Damnit!

I just finished reading the latest Jim Butcher Harry Dresden book "Changes".

I was hesitant to start this book because I had already read a couple of spoiler-free reviews where people went "wait, you can't finish it there... "

So going into this book I felt I kinda knew this in anticipation.  As I was reading I was mentally going "oh right, I see,  I see where we're going.  Yep that makes sense."

I feel I have a relatively good idea of this author. Most of the big reveals were "well duh!  That was obvious because ...." and still an enjoyable read.

Until the last page.

I'm not sure I can forgive Mr Butcher for the last page. 
For it BEING the last page. 
For making me wait until March 2011.

For using the last page of the book to define the title of the book.

DAMN YOU!

Stitching Update: May - July 2010

Due to many factors mostly stemming from my migraine still being with me (started late March and here still here) I have been very quiet on my blogs and with my stitching.

The treatment for my migraine revolves around short-term medication leading to regular sleep patterns and lifestyle changes (both work and at home). As part of this, I'm getting back into my stitching and  reconnecting with the world again.  Anyway enough whinging, onto the update:

Stitching update!



In June I finished off poor Jasper in Bloom.  Jasper was a project I cross-stitched in May-July 2008 as one of my train commuter projects.  Unfortunately the back stitching was getting me down so I put him away.  I found him last month while looking for a different project, and decided to "be good" and just struggle through the back stitching.  The struggle turned out to be a mere two nights in front of the TV, and he was done.

A lesson there in building molehills into mountains and the fear is worse than the event and a few other platitudes.


I then, flushed with this success, went back to New York and finished it off completely.  The silver scroll-work was a pain to do on Aida but well it always is :)  This Vervaco kit, unlike Moscow, contained enough fibres to complete the whole project.  I've included a photo of the finish here so you can see that Vervaco uses generous fabric sizes in their kits.  If only they included evenweave or linen as an option...

In late June-early July my mum visited for a fortnight. Mum brought over all of her finishes so we took them down for a Show and Tell visit to Colours Down Under :)

While mum was here, I mentioned that I had a "Fall limited edition" range of Carrie's Threads that was released in a collaboration pack a couple of years earlier.  I hadn't given away any of the threads because they all blended well together but I hadn't found a chart that I could use them on.  Coincidentally, the next day Tracy released a new free pattern, Celtic Spiral, to those on the Inkcircles email list.  Mum and I pulled out those threads and some fabric and started stitching!

Unfortunately for the stitching, I introduced mum to World of Warcraft that night and no further stitching was done for the rest of the visit.  The day she flew home I sat and stitched the rest of this piece, all except for the last 10 stitches.  You see mum and I both chose one colour the same in our palettes and I gave the rest of the skein to mum to take home with her.  I was a) quite sure I had enough and b) given our history mum always finishes our collaborated projects months ahead of me. In this instance, I was wrong on both counts.

Mum has popped a length of the thread in the mail and when it finally arrives I will finish off this poor thing.  Or not.  I just found out that the direction of the project should have been reversed for the Southern hemisphere.  {insert expletive here}.

After that I became all enthusiastic about our private round robin group starting up again, so I pulled out the Historical Dress Sampler that went around last year. I had great plans to stitch up the rest of the grey border pieces to make life easier for placement for the others. In the next four weeks I stitched precisely 10 stitches on it.  I gave up and just sent it on as is.  I feel so ashamed that I just couldn't motivate myself enough enough to stitch on it.

After it went, I started a new project, a piece for a friend's birthday in late August.  So this is my focus piece for the next few weeks.  I'll put up a separate blog with pictures and progress on this project on the weekend.  I was going great guns until I found one row of the wording was out of alignment, so I've unpicked it.  Hopefully I can have that area restitched before Sunday.  I will once again be using the Sunday updates to help keep up my motivation.

And that's it - all my stitching over the past two months :)

On the nature of love and friendship

At work this afternoon I was chatting to a customer who told me a story about how her hubby (then boyfriend) had surprised her as few years ago. She had had a bad week at work and he working at one of the mine sites and wouldn't be back for a another few weeks.  Just before 5pm on Friday, one of the other women she worked with let him into the work area, and came up behind her, picked her up, twirled her around and then kissed her senseless.  She said it was like something out of a movie and every time she remembers it she automatically adds in "that hollywood swell of music".  She and her hubby still look very much in love and I suspect this incident was from more than a couple of years ago.

Thinking on this afterwards, I became a little depressed as I realised there was no-one in my life I could even fantasise about putting in that role.  None of my friends, no hotties from work... no-one.  I think this is the first time in my life I'm not even having a fantasy love life!

Then when I got home this evening I caught up on one of my favourite blogs and read the following in the comments section to a post:

See, the wonderful thing about being grown-up is that other people have finally lost the right to tell you exactly what that means, and you're free to choose. Except of course for very close friends, but really, you have to excuse them because they are, after all, close friends, and there is a certain level of irreverence that's to be expected when they tell you you're being an idiot. Although often they are being idiots with you, so the whole thing's a rather moot point in the end.*

... and quite a number of names came to mind!  In fact I feel a few of you will be reading this and going "YES! YES!" in a non-Meg Ryan-ish manner.

So while I may not have any person to cuddle or even many to brunch with right now, I do have a heck of a set of friends!  Far more than I deserve, and I thank each and every one of you for being there! For being my friend, and for being exactly who you are!


* If you want some context, read the blog post and all the other comments here.