Crazy Challenge Day Five

Pitiful progress for Day Five's start for the Crazy Challenge.  Every year I kit up a JBW ornament series to stitch up for the girls in the office at work.  This year's choice are the Christmas Doves I & II I will be stitching up six in total, so I will have to do two of the four designs twice... unless the designer releases a Christmas Doves III chart before December!  A girl can wish right?

Love Dove, Christmas Doves I

Stitched over two on black 28ct Lugana with DMC B5200

Yesterday was a busy day, I went into Weight Watchers for the first time since December 15th.  I didn't loose over the holidays, I didn't maintain either, but I think I did well, gaining only 1.8 lbs over a 3 week period where I wasn't exactly vigilant with eating and food choices.

I also had to do a little housework because my Nephew and his Girlfriend were coming over for dinner.  By the time they left, I tried to work on it at night, but because of the black fabric I decided not to struggle with it.  I wasn't really in a stitching mood either, I just poked away at my AAN Leaf for a bit before going to bed early.

Delightful Dragon Fob front & back

Teresa Wentzler

I've also forgotten to share with you a little piece I finally put the cording on.  I had done the actual finishing quite some time ago (like at least a month) but I didn't have the right floss colour to make the cording with so it waited.  Then I bought it, and it waited some more.

Pre IHSW, Gridding & More

The January IHSW is here!  That's the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend!  The idea is that when and if you can from Friday-Monday you ignore the world and stitch your little heart out and get a serious case of stitcher's butt.  You can read all about it here and sign up for the January edition here.

So here is Enchantment of Winter BEFORE the IHSW, its seen a little needle time but not as much as I'd like.  Its been a very busy week for me, lots going on.  As I type this I've spent my evening getting ready as tomorrow evening I'm joining up with about 18 other stitchers for a weekend away in a quiet country B&B to stitch our little hearts out!  Hopefully I'll make some great progress on EOW, if I don't spend too much time chatting and visiting!  Of course I have my camera all packed, so I will share with you here after the weekend.

On my busier nights when I was either tired or didn't have much time to stitch I pulled out Polar Friends - Night and made a little progress on that too.

I've received several comments asking about the gridding many of you saw in one of my earlier posts this month.  I love e-mailing my commenters back when the comment warrants an answer but so many of you don't have an e-mail address linked to your profile!  I have my comments e-mailed to me and if you have an e-mail address linked to your profile when you hit reply, it pops in your e-mail address and whoila I can send a personal note to you!

So here's the information... I gridded my Ink Circles Seasonal Mandalas after so many mis-counts and encounters with those damned frogs!  There was no specific distances between my stitches, I just did a running/basting stitch, making sure that each vertical or horizontal line was exactly 10 stitches apart.  I wanted to mimic the darker grid lines on the chart that mark out 10x10 blocks of stitches.

Most of you were curious about the thread I used because I called it my "special gridding thread" (or something along those lines).  Really it isn't special, nor is it specifically for girdding but it is THE perfect thread!  I received a spool of this years ago from another stitcher.  Its by Sulky and its their Silver Metallic thread.  This is a thin, flat, ribbon-like metallic thread you'd probably find it in quilting stores.  The main reason I like to use this compared to a conventional thread or cotton floss is that when you are cross stitching if you happen to leave your grid in as you're stitching you won't be able to pierce the gridding thread with your needle as you stitch... unless you happen to use a sharp one!  This makes removing the gridding thread later on SOOO much easier.  It usually just slides right out.  I haven't had to grid often in the past but sometimes I've used it to put in a basting line down the left hand side of a sampler so that I know the beginning of my rows match up.  Its also been great for gridding blocks for Round Robins for the participants to stitch in.

So, there you've got it... one of my little stitching secrets!

Non-Stitchy Stuff

The snowploughs rolling out to hit the highways

The weather has been just brutal lately!  The temperature has been up and down like a yo-yo its either -5c or colder than -20c.  When its not brutally cold, its either snowing like its the end of the world, or we're having freezing rain.  I've had to drive to/from work in really bad weather twice in the last two weeks.  Its very stressful!  On Tuesday night we had rain, which apparently froze on contact.  To get in my car the next morning, we had to pry the door open with a putty knife!  After starting the car and letting it run with the defrost on at full blast for over 20 minutes... I still had to spend over 45 minutes chipping ice off of my car and windows so that I could safely drive!  If another person who lives in a warm climate that doesn't have winter... and I mean TRUE winter with sub-zero temperatures, snow and freezing rain says they LOVE winter, think snow is so PRETTY and would love a WHITE Christmas I'm going to slap them up side the head!  When you live with winter the way us folk in norther climes I can tell you that winter can be quite miserable, and downright dangerous, you stop seeing the pretty very quickly!

