College #57

Thank you everyone who gave me encouraging words both here and on facebook regarding my grad school success. It means a lot to me. So far I know that I passed my final portfolio (like a thesis) and I got 100% on another class. Still waiting on my third, and final, grade, but I'm hoping for the best. I will find out May 23rd.

The first day, I didn't know what to do with myself. I was dizzy and stressed out and just wanted to sleep. Which is exactly what I did. But when, about five days later on Friday, I didn't feel better I finally went to the doctor. Turns out my ears are clogged which is causing the dizziness and general gross feelings. So that prohibited stitching because dizziness plus stitching don't mix very well. But I managed just over 1,000 stitches anyway! Yay for no school!

Before:

After:

After two years it feels really good to be able to stitch for extended periods of time again without guilt. Granted I still feel guilt. I still have sensations of having to do homework, if not now then in a week or a month I will have to. But I don't. Hurrah!! That puts my degree count at four, which is more than plenty. My parents have forbidden me from any more graduate studies. I'm really okay with that.

In my last bit of stitching news, I did buy (yet another) pattern. This is one that I've been eyeing for about a year and yesterday Martina posted that it is being retired so really I had no choice but to buy it. Right? Right. Here it is, Old English Walled Rose Garden by Chatelaine Designs:

I haven't bought the kit for it yet. I'll be putting it on my birthday wish list. But it's going to look so lush and beautiful once it's done. I have a rotation of smaller patterns that I work on. I don't put the progress of those up here until they're done, because they are smaller patterns and I think this one would be included in one of those rotations once Greek Mandala is finished, since I would need the scroll bars for it.

So that's it! The stats for the week:
Days until wedding: 139
Anticipated completion date for "secret stitching": 10/7/2016
Anticipated completion date for College: 10/28/2016
Anticipated completion date for Library Adventures: 4/26/2020

Happy stitching, everyone!

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please...

...I'M DONE WITH GRAD SCHOOL

CHEERS

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!

Good News, Bad News

This is a no-stitching post, so if you're here only for stitching, move along. Fair warning.

This past weekend Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I went to New York to celebrate the 80th birthday of his grandma. Practically his entire extended family was there, so it was nice to meet them before the wedding. However, the trip was not without its ups and downs, as follows:

The first day we caught our flight out to Jersey and all went well. HHF's dad picked us up from the airport and we promptly got lost in the ghetto. Which was brief and uneventful and therefore fun. As we're driving to grandma's house in New York, however, I get "the call." My wedding is canceled at our venue. It won't be done in time for the wedding. And I can't even process the emotions because we don't want to worry grandma. So I internalize everything, let my mom know (she begins to panic but doesn't tell me until after) and arrive at grandma's house. Where HHF quickly begins to succumb to food poisoning, the symptoms of which began to manifest during the flight.

While HHF is sleeping in bed, I get the task of navigating his dad to JFK to pick up his sister and her boyfriend. I'm eager to do this because I've never been to NYC and we have to drive through in order to get to JFK and since HHF's dad used to live there and is also a history buff, it was a great car tour. We went through Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and through Brooklyn. Even though we didn't have time to get out of the car and do the regular tourist-y things, it was still awesome to see all the stuff I didn't think I'd be able to see at all.

Freedom Tower

Brooklyn Bridge

I survived the meet and greet with the extended family without HHF and the next day he felt better so all was well.

The next day was Grandma's birthday and HHF felt well enough to make it which was great.

Shameless Selfie

After the party we went out for pizza.

You see the size of those slices? I ate three of those. And then followed it with cannoli. No regrets. None. 

I had really wanted the authentic New York pizza experience so Thomas' dad took us to Turiello's in Nyack and it was amazing. 

While all this is happening my sister and brother in law drove south for an hour and my parents drove north for an hour and a half and in one afternoon toured three different potential alternate venues for our wedding and we think they may have found one! The venue even had availability on my original wedding date and because of the situation is willing to honor all my vendor contracts! They penciled me in on their calendar and I just have to talk to them over the phone, hopefully today, and make a decision, but it looks promising!

Last night we flew back. Our flight from Jersey was stuck on the tarmac for a while as all flights to and from Dallas were grounded due to weather. We finally made it to Dallas, caught our flight to Midland, and then were diverted to Amarillo due to 70+ mph winds in Midland and a dust storm. We did make it back to Midland only about three hours later than originally intended. But we did make it home.

On the stitching front there was a little bit of progress but not a whole lot. That's because last week on Monday or stove was shooting out sparks, on Tuesday the A/C broke, on Wednesday the closet flooded, and on Thursday I found mold in said closet. Friday we flew to New York and yesterday we came back. So basically it has been a busy and weird week.

Lesli did decide to spoil me again, and in celebration of my finishing my school portfolio she got me this beauty from Tilton Crafts called "Magical World" (original artwork by Igor Morski):

That is going to be a fun one to stitch... someday.

So now that you know everything that has happened over the last week (crazy, right?) here are the stats:

Anticipated completion date for College: 9/13/2016
Anticipated completion date for Library Adventures: 12/22/2019
Anticipated completion date for "secret stitching": 6/13/2016
Days until end of school: 15
Days until wedding: 159

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

College #59

Another crazy two weeks. This time, though, not tragic - just working on finishing up my grad portfolio. More on that later.

Before:

After:

I have about 1300 stitches left in the page so it's possible that I'll have a page finish soon!

On the grad portfolio front, I'm about halfway through. I have written 8 competencies and all of them have been accepted, which means I have 9 competencies left. It's due in about 2 weeks, but I'm hoping to finish it up by the end of this coming week, while still keeping up with my other classes. This is the explanation as to why I'm a zombie right now. With the exception of maybe an hour of stitching here and there I have been almost exclusively doing homework. And it sucks. A lot.

But once my grad portfolio is done it's just a matter of finishing up my two classes, and May 13th is the end of the semester and the end of grad school! So cross your fingers and send good vibes!

Still no word on my venue for the wedding, but I'm just going to pretend like nothing is wrong and everything will go as planned unless I hear otherwise.

I did not make the 5 pound challenge. I was .4 pounds off. But that's ok, because I put in a good effort and I haven't given up yet! Still going!

So the stats for this week are...
Days until end of school: 37
Days until the wedding: 181
Anticipated completion date for above chart: 8/16/2016

Next update will probably be in about two weeks, and I'm hoping it will be a page finish!