Leap froggy, leap

This was started this in Friday night (~21:30) when I was bored and tired, but wasn't very eager to get to bed yet and desperately wanted to start something new. My excuse for this is that this is my square for Cayden's quilt - though this seems to be the pillow piece as someone stupid (not me, never...) didn't recheck the instructions and my square is 3x3 inches smaller than required for the quilt. *throws a tantrum*

Pieces of info:

• Designer: Gillian Souter
• Design: "Frog in Spring"
• Source: Classic Storybook Cross-Stitch (ISBN 0-316-85401-8)
• Fabric:: 32 count white Jobelan
• Notes:
  1. The light green charted for the grass was of completely wrong tone (it was yellowish when all the other colours in the design have blueish tint) I changed it to some light green from DMC 100 series.
  2. Blue stripes in shorts are my choice as I didn't have the charted pink. (I'd have changed it anyway, I think.)
  3. The grass is four stitches too wide (but if I hadn't told about it you wouldn't have noticed it).
  4. Sky was left out and butterfly added. (I thought it would give more sense for the design.)
  5. The backstitching is modified: in pieces like this I prefer not to follow the chart, but my own gut feeling.

I enjoyed stitching this piece as it is cheery and keeps you interested with tons of fractionals.

Some cats have no joint pains, I think...

 

Neko, that guy who had (im)mobility issues in spring... quite hard to believe now, don't you think? ^^

I'm such a sucker...

I know I shouldn't get any more obligations due time constraints and anyway I did sign-up for another charity square, this time for a little boy callen Caydon who lost his mother in a car accident and also got badly injured himself.
The quilt could use some more stitchers so if you are interested check here for more info.

The course

Two more hours to my day, the course is only 6h/ day excluding the "training" periods (altogether 52 working days) and as it's quite close to me commuting doesn't take too long.
And, the thing I had completely forgot: SII pays me more per day because I am on the course - though I'm not sure am I allowed to keep the 8 more euros/ day as an inspirational income, noticing that my allowances are paid by the government and the city... at least I can hope, it would be great though.

SAT: Happy Dancing Epilogue

This is where I started from

and this is what I have now:

Pieces of information:

• Designer: Ellen Maurer-Stroh
• Design: Bunny Baby
• Fabric: 16 count aida (I know, but while signing up they gave evenweave as another option, but as, less surprisingly people prefer aida (for reasons beyond me) it was what we were given.)
• Why?: This is for Stitchers for Children charity RR.

I didn't achieve as much I wanted or as much I seemed to be able to achieve based on my speed in Friday, but my new allergy medicine makes me really tired - and it doesn't help to take it in the evening as I will be twice as tired during the day...
Maybe I will do better next month, as I will ask for another new antihistamine if my energy levels stay this low.

Nevertheless, a happy dance!

Keeping myself busy

After getting her cell number from the synagogue I called to the Hebrew teacher in Friday... and now I have more things to do every week, in other words I will spend an hour every Tuesday in good company of alefbets.
What makes it interesting is that I haven't been in the lessons in two years and her opinion was that I can easily continue from where I stopped.
Admittedly one of the reasons why I have always liked her is that she doesn't seem to know the phrase I/ you can't do it.

This means that my stitching time will be limited in Tuesdays (as the day will go as follows: course -> back home -> shower -> eat -> head to the synagogue (well, in sense of correct terms the lessons are ran in the Jewish School of Helsinki, which is in Jewish Community Centre which is commonly referred as synagogue - the temple itself is in the community centre and in the same building as the school) -> learn -> come home at 21), though I have come up with a plan: I can stitch small items while waiting the lesson to begin (I usually have about 20-30 minutes to wait due buss scheduling (I'm too lazy to use the bus- train combo)) and therefore have some progress every day.
I will probably take something small with me to the course too, in case there are any idle moments (lunch, coffee breaks etc.).

And now, I am off to bed... (I foresee some lousy peak flow results in the morning. *grin*)

WIP: Bunny Baby

I decided that I'll work on Bunny Baby (for Stitchers for Children charity RR) during my weekly break.

I have always thought these are cute and well designed within their genre, but not really my cup of tea. Now, after working on this and seeing how it turns out I have to say that I may have to have kids just to stitch few of these (though I could stitch the Spider Baby for myself ).