I was also asked if I'm still going to Weight Watchers.  Yes I am, I think I will forever be going to Weight Watchers, just to maintain my goal weight takes a lot of work and vigilance on my part.  Sadly I'm not one of those people who can eat what they want and not exercise.  If I don't live by the 80/20 rule and exercise on average 4-5 times a week I WILL gain weight!

What do I mean by the 80/20 rule?  Be good 80% of the time and just do your best 20% of the time.  There are times, moments, events that still trigger bad choices in anyone who has ever been overweight.  No one can be perfect, and imagining that you can be perfect and perfectly loose weight turns your journey into an incredibly stressful one.  Its all about checks and balances, if you know you're going out for a nice dinner on Friday you can balance that out by eating right and moving more a couple of days prior to and after that dinner out.  I also make a point of making sure all of my other meals are low point and earn some activity points.

The last week and a half have been very tough for me.  I've made a lot of bad choices (chocolate and lots of it), salted peanuts, crackers, lots of very yummy things.  Oh and a devine slice of a "chocolate bomb" when we went out for dinner on Saturday to celebrate my Mum's birthday (which it was -25c without the windchill that was fun to be out and about in).  I was very shocked when I weighed in at my WW meeting on Wednesday and the receptionist told me I had lost this week!  Wow!  So I lost 1 lb!  I started going back to WW the previous week and between my last weigh in at the very beginning of December to the second week in January I put on 3lbs... it could of been worse.  So I'm back on the road to getting back to goal 9lbs to go.

I Certainly Hermited This Weekend

It was the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, and this month I had the time and luxury to be able to take part!  I've been so busy all I've been wanting was a weekend to stay home and stitch!  I did some finishing (see yesterday's blog entry) and I stitched!

Quaker Christmas Ornament

Kell Smurthwaite

Freebie Kincavell Krosses Blog

Stitched one 32ct Cranberry Linen Stitched with DMC B5200

I stitched up this fantastic freebie I had a wee start on it before I got up from my nap after work on Friday but I worked on it that night, quite a bit on Saturday and wrapped it up today.  I really enjoyed this stitch, and of course if you don't know me by now, I love to switch up the colours!  This was charted up for red floss on white fabric I of course did the opposite!  Unfortunately this isn't the best picture, I didn't realize the whites had blown out until I got it on the computer and honestly I'm too busy watching the Survivor Finale to get up and re-take a picture!  I'll have a better picture when I do the finishing of this pretty.

I also pulled Enchantment of Winter back out.  For some reason lately I've been avoiding working on this piece, despite the fact that it needs to get finished!  I think I just don't want to face all that over one backstitching, which I was very good to do today until it drove me buggy!  When I switched back to stitching over two without my magnifier my eyes were immediately much happier!  Of course this picture just doesn't show what progress I've made.


-- Non-Stitchy Stuff --

Well there's still no new treadmill though we ordered a new one on December 3rd.  This order kinda turned into a comedy of errors.  Actually its not a comedy of errors, but just a bad case of STUPID PEOPLE!  They were told to send one back they had two arrive.  One had been ordered as a gift and ours.  They had been told by the warehouse to return a treadmill, but they didn't think to find out which one.  Since gifts NEVER have to go back they sent ours back before it barely arrived... never thinking to maybe CALL us to confirm we wanted it returned, since they had all our information to do that so we could come pick it up.  The long and the short of it is, our treadmill has been re-ordered, its now on sale so we got a further discount, and its being delivered to the house for free.  I hate STUPID PEOPLE!!!!  You can ask Chrsitin I go on about stupid people a lot, a pet peeve of mine.  I've not run in almost a month because its winter-like out there, and because of STUPID PEOPLE!

A wee self portrait, see that on the ground?  Yup evil, white stuff!

