Girl On a Swing ~ Green Version, Journal #3

Blah blah blah...you all know the design and inspiration by now, right?

Journal: Ok, so I mis-titled this posting. I am "supposed" to be working on Girl On a Swing, but, honestly, if I have to put one more stitch into that thing this week, I may burn it. I am just not made to work on 1 project at a time. I think this fact goes all the way down to my DNA level. Gene Mustnotworkononethingatatime2093457236096. Look it up! It's real!!

So, I am sitting in my favorite stitching place in Berkeley, thinking about Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Wondering why Life is such a drag sometimes and blissfully perfect others. Why Liberty is always being attacked and wondering why she picked that nasty old rag she wears. (werent the French known for their fashion back then??) And why Happiness is so damned fast on her feet that it makes her hard to catch...although I guess it does say to "pursue" happiness. No guarantees on catching her!! Those founding fathers were really quick on their feet and VERY smart. *nods earnestly* All the while listening to my "life is fucked" playlist on my iPod. ( I know the playlist name doesnt sound very happy, but it's a list of all the music I have that makes me feel good. LOL It's my sick sense of humor coming out that no one was supposed to see but me, yet I posted the name anyway. LOL)

It's a beautiful day. Warm, but not too hot. Clear skies. Lots of birds chirping and happy people walking by laughing and chatting. By the way, these pictures are taking out of my sun roof. I didnt even have to leave my car!! Here's the Gothic building I get to look at. It's a school of religion of some kind and has religeous symbols all around the building under the windows. I want to look them up because some of them I have no idea about.



Here's the giant redwoods right next to the car. You can see one of them in the earlier picture, but this is looking straight up them from the driver's seat.



I am not sure what kind of tree this one is...some pine or cypress or something? It's pretty cool though. It's all tangled and gnarly. The college kids love to sit in it as do the squirrels and the birds.



This is the building on the other side of the street. It looks like a castle, but it's really a brick church. We dont have many brick buildings in CA, they tend to crumble in earthquakes, so it's always amazing to actually see one. Berkeley really needs to get on the underground wiring bandwagon! They have so much pretty scenery and architecture, it's a shame that there are wires everywhere.



This one wasnt taken out of the sunroof. It is actually about a mile up the road from where I park. Top left is SF. Middle top is the Golden Gate. Top right is Marin or some other fancypants city that costs way too much to even visit. The bridge on the lower left is the Bay Bridge. Bottom middle is UC Berkeley with Berkeley stretched out before it. The bottom half of the photo that is a rooftop is some top secret Berkeley National Labs building. I'd tell you what it is, but then I'd have to kill you. I just tossed this picture in because it was taken on the same day. :)



Everything is perfect! I have put away Girl on a Swing, and have been digging through my bag to see what I want to work on. Papillion mystery? No, too many specialty stitches I have to concentrate on. BFG? No, I have a bit of frogging to do. Just about 5 minutes worth, but I dont want to ruin the perfect day with frogging. Celtic Banner? No, too long and cumbersome to stitch in the car. Ah....my Love Quilt square! I need to finish this anyway.

So, I am decided how to game up my stitching time. Do I pick a section to finish and finish that section? Do I stitch with 1 color of thread and finish off all I can with that color? Do I rotate colors after every thread? Do I do the outlining and no filling in? Do I fill in and not do any outlining?? I decide I may have ADD. Why do I need to "game up" my stitching all the time?? Cant I just stitch?? Does anyone else find a game in their stitching?? THEN I decide to do the rotating color game. One thread of each color in the design (thank goodnesss their are only 6 and one of the colors is already used up!!) game.

So, I pull out the grey and start stitching. I get about halfway through the thread and I hear a helicopter overhead. Must be one of the news copters flying over to get to an accident or something....cept now I am hearing 2 copters. One of the copters starts a circular pattern overhead. Hmmm...must be a police copter. It is dark blue. They must be looking for someone....always comforting when they do this right overhead!! LOL Wait....what's that noise? 3 copters? Wow! This must be something big! I start to wonder if I should roll up the windows and lock the doors. Forget that!! I'll roast up like a pork rib roast if I do that!....mmmmmm, ribs.....

Now the copters are hovering about 3 blocks in front of me. Low and behold, number 4 comes flying in. He gets into a hovering position almost immediately. He must be a much better copter driver. All the others flew around looking for a spot and this guy just plopped right in and found a spot in seconds!! Now there are other copters flying in and out of my eyesight. Just 1 or 2 at a time, coming and going. Next comes a small plane...probably some TV station that is too cheap to buy a copter...flies by a couple of times circling around. HAHA! That sucker cant hover!! I got 5 copters in this picture!! FIVE! Number 3 was just passing through the hoverers. I circled them because they are hard to see without blowing up the magnification.



