IHSW results - Greek Mandala, part 1!

Finished, minus the beads of course! Without further ado...

Before:

Now:

I can't BELIEVE how beautiful it is. The colors in the photo are somewhat washed out because I was too impatient to wait for natural light, and it's not perfect because I'm still very new at specialty stitches, but I do love the way that it has turned out. The whole mandala is going to be stunning when finished... you know... whenever that is. I do have to say, I'm very proud of myself.

I love it! Handsome helpful boyfriend helped me a lot by being very very supportive while I stitched this and whined.

Moving on, I start school tomorrow. BOOOOO. I'm not looking forward to it, but I will tackle it head-on. Here are some of my goals for this quarter:
1. Don't freak out. Take it one step at a time and one day at a time.
2. Don't procrastinate. Start working on a project early and finish it calmly. There's no point in leaving it until the last minute and freaking out about it.
3. Keep up with my discussion forums. I think this will be the most difficult part since it's what I enjoy least.
4. Take every opportunity to keep up with my reading.
5. Make an effort to stitch every night, even if it's just an hour.

I know I know, kind of difficult but when I have structure I work better so there it is. And I know that Handsome Helpful Boyfriend always helps me out when I'm in school - makes dinner, brings me tea, gives me foot rubs, brings me treats, whatever I need.

And finally I set up some goals for 2013. I don't know how successful I'll be, but again, I work better with structure, so here goes:


Finish College of Magical Knowledge
Finish Riding the Wave
Finish "Secret Stitch"
Finish Santa and the Mouse
Finish Woodhouse Ornament
Mario pages 13-21
Medieval Shelf pages 1-6
Middle Earf pages 2-6
Greek Mandala parts 1-6
First 10 colors of Empress
Parrot pages 1-10
6 coffee cups

The coffee cups are an Alessandra Adelaide design my mom wants me to stitch for her several times into napkins. Which is cool. It'll be a fun and quick stitch to distract me from BAPs.

And with that I say goodnight. Work tomorrow and first day of school and I have to be ready to take on both, so that I have time for stitching, of course ;)

Spangler's Inspiration?

I think I may have located the inspiration for Randal Spangler's "Trick or Treat" house...

Yeah? Yeah?

College is Back!

I thought I'd finish the page, but I didn't. That's ok. It's all about the journey, right? Right...?

So here's College before:

Now:

Ok so not much. The confetti here is immense! But it's a lot of fun and I'ma keep on going. Maybe next time around I'll have more. I'm also considering extending the rotation to 15 hours instead of 10 - at least for this piece. I'll probably end up doing that.

This past Thursday, it snowed in Texas. It was the first time I had seen snow in 21 years, and it was magical. I'm completely comfortable in saying that if I had to deal with snow on a regular basis, including but not limited to scraping my car, shoveling snow, and wearing snow-related attire, I'd probably hate it. But since it was one day and there was less than an inch of it, it was magical. I think I sat by my balcony window for over an hour, watching it fall. And when I woke up Friday morning and looked outside before the sun had come up everything was blanketed in white perfection. It glittered and sparkled and looked absolutely beautiful. Absolutely peaceful. It was truly a nice feeling, especially considering all the inner turmoil I've had since moving out here.

So what's new for 2013?

- To be kinder to myself in every respect.
- Take every opportunity to enjoy my life and improve upon it.

And what about stitching goals? Ideally, I'd like to finish College and Greek Mandala. But if I don't, that's ok too. As long as I enjoy what I'm doing, I'm ok with that.

I recently have seemed to addict my friend to cross stitching. Whoops! She started a few days ago and ever since then I get excited text messages about how she's been thinking about stitching all day and can't wait to get home to do it. And that makes me really happy :)

I got a request in the previous comments to share a photo of Handsome Helpful Boyfriend. We don't take a lot of pictures (because cameras are evil) but I have one from Thanksgiving of the two of us, and I have one of the two of us in San Francisco before we left California, so I'll share those here.

Yeah, I'm super awkward.

Happy stitching everyone, and I wish you all the best in 2013.