There's actually another reason why I'm going on about my treadmill.  My weight loss efforts are seriously suffering, its like I lost my safety blanket not being able to run on my schedule and my terms (I live in the country which is great for good weather running, but not great for winter running and its dark before 5PM right now and I mean dark!).  Today I bundled up and went out and walked my run route.  I went out for a brisk walk, with no distractions, no music to move me along (which I always run with).  It was very, very nice.  Part way through I realized, oh my gosh I actually MISS running?  Me, the short fat girl (well still short and a little fatter than I'd like to be at the moment but not as fat as I used to be) missing running?  The only time you would of caught me running in the past was out of a burning house with two cats under my arms and my stitching bag!  Despite the sub-zero temps I bundled up and it was very nice!  I'll have to do that again.

So my regular readers know the treadmill is on order because mine broke at the tail end of November, well Murphy paid us another visit.  A week away from Christmas to the day, our washing machine died today!  The motor was smoking and all that.  We have another big purchase coming this week, of all weeks.

Celebrating NaBloPoMo!

There's a party here at my blog tonight!  I'm happy dancing that I successfully completed the crazy challenge known as NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month.  The challenge : to post a blog entry for all 30 days in November.  With this final post for November I've successfully met that challenge!  Yay me!  I'm sure some blog entries were worth reading and a few were just filling in space, but I did it!  Also a shout out to my friends Christin and Bonnie for joining me and completing the challenge!  Way to go!  Way to go to everyone who attempted NaBloPoMo this year, and to those who completed it, props to you!  See you same time, same place in 2012!!!

Today was weigh in day, for the last few years I've been regularly weighing in on Saturday morning... which of course is always more favourable because its first thing in the morning and before eating, etc.  These last few weeks I've been flirting with idea of Wednesday evening weigh ins.  I've kinda decided to stick with it because usually on Friday nights Christin and I have dinner together... that worked when I was weighing in monthly but now that I'm back to weekly, it kinda puts a downer on dinner out.  I find myself so conscience of where and what I'm eating, is there too much salt?  Like my favourite fajitas, sure to put you up three pounds the next day due to retaining water and the salt!

I wasn't sure how I did this week when I went to step on the scale, since I came of maintenance and went back to loosing and paying I've not touched my home scale not checked up on how I'm doing.  The only time I know how I'm doing is when I step on that scale in front of my WW leader.  I've also not been obsessing over my number on the scale, but if I lost and what that loss (or gain was).  Its kinda nice ignoring that number (the bigger picture I suppose) and saying oh cool, I lost a pound this week.  I and my leader were surprised that I lost 1.5 lbs this week!  I had only just weighed in this past Saturday so it hadn't been a full week, and it was a evening not a morning weigh in.  I can proudly report I'm now down 3.5 lbs out of the 10 I need to loose!  Getting pretty close to that 5lb mark, the half way point!

There's two things I've been dying to do and I've decided they're going to be rewards for hitting the half way point and the 10lb mark.  When I hit the 5lb mark I'm going to get my eyebrows waxed... lets just say I've got a bit of a jungle going on up there above my eyes!  Its something I usually keep on top of every 6 weeks or so but I let a lot of things go when my Mum was in hospital in September.  Second, I'm dying for a haircut!  I haven't had it cut since the beginning of February.  Right now its long, flat and lifeless, its just dragging me and my face down!  Hopefully this is the motivation I need to see this thing through!

I thought I might share these two pictures with you, especially for those of you who weren't familiar with the "old" me :

At the Mexico/Arizona border March 2007, pushing over 200 lbs

Same place, same time of year but in March 2011 at my lowest 142 lbs

Saturday PhotoHunt "Hand Written" & A Happy Dance

Its Saturday which means its PhotoHunt day!  The theme this week is "Hand Written"

This picture is from my life-long friend Andrew's wedding day this past September.  Here he is hand writing his signature on his wedding licence.  It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding!  Never thought he would get married before I did!

Today I also celebrated a Happy Dance!  I started this wee, cute freebie ornament from Daffycat's blog last weekend.  It would of been finished sooner but its been a busy week.

