New Beads!

In keeping with the 'usual' (being late for everything in my hobbies), they aren't particularly in season. I just go with the flow and make what I like, seasons be damned. :)

Personally, I'm looking at a ton of snow out there so I'm game for some snowman. (I have a snow kitty-man on my deck right now. An inspired bit of snow fun by the hubby from the other day. lol)

The snowman are sold separately from the spotted spacers so you can make your own sets up as needed.

A Valentine's set, of sorts. I have a Christmas colored set like this that people seem to like a lot so I did a similar one in pinks. Because if there is one thing I know it's how much people love pink. Pink, pink, and more pink! (It *is* a fun color. Always happy!)

A couple other things too but I won't bore people. Well, except for this:

I lied a tiny bit when I said last month that I had packed up all my 'extra' beads and was starting over again for the new year with empty bead bowls. I meant to say all the extra beads that weren't the spacers and small beads that I like to hoard make in great quantities. Oh, THOSE. *ahem*

I've had to graduate from my bead bowl to this 'bead tin'. A whole tin! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! I haven't weighed it but it wouldn't shock me if it were around 2lbs.  It's a glorious, happy, massive pile of little beads that are MINE, MINE, MINE.

What can I say? I like spacers. They are a good way to use up all the glass rod shorts on my work table. A good portion of them go out in my shipped packages as little freebies but I make them upwards of six at a time on one mandrel (!!) so I always make more than I actually use. I should probably start scouting out a bigger container now. It's just never enough. Heh. :)

Beads, beads, beads.

 I finished my New Year's cleaning - whew! Feels nice to have a clean start to the year. Purged of all things clutterly and so last year. 

 As part of that I've cleaned out all my 'bead bowls' from last year, strung them up by theme, and put them on Etsy for a steal.

Now I get to start over again from scratch and create new 'piles'. (And there are ALWAYS new piles. It's crazy how fast they start to stack up again!)

Another week.

It's crazy how fast this summer is going by!! It doesn't help that I've been seeing a lot more Halloween beads being ordered from my web shop the last couple weeks. (Yes, Halloween. Already. I do love the colors in Halloween stuff though so I don't mind it.)  

Mostly everything is put back to rights from the lightening strike. (Was that LAST weekend? Good god it feels like a MONTH ago already.) New grass is being grown to get rid of the dirt runway in my lawn, we've started purchasing some new flowers and plants to replace the big bushes that were pulled out near my front door, and all the smoke damaged clothes are off being handled by a service that specializes in that type of thing. Insurance paid for everything right away so....WHEW. No worries there. (Thank you, Safeco Insurance. You were, dare I say it, quite amazing to deal with?)

Hey! Do you want a free pattern?

I finished up my Dandy Dreams and, in the spirit in which it was given to me (thank you, Maggee!), if you'd like to stitch it too I will be happy to send it along to the first person who asks. I stitched this up with no mods in the colors, on a.......I believe it was 36ct fabric? Loved it, aside from blurry issues with my eye sight, that seems to be affecting everything I do lately. (Not sure if I 'suddenly' need bifocals or what. Does that come on you real quick like? I'm off to the eye doctors in a couple weeks at any rate because it's really annoying. It seems a little better when wearing glasses vs. contacts so I'm just sticking to glasses when doing my handwork stuff.)

I've been meaning to get to finishing up another WIP project so I went digging in my storage ottoman (where things go to die) and came up with this........

You know what? I kinda hate this project so there doesn't seem any point in finishing it, to be honest. BYE BYE, FISHIES. (insert 'swim with da fishes' joke here)

Like: the pattern, the colors. Dislike: the linen, linen, linen

I feel like the stitch count is too big for such a simple pattern. It needs to be done over one or over two on a much finer linen, like a 40ct. It's hard to tell in such a random picture but the fish are just too.......BIG. Don't like. Moving on.

I started something else but it needs more work before it has a TA-DA!!! moment. :)

If you ever wondered (which I'm sure NO ONE has) where my interest in handwork type things come from, I offer the above towels as evidence that it came from my mother. She did those last month for me. All freehand and her own pattern. She doesn't care for cross-stitch because it's too 'structured' but she can embroider the hell out of most anything. (Thanks, Mom!)

