Halloween Blog Hop!

Posting this a little early for everyone abroad!

Letter "O"

Next blog: Serendipitous Stitching!

Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates it. Stay safe out there and have a blast! I'll be sure to post a full blog post update soon - promise! I've had good reason to stay away for a bit - a preview of it is when I got my laptop back from repair it was completely empty. They wiped the whole thing. It didn't even have drivers on it. So the last few weeks have been an adventure. Yay!...

College page 13, 2249 stitches to go!

Of course, the moment I get my stitchy bug back everything hits the fan.

First, in mid-September I flew to California for 5 days. It wasn't exactly a relaxing trip. I landed Thursday morning in California and immediately had to start driving around. In a period of 5 days I had an optical appointment, a dentist appointment, met two different friends for dinner on two different nights, saw my venue for the first time, did my cake tasting and finalized the wedding cake decorations and cake flavors (four tiers and two flavors: almond cake with tiramisu filling and chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse filling), had dinner with the in-laws, finalized bridesmaids dresses, went clothes shopping, and was in a wedding (which took two days, so everything else was done over the course of three days). For anyone familiar with California geography I spent time in Oakland, Davis, San Jose, Larkspur, Santa Clara, Auburn, Grass Valley, and San Rafael (kind of in that order with some driving back and forth). Suffice it to say I was exhausted upon my return.

But it didn't stop there! Then some people at work went on vacation so I worked nonstop, then had some papers due at school, and then (of course) some hardware in my new laptop started malfunctioning and I had to send it in for repairs before the warranty ran out. So now I'm laptop-less (using my desktop right now) because my old laptop wouldn't work, I've got a ton of schoolwork, AND yesterday marked one year to go to the wedding.

Whew.

Despite all this, I did manage some stitching, I just haven't managed to post about it until I deliberately set aside a bit of time to do it today. I've got 2,249 stitches to go on this page, and I'm pretty happy with my progress despite hoping to have been done with the page by now.

Before:

After:

Monday morning I fly to Dallas for my first dress fitting. It's way early because the designer messed up on my dress order and ended up sending it 8 months too early. Since the bridal salon will only hold the dress in-store for two months I had to set up my first fitting right now and just have a lot of time between fittings in order to keep the dress in Dallas a little bit longer before my mom flies it back to California for the wedding after the last fitting.

Suffice it to say I feel like I'm running on empty. The good news is, some of you know that I've been in a pretty bad funk for many, many months now. That is somehow easing. I hope it's more of a permanent ease as opposed to temporary relief, but I guess only time will tell.

In other stitchy news, I did succumb to the stash gods and bought this:

I'm so bad. And I'm completely okay with that.

Handsome Helpful Fiancé has been a real sweetheart since I've been so exhausted and since it's starting to get cold (well, colder, anyway) I've been getting swaddled in fleece blankets and receiving tea deliveries. We're hoping to get our engagement photos done in November, so I may end up posting some of those.

Until then, I hope you guys are having a wonderful stitchy time!

Pumpkins for Cathey!

It's Daffycat

Cathey's Blog

Stitching Bug!

My stitching bug is back in full force and I think you can tell from the progress.

Before:

After:

I'm a few hundred stitches short of 3,000 on the page but I full anticipate to get there tonight or tomorrow, at the rate I've been going anyway. And I'm very excited to see the outline of the college appear on this page. Woo hoo! A little tower blowing smoke is going to make its appearance. You can see a bit of the smoke on the page above it.

Besides that, I am SO HAPPY I'm doing one day off a week now. Yesterday was glorious. I started it off by reading a chapter of my book. Then I played Skyrim (until I died and got frustrated). Then I picked up my stitching and went at it. We also had dinner with some friends and all in all it was an awesome, awesome day. At least in the relaxing sense. It kind of felt like just what I needed.

This is going to be a short post so the last thing I'm going to mention is that Handsome Helpful Fiancé was bemoaning the lack of his appearance on this blog and asked if I could post a picture of him. I'll do one better: I'll post TWO.

One is a picture I've posted before:

And here's a new one you haven't seen:

The first was taken in Texas, and the second when we were still in California. Anyway, that's the man I'm gonna marry!