Snow Hop

c2011 Sharon Bennett

Stitched on 32ct Queen Ann's Lace Joblean

Stitched with DMC floss

Some of you might know I on and off blog on a weight loss/weight maintenance blog.  I keep finding my heart hasn't really been into that blog for sometime. now.  So for the moment I'm going to just let that blog sit and I'll tell you about my struggles from time to time here.  My long-time readers will know that a few years ago I went through quite a transformation, loosing over 60 pounds through Weight Watchers.  In the spring/summer I packed back on 10lbs.  About a month ago I decided instead of just doing my once a month weigh-in and paying the fee for being above my goal weight (which wasn't working), I bought 8 weeks worth of coupons and I am going weekly, and weighing in weekly.  Week one was good I lost 1.5 lbs, so was week two I lost 1 lbs... doing well right?  Until I hit week 3, where I gained 1.5 lbs... that was a shock and I had moments where I didn't want to be committed to eating/exercising properly.  I did trudge through last week and was rewarded with a 1 lb loss!  So I'm back to where I was, down 2.5lbs out of 10... only 7.5 to go!  In an ideal world I'd love to loose it all by Christmas but with one poor week I don't think that's a reality.  I'll keep plugging away at this!

2010, The Year In Review

Sorry about the delay in getting my annual "Year In Review" post up, I had really intended to do it yesterday, then the letter "i" broke on my laptop keyboard.  Do you know how hard it is to get by without the letter i?  Pretty darned hard.  So today when the shops opened up not only did we do the grocery shopping, I got a new wireless keyboard, wireless printer (silly me though its not compatible with the air print on my iPhone... shoulda done my research first but it was dirt cheap!), and a new laptop.  Did I REALLY need a new laptop?  No, my old one has been performing beautifully but all of you know I do hit the roads quite regularly and you loose the point of a laptop when you have to have a keyboard, it kinda becomes a glorified desktop computer.  The reason we did get the new keyboard for it is so that Todd can inherit it.  He's been using a really old laptop for sometime now and I'm tired of hearing him curse and swear over it so in the end it will reduce my stress level.  I've moved up in the world to a 17.6 inch monitor and I quite like it.  I'll probably change my mind when I lug it with me!

Let's get to the interesting stuff first....

The ceremonial emptying of the Ort Jar on New Year's Day!  I've noticed many of my online stitching friends have adopted this annual tradition as well.  Doesn't it feel great/therapeutic to dispose of all of those orts to start fresh?  I think this year I'll have to hit some of those neat shops I went to in the fall with my friend Tracey to find myself a nicer, more interesting ort jar than a plain old Mason Jar.

The Ort Jar stuffed full by December 31, 2010

Emptied and awaiting 2011 orts!

Stitching Year In Review :

I completed 30 projects in 2010 all of varying sizes from the tiny to the very big!  The finishes I'm most proud of are :

Tour des Marques by The Silver Lining

(psst I have another SL waiting in the wings)

Celestial Dragon by Teresa Wentzler

I had hoped to finish Art Deco Spirits as well in 2010 but I got close, with finishing up 3/4 on New Year's Day ( I didn't quite make the midnight deadline, but I was backstitching as the clock struck midnight at Rebecca's).

3/4 of Art Deco Spirits completed

Air Panel finished on New Year's Day

So this year there's not big New Year's Day start as there has been in previous years. My good friends Bonnie and Christin (she's got a pic of the flower frog I bought her on her blog go take a look!) indulged themselves by starting Ink Circle's Cirque des Cirques. I may join them later in the year.  For now I'm going to carry on with last year's focus, to empty out what's left in my stitching basket!  I did very well this past year with finishing off Tour Des Marques and Celestial Dragon, both very big projects!

Here's what's left to stitch up in 2011

Art Deco Spirits by Mirabilia

The Accolade - Timeless Designs, Gitta's

Delightful Dragon Fob by Teresa Wentzler

Enchantment of Winter by Dimples Designs -- my next focus piece

This little kit I started on my DR trip last year and I've had no interest in picking it back up

Byzantine Ornament #3 by Teresa Wenztler

I of course will be continuing my ornament a month which I have been doing for years!  I think this year I'll be stitching up all the JBW mittens to match the stockings I gave the girls in the office for Christmas this past year, and I'll finish up the Teresa Wentzler Byzantine Ornaments.

Personal Highlights of 2010....

My Dominican Experience Trip for sure!  What an amazing experience (see my posts from March 2010), and to share it with teenagers just made it so much more rewarding.  I'm very fortunate and my Principal has allowed me to run the trip again for 2011 and in a few short weeks I'll be back in The Dominican Republic again, this time with 12 different students!  I'm looking forward to my trip February 18-25th, and of course I will have photos for you!

