Finished finished! :)

The back is a plain yellow fleece and the binding is an ordinary satin blanket binding I got at JoAnn's.

I just hope young Teresa understands Aunt Jenny is a much better stitcher than she is a sewer - the satin binding was really hard to keep straight. I think the result is passable, but I'm sure a more experienced seamstress would have done much better. Ah well.

Happy Dance!

All the stitching is done on the afghan! Woo Hoo! And not a moment too soon. My sister had her baby yesterday morning at 4:30am. She had a little girl they named Teresa Lucia. They don't find out the sex or reveal the name of the baby til it is born, so usually I don't get a chance to include any name or anything before finishing the blanket. The timing worked out this time that I was just finishing up when she was born. The text along the side of the center is the baby's name and birthdate. :)

I'm planning on doing the finishing tomorrow as I have off from work. More pictures once I have it all blanketified.

Little Squares done!

Finally! Now just Mother Gooser herself and this afghan will be ready to be finished into a blanket. :)

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater

I'm afraid to say so, but I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Only two more small squares left and they are both rather easy. Then the large center design of Mother Goose herself, which is going to be over-two, so it really isn't that much harder/bigger than the small squares. I'm thinking it will take about as long as two of the small squares. Anyway, getting close now. And no obligation stitching for 2010! (Well except for the Mira RR I'm already stitching for.)

Finally!

My husband finally figured out why our PC wouldn't load any pictures and got it fixed. So now I can share these with you. In between painting all the trim in the basement I'm still plugging along on the afghan. Here is Sing a Song of Sixpence and a picture of the whole thing. I'm working on Little Bo Peep next. :)

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

This one went faster than I expected. Finished just in time for Autumn's RR to show up on my doorstep. :) So I get to stitch on the RR for the next bit and take a break from the afghan.

I'm stitching Athena for Autumn's RR, and then Sing a Song of Sixpence for the afghan after that.

Jack be Nimble

Finished this up just today. :) There was an old woman who lived in a shoe is next. Might have to get in some progress on something else first though - this afghan is burning me out. Sister is due in January though - so not much time left to get it done.

Rub a Dub Dub - 5 kids in a tub?

Some of these take longer than others and this was definitely a longer stitch. It is done though, and I'm happy with it. Just in time for the next Mira RR to show up. I'll be stitching the Poppy pixie for Missy Ann next. :)

In other news our renovation of the basement has begun. They put in the HVAC vents today. No pics, cause well it is just vents and nothing interesting to look at there.

This past Sunday, my sisters and brothers and I all got together at my mom's for a picnic. It was the first time in probably years that all 5 of us were together. It is so hard for me to believe that the boys are practically grown. Me and my sisters are from my mom's first marriage and we were in high school when my mom had the boys during her second marriage. Here is the pic of all 5 of us.

From left to right: Mat, Karen, Wendy, me, Andy. Wendy is 5 months pregnant and will be the recipiant of the afghan when it is complete.

Mary had a little lamb

Finished this a few days ago - just now getting around to uploading it. :) I'll be stitching on Annette's RR for the Mira RR next, so hopefully I'll have a pic of that to show soon enough. :)

Finished!

I managed to finish Katie's silver curtains, the Jack n Jill design for the afghan and mulching the front garden. Still haven't settled on a paint color for the bedroom, but whatever, I'll get to it when I get to it I guess.

Katie was pretty happy with her silver valance and I was happy I talked her into this in lieu of the silver walls she really wanted.

In other news, I won a prize on Susan' s blog for showing a pic of my "to-be" craft room. Look at all the awesome stuff she sent. Thank you Susan!! :)

WIPs

Seems just about everything is a WIP right now and nothing is done. I've been stitching for what seems like forever and a half on this Jack and Jill square for the mother goose baby afghan. I guess it is taking me so long because I'm not really enjoying this particular design and also work has been really, really tedious lately. Last thing I want to pick up when I get home is something that also feels tedious cause I don't really like it. Work is about driving me batty - they seem to think that I will somehow just know what to do and do it right the first time with no explanation or plan of attack. When I point out there is no way for me to know this stuff, they agree and apologize and act all understanding and then say something insane like, "So you'll be done tomorrow right?" It also doesn't help that the work is not at all technical writing, it is more like code writing and I find it extremely tedious. Instead of writing documentation, I'm fiddling with the code of the xml pages to make the content management system display the pages correctly. If you understood what I meant by that - you probably understand it as well as I do. I've tinkered a bit with this sort of stuff before, but it was never the whole crux of my job before and my handlers seem to think that experienced technical writer means I'll figure out what they want and just do it without them telling me. Anyway, if the economy didn't suck right now, I'd so be telling my resource manager to get me out of there - but with assignments so scarce, I gotta make the best of it.

