Snowflake - first real day

well I just had a great day. The neighbours disappeared off somewhere with a packed car yesterday (YAY!) and still haven;t returned.

Paul spent the day with his mum. And instead of the forecast rain, it was a beautiful sunny mild day.

Trub and I spent the whole day sitting out in the sun, reading, stitching and dozing. Magnificent!!!!

Of course the weather cooled down around 4pm and we had to come inside. Its now 8:30pm, and Paul's here and we're about to watch X-Men 2. Lovely ending to a lovely day. However I just had to show you the progress I made on snowflake today - its starting to look like an actual snowflake now :) Pity that the scanner really is NOT doing the fabric justice.

Mother's Day

OK here's mum's Mother's Day present 2006. She just rang me and had opened it, so its safe to post here now. As I had it framed while mum was here for a visit over Easter, I could not get a photo of it framed. Mum's going to send me a photo of it on her wall when she can.

She loves it - she really does thank goodness! I had the leaflet in amongst the others when she had a look through my stash when she was here, but she didn't seem very interested in it at the time. She now says that she didn't want to show too much interest because she wanted me to stitch things for myself, not for other people! Sure mum - I can spot your saves!

Anyway, the framer did a marvellous job of the framing and I think I chose just the right mat for it! You'll see when the pics come along. Actually it was good to chat to mum now she's stitching too! eg *she* mentioned that it was on 14ct Aida and how neat the stitches were, and didn;t I find all that black block work depressing ... and then she said "You know I could make something like that!" And I said "YES MUM! You CAN!"

It was sooo brilliant!

I'm sitting here typing this with a pile of charts in plastic covers on the carpet beside me - I'm doing some work updating my spreadsheet of stash - and Trouble just walked past. She stopped and turned her head around to lick near her tail. But her front right paw (the one that she's shifted most of her weight onto) is on a plastic chart, and its sloooowly sliding sideways .... I just watched, but she moved her paw just before she toppled onto her face. I giggled and she glared at me and stalked away :)

Snowflake

As the caption says, here's the first bit. I've had a couple of hectic days and busy nights, so although this is two days worth, in reality its more like a combined total of one hour. What you can see is the bottom of the large snowflake.

Moving house

Well it hurt too much yesterday to talk about it, but I didn't get the house.

Apparently I was the best applicant by far but the owner turned me down because I have a cat. Apparently the Real Estate submitted me as the best applicant on Tuesday afternoon after ringing my references, and then spent continually up until Thursday morning trying to convince the owners to accept me. They would not.

In a very small voice I quietly suggested that if the owners were so obviously anti-pet, then that should have been listed in the advertisement, so I wouldn't have even bothered to go and look at it, let alone fall in love with it. The Real Estate person was very kind, and said she has a cat around the same age as mine and she feels terrible. She simply did not envisage that the owner would be so adamant. So I hung up and cried a little and got lots of hugs from my co-workers and then went for a walk, did some retail therapy and then got on with my work.

After lunch my supervisor came up to my desk and said that he had rung the Real Estate agent to see if he could help my case. He confirmed that they told him the same story that they had told me, and it appeared to him that the Real Estate person was in genuine distress in not being able to offer the property to me. she did tell *him* that if none of the other applicants were acceptable to the owner then she would force my application through. But that doesn't sound very likely (as there were heaps of applicants) nor am I sure I would want a house under those circumstances.

So guess what I'm doing tomorrow and its not the trip to Katoomba to the new cross stitch store like I planned!

It was very nice that my coworkers rallied around like that - and nice of my supervisor to go out of his way like that too! And then to come home to a surprise kit when I had ordered a chart and wasn't sure when it was even going to arrive .... well sometimes the good compensate.

Oh and that Retail Therapy? The local woodworkers guild had a series of stalls set up in the local shopping mall (its Mothers Day in Australia this coming Sunday) and I bought a beautiful ironbark chopping board. It is a gorgeous deep red mahogany colour - simply a beautiful piece of timber - and its been crafted to have rounded edges - very organic looking and it has a slot cut out of one corner so I can put my hand through it and use it as a handle !!!!

Many hugs to you all!

Snowflake - from Moonflower designs

With all of the hassles with my neighbours and finding a new house etc etc I have been in a real stitching slump!  I haven't picked up a needle in nearly a fortnight.  I got home from work and grocery shopping tonight to find that the latest Moonflower design had arrived on my doorstop.

http://moonflowerneedleart.com/html/charts_18.html

Snowflake is truly beautiful!  I also had a note attached from the designer that stated (well I've paraphrased here) that due to her being unsure whether I could obtain the specialty threads and fabric here in Australia, she sent the leftovers she had from her model stitching of this piece.    So I have in effect a whole kit for the introductory price of the chart !!!!  And it is truly beautiful.  Although my scanner does not pick it up, the fabric has beautiful jewel tone sparkles throughout.

I've decided that right after I finish this post, and update my webshots site, I will start on this design immediately!  It is sooo beautiful!

My Neighbours

Well I was going to keep this blog completely stitching related but I'm afraid I need to rant about my neighbours somewhere. Feel free to ignore - I think I'm doing this more for the cathartic experience.

Bugger time's gotten away from me - I need to get to work. Oh well - will rant and cleanse later ...

Mum's Third Piece - Bird of Paradise

Hi I, I've been a bit busy to update - see next blog entry if you are interested.

Here is mum's third piece - a bird of Paradise bookmark kit from Cross Stitch Magic.

I've included the original pattern - will change to original cover pic as soon as mum sends me the right scan. I've cropped the pic to remove the legend in the hope it will make the pic more acceptable.

And of course here are her two progress pics.

Hugs
Mel.