The Return of College

The new school semester started on Wednesday but I've been pretty diligent about making sure I have some stitching time. As a result I somehow managed about 1,100 stitches. I'm also really proud of myself for posting according to my previous schedule. Go me! The first week of school is usually pretty tough to catch up on because it's a short week. But I'm doing my best and then I hope to do what I used to do as an undergrad: set aside one day a week just for myself. No homework, no work, no worries, just stitching (wishful thinking, anyone?). But I'm hoping to make those days Sundays. That would definitely help contribute to my sanity and general happiness, along with my trying to finally finish College. Not that I'm not enjoying it, I'm loving it, but I'm ready to finish it and start something new.

Before:

After:

I know, it doesn't really look like 1,100 stitches. But it is, really! I'm hoping to stick with College for a while and get as much of it done as I possibly can.

I've also been REALLY into video games lately and just purchased the Kingdom Hearts game for 3DS and Epic Mickey 2 for XBOX (Keebles, if you're reading this, your posts convinced me to get it). Not sure when I'll have time to actually play them, but I'm hopeful. My list of video games to play and beat is almost as long as my stash list!

Time to get ready for work now. Hopefully I'll get to put in a good amount of stitches tonight. I haven't even really started working on one of my classes so maybe I should get on that, too. Sigh.

Happy stitching, everyone!

Middle Earf, page 3 done!

It's about time, too! I've been on this page almost 4 months!

Before:

After:

WOO!

I meant to post earlier but I was so close to finishing the page that I held off posting until it was done (which happened about an hour ago). Of course life got in the way a bit too so that kept me from finishing super quick. For starts I had the end of the summer semester. Can't get too excited about it since I start school back up on Wednesday but at least I had a little time off, and I finished my last final just in time for my birthday last Tuesday. Nothing too exciting, I had the day off work and Handsome Helpful Fiancé had to go to work, so I went out on my first oil rig to have dinner with him:

Crazy, right?

The next day we were going to hang out, go to a baseball game, etc., but Handsome Helpful Fiancé injured his back at the gym. We thought he was ok until 5:30 the next morning when he woke me up because he couldn't move. So I called my supervisor (at 5:30 in the morning and I STILL have my job!) and told her what happened since I was supposed to be in at 8 and I was the only one scheduled that day. But he's doing much better which is good.

In other news, I was feeling nostalgic today and going through some of my photos on facebook and I had the realization that I am really, really lucky. I have been to some INCREDIBLE places in my 27 years and I hope to go to some more incredible places. I've seen glaciers, walked on volcanoes, roamed castles, and gazed at Roman ruins. I've slept in tents during terrible storms and gone to the Arctic Circle! Truly, truly lucky and very grateful for everything. Despite the fact that where I live now isn't exactly pretty and the landscape is bleak and depressing, life goes on and this is a temporary thing. Eventually we will live somewhere beautiful again, it's just a matter of time.

With that, I'm off to play Oblivion until my eyes bleed and start setting up stitching College, so get ready to see lots more of that!

Hugs to all and happy stitching!

A Finish!

Hello!

I know I've somewhat abandoned this blog, but I haven't actually. It hasn't been for a lack of desire to blog, but more for a lack of time. Summer session is winding down right now which means projects, due dates, and finals (yay?). Once this semester ends, though, I have 30 weeks left and then no more school! Which will happen in May!

But in the meantime, I've started and finished St. Valentine Passerolli by Alessandra Adelaide for Handsome Helpful Fiancé (who is also a hero). A hero? Well, there have been some problems at the library lately with a creeper who won't leave and today it culminated in police action, a ticket, and Handsome Helpful Fiancé having to come in around closing time to walk me to my car. Ugh. I hope that's the end of it, anyway.

But here's the stitching!

Hope you guys like it! It was a fun, easy stitch and I think is rather adorable.

I'd say more right now but I'm actually a bit rattled and need to relax. Not enough time to stitch (date night!) so I'm going to play Oblivion for a bit (Skyrim prequel - Handsome Helpful Fiancé bought it for me as an early birthday present so I can play on my laptop while he uses the XBOX). So there you go.

I hope you're all having a better day than I am. I'll be giving away some scraps of 25 count soon as I have a lot left over from the birdies and I know some of you do small projects - maybe storykeeps or something, so keep a lookout for that.

Also, I must mention my friend's awesome wonderful new Etsy page: Buffalo Nickel Goods. She makes her own jewelry using vintage stuff and it's really awesome. Everything is one of a kind, affordable, and really unique without being over-the-top. So I highly encourage you guys to check it out.

Happy stitching everyone!