Anyway, went off a bit of a work rant there, which I try not to do in my blog so back to my WIPs. Besides my stitching WIPs, I also have several other projects that seem to be in the middle. I guess if I had more than the attention span of a gnat, I'd have something done instead of a whole slew of things that are "in progress".

DH and I pulled all the bleeding heart from the bed around the garage because it was seriously overgrown and choking out all the other plants - we didn't quite get it all finished though - a little weeding and mulching left to do on the right side. See my lilies, before we cleared the bleeding heart, you couldn't even tell they were there

Then there are Katie's silver curtains - I bought fabric a few weeks ago and just this weekend got around to hemming all the edges and starting the pocket where the rod will go - there will be tapered sides to this when it is done. I got sick of it though this afternoon and put it aside. Hoping to get back to it sometime this next week - we'll see.

And then there is the master bedroom. I picked out and purchased curtains - got a steal in JC Penny's clearance bin on some lined silk panels for $20 each (reg. price $75). The valances were on sale too - but not quite as good a deal. We're having a hard time selecting a paint color for the room - I want a sort of steel blue but darkish. I think I've ruled out all three of the samples you see in the pic. The one on top is too "baby" blue, the one in the middle is too purply, and the one on the bottom is just too, well blue.

So anyway, there is what I've been up to and what I've accomplished - a whole lotta nothing!

Humpty Dumpty

A couple of pics of the latest afghan block and the whole afghan as it stands now. I think I will take a bit of a break from this for a little bit. I want to stitch on something else for a few days until the Mira RR comes, then maybe when I finish with that I'll come back to the afghan.

Thanks everyone for your comments on my garden - the ones here and some made on facebook really helped point me in the right direction. I'm slowly getting there on what I want/need to do to make it look decent. :)

One other thing, I think I'm going to skip entering anything in the Fair this year. I'm just not close enough to finishing anything, and in no mood to push myself to have a finish just to enter. I'm going to try to go to the judging though anyway. It is always a fun day. If you are thinking of entering something in the WI fair this year though, be aware the entry deadline is June 20 - so go check out the website if you want to enter. :)

Rock a bye Baby

We had a little good news on the house today - the seller's bank says we can close whenever we want now! I'm excited, but also nervous that something will come up again at the last minute. The new closing is scheduled for Friday at 9:30am. Cross your fingers that this time it will really close and the bank has no more surprises.

Lately I just haven't had the concentration for any of my WIPs as they are all larger pieces. Instead I've been working on the baby afghan for my sister - each block is a quick finish. I've also been working on one of the smalls I got at Celebration, so hopefully I'll have that to show one of these days too. So the above picture is another of the nursery rhyme blocks from the baby afghan.

The job situation is looking up too - it sounds like I have a definite maybe for a new placement, which would be awesome and aleviate some of the "OMG, I have a larger mortgage payment and I might loose my job." angst I've been having.

So things are looking up, I hope, maybe, I think. Cross your fingers and say a prayer though just in case!

Well, we moved

First let me say we are all moved into the new house. We are completely free and clear, clean and closed on the old house. I cried like a baby at 11pm Friday night when the last items were removed and we finished vacuuming and cleaning so the new owners could move into a clean home. It was a really good house and except for the apartment complex across the street that was becoming more rundown and us just generally outgrowing the place, we loved it there.

I'm sad to report that we did not have an uneventful closing/move to the new house though. We went to the walk-thru at the new house at 4pm on Thurs evening, and closing was scheduled for 10am Friday morning. We already had a good portion of the old house packed and loaded onto the moving van. When we got out of the car our realtor's face was just white. She told us that aparently the bank had continued to move on the foreclosure of the house even though they had accepted the short sale. Apparently there are two different departments at the bank and the right hand does not know what the left is doing. The seller aparently knew this but did not tell her realtor, so nothing was ever communicated to us and we thought we were smooth sailing since it was less than 24 hrs til closing. Anyway, bottom line was we couldn't close cause the bank did not have a payoff number because the foreclosure attorneys now need to get paid (even though they have accepted an offer before the foreclosure attorneys were in the picture).

