Finished finished!

 Eat, Sleep, Stitch

Cherrywood Designs

my personal motto!

Somehow on Monday I was motivated to do a little finishing... I mean a little.  These two pieces had been all sewn up for weeks now, all I needed to do was stuff them and sew them up!  How lazy have I been????  So Monday I pulled them out and just got them done!

Gone Fishing

Jane Grenoff

a little something for Todd, the fisherman in my life!

Crazy Challenge Day 8

Sadly I won't be able to dedicate as much time as I'd like to stitching.  Its time to get back to the real world, and things are going to be busy this month!  I'm sure I'll find the odd moment of sanity here and there through stitching.

Eat, Sleep, Stitch

c2010 Cherrywood Design Studios

Stitched on : 28ct African Daisy Joblean

Stitched with : DMC floss

When I finally did pick up my stitching on Sunday I felt more like finishing something instead of starting a new project (which I did, just in the evening).  Eat, Sleep, Stitch was just a few short hours away from Happy Dance status, so I decided to focus on that first.  I am proud to share with you my first finish of 2012!

As you can see, I was a little challenged in the measurement department when I started this... heck I didn't measure, I just started.  Pretty close to the edge eh?

Polar Friends - Day

Stitcher's Habit

Stitched on 32ct Ocean Fantasy Linen from Silkweavers

Later in the evening I stated my project for this Day 8 of the Crazy Challenge.  It was another small one, Polar Friends - Day, I started night earlier in the week.  This pair is a pleasure to stitch.

Yesterday afternoon, it was Zeus's turn to find a lovely patch in the sunshine.  Very pretty!

Finally on Saturday our replacement treadmill was delivered, and Todd put it together on Sunday morning.  I took it for its inaugural run that evening.  I have to say after a month of not running, plus having a remnant of my cold boy, my cardio, endurance, and speed were all GONE!  How frustrating.  It took me quite a bit of effort to put in about 15 minutes, and I had to do it in a run/walk.  Prior to this whole circus I was running for on average 20 minutes on the treadmill at 5.7... today 5.4 was challenging.  Oh boy... I've got a lot to get back.  There's work to do before my first race in May (Ottawa Race Weekend 10K).

I use the Nike+ GPS app when I run and I got this neat little re-cap of my running year.  I'm quite happy with these results!  I guess I should aim for 500 KM this year?????

Crazy Challenge Day 7 or The Day I Conquered The Frogs!

First of all I'd like to retract a previous statement I may have made, that griding was a waste of perfectly good stitching time.  Well in my opinion it always was, I mean if you count and count carefully, double check yourself against your other stitches technically you don't need to grid.  Boy did the outlines on the Ink Circles Seasonal Mandalas taught me otherwise!  I had frogs so many times that I finally gave in and pull out the thread I bought for griding years ago (and never used) and started griding.  Honestly that griding saved my life, saved my sanity!  The last two seasons went off without a hitch once I had my grids in place.

So here we are!  All four seasons, outlined!!!  Once this Crazy Challenge is done and I've finished Enchantment of Winter (which has had no love for a week now!) this will be my next focus piece starting with Winter.

Last night when I wrapped up my outline, it wasn't quite bedtime yet so I whipped out Eat, Sleep, Stitch and gave it a little more love, got a few more letters done.  I think I may take the time to wrap this one up today before I start my day 8 project.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon I went into the kitchen, and looked out into my backyard.  The weather had been a mixed bag, a little bit of rain, overcast, moments of sunshine, etc.  It seemed almost magical when I looked outside and saw the sunshine touching only the willow tree and nothing else.

On March 20, 2010 the PhotoHunt theme was "three"

Three stitching ladies with three new stitching bags... we all match and if you look closely we're in alphabetical order!

Crazy Challenge Day 5

I didn't get in a full day of stitching yesterday.  Instead I had a lovely day out with my Mum, doing some running around and grabbing my favourite pizza for lunch!  What a treat!  I also got all of my travel medicine stuff done for my upcoming trip to the Dominican Republic in the latter part of February.  I'm heading back for another Dominican Experience, this time with 16 students!

Eat, Sleep, Stitch

Cherrywood Studios

Stitched on 28ct African Daisy Joblean using DMC

I wasn't sure what I wanted to start when I finally sat down to stitch yesterday evening but I did know ti wasn't the Summer Mandala (saving that for today).  So a bit of a group session on iMessenger (love it!) with Christin, Bonnie and Tracey we agreed upon Eat, Sleep, Stitch.  I'm glad we did.  It was another nice, colourful, simple piece on 28ct fabric!  I have started leaning towards higher count fabric fabrics in the last year but I always forget how much I like the lower count fabrics like 28!

How about another Retro PhotoHunt?  On March 13, 2010 the theme was "Spiral"

In the spring, ferns unfurl from a tight little spiral.