Ready, set, drool!

As promised, stashy pictures!

 

First one is my Bunny Baby kit from Casa Cenina. This will be stitched for charity project 'Stitchers for Children'.
The second one is Lady's latest S.E.X. from Violarium: DMCs for two new models and some Atalie's hand-dyed cottons just because - and set of 28 needles because I wanted try that brand and because I need thinner needles for 40 count (I can stitch with 26 on it (One Star's Light sells Permin's needles which are great for 40 count), but 28s might be better).
Even though I thought that Flamme (first two on left) would look different I can't say that I am disappointed - it looks great even my screen lied to me yesterday.

I have noticed lately that hand-dyeds are an interesting phenomenon: even though they use same fibers the results are so different (can be explained with dye brand, water etc.) that one can't afford to have just one favourite brand.
Personally I have at least three favourite hand-dyed silk brands and two or three hand-dyed cotton brands - though, for example Atalie has both in their selection and both of them are in my favourites (Atalie's floss is rather expensive if you just look at the price per skein, but once you get a chance to try them you are hooked!).

Gadgets

Ooh, /me wants USB Doorbell!

Advantages of sleeping on the floor

As my futon is still WIP I sleep on the floor using thin matress cover and think blanket as my matress... and I sleep better than I have done in ages - I even wake up earlier.
Which means that futon may be some kind of a solution for my (over)sleeping problems as my matress-to-be is only 7 cm thick.

An angel got its wings

After finishing Linda's biscornu I took second of Mary's (Btw, Mary has got her diagnosis and things look rather good - excluding the fact that she has cancer) angels as a project and decided not to stitch anything else before it's finished, washed, pressed and ready to go. Here it is:

He's victim of a colour conversion, and I used same colours in Hope than I used with Life to make them more of a pair.
Let me show how they were supposed to look like and how they ended up to be:

      

Info:

• Designs: Glad Tidings; Life and Hope
• Designer: Marie Barber
• Source: JCS December 2002
• Fabric: 14 count white aida (URGH!)
• Other: Colours of gowns converted to pink theme, Hope should have darker hair, halos and texts removed.

Designer should, IMNSHO, do her background research a bit better... since when angels have had an Adam's apple?

"… is so called from a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit, (an apple) sticking in the throat of our first parent."

Taking all this religious thematism... angels haven't sinned (what ever that is) so why they should carry sign of that sin around? How I reason the fact that angels have never sinned? Well, isn't sin human thing? Angels don't have a navel, so they haven't born out of human female. According to certain theories they were around before humans were created... see where I'm getting to?
If you have to design an angel, could you even design it to be "factual"?

But, off to make some tea and eat some chocolate. I've migraine to take care of.

Mary's Angels; part I

Well, I wasn't able to sleep last night before 4 o'clock so I stitched. And in addition of sleeping, being sick and idling around in net I've been... stitching. Stitching enough to have a happy dance here and now. Therefore, may I introduce you, first of Mary's angels:

Now, does she look better with my conversion or does she look better with my conversion?

On fingernails

Have problems with your fingernails? Ditch every single low-fat dairy product from your diet and enjoy them with their natural fat. Wait for a week or three and voilá, you have strong fingernails!

My nails got very strong while I was in Bangkok and I thought it was the iodine in those deep fried seaweed chips we ate almost every night. It may one reason, but fact is that part of my daily diet was yoghurt which surely had normal amount of fat (no thickening additives as I never got anything from eating them) in it.
When I came back my nails begun to soften after month or so, and I thought it was lack of iodine... apparently it wasn't, as after I begun to buy my curd milk (believe or not, but it is actually good) as greasy you can find it (3,5 grams of fat in 100g) my nails have grew stronger again.

And before someone asks: I haven't gain any weight. I'm exactly in same weight I was in last winter (which is two kilos more than during summer).

Pretty in pink

My honest, and humble, opinion is that my conversion looks better on her than those original greens.

Noticing that I was on the go whole weekend I got quite much done, don't you think?
Anyway, I'll give her few day's rest as I've other deadline projects to work with. She'll be back in... weekend, and I'll keep her as a stitchy snack during the week.

You may remember this guy from Olympics?