My wee little kitties-to-be are getting bigger and are *almost* big enough to take home with us. They are being weaned this week so we're almost there. :)

Bead pile!

The first one of 2013. :)

Been busy busy busy making lots of beads so I couldn't resist a quick snap of one of the piles before they got strung up and mailed out. (I don't keep any for myself so it's the only time I get to enjoy them. lol) I *WOULD* say the bright colors are a nice treat from the cold, dreary winter but, in fact, it's been warmish and quite nice here for the last week.

I don't do resolutions but my PLAN is to do more stitching this year. Of course, like all good plans, you need to prep first and, for me, that means clearing the deck of my current knitty WIP's. I am struggling to finish up a pair of mittens (started last fall) but I went like gangbusters on this Wurm hat. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to grab the hubby to help with the 'modeling' part of things Grr. (As it is impossible to properly photograph YOURSELF from the back.) So I grabbed Frosty McSmiles-A-Lot to do some modeling instead. 

 His head, crazily enough, was pretty perfectly sized for hat modeling. lol

This hat is kinda awesome. It has a knitted in brim so it's crazy thick and warm, and, even better, crazy fast to knit up. (And crazy easy to understand. You can knit this pattern in your sleep. ) Also: it's free. So what's not to love? It's got kind of a 'hipstery' vibe with the whole 'sag and droop' thing in the back. Not sure how hipstery *I* am but I wanted a hat that had ample room for when I have the Pile O' Curls bunched up on top of my head - and this definitely fits the bill. (I'm MUCH less inclined to spend time on blowing the 'do' out in the winter as it's too dry and fly-away sometimes for that. So au natural aka HONKING MESS of curls it is instead. :)) So now I have a hat for every occasion that might pop up - just in time for the snow that is coming our way this week. 

My other plan for the year is keep walking. I got a Fitbit last year for Xmas and, in a stunning turn of events, I not only used it - I USED IT EVERY SINGLE DAY. Every day! (Except for the two days I had food poisoning. But, you know.) 

 My 'natural' schedule would only put me at 3,000 steps per day but I worked up to 10,000 per day afer a while and, lately, my totals have been even higher than that. Who knows, if I keep it up maybe I will walk 2,000 miles this year............or MORE. So if you need a little motivation to be more active, a Fitbit might be for you. I am still endlessly fascinated (and motivated) by the constant digital tick-tick-ticking of my day, even after a whole year of it. I'm sure my heart is very thankful for it too! :)

Holiday Giveaway time!

 Little bit of blogging first and then I'll get to the free stuff. :)

I haven't managed a day off from work..............yet. But it's coming!!!

Etsy shop is closed down now and I *was* going to wait until this weekend to shut the web store down but I rethought it and now that will be closed sometime tomorrow too. Three weeks without a day off and an annoying bout of dizziness the last couple days have me waving the white flag. I need time to regroup; physically, mentally and just about any other 'ally you can think of. lol

(Also: need to finish cleaning my house and Xmas decorating. The tree is up - with lights but no ornaments on it. *sad*)

I did manage to put together some stuff for a holiday giveaway though!

A little bit of everything - so something stitchy for stitchy peeps and something beady for beady peeps, etc.

The stitchy stuff is a brand-new Blackbird Designs stocking pattern (I overbought but my whoopsie is your gain!) and I made a handy-dandy fabric thread catcher to match. The fabrics on the thread catcher aren't OVERTLY Christmasy though if you want to use it year-round. (I can't promise a couple beads won't work their way into this offering too though. Heh.)

For the beady stuff I did up four different hatted snowmen and wired them up with Swarovski crystals and put them on coordinating lobster claw lariats. Perfect to put on a pair of scissors, your cell phone, etc. - or take it off the lariat and put it on a chain for a necklace! (I went with snowmen because they can work as a trinket all winter long vs. just a few weeks in December.)

So FIVE separate things to giveaway! :)

Here is how you can get them:

1. To enter all you have to do is email me. ( I will ship it anywhere in the world so everyone is welcome to enter.)

 

2. If you have no preference on what you'd like to win, no message is needed on your email. If you'd prefer one thing (stitchy) vs the other (beady) then feel free to put that in your message.