Now it dawns on me, today was the day that they court was going to rule on the Berkeley Tree Sitters. I am all for saving the oaks, but does it really need every helicopter in the area to cover it?? It is the commuting hour!! What about all the accidents on the roads? Who's covering those?? What will the public do if they dont get to see every fender bender on the news tonight?? And for God's sake, do the copters have to be so loud?? I feel like my ears have little drummer boys in them...."pa rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum". There will, obviously, be no quiet stitching for me this week. I still got quite a bit done. I did some more outlining done of the muzzle and whiskers. I finished filing in the muzzle and the grey around the whiskers on the left. It was a lot of fun not having any confetti or fractal stitches. Maybe I'll do more today.




On a side note....another video of me bitching about noise! YAY!! I am thinking of renaming my blog to "Chronicles of a Bitchy Stitcher" or maybe "The Bitchery Stitchery" What do you think?? And I am serious about this! LOL

Girl On a Swing ~ Green Version, Journal #2

Journal: This is about week 3 of stitching Girl on a Swing. The week is a lot less hopeful than last weeks. The scenery was much more bland, antiseptic and glaring. There was no beautiful redwood trees, gothic buildings and serenity. No tiny squirrels running around playing tag. No, my surroundings were filled with people running around, loud beeps and screeches, people tearfully crying in fear, people screaming in pain. The air was filled with everyone's pain, fear, anger, and confusion. It sounds a lot like hell. Unfortunately it is an earthly form of hell. The Emergency Room.



Gma called in the morning and said she really wasnt feeling well. When Gma admits she's not feeling good, it's a big deal. She is the biggest martyr I know and for her to admit something like that means there's something really wrong. So, I jump up out of bed and get dressed and head over to her place. By the time I get there she said the advice nurse told her to go to the ER...which was my plan all along anyway.

We pull into the ER parking lot and the lot is being torn up. There are big piles of dirt and trackters everywhere. There is a small drive thru for ambulances only. This means that we have to drive all the way around the hospital to the other side, which is almost a block away. I drop her at the front door and tell her to wait...she doesnt. She never does. I park the car and catch up to her and then run ahead to get a wheelchair since she cant walk very well. We get into the ER and before they even fill out her paperwork the triage nurse calls us in. Gma doesnt even have the stylish ER bracelet on yet and we are in a room with a bed, a bunch of machines and a small hard stool for me....woohoo! a stool! those are ALWAYS comfy to sit on for hours and hours at a time! Not.

After they get Gma settled in, I go on a reconnaissance mission to find a chair. I spend a few minute dodging doctors, nurses, EMT's and wandering patients and their families. I hate ER's. I have spent more than my fair share in them in the last couple of years. I can say this though....Kaiser Fremont has the best ER in the area. They are quick, they know what they are doing, they get things done, and the staff is very friendly. Anyway, I find my chair, switch it out with the stool, and pull out my bag of stitching while we wait on doctors, x-ray, lab, et.



Here is my prized chair I found. It's snuggly between the docs computer stand and Gma's walker....which were flanked by the IV station and a supply closet that everyone needed to get into, thus bumping me with the mouse table. I have a bruise on my upper arm from it. On the other side by the walker was a sink and a biological waste garbage can....yum! Luckily we were at the end of the row of rooms so behind me was a wall and not a curtain with people behind it hitting me in the head with their elbows everytime they moved.

On the other side of the bed we had a curtain and another bed. I felt so bad for the family over there. It was another granddaughter/grandmother team. So I felt instantly connected to them. The poor girl couldnt get a hold of her Gma and the family that lived with the Gma (real winners from the sounds of it) kept telling her that her gma was sleeping. She finally went over there and found the gma in a coma and called the ambulance. Her gma was really sick and in pain and had been taking pain meds from different doctors and had taken 100 vicadins in 10 days, plus 2 other opiates and some other drugs. The poor girl was beside herself. There was not much the docs could do because it had been so long since she taken the meds, they just had to let her sleep them off. So, I stitched to the sound of this woman crying to her Gma to wake up. Somehow it seemed that my bright and lively colors dimmed themselves to the pain of this other woman. They just werent so cheery for a while. Thankfully after about 6 hours the ladies gma woke up and started yelling. LOL "Why did you bring me here?? I was just napping!!" "For 18 hours, Gma??" "It wasnt 18 hours!! It's only been a couple of minutes!! I want to go home NOW!" LOL you gotta love Gmas! Anyway, the colors got a little brighter after that...or maybe they just turned on the overhead flourescent lights. Who knows?

They decided to admit Gma into a nursing home for a week or so until she could walk again. She had lost a bunch of her muscle tone while she was sick. The rest of the week was spent sitting and stitching in a wheelchair next to Gma's hospital bed. She had a wonderful roommate the first couple of days and it was a real pleasure to sit and stitch around people who appreciated stitching.

Anyway, Gma is all better and back at home this week. Girl on a Swing got a big chunk done on her. Excuse all the wrinkles, but I have been stitching her in had so I dont mess up the beads. I have been beading as I go along. She's also been stuffed in my bag while I am not stitching.

