WIPocalypse, Theme-a-licious and whatever else I'm behind on

I'm late for my WIPocalypse update, and even later for Theme-a-licious.  I seem to be on a downward  trend. For WIPocalypse, I'm not doing so great.  The only previously existing WIP I worked on for the last month was a bit of my BBD Anniversaries of the Heart.

BBD Anniversaries of the Heart, stitched on 36 count linen
with assorted overdyed silk floss

I did much better with Theme-a-licious for February, so much better it seems to be extending into March as well.  We were supposed to stitch on our projects by our favorite designer, and I chose Black Bird Designs.  I was hoping to tie it into AOTH.  Instead, I seemed to catch the smalls bug after doing the January and February CCN cottages.

BBD Pins and Needles Reward of Merit, stitched on 38 count
Gander linen with assorted overdyed cotton floss

Both the exact same design, just the one on the left being close to the called for threads, and the right one being a new color palette I chose.  Hopefully in the next day or two I can get both of these finished into pincushions.  Right after I took this pic I ended up finding some backing fabric for them in my mom's quilt fabric scrap drawer.  A quilter's scrap drawer is a cross stitcher's heaven for finishing smalls.

Right now I'm working on another smallish BBD chart, but have so little stitched its not even worth a picture, and its meant to be a gift.  I can thank the lack of progress on it to a tiny mistake on the first night's stitching which meant I spent the second night frogging.  Usually I'll just adapt and work around my mistakes, but this is one that was going to annoy me and make the rest of the chart just slightly off.  Out it came.

I caught a very un-ladylike picture of Annie the other night.  This is just one more of her "rub my belly" poses.  She was also sound asleep like this, until the flash went off on my camera phone.

Grandma is hanging in there.  She was moved to a rehab facility last weekend, and has her good days and bad days.  One thing I've learned is you need to really keep on top of those facilities and make your presence known.  I think every employee there know's I'm 31C's granddaughter, and to watch out for me.  I know for a fact the Physical Therapy department is going to be giving her good care, and there's a chance I got one employee fired.  Don't you dare log you gave my grandmother PT when you didn't, and don't be so stupid as to log the time right when I was visiting and can prove you didn't do your job.  Better the PT department fire one person than get turned into Medicare for fraud.  Enough about that, Mom and I have decided we have them whipped into shape enough that we can back off the twice a day visits to just once a day.

Dad and I went for a visit yesterday and enjoyed some nice time with her outside, for an al fresco lunch.  It was such a nice time I decided to ignore her not touching any of her food, except for the ice cream.  Right now I'm just trying to do anything to keep her happy and comfortable.  We're all a bit concerned since her blood pressure and pulse have really been dropping very low, and there's a strong suspicion her kidneys are failing.  At 91, almost 92, we're not going to pursue the dialysis option. Hospice will be the priority, when the time comes.

I'm trying to get caught back up with school, but me writing this blog post is really just me procrastinating.  I finally got back to a spin class on Thursday after missing a whole week, and OMG, it was painful!  I went to a Saturday class to try and make up for so much missed the week prior.  It must have paid off since my weekly weigh-in this morning showed a loss (finally!) instead of just holding steady.

Thank you to everyone for all your kind thoughts and well-wishes, its really meant a lot to my family and I.  I'm not always perfect about responding to all the comments left, but I'm really trying to get better about it.

Procrastination...

...will kill me every time.  I'm the Queen of procrastination, and it really bit me in the ass this time.  About a week ago I received a fantastic surprise in the mail from Myra.  I was the very lucky recipient of one of her sewn project bags.  She picked out totally adorable Halloween fabric, making it perfect for the Halloween rules project we're doing as a SAL together (and no, I haven't stitched on it for a month).

The procrastination bit comes in that I didn't do the right thing and immediately get my tush up to the computer and send her an e-mail thank you that night.  The next morning my internet woes started.  To make matters worse, I never even thought to send her a hand-written thank you through snail mail until the day I got internet back.  How quickly I forget some of the rules of politeness my mother raised me with.  Now imagine the guilt I felt when I finally did get internet back, and before I could even send that e-mail thank you out, there's a very concerned email from Myra wondering if I was ok, since I had dropped out of blog-land for a while.

Anyway, she's forgiven me (I think), life is getting better, just hectic, and I'm trying to solve my time-management problems (I probably never will).  Lots of updating to do in this post.

WIPocalypse is due today (thank you so much to Measi for the lovely e-mail reminder, I'd totally spaced out on the moon date).  I don't have too much to show on that.  No real progress on Halloween Rules since you last saw it for Theme-a-licious.  My primary focus has been on Christmas Garden (my BAP challenge piece).  Crappy picture, both for the colors and the wrinkles, but I'm lazy and don't iron my pieces just for pictures.

My January wrap-up for Theme-a-licious was due a week ago (eep!), and I'm just going to say, look at the picture above!  The theme was gardens and flowers, and I think Christmas Garden fits perfectly.  I also got a finish in of Poinsettia House, but no picture.  Right now its so dreary and overcast, it would be useless to try and take one.  I promise I'll post one once I actually get it finish-finished.  Oh, and then there was the partially stitched sunflower on Halloween Rules.

The theme for this month is Fangirl February - stitch on designs from your favorite designer.  I'm going to make it a BBD month, and tie it in with WIPocalypse and try to get some done on Anniversaries of the Heart, and more of Christmas Garden.