  3. If you are a follower of this blog, let me know and I will enter your name in twice. I do so appreciate my followers and the comments I get here so of course you guys get extra special attention. :)
(If you are not a follower but want to be, just click the 'follow' link on the right side bar. Everybody has a Google account at this point................right?)

4. I will draw the winners names next Tuesday, December 18th using the random number generator. and contact the winners by email for their mailing addresses.

And that's it. Easy-peasy, right? :)
GOOD LUCK!

'tis the Season

 I have a blog update or two in me but, for the moment, I'm buried in beads, piles and piles of beads, and internets (and hobbies) time is drastically reduced.

Every morning a big new pile to clean and string. 

(They're so happy looking in a big pile, aren't they???)

I know people always say they would love to work from home and, while it is pretty awesome most of the time, other times you look up and realize you've been so busy that you haven't left the house in 8 days. And then it feels less like a blessing and more like house arrest. LOL (Oh Black Friday, if I had know then you were going to be my last day of freedom I would have lived it up more!!) 

Hoping to be free on 'parole' by Tuesday. Or Wednesday. 

(Please god, by Wednesday. *twitch* GETTING STIR CRAZY NOW.)

I usually take the last two weeks of December off but I'm thinking I might be 'eligible' for three weeks this year. Need to consult with my employer (me) about that! ;)

Too soon?

For most of y'all - PROBABLY. 

But I've been knee deep in the Halloween beads for a couple weeks now. 

(This pile was from a few days ago.)

It's my favorite holiday, because of all the GREAT, bright colors so I'm having fun. Ask me again about it in September though because I might be burnt out then. (Or not. I really DO love working with all the purples, limes, oranges, yellows, purples (I love purple so it gets two mentions), etc.)

Also loving:

Olympics. I'm a junkie. Totally totally junkified. 

(Which is really odd seeing as I don't like watching sports on tv otherwise. I tolerate a *bit* of NASCAR  - but only a bit - and nothing else at all.)

I absolutely ADORE the equestrian events, which you can only get, really, online here because you're lucky if they do a highlight reel on tv, never mind actually show the entire event. (I'm bitter about it.) So I was up and ready for the cross country jumping this morning at 7:30am. 

74 riders.

6 hours.

 Yep. Watched it all. :)

  The live feed had this wonderfully droll British announcer that sounded just like Wallace (from Wallace & Gromit fame). I could listen to that all day, it's just so delightfully...........British.Going on about 'cracking good rides' and 'great knobby horses'. And when you put a horse on to boil or off the boil and all that. Love it!!!

The third phase starts tomorrow at.............5am. 

Hmmmm. Might be a little late for watching that one! I don't get to bed usually before 1am-2am so I don't see 5am happening. I'll probably check in again around 7:30am and hope there is some good jumping left to see. I don't have much patience for the chopped up, time delayed stuff at night so I'm finding the main NBC site is quite good for viewing stuff live. (It works quite well on your iPhone as well for watching on the go.) In case there are any other junkies out there. :)

New new new.

Firstly, I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day. :)

I'm not a mother but I didn't want to feel left out so I made myself a nice home-cooked 'mother's day breakfast'. lol (It was YUMMY too!) And then I was busy for the rest of the afternoon doing lots and lots of housework and food shopping. Hmph. (That part wasn't as fun.) The weather was just PERFECT perfect perfect though and I did manage to enjoy a bit of it out on the deck, doing my nails and chillaxing with a book.

I also finished a new stitchy!

This was the Shepherd's Bush kit that came out a couple months ago. Quick stitch and even quicker to finish. I went digging in my fabric stash and, shockingly, found something that closely matched the chenille trim that came with the kit. (Shocking because I don't have too many fabrics in the purple-mauve-plum tones in my stash.)

Not too cool? The chenille trim didn't fit the piece. 

!@#$!@#!@#$!@#!@#!@#

Disappointing because the kit instructions call for cutting the square to 8 inches and I actually cut it to 6 - so by my reasoning I should have had EXTRA trim, not fallen an inch short of it. Grrrr.

The gap is on the bottom so it's not really noticeable but it's going to bother me knowing...it's...there...mocking....me. I'm going to email them and see if they can send me out another piece. If they don't have any extras, I'll hit up the lovely Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe for some other chenille trim. I'll get 'er done one way or the other. :)

Also new, some new beads are up on the shoppe pages and Etsy:

(Plus others.)