We obviously did not want to be bullied into paying these fees just because it was the last minute and we had no where to go. We threatened to get an attorney and sue for breach of contract and basically the seller and the realtors agreed to let us move in under an occupancy agreement where we pay a very small rental fee per day til we can get the thing closed. The quasi-closing was really to set up this agreement and it was a little ugly because the seller, who is the person who is being foreclosed on was there and she was bitter about the whole thing and wanted us to pay more for the rent. We didn't want to pay anything because we felt we already agreed to get a mortgage to pay for the house - why should we ultimately increase our cost to own the house by paying rent until we close and then still pay the agreed price. We only agreed because the amount we are paying is so small that should the bank continue to drag their feet we are getting an awesome deal on living expenses. The seller felt we should pay what it would cost us to rent an extended stay hotel. The realtors all told her too bad - we shouldn't have to pay anything, and that we were getting the house. It wasn't down right hostile, but plenty uncomfortable.

So anyway, we are in, the house is a mess with stuff needing to be unpacked, and we are unsettled and stressed about whether this will all work out. The realtors are all saying it will, probably within the next week - but when I read up on short sales/foreclosures online there are plenty of horror stories that start out sounding like our situation... so we are hoping and praying for the best.

Soooo to completely switch gears and include a little stitching, here is a pic of the first block of the baby afghan I started for my sister. She is expecting her third child in January. I finished this inbetween packing the week before we moved. The afghan is going to be all mother goose nursery ryhmes (sp?).

Baby Afghan Pics

Finally got pics taken of the finished baby afghan! Here it is. :) The pics aren't as high quality as I'd like cause the camera is set on the medium quality setting rather than the high quality setting and I haven't taken the time to go through the menu and change that yet - but you get the idea.

Baby Afghan Finished!

ARGH! And since my digital camera is still very much dead, I cannot show a pic. Of course there is no way that sucker is fitting on the scanner, so you'll just have to imagine with me what it looks like until I can buy a new camera. (I'm hoping that will be soon, but have to warm DH up to the idea.) I used a flannel backing with little handprints and footprints in pastel colors and a purple blanket binding to finish it off. I'm rather proud of how it came out. One side has the bright colored alphabet, and the other the pastel prints, and the purple binding compliments both rather nicely. I will post a pic once I get a new camera, just cause I'm so gosh darn glad to be rid of stitching on those afghans that now I have to share my victory.

So now I'm focusing on getting as many pieces finished for the fair as possible. I have to turn pieces in by July 19, so I have just under a month to finish stuff. This year I'm entering "Cottage Garden Fairy" as my large piece. I finished her in late 2005, but don't have a more recent large finish because of spending all the time on the darn afghans. Since she was finished within the last two years and I've never entered her before she is still eligible. Only reason I didn't enter her last year was that I entered Chatelaine's Sampler Mystery II instead, which won me my first blue ribbon in that category! I don't think CGF will win this year, but she may place - we'll see. I'm also entering the baby afghan I just finished in the "not a framed picture" category, so at least I have two pieces already done. I'm really hoping I can also finish "Waiting for Ships" for one of the medium size categories, and possibly "Girls Night Out" by Just Nan for the small category. Guess we'll just have to see if I can actually accomplish that!

Katie is 3!

Katie turned 3 on Memorial day. I cannot figure out for the life of me where the last 3 years went, but I'm sorta glad to have the baby years behind us. I love my daughter dearly, but I'm glad to be moving into the age where she can do a little more for herself. Of course, these days she wants to be doing a little too much for herself and we are usually struggling with her wanting to do things herself, but not quite being able to manage it just yet. Tantrums and struggles result. We'll get there though, and I'm trying to let her do as much as she can but still be there when she really does need me.