If I haven't been stitching, or surfing the web reading blogs, what the heck have I been up to?  I started classes for my MBA on Feb 1 (just in time for the internet to go wacky), and that's all online.  No spending hundreds of dollars on books, but I need an internet connection to read them online, they can't be downloaded.  I swear the first tuition check I get from the VA is getting spent on a tablet of some sort so I'm not tied to my damn computer.

I  joined a gym in January, and I've been getting into the routine of exercising.  Monday and Wednesday mornings I have a session with a personal trainer at 6 am (gasp!).  Mon, Wed, and Fri I do gentle Hatha yoga at 1 pm.  Tue and Thur is water aerobics (mom joins me for this), and scattered in there I do some extra cardio work.  I've been hitting the gym at least once a day, 6 days a week (I feel like I almost live there).  Despite all of this, and religiously logging what I eat and staying below my goal calorie count for the day, I seemed to have hit a plateau already.  In fact, I actually gained weight.  I'm trying to be optimistic and telling myself I'm getting muscle mass back (which weighs more than fat), but its hard.  Maybe I should just ignore the scale and just use the old stand-by of "how do the jeans fit."

Grandma.  In some ways she's doing better, in others a lot worse.  Last week when I showed up at her place to take her for the weekly hair appointment, I saw she'd forgotten to take not only her morning pills, but also the evening ones from the day before.  Mom and I decided to bring her home, so she's been with us for the last week.  Daily trips to her place and phone calls to remind her to take her pills and eat weren't enough.  There aren't any obvious signs of distress, she's not on oxygen, she's not incontinent, she doesn't wander off and get lost.  She's just tired all of the time, has absolutely no short-term memory, and has become an extremely picky eater - meaning she's not really eating anything and trying to survive on Vanilla Ensure drinks.  Grandma is having a tough time deciding who's bossier - me or my mother.  At least I sneak her small amounts of chocolate as rewards for various thing.  Yeah, I know, not the best for a diabetic, especially when that's one of the meds she had to quit taking due to kidney problems.  Its time for us to re-evaluate where she's living, the care she needs, and come up with a long-term solution.

Sorry I wrote a novel about so much personal stuff in what is supposed to be a stitching-focused blog.  There just seemed to be a lot to catch up on and explain why I dropped off the face of the earth.  I've got a little surprise planned, and some other great things to post about, once I get some more stitching finished.

WIPocalypse Update

I started off the 2012 WIPocalypse by working on my Halloween Rules, which I'm doing as a SAL with Myra, Cucki and Ranae.  Myra is stitching hers as individual ornaments and has already posted a pic of her first finish, its adorable!  So adorable my mom wants me to stitch that block for her as a small pillow.  At least she hasn't claimed my full banner yet.

I'm not totally in love with these colors, or the colors on the grey fabric I chose.  I'm hoping it comes together at the end.  Its funny that I normally dislike the cutesy-ness of L*K charts, but despite not loving the colors or how they're working with my fabric, I'm still enjoying stitching this.  I think the reason why is I can pick it up and work on it for short periods of time and still see progress.  Its that instant gratification thing.  With L*K, 30 minutes can be the border of a block, half the saying, or a house.  On Jane Rees, 30 minutes is one or 2 letters.

Here's where I'm at.  If the picture is crappy, blame it on my being lazy and just using my phone.  <3 the new smartphone, take a pic, make a few clicks to add an effect or 2, and then another single click to upload it to Picasa.  No fancy edits, but also not messing around with memory cards, computer, going through 2 programs, etc.  I'm saving all the buttons to sew on at the end, so they don't mess with the Q-snaps.  You might notice a few missing bits, I'm adding a smattering of small JABCO buttons in those places.  So far that's just going to be a tiny candy corn and a bat.

I learned yesterday Quilters don't have the same etiquette as stitchers.  When I went to Mom's quilting class with everyone wanted to see what I was working on, which was great.  But I couldn't control my cringe when one woman came up with a cookie in hand, ate it, and then took the cookie holding finger and ran it right over the white stitched ghost.  What are the 2 golden rules of stitchers?  First, don't touch the stitching, or if you do, have meticulously clean hands.  I don't wash my hands so often to the point I look like a 19th century pot scrubber for nothing.  Second rule (which wasn't violated here) was don't look at the back of the stitching!  Or if you do, don't make disparaging comments, don't be obvious about looking at the back, don't get caught looking at the back and then frowning.  I'll admit, my backs are pretty neat, but they're definitely not so neat you can't tell the back from the front.  If you're one of those, please don't flaunt it to me.

Incoming disclaimer for this next bit - I promise, no affiliation what so ever, I  just love their charts.  I'm talking about Jardin Prive.  Unfortunately those charts come from France and cost a fortune, so I don't own a single one.  I've admired a few of the 3 part Sampler aux Bouquets that have been done in blogland (Theresa with a WIP and Michelle with a finish), but the thought of paying almost $20 for each of the 3 charts just put it out of my reach.  Imagine my happiness when I stumbled on the designer's website, and she sells the charts via PDF, at a reduced rate.  Remember the prices are in Euros, so its still not cheap, but wow, I might be able to get a chart or 2 (or 3)!  I normally hate to cut out an LNS, but my budget is my budget, and were talking about more than a dollar or 2.