My summer vacation was just so wonderful this year!  I got to spend a couple of days up in the gorgeous Georgian Bay area with my friend Sheila, it was a treat for sure!

Then I got to spend 3 days in Quebec City with my Mum.  If you're ever in Canada or are a Canadian everyone should make a trip to Quebec City once in their lives!  I definitely want to go back and explore it some more.

Of  course there have been the wonderful retreats and get togethers I've been lucky to attend this last year!  I enjoy and cherish each an every one of them.  There's nothing more pleasing than being in a room full of people intent on one purpose that's to stitch!!!  I of course am looking forward to more of these great days with friends in 2011!!!

Billy Talent

Nickleback

Concerts!  There's not been too many of them in 2010 here in Ottawa but I did get to go to two great shows with Christin early on in the year, Billy Talent and Nickleback!  Two of my favourite bands!

I got to see a once in a lifetime show this fall with my Mum when Roger Waters went on tour with Pink Floyd's The Wall from start to finish.  Wow!  What a show!

There was a hurricane named after me this year!  However I do think it was a fairly well behaved hurricane... as well as a hurricane can be.

I participated in my 3rd Run For the Cure and thanks to many of you I raised $1,410.00 for breast cancer research.  I'll be running again the first Sunday in October of 2011.  Speaking of running I've set two goals for myself this year and they're BIG!  I've already registered for the 10K in the Ottawa Race Weekend on Saturday May 28th.  This will be my first official timed race!  I'm hoping this will lead to registering and completing the Ottawa Army Run Half Marathon in September (not yet registered for).

Despite running this blog for 7 years, in July I stared a second blog : Battle of the Bulge, I wanted to separate my stitching blog from my weight loss experience.  Over at my new blog I'm sharing my weekly progress, Weight Watchers meeting topics, ideas and insights.  Speaking of my weight, I rung in the New Years 2lbs lighter than before the Christmas holidays started!  I was so happy to come out of this holiday season with a loss (very hard to do).  Ideally I'd like to loose 6 more pounds to get within my "healthy" BMI.  This year has definitely been a challenge to maintain my weight loss, back in March I gained about 6-8 lbs and it took me until August to get those pesky pounds off... they went on in 3 weeks and took me MONTHS to get off again.  Since then I've maintained my goal weight and have even dipped a little bit below every once in awhile.

This fall I was back to teaching at Taekwon-Do after a very long break (like 3 years!), its great to be back at the front of the class again.  I'm teaching the "Little Tigers" 4-6 year olds and loving it!  They are so much fun and life is just so simple and straightforward to them.  I also competed for the first time in just as long, coming home from a friendship tournament with a gold and bronze medals.  I look forward to competing some more this year.

I was very proud this year to remember to and fully participate in NaBloPoMo!  I posted once a day on TWO blogs for the whole month of November.  Imagine doing 60 blog entries in 30 days?  Yup I'm that crazy!

I've enjoyed getting back to sharing my PhotoHunt pictures with you in 2010 and I intend to continue in 2011.  I've got some catching up to do!!!

Finally on the fun side of life, I got to drive a Corvette for the first time ever!

So I think that covers EVERYTHING!  What I have done and what I hope to do both in my stitching life and my personal life.  I hope everyone has a fantastic New Year!

The Week's Progress

Its been a very long week with the extreme temperatures and humidity we've had here in the Ottawa area.  Temperatures have been in the mid 30's all week long and it certainly has taken a toll on everyone.  I've not worked out this week because driving home in my greenhouse on wheels (aka no A/C in the car) left me feeling ill after the 25 minute drive.  I pretty much came home most evenings and went right to bed for a few hours!  My appetite has suffered as well, and I've not been able to eat proper meals just a little here and there.

I have been stitching a little bit this week, and here's where Celestial Dragon stands before my weekend of stitching!  Tomorrow Lynn is hosting a day of stitching and hopefully I'll get a lot done... instead a lot of eating and talking!

Things have not gone well on the weight front again.  Last week saw me at a stay the same on the scale, and that I could accept.  This week, I was up 2.5 lbs again, so I'm back 6.5 lbs over my goal weight.  So the battle continues.

I'm looking forward to Lynn's tomorrow!