Sydney and please be patient. They will give each person a food voucher so that we can get something to eat and they hope to be able to start boarding at 3:30. Oh goodie just what every one want to do sit in an airport for 6 hours. So we went and ate and then looked to see about a different flight but nothing else is leaving Melbourne for the US until the next day. 3:30 comes and goes and finally at 4:10 we start loading and I believe we took off about 4:45. Oh course this means we miss our connecting flight in LA but they assure us they will make all the arrangements for new flights. Get to LA and we are not the only late plane coming in at this time, there is a flight from Singapore that was late and have about the same amount of people which puts an 1000 extra people in the queue along with any planes that are there on time so as anyone would imagine Immigration and Customs is packed. Of course we can not go through the fast option because for whatever reason Mike's passport would not register on the machine, we had to get into the line and see an agent. Our rotten luck we get in the line with the people that are being jerks. About 20 people ahead of us was a group of 8 people led by a loudmouth women that was being a bitch. The security man came up to her and told her to please calm down and stop yelling and making a scene because it was not helping and it would only cause more delays. Well she was not having any of it she continued for a while longer and finally the agent in the booth came out and had a quiet conversation with her. We could not hear what he said but whatever it was must have finally got her attention because from then on she stood very quiet, hands folded in front of her and looked at the floor. Once that group of 8 went through everything increased in speed and we got through. That took 2 hours. Then had to go pick up bags, talk to Quantas, get new tickets and then get in the line for the baggage check at the customs desk. The new flight was going to load in 1 hour and the line to customs was massive but you could not skip it and there was no way to be taken through faster. On top of that the Quantas people had run out of new stickers for our luggage and we had to recheck our bags at the counter upstairs which meant we then had to go through TSA all over. Well the Customs people realized that unless you had declared something like food, plants, animals or something that was a red flag they were just waving you through. Up the stairs get to the counter tell our new flight, run down to the next concourse go through TSA which was fine but you had to give up belts, shoes, my bag and so on and why is it there is always 1 person that does not know how to listen??????? Grab our shoes and run to the gate on the ticket and it is empty....oh no did the plane leave already. Asked the lady at the desk, she said no the gate was moved and we had to run to the end of the concourse (oh course) We get down there and it is packed but there are 5 gates down there so is it packed because we are still there or is it from other flights. I go to the desk and hand the counter gal my ticket and before I can say anything she says "what is this" I said I would like to know if we are on time for the flight, has it loaded? She rolls her eyes and says no we are still waiting on the plane it is late you will have to wait. I would have told her off but all I could think was you want to go home not to a detention area for telling this witch off, bite your tongue. So Mike got us some water and a candy because that was the best we could find in that area. And we had not eaten since before we got off the plane and that was just a small breakfast and it is now 3:40 and it was 10 minutes past when the loading was scheduled for. Another 10 minutes and the plane shows up and they unload and then they have to clean up the plane and so about 45 minutes after we were scheduled to load we get on the plane and I think great 1 hour we will be in SFO and then home. Oh no not the way our day has gone no.................... We are sitting and waiting and waiting and the Captain comes on and says we have an issue. OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. It turns out they had an APU that was not working, this is not a big deal actually because it's only job is to help start one of the motors and they can over ride it but they have to have a tech come in and test it and then cal headquarters in Oklahoma get permission to continue and then do paper work to explain all of this. But don't worry it will only take about 30 minutes. Hahahahahahahahahaaaaa yeah right an hour later we actually taxied out. We got home at 9:45 just about 40 hours after we had started this whole adventure.
So let me say I will not be doing any traveling for quite some time.

Before I go

I thought that I better put in an update before I leave. Hubby and I are off on a business/vacation. We are heading to Australia for 26 days. I am so excited. I have never been there and it is a place I have ALWAYS wanted to go. So a post before I go and when I get back I will be gushing with stories and pictures. I am having a really hard time trying to choose what project to take with me. I have limited room in the luggage but I know I have to have something with me or go nuts. 

I got the 7th package from the Gadgets, Gizmos and Great inventions. This one was for fuzzy stuff. New scissors for cutting threads when you are working turkey stitches or others that need cut. 2 different styles of brushes to fluff up threads for the fuzzy look to your stitching. 2 booboo sticks to use when your threads start to fray or when you have to frog and it leaves behind little pieces of thread. A very soft tooth brush also for whisking away pieces of thread. Some felt for finishing and also the round pads are for giving a bit of bulk.

 Santa got finished. He looks great and the beads did not overwhelm me but I still will replace most of them on future projects.

I got another page finished on Christmas Cottage and a good bit worked on the next page. So 1 through 16 done along with 23,24. Working on 22.

I have worked on my owl and my embroidery piece they are super fun to work on and it has been exciting to learn new stitches.

 

 I have worked a bit on Beauty and the Beast and also my Glendon Place piece but not really much to show so no point in adding pictures. 

I have started another project, I want to make for a friend. She is going through some really tough times and I want to make her just a small inspirational piece. I hope it will work. 

Also I have a confession. In the last month I have bought over $400 of new fabric. I am not a big quilter but I like to have fabric to use for my finishings and that is fine but this seems a bit excessive even for me.I also bought 3 yards of plain white and 3 yards of a design I already had but was running short on. I did not take pictures of those.