College #64

I have been on a crazy stitching spree. It has been focused on College of Magical Knowledge mostly because I'm still working on that lace scarf for my flower girl (almost done!) so I knit that during the day and then stitch in the evening. I have managed to put in a little over 1,000 stitches on College since the page finish. I catch myself thinking about how close I am to finishing it and then I realize that I'm actually not that close, it just feels comparatively close in comparison with how much I've already done.

Before:

After:

It doesn't really look like 1,000 stitches but it's there. As of right now, if I stitch an average of 141 stitches per day on College, I can finish it in one year. That should give me time to wash it, iron it, and have it framed in time for Christmas. And now that grad school is done and the wedding is over, I should have more time, theoretically. There are some life things in the works right now and we'll see where those go but I'm cautiously optimistic. A lot of things got put on hold due to grad school so I'm hoping to pick up where I left off. This page of College features the staircase, and I'm super excited to watch it come in.

I've also been on a general stitching kick, wanting to stitch absolutely everything I have and start churning out finishes. I realize, however, that I will never get through all my patterns if I keep buying them. So, I've been talking with a dear stitchy friend of mine (Lesli) and I decided that the best course of action for me is the "finish 2 buy 1" rule. So for every two projects I finish I'm allowed to buy one chart. Makes sense, right? Let's see if I can stick to it.

It's a cold dreary rainy day in California today and I'm sitting in H³'s "man cave" listening to creepy paranormal podcasts while he plays video games. The rain makes a great backdrop. I might even play some Oblivion later, but we'll see how the day goes.

Until next time, happy stitching everyone!

College page 15

Yesterday morning when I woke up I had 422 stitches left on the current page of College. Naturally, I powered through it until it was done, ignoring everything else I had to do that day except for making dinner because food is important. So, while marathoning old episodes of Ghost Adventures and historical podcasts, I miraculously stitched 422 stitches last night. The end result was finishing page 15!

Before:

After:

Last time I updated this I was still unmarried and living in Texas!

Making some good progress on it but not much else I have to say. That's because I have a goal to finish this project by next Christmas, and now with grad school being done I might actually finish it! Another factor is that I'm knitting a thank you scarf for my flower girl for Christmas and, quite honestly, it's extremely difficult. It's a lace pattern that has 32 rows in every repeat with 22 repeats total, however each row is different from the last one so I can't really memorize the pattern. I should be finished with it soon-ish and then I can get back to my regularly scheduled stitching but in the meantime at least I'm getting some College done! I'm pretty happy with this page finish. You can start to see the tops of the heads of the little wizards who will fully appear in the last row of pages! Two more full and one partial (which I will do with the full page) left in this row and then it'll be the final countdown!

In other news I have signed up for a half marathon in February. I might die. But at least I signed up! H³ encouraged me in this and I went for it but now I'm terrified. I'm running four days a week according to a half marathon training plan, though, and this week I ran 6.34 miles which is more than I've ever done before. Granted, that's still not as long as a half marathon, but I have until February and as long as I stick with this program all should be well.

Time to get dressed and do some grocery shopping. H³ has promised to make dinner tonight, but I do have to buy all the dinnering supplies, which is a good trade off. So off I go - happy stitching everyone!

Flapping Parrot, page 3 done!

I usually don't post on weekends when I'm really close to a page finish because I'd rather just post the page finish a few days later. So here it is, page 3 of the Flapping Parrot!

Before:

Now:

That line of demarcation only seems to show up on photos. I've tried and tried to see it with the naked eye and I just can't. That being said, I absolutely love the blending of this, even if it is a pain to stitch with two strands of two different colors.

H³ has picked my next project to be Library Adventures, but I'm going to try to finish another part of my AAN Halloween Mystery SAL before starting page 23, even though I'm past Halloween and past the deadline of the contest. I'd still like to finish it. I also have a scarf I need to knit by Christmas, and since it's complicated it might take me longer than I'd like. NaNoWriMo is this month as well, and that has been taking up more of my time than I'd like to admit. But, despite all that, I'm still managing to stitch College (don't ask me how, but it basically involves locking myself in my room) so I might have a page finish on that soon as well. Whew!

In other news, I don't really have other news. Everyone keeps asking me how married life is and I have to say, it's pretty much the same as it was before just with a new last name and an extra ring on my finger. I'm not saying that's bad. H³ have just been together long enough, including living together, that not much has changed!

In fact, here's a fun thing. Here's the first blog post I made when I first met him. Enjoy!

Happy stitching everyone!