Library Adventures - pages 22-24!

Another page bites the dust!

Before:

After:

The partial pages go by real quick! And now H³ has picked the second Icelandic chicken to be stitched next, so that's coming up!

I had my review at work today and it went very well. Things were kind of up in the air about whether or not I was going to stay. It all depended on what happened at the review. But I talked to someone a few weeks ago about my concerns and things fell into place today so I'll be staying a while longer, despite the crushing amounts of work. At least I'm finally at the point where I feel my compensation matches what is expected of me and I feel pretty good about it. Finally. There will be no fancy dinners to celebrate, however, because we're saving up to buy a house. And if I have anything to say about it, we will buy one as soon as we fiscally can. Today made that all the more possible.

So, with that, I'm off to work more (at 9:30pm... sigh) and happy stitching everyone!

Library Adventures #7

Here's one I haven't worked on in a while, although that can probably be said of most of my WIPs at this point: Library Adventures by Randal Spangler.

Before:

After 10 hours:

I have missed stitching so much and now that I'm back into it, it feels so good. I usually knit during the week after work if I have time for it. I'm training for two half marathons right now and possibly a marathon so sometimes I get home pretty late and by the time I settle in it's usually too late to pull all my stitching out. But I can pick up with my knitting where I left off and then have little stitching marathons on the weekend.

I actually took a personal day on Monday (I paid for it Friday night and I'll pay for it again on Tuesday) but it got to the point where I just needed a day all for myself with no work. I have already booked a mani/pedi for Monday morning and then I plan to do some shopping, maybe hang out at a coffee shop and write for a bit, and stitching until I can't see straight. Throw some video games in there, too. And today I have to go for a run, hit up the BevMo $0.05 wine sale, and then we're going to go play board games at a friend's. Stitching now while my breakfast settles before going out for a run.

All in all, life is pretty okay right now. Work is still work and there is SO MUCH of it. I can't keep up. I think one of these days I'm just going to have to work until I get through everything in my inbox and then it will feel like a fresh start. Right now I have so many things outstanding my head is spinning.

One thing at a time.

Happy stitching!

Library Adventures pages 23-24 finished!

Don't get too excited by the title, this is the project that I'm working from the last page (24) to the first page. So that means there are two pages complete now, and both of them are partial pages so I kind of feel like I'm cheating.

Before:

After:

I have to honestly admit that this is a little more fun to stitch than College as it has a nice dose of both blocks of color and confetti, neither one being too much, whereas College is pretty much all confetti. I'm getting a little bit of blocks of color on the part I'm working on now but I think that's because there's sky in it.

H³ has chosen Middle Earf to be the next pattern I work on, so I'm going to pull that out as soon as I finish part 2 of AAN's Halloween Mystery SAL which ended a long, long time ago but I'm still working on because grad school stole my life. It's a fun little pattern though, so I want to finish it for Halloween this year.

The movie theater near our place here has a discounted day on Tuesdays so H³ and I decided to go see The Imitation Game, which I've been wanting to see since the teaser trailer came out months and months ago. I must say that I found it to be quite a good movie (and no, not just because of Benedict Cumberbatch. Stop laughing, Jo!) and H³ enjoyed it as well. I thought it was well written and well acted. I don't normally get emotionally pulled into a movie. Most movies are too short for that. Mini series work better for me in that regard, as do TV series, but I found myself extremely emotionally involved with the characters in this piece. Perhaps because it's based on a true story. Either way, I thought it was quite good.

Off I go now, happy stitching, everyone!

Library Adventures update 5 and College update 66

I have had multiple friends and family members announce that they're pregnant in the last two weeks, so I've been knitting baby blankets like a fiend. But I have also been stitching like a fiend. Library Adventures shows more progress, I think, even though I've put more stitches into College. Either way, here's an update on both.

Library Adventures before:

Library Adventures after:

College before:

College after:

There are about 2790 stitches left in this page of College and 1028 stitches left in this page of Library Adventures. So far I'm on track for finishing this page of College by January 7 and Library Adventures by December 31.

The last couple of days haven't been super awesome. I'm pretty sure I got sick and at the same time got food poisoning so I've been trying to pull myself out of both. So for the past four days I've had a constant tension headache as well as a sinus headache, nausea, ringing in the ears, and just a general feeling of grossness. A friend of mine was also in a bind, needing someone to take care of his dog for three weeks while he went home for Christmas break. He wanted to take his dog with him but his mom wouldn't let her (the dog) into the house, so we took her in. She's very sweet and seems to think she's a cat. But that's just an added responsibility, which I think has contributed to the tension headache. Add caffeine withdrawal symptoms as I haven't had coffee since food poisoning and general symptoms that go hand in hand with not eating for four days and I'm kind of a mess. I went for a short run yesterday and I'm trying to eat again but I still feel a little queasy. Hopefully I'll be back on track in a few days.

Christmas is coming, too, and that's always exciting. We've been cooking for a few days, H³ was on Pierogi making duty, my mom made cheesecake and Bigos, I just started soaking the beans for some Ukranian Barszcz. But there's still a lot more to cook.