In stitching news, I finished the 20th letter (T) on the baby afghan this afternoon. Would have finished it last night only I ran out of 3325 and had to wait til my way home from work today to stop and get a skein. All done now though. Since the next Mira RR still hasn't arrived, I get to work on something of my own choosing tonight - I'm waffling between "Waiting for Ships" and "Silkwood Manor" hmmm wonder which one will win out.

Katie's Blanket Finished!

The backing is fleece and very warm and snuggly. Now to finish that other afghan, I've been stitching on that this weekend too and have finished the O and P blocks and I'm currently working on Q. I also stained the new trim around our new entry doors and primed/painted the wood foundations they are mounted onto - whew, I'm tired. Oh, and we took my car into to have the A/C looked at because it wasn't cooling and it is going to cost $1000 to fix. For an old 1997 Cavalier - nah, I don't think so. So DH and I started looking around at dealerships this weekend too. We are going to probably buy something used though, maybe a 2004 or 2005, we'll see.

I'm going to try to write some more of the trip report tomorrow - we'll see how busy I get with other stuff though!

One Last Dance Before I go!

Happy Dance that is! Finally this blanket is done - well the stitching is done. Still have to do the finishing, but that will have to wait til we return from our trip. :)

We are also having new doors installed today - so if I get a chance I'll post some pictures of the new door later today. We'll see though cause our toilet handle broke this morning, making flushing impossible on the upstairs toilet. Luckily we do have a basement bathroom too, so we can use a bathroom. Why does stuff like this always happen when you are about to go on vacation? Looks relatively easy to fix though, just buy a new handle that should connect through the back of the toilet to the little arm thing that pulls up the stopper in the bottom. Just one more errand for me to run today! Yikes.

I also have to finish the laundry, finish the packing (mostly done except for items from the laundry), and mow the lawn. DH is really frustrating me, cause I know he doesnt have enough clean clothes and underwear to bring and I've offered to do some laundry for him during the day today (he's working - I'm off) so that it'll be ready to pack when he gets home. He just keeps saying he doesn't have time to get the laundry together for me - so now he has to do it himself when he gets home and then pack after that. Considering we are leaving at 5am tomorrow morning, this is starting to stress me a bit that he isn't packed AT ALL. He cut the tags off his luggage last night and had the nerve to tell me how good he's doing getting ready and expected me to say how good that was! *sigh* I hate how he always leaves everything to the last minute!

Running in Place

That is how I feel these days, running and running to try to get things done, but nothing is actually done! I have most things ready for our trip, but keep remembering this or that to buy/do. Last night I started the packing – not actually putting things in the suitcases yet, but just sorting through the kids summer outfits. Since we are in Wisconsin, they haven’t seen the light of day since September and I needed to take some inventory. I normally buy them clothes for the next years season at the clearance sales from the previous year, so I was expecting I’d be all set. Katie does indeed have 9 pairs of shorts and 9 short sleeve tops, but no matter how I mix and match them, she does not have 9 outfits that she can wear. Not to mention that I’d like to have 2 or 3 extra outfits for her since she is still relatively newly potty-trained and an accident isn’t entirely out of the question. And of course almost-3-yr-olds never, ever mess up their clothes and need to be changed multiple times in one day, right? HA! Anyway, I ended up making a run to Kohl’s last night to get her a few more tops and one more pair of shorts. The tops will match the shorts that didn’t match anything else and the shorts I got her were ordinary jean shorts that will match any top she has. (BTW, Kohl’s has these really cute solid and print separates –shirts and shorts – 2 for $9 right now – with my Kohl’s charge 15% off on top of that, I got a really good deal!)

Tonight after work I need to run to the grocery store to buy toothpaste and paper plates. I also need to clean the house because we are having new doors installed the day before we leave on the trip. I know that sounds like a dumb time to schedule it, but this way I only need to take one day off of work to both do all the final prep work/laundry/packing/mow lawn AND be there when the installation guy comes.

My stitching is really starting to take a back seat. I am working on the very last square for Katie’s blanket and although I really want to finish it – it seems to be taking forever. Last night I thought I was finally going to get some good time in on it and my sister called to chat about our trip plans and wish us well. Nice of her, and I enjoyed it, but now I’m further behind! J I do have that last square almost complete though, and part of it is that I picked sort of a large and solidly stitched pattern for that last block. So it is really my own fault. Anyway – cross your fingers for me that I can happy dance that blanket before I leave on my trip!