I also spent a little time redoing the front page of my web site. Always good to spruce things up once and again. I get bored with it so I have to think OTHER people get bored with it too. lol

There's more work to be done to it, I think, but I'm done with it for the moment while I think on it. I'm no pro when it comes to html and style sheets and blah blah blah geekspeak so I have to move carefully and slowly and to get where I want to go and my brain is melted after this first go round.

Monday. *yawn*

 The trip to Fenway was fantastic but, boy, am I still tired from it all! The game went really really really long so it was like watching two games at once. lol (Though it was not as historically long as yesterday's game, in which they were dragging outfielders to the pitching mound because they literally ran out of pitchers. lol I saw online today that that was the first time since 1925 that both teams had to resort to that during a game.) 

Anyhoozle, we don't live *that* close to Boston so we didn't get home until after 2am and I needed to be up at dark o'clock the next morning to receive a furniture delivery so wooooooooooooooooooboy am I starting off the week TIRED. Fenway was a little jewel of a place though so I'd love to go back at some point!

Oh, and I also had lots and lots and lots of work to fit in-between doing this, that, and the other. My bead cup literally runneth over from the weekend. lol

Lots and lots of fairies and owls to do, with a few other things sprinkled in here and there. It was a fun group of stuff to work on! 

The eyeball in the righthand corner, by the way, belongs to my photo assistant Maggie. 

Always helpful, that one, when there is work to be done.............that you can do while lying down. lol

Playing catch up this week.

 

Lost a few days there at the end of last week due to stupid frakkin hay fever. Grrrrr!

There was no way I was going to avoid it though as it hit him hard the week before and then Maggie (the cat) started scratching every second she was awake a few days after that. (She has bad allergies as well.) While I was at the vet getting her a steroid shot to stop her scratching and make her feel better, I started getting sniffly..........and leaky...........and by the end of the night my left eye was swollen, my brains were melted and leaking out everywhere, and I wanted to kill someone............and that was that for the next four days. It's just drop dead sexy when you have to walk around with a tissue jammed up your nose to stop it from running like a faucet, yes? lol

So Sunday was about working working working to catch up on orders and make lots of little beadies.

Yesterday was for doing packages and paperwork and today is for catching up on house cleaning things and...

...deciding which of these new polishes I want to use tonight. Hmm, decisions, decisions! These came in the mail while I was sick, courtesy of a UK company (free shipping to the US!) and look much much MUCH better once on. (They have a holo effect that I'm not going to bother wasting time trying to capture.) The temps have skyrocketed like WOAH (!!!) this week so it won't do to be out and about in the nice sunny weather with less-than-awesome polish! It's kind of crazy to think that I usually have to keep the heat on until May, at least at night.............and here it in the SEVENTIES in *MARCH*. MARCH.

My current cross stitch project is deeply deeply unsatisfying and I think I may to scrap the whole thing, even though I'm more than halfway done with it. :( I just hate the way the colors are playing together and the design wasn't 100% me anyway (it was going to be a gift for someone who WOULD love it) and............it's got to go because it's causing me stress every time I think about finishing. I had to waste a good piece of linen though.........................*sigh*

So pretty..........and so so so evil.

*achoo*

Hope your spring is less sniffly!! :)

My bad.

I think I forgot there for a couple weeks that I have, like, a blog and stuff. And I should, I dunno, like.........USE it or something. lol

I have been keeping myself busy OFFline though! :)

There have been a few new beads posted:

I am making good headway on the long, long, long list of WIP stitching projects I have started or kitted up around the hosue:

An Ewe & Friends Roly-Poly Snowman. 

I had this kitted up for so long that I probably had 75% less wrinkles and gray hair when I first put it together. *cough* Finished it up in FOUR nights. (What the heck was wrong with me that I let it go so long??) I think I want to finish this up as cube. Hmm......

Some Midnight Stitching cutie-pie snowman hearts started last winter. 

I actually finished up a pinker version of the right one last winter but I ended up HATING the fabric it was on (too holey) so I restitched it on a better fabric and did it with a different red too, because I love deep reds. 