Anyway, now that you know way more than you need to about what's going on in my body and my kitchen, I'm going to go be a slug and stitch. Happy stitching, everyone!

College 65 and Library Adventures 4

Updating on two projects today! It's kind of fun working on multiple projects at once. I'm trying to keep up on my "daily quota" of College to finish it in time but I also want to work on my other projects because I love them. So I work on College for a little bit and then move on. So, without further ado, here are the results.

College before:

After:

Just over 2,000 stitches total in on that one and you can see outlines starting to come in. I think it looks pretty neat!

Library Adventures before:

Library Adventures after:

Not as much done on that one but starting to put some more stitches in.

I finally finished the scarf for my flower girl, but I have to block it so once it's done I'll post a photo - likely in next week's post. It came out pretty well but I must say I hate grafting. So I will likely not be doing that again if I can avoid it.

Not much else to report here, I'm sorry to say. Got my informational e-mail about the half-marathon so training is going strong on that. I'm slowly getting better but I've discovered that the secret of my success is in the music I listen to when I run (the Thor 2 and X-Men: First Class soundtracks are particularly good at cutting my times, believe it or not). I'm also trying to figure out this whole inner peace and positivity thing. Sometimes I feel like I've nailed it whereas other times I sit there wondering what it is I'm supposed to do and how. Just gotta keep working on it, I guess!

Happy stitching, everyone!

Library Adventures, page 24 finish!

I'm a day early, I know, but exciting news is that I finished page 24 of Library Adventures! It was a smaller page so it didn't take very long, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Before:

After:

I think the page looks really good! You can see the dragon tails and the scales. I'm pretty excited about it. But, it's going away now for a while and I'll be taking College out again, hoping to get another page finish on that.

There's not much excitement here. I'm only a few days away from finishing my grad school program. Besides that, wedding planning is in full swing as there's less than 5 months left. I have reordered the wedding invitations (grumble grumble), set up the rehearsal, and now I'm working on the wedding registry, which is a bit of a pain since Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I have been living together for two years and we have pretty much everything we need. Can't I just register for stitching patterns? I'm surprisingly not stressed out, though. Considering my venue has already burned down and I had to find another one, everything from that point on is pretty stress-free.

In more stitching-related news, The Crafty Princess has been a bad, bad girl and RAK'd me this beauty:

I'm so excited! He's gorgeous! Though stitching all that black is going to be a new experience for me. I'm ready for it! I swear, when I'm financially secure I will return all this generosity I've been receiving. The stitching community is so full of wonderful people who are far too kind to me.

This week's stats:
Days until end of school: 3
Days until wedding:147
Anticipated completion date for "secret stitching": 7/21/2016
Anticipated completion date for College: 1/19/2017
Anticipated completion date for Library Adventures: 1/9/2019

Library Adventures 2

Finally, a stitching post. School is winding down, things are falling into place for the wedding, and I can finally breathe again. Almost. Another couple of assignments to do, but I'm finally caught up on everything I missed last week. Including stitching!

Before:

After:

I'm thinking page finish soon! Not that it's much of a page, but a page finish is a page finish.

In other news we have found another wedding venue. Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I can breathe a little easier now. We get to keep the same wedding date, the venue is being extremely flexible and letting us keep all of our vendors, and it's only 5 miles away from our previous venue. We're trading redwoods for an ocean view (the venue is, quite literally, on the water) but that's ok. I don't think we're trading down, just trading for something different. Either way we will get to be with our friends and family the day of and that's what matters most.

I'll keep it short today since I wrote a novel last week, so here are the stats:

Anticipated completion date for College: 11/13/2016
Anticipated completion date for Library Adventures: 10/25/2019
Anticipated completion date for "secret stitching": 7/20/2016
Days until end of school: 9
Days until wedding: 153

Happy stitching everyone!

College page 14 and a new start!

Hello hello!

The first bit of exciting news has absolutely nothing to do with stitching, but is exciting nonetheless (at least for me). I got my grad portfolio accepted! That means that if I pass both of my other classes this semester, I'll be done! Woooo! Managed to get it done four days before the deadline and accepted two days before the deadline (which is tomorrow) so yay! That is DONE and out of the way!

Now for the second bit of exciting news, finished page 14 of College!

Before:

After:

I love how you can see a little bit of the flowers coming in at the bottom. College is now 60% done.

Handsome Helpful Fiancé picked my Christmas gift, Library Adventures, to stitch on next. So here is my new start on that. He asked if I could stitch from the last page to the first, so I started bottom right at page 24:

Not much progress yet, but it's a bit easier to stitch than College so maybe faster progress? Once I'm done with this page (probably soon) I'll move back to College for page 15.

I don't have much other news to report, for now. So with that, the stats, and happy stitching!

Days until end of school: 23
Days until wedding: 167 (holy crap!)
Anticipated end date of College: 7/8/2016
Anticipated end date of Library Adventures: 2/25/2018