Girl On a Swing ~ Green Version Journal

Stats: Girl on a Swing from Issue 198 of CrossStitcher Magazine. I am doing the Green version which was a free download from their website. I am using recommended fibers, except I have replaced their Glistengloss with Kreinik small braid. It's being stitched on 14ct Sky Blue Aida.

Inspiration: I'll be stitching this project twice. I'll be doing the Green Version and a mirrored Blue Verson. I am also thinking of personalizing them, as they are for my nieces, Fiona, 5, and Inara, 2. Fia will get the blue version and Inara will get the green version. As soon as I saw this design I knew immediately that it was meant for my nieces. The girl looks almost exactly like my niece Fia.

Journal: This has been my focus piece for almost 2 weeks now. I have been taking it everywhere with me. So far, my favorite stitching place has been next to the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. I park under some huge redwoods next to a beautiful gothic looking building. (I'll have to post a picture of the building later.)There are always squirrels running under and through the trees. There is one parking space that lets just enough sun into the car to give me light, but not heat it up too much. I open up the sunroof for extra light and fresh air. I turn the radio down low so it's background music, but I mostly just listen to the birds, squirrels chattering, and people walking up and down the street. It's very peaceful and relaxing.

I had a hard time with the first week or so with this design. I hate oranges and yellows. I am just now being able to accept reds into my life, but orange and yellow arent cutting it. I really dont like bright colors either. I am a pastel/dusty/jewel toned type of girl. And who thought of putting bright orange and lime green together? Were they crazy? I had been toying with the idea of changing the green to something else, so I hadnt put in an of the green stitches. Well, that and I didnt have any of the right color in my stash and Michael's was out of the green. LOL

But something happened this week. I finally went and got the green color I needed and decided to go f or it. I am not really comfortable switching colors in a project because my past tries have failed miserably. I started adding the green and it just made things POP! I am now excited about working this project. I am loving the colors and how they contrast and blend. I am finding it refreshing to work on something so bright and cheery. I think I really needed this project in my life.

It's very important for me to reclaim this neighborhood and make it positive. I visit this spot once a week when my husband has to go to his aftercare program at his rehab clinic. Most of you dont know, but that's where he was for most of March and April. This beautiful neighborhood has held a lot of pain and anger for me. It also has it's good moments because this is where my husband decided to start living sober again. I had to drag myself 30 miles from home to go visit him and go to counseling with him twice a week while he lived at rehab. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of negative emotions came out in that area. I spent a lot of time crying on that street. So, this piece will be restoring the peace and beauty of this neighborhood so I can start concentrating on the future and let the past fade behind me.

Finally finished!

I am going to say this again...I HATE SEWING. Here is my little peacock that is finally finished. I turned her into a photo album cover. She has been made for one of the ladies that works where Gma lives. She recently had a grandchild and I thought she needed a peacock because of how she was showing the baby off. LOL I bought the kit for $1.25 in September of 07 and it is finally finished today! Better late than never!

I have also made the life changing decision that I will never learn to quilt. I hate sewing that much! So, that's another hobby off my lists of things to do.

Celestial Dragon by Teresa Wentzler

Here's my April 20th update of Celestial Dragon. I managed to finish my April goal for it, which was to finish this square minus the beads and metalics. I havent quite decided what my next goal for it will be.

I am really starting to like this whole goal thing. I have never tried it before. Sometimes it gets a little stressful at the end of the month, but I am getting over that. No need for it to be stressful since it is a goal just for me. No one else. I am actually accomplishing stuff now. Not finishing, mind you...just accomplishing!! I dont want all those pink girls to get excited.

Cats, Fish and Birds Oh My!

Well, I finally got off my duff and started on a sewing project I have been putting off since january. I stitched a little peacock for a lady that works where my Gma lives. I had been trying to figure out how to finish it for her. I finally decided to sew it onto a small book cover for a photo album since the peacock was an inside joke between us. She recently became a grandmother, reluctantly, but now she's proud as a peacock! LOL

Sewing this thing into a book cover has been no easy feat since I have no pattern, nor do I have any real sewing experience. I dont think I am doing so badly so far, although I have had to make some design changes. Here's a picture of the peacock, my fabric, and the backing fabric. Hopefully I'll have a finished picture posted by the end of the week!

Since I have the sewing machine out, I figured I'd sew up a couple of pillows for my nieces. I promised my oldest niece a pillow last May. So, I am doing pretty good with my timeline...only a year late. LOL Here are the fabric I picked for each girl. Inara who will be 2 will get the gold fish and Fiona who will be 5 will get the kitties. I am not sure how to design the pillows yet, but I have a couple of months to finish them. Their birthdays are in June and July. I am definately going to have to change my goals for the next few months now though. Not sure I can sew and stitch and get everything done.

Something new

I found a new design that I love. I really want to stitch it up....but I am already at 4 in my Two or Four at a Time rotation. So, I'll either have to wait until something is finished or bump one of the other things and add that in. Finishing will not be an option for another month or two.

I guess I could always stitch it on the sly and not tell any of you about it.....

/runs off to gather all the threads and fabric for the "secret stitch". *giggle*