My mother asked me to make birthday card for her sister, and couple of days ago it dawned to me that satyr would be just perfect choice.

Angels for Mary

It has been almost a year since I stitched for SOLAK and I've been thinking of it again lately (now when my life is so balanced and all ). And yesterday I read their mailing list and noticed that there's request coming for a quilt for a friend of a friend (World really is small place nowadays).
So, I promised to stitch a square - and after we got the theme, and I found design I'll use, I ended up signing in for two squares.

I'm making two of four angels (you guessed right, its theme is angels) from Marie Barber's Glad Tidings ornament series (JCS, Dec. 2002), though I'll convert their dresses to different shades of pink, and I've to tweak the wing colours as I don't have suitable blending filaments etc..

This is how they're (Life and Hope, others are Love and Joy) supposed to look like...

And this is what we have now.

I've to say that they seem look much better stitched.

Merna's quilt, SWC and 24 hours

^^

My first two squares for SOLAK have been used to quilt they were meant to.
Finished quilt

(Those squares I made are in lowest row, in corners.)
As you may deduce theme was Japan...

World Cup and 24 Hour Challenge

Poor AE is still awaiting for it's first stitches as I decided to participate 24 hour challenge and stitch one of my Recipe Exchange item(s) - or actually 1/4 of designs needed. No public pictures, but as none of RE participants, in addition to me, is LJ user I can give picture in friends only entry (Hmph, how about only LJ friends entry?).

But, AE fabric is gridded, washed (there was something similar to chocolate (which is odd as I haven't been eating chocolate lately (ok, before today)) in the fabric so I decided to give it a wash), zig-zagged and ironed. Though it'll get wrinkly again in one of these days as I decided not to use my frame for it. Why? Because my frame is too long to fit in my rucksack...
(Yes, I made one man happy today (actually I told it right after I found it out yesterday, but being as clear as I am... *giggles*). I'm free to travel now as my things are (mostly) cleared up. Now we just have to see when...)

And something, well, funny, in it's own way, happened yesterday.
We (snowprincipessa and bits_2_whole) came back from our aunt's 50th birthday by train and... Conductor glanced few times to my direction during that trip while passing by... because I was gridding AE fabric. Maybe you don't expect someone like me to like embroidery?

I could also give little rant about my father and his opinions, but I try not to think about that, as it just gives me another day with migraine... He just knows how to hurt me.

SBQ.

It's Wednesday again and time for:

Stitching Blogger's Question

was suggested by Zohrah and is:

"Have you done any charity stitching, been in one, or would like to organize one?"

Yes, I have done and will do in future (because IMO we have to remember those who don't have everything as well as we do - some day we may be in their situation. And naive me still hopes that if I try to live my life well and treat others reasonably well I get it back some day in some way).

I joined to SOLAK (found link from Jenna's blog) some time ago and have stitched two squares (pictures in here and here), which went to same quilt (at least they're meant to same quilt, but it's up to quilter in the end AFAIK). Will stitch more later, but I'll stitch things for me for some time - and anyway I don't have to save the whole world.

2-do

To-dos before Yule:

• Ornaments for my parents
• 'Devil Bear' finish
• 'Winter Topiary' finish

And I also need to think what to take with me when I go to my mother's place as I'm not sure do I want to take my computer with me and that limits me quite much in stitching wise, as poor me doesn't have a printer.

Of course I could take free kits I've stored to wait for better/ duller day and make them. In fact I've been thinking that some of those kits would do great SOLAK squares (I just need to bigger pieces of fabric to make them on).

Oh my... I've one card I should send. Got to remember that when I go to "town" next time.

Official 2-do list.

I finally spent minute to explore on LJ's 2-do list attribute and made mine. It's available in my blog's sidebar.

Maneki neko. =^^=

My second SOLAK square:

Freebie from Other Wonders.

In fact I think I could try to do one of these one over one. It'd look quite good, I think.

Friends.

My ex has been here whole weekend. He came just because I needed him. Never had a friend like he is. Though I have never asked anyone to come, because I've never felt that from someone else... that one comes if I need one.

Once again I've to say that I'm happy that I know him. And I'm happy because I've been able to talk about things I just can't talk with anyone else. Kind of scary, I'd say.

"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort."
John Ruskin

"Hell is other people."
Jean Paul Sartre

HD.

