Where I'm disappearing to

At least for the next two weeks:

Yup. All these and more must be read by May 13. And to top it off, we're short-staffed at work and my mom is coming to visit on Saturday. SOOOO despite the fact that I'm still stitching (the audio books are in there for a reason!) I'm just not going to be able to post :(

But fret not and prepare yourselves for a mega post upon my return! I would say count on it May 14th. I'm off work that day and the plan is two-fold: blog and play video games until my eyes bleed.

Farewell.... FOR NOW

Parrot 1

Again, I seem to have neglected taking a before picture for IHSW. Oh well. Just imagine the following with maybe 20 fewer stitches, because IHSW was an epic fail for me this time around. Too much work to do and not enough time meant bad stitching results.

That being said, though, I did manage to get quite a bit of stitching done on the week before IHSW, so there's that at least! I'm really enjoying the Golden Kite pattern, even though it's actually vastly different than HAED. First of all, it's being stitched on 18 count Aida instead of 25 count evenweave, with two threads over 1, full crosses, and blended threads (GASP!). I do have to say, though, the blended threads give it a beautiful effect of barely discernible color change while still achieving it, making a subtle gradient effect. You can barely see it in the photo I'm going to show you - but it's there!

Also it doesn't hurt that the stitch count per page is about 3000 - which means page finishes are much faster and progress is more visible, which gives you a sense of accomplishment. I will probably be buying HAED charts in large chart format from now on due to this.

So without further ado, here is my start on Handsome Helpful (overworked) Fiancé's "Still Life With Parrot"

College pages 11 and 12!

A double page finish!

Sorry for not posting last week! I was so close to a page finish by the end of last week I thought to myself, oh I'll just stitch another day or two and finish it all up. But then things hit the fan. I knew it would be a busy week, I just didn't expect it to be THAT busy - I had three major projects due, the in-laws came to visit, AND the grand opening of the library was Saturday with Laura Bush as the guest speaker followed by a luncheon she was at that my boss made me work. So between all that, I didn't get to stitch for days. Yesterday I sat down with my stitching and an audio book and just went wild, so here it is!

Before:

After:

That picture is as true to color as I have been able to get in a long time! Also, this marks the project as 51.06% complete. Wow! How sad that that's all I can think of to say.

I'll be putting College away for a little bit (not too long) as I promised Handsome Helpful Fiancé that I'd start the flapping parrot from Golden Kite as soon as I finished up these two pages. It's his birthday on Thursday and I promised it as an early birthday present. So that's what I'll be doing tonight and working on until a page finish - which shouldn't be too long as Golden Kite pages are only about 3,000 stitches per page and HAED pages are about 7,000 stitches per page!

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it - 4 weeks of this school semester left (ends May 13) and then I'm free until June 3 when summer starts. Taking summer classes so I can finish ASAP instead of dragging it out.

Sooo I think that's about it. Happy Stitching!

College #43

Another week another progress shot. I'm ready to be stitching something else now truth be told. Maybe I'm just not a one project at a time girl, as much as I want to be. Anyway, here's the progress.

Before:

After:

Give me another week or two and I should be done with the second row.

On another note, Blogger is driving me crazy, to the point where I don't want to blog anymore. It inserts spaces where no spaces were inserted by me, changes the layout and formatting, won't let me type where I want to type, and is being a general pain. 

On a last note, Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I are getting married October 4, 2014. A long way away but that's good. Plenty of time to plan and save up.

And lastly, I missed my two year blogoversary. Oops. So yeah, I've been around two years now.