A trio of Bent Creek minis. 

(The third one, a wee little house, was downstairs when I was picture taking and if you think I was going to  haul off and go down two flights of stairs to get it in the interests of doing a blog post, well then, you don't know me very well. My sedentary nature knows NO BOUNDS.)

I'm loving my new most-favoritest nail polish (all new polish automatically becomes my most-favoritest, you know that, right?)

He gifted me the OPI from his visit to the hair salon last week and it's the perfect shade of green for this lime-loving gal. (Matches my pocketbook, my iPhone cover, AND my Fire cover! lol) Paired with an iridescent top coat? Totally springalicious! Like a perfect, glittery easter egg. I may be stuck on this combo for a while. (The top coat is clear with an iridescent micro-glitter - not white like it looks like here.)

Trying to get back into reading every day again. Currently on tap:

This one just came out TODAY (or the Kindle version was just released, not sure about hard cover) but I had it pre-ordered and actually started it this morning. I have a friend who has been living in India for a couple years now (husband's job was moved there) so I'm not entirely ignorant of how things work there but I still fully expect to be horrified, frustrated, angry, depressed, interested, saddened and moved by this book.

Enh. Not loving this one. I'm giving it a few more chapters before I give it up entirely. (It's probably not the book - I'm just hit or miss on nonfiction.)

You're either a foodie or you're not and non-foodies can ignore this one. Personally, I love these collections because I love food blogs in general. And I like how most of the essays are short enough that you can pick one off here and there when you only have a little time to read.

Watching a whole of this:

I never got around to watching it when it was on air but it's on Netflix streaming so I'm picking it off, little by little while I'm working, etc. I can't say I LOVE IT but it's entertaining enough.

I just finished up season three last night and it doesn't seem possible that it had enough juice to get through three MORE seasons? Hmph. I'm not sure I'll make it all the way to the end, to be honest. /shrug

Whew! I think I'm all caught up on the goings on of late now. Nothing terribly exciting going on, to be honest. lol It may not be very snowy/stormy out this winter but it's still winter and it's still COLD and, therefore, still a little dreary and blah. Here's to spring and more interesting goings-on! :)

Oh happy happy weekend!

And it's nice and SUPER sunny too, which is ALWAYS a mood booster this time of year. :)

 Hard at work this week on adding little goodies on the site/Etsy for Valentine's and spring. Ahhhh, spring! It won't hit here until May but one gets tired of working on nothing but snowmen after awhile. (Still no snow here though. Haven't had a single flake since Halloween, which is totally crazy! I really don't remember if we've ever had a winter with NO snow before?!?)

Also: finished my 'Christmas' hat this week. Yay!!! Another WIP killed, only one left to tackle now. Nothing like being two three weeks late and stuff with the christmas knits, eh? But it's just for the hubs so he can deal.*snort* 

(He *did* get a pair of mittens and socks that made into his stocking for Xmas so I wasn't TOTALLY off the ball here.)

The pattern is called Snowbird (check Ravelry for links) that I purchased from the Stitches East show in 2010. It's pretty funny looking when you are wearing it, to be honest, but this is the same man who goes around the yard in a humongous rabbit fur hat - complete with ear flaps - when shoveling, etc. so at least nothing DIED for this one. :(

Of course, I find ALL winter hats slightly ridiculous in a vague, make-me-chuckle type of way, so it might just be me.

He wanted to have something he could wear to work so I did it in the color palate of his uniforms/work clothing - though he still can't actually be caught wearing it on work grounds, they're so so so so picky about such things. *sigh*  He'll have to save it for when he is working away from work - if that makes sense - but that comprises 98% of his work day so it's all good. The double layer of wool will be nice and toasty for working outdoors all day. :)

The only change I made was to make the inside brim in the same wool (Cascade Superwash) as the rest of the hat instead of doing it in cotton like the pattern suggested. Hates knitting with cotton. Hates it. *shudder*

I'm getting a little tired of doing nothing but colorwork project after project after project but I still have a pair of colorwork mittens that needs some thumbs so once more into the breach....................After that is done though I'm digging into some serious STITCHING. I WILL FINISH SOME ORNAMENTS THIS YEAR. WILL. I WILL. I WILL.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!!!!!!!!!