My first SOLAK square is finished. It's going to a quilt with Japanese theme ("Oh, how surprising") - this was first thing in my mind after I read that request few days back.
This is a freebie from Cross Harmony and even I modified colours to suit to my "left overs" I think it came out nicely (in fact I only modified shades, not colours).

Sick... again.

Ok, since this I've got really sick. My nose is running, my sinuses are full of strange stuff and I've quite high fever. (In my case ~38 C is high as my normal body temperature is ~36- 36,3) It has been interesting experience to stitch in this condition...

300!

This week's

Stitching Bloggers Question

is suggested by Kimberly and Lili and it has (questionable) honour to be entry #300.

"How do you feel about staying totally true to a pattern? Do you feel that you have to rip out stitches to fix a mistake or do you feel it's acceptable to incorporate a mistake into the design?"

Of course it depends on mistake. If it's minor one and no one will notice it I'll leave it be. If it's noticeable I'll frog. For example while stitching needle case for an exchange I had to frog same area of that flower three times because it'd been visible mistake as of that design was completely symmetric.

I'm perfectionist, but I live and stitch according to this:

"Only G-d makes it perfect."

so if there's minor mistake no one will notice, I'll just let it be. There's one mistake in every hand-made oriental carpet because of that saying, so why couldn't I make little mistakes intentionally?

Other stitching issues.

I stitched DB today, but there's nothing to see yet as I've been stitching her dungarees. And then there came new request from SOLAK with theme I have suitable patterns for, so I have been stitching my first square.
In fact I might do couple others too, as I really do have suitable patterns - and I've been wanting to stitch them. There's nothing better than a good excuse...

Official useless (but c00l) link.

The Zoomquilt

Entry no. 295; various.

There's something seriously odd in my brains. And in Mozart.

I went to sleep about 4 hours ago and woke up (once again) completely sweaty, dieing of thirst and complete messed up. Don't remember dreams I saw that well, but I know they have been very scattered and without any sense (I usually have some sense in my dreams). Woke up totally confused and very cranky, just like I've used to wake up before I found out what influence that CD I mentioned has on me.
Last night I didn't listen it. I was too lazy and way too relaxed when I realized that CD player is not on and decided to play with my fate. Apparently I shouldn't have done it.

I'm in here now because I was unable to fall asleep again.

This has nothing to do with coffee consumption. I drank my last cup in about 6 hours before I went to bed, and I've been known as a person who has needed coffee to fall asleep.
Neither have I drank tea or anything with caffeine in it. Music doesn't affect to my sleeping either.

Unless it's Mozart. At least it really begins to look like it.

Anyway, while laying in bed I came to conclusion that my brains are so overactive during nighttime that it goes far above normal activity, and that causes sweating and thirst. Apparently I use quite much energy while sleeping... It'd be nice to know how restlessly I sleep without my daily Mozart fix.

Health.

Throat ache went away and is here again, so I think that in the end it's all about.. *tadaa*.... central heating, in other words air in this apartment is too dry for my tubes. I've to remember put my air humidifier on.

And after about five weeks stable phase it seems to me that my weight is going down again.

Blogging and some serious nerdiness.

I've developed a perverted dream... I've had this server project going on about year and a half (yes, I'm fast) and lately I've been dreaming about it again. Just because I've reached new level in my bloggerism: I want to have an independent blog. (Livejournal isn't actually "an independent blog" if you ask from me)
Software is free, but it needs server which runs PHP+MySLQ (freeware too, AFAIK). And that would mean that I should learn about gazillion things and after it we could ask "Why not study that stuff then as you seem to be so friggin' interested of it?".

Interesting issues indeed.

SOLAK.

I became familiar with aspect of "charity stitching" some months ago when I really begun to find my place in cross stitching communities around internet. As a known tree-hugger I liked the idea of it, but was very disappointed because most charities seem to be flooded with religious views (and quite fundamentalistic even (in my eyes at least)) and they're focused only to one place and to small groups of individuals (and when we mix charity and religious views it easily gets ugly and leads to discriminating of individuals with "wrong" beliefs....).
But then I was reading one previously mentioned blog and found link to SOLAK's site...

Nowadays I'm a member, so I think we all know what happened after I got to their site?