Heidi's Stitching Saga

   I can't believe I only posted once all last year!  I started last January with DD first competition and never came back.  Hopefully this year I will do a lot better.

As an update on the competition season for last year, DD ended up finishing her level 4 season as the State Champion in Bars, Beam, Floor and All Around!  She won all around at all 6 meets she went to!  I am so proud of her!

Her next season as a level 5 starts next weekend.  I don't think she'll do as well in the first couple of meets since some of the skills are not as polished as they were last year but by the end of the she should do great!

On the stitching front, I stitched very little last year due mostly to the fact that I spent 9 weeks getting my Montessori Certificate and then going back to work for the first time in 9 years.  I love what I am doing but I haven't quite got the whole home/work balance thing figured out!

I did get some things finished though.  My biggest accomplishment was finishing my Fractal!  I will NEVER do another one of those again!  WAY too many confetti stitches!.  I do like the way this one came out though.  You can see pictures in my photo section.

Then I finished a baby piece that I did as an auction piece, a Britty Kitty Christmas piece, a few ornaments and 3 lizzie kate stamps and that's it.

This year I hope to make better progress on my Chateline, huge sampler, and Trumet Flower.  I don't think I will start any new things until I get these finished.  I have way too many things going on!

I hope everyone has a great new year!

It has been months and months since I last posted anything here.  I hope to be better about it in the future.  I have been stiching quite a bit though mostly on small things.  My larger projects have been sorely neglected.  I am tempted to start bringing my larger projects to my DD gymnastics practices.  She's there for 4 hours at a time so I get a lot of stitching in when I am not chatting with other moms.

Two of my finishes were actually done just after Christmas.  One will eventually be a pillow.  It was a Britty Kitty chart from the Just Cross Stitch Christmas ornament issue this year.  I used all sorts of different types of fiber on this one.  I use angora and metallics and rayon (yuck) and velvet.  Plus overdyed wool and perle cotton.  It was a fun and relatively quick stitch until I ran out of some of the threads.

Then I finished the Joy ornament from the same magazine and just didn't get around to actually finishing it off.

My next two finishes are both LK designs, one was a Holiday Flip it- Valentine's and the other was the January Stamp.  I am determined to finish the stamps this year!  They come out so pretty.

Last, I finished My Big Toe Designs and "two shall be as one" for my husband and I.  I hadn't made us a sampler for our wedding.  So I finally found one and finished it only 14 years later :)

My current large project is a group of tigers.  I was doing it for a gentleman who's wife had passed away.  The contact was made through my LNS which has since closed and now I don't know how to contact the person.  The owner can't find the number either.  So I guess I will finish the picture and hope he somehow contacts the owner again.

You can see pictures in my photos section.

I am so proud of my DD.  She started competing in Level 4 in Gymnastics this year and she had her first meet on January 8th in Twin Falls, ID.  She did fantastic!  She was first on the bars, first on the beamm third on the floor, 6th on the vault and FIRST place All around with a score of 35.105!  She was so excited to do so well on her first meet.  She will compete 5 more times by the end of March.

My little girl, her beset friend, her mom, and myself did the neatest thing over Spring Break last week.  We have a wild life park close by that has bears and other things in it.  One of the activities that you can do is feed the baby bears.  Well, apparently, before the baby bears are exposed to the general public a lot of time is spent getting them used to people.  A new batch of grizzly bears were born about 10 weeks ago and they are starting to get used to people.  SO, we were invited to come and play with the baby bears.  There were 6 of them and they were the cutest things!  They did have sharp claws and little sharp teeth, like a puppy's really.  We all thought it was the coolest part of our break.  You can see more pictures in the album, Bears.

I can't believe that it is almost done!  My fractal only has a little bit of one page left and I will have finished it!  I am going to move on in my rotation for now though.  I can't stand to do another confetti stitch.  I should get it done this year for sure though, maybe even before the fair in September.

Well, I am on a roll on the small finishes.  Now if I can only get myself going on the larger pieces!  I finished #19 of EMS Advent free charts from last year.  It am slowly but surely getting through all of these.  And then I finished a gymnast piece that I designed myself for Isabelle's gym sister for her last meet.  I stitched it but Isabelle choose the colors.  Now to finish it up.  I haven't decided how I am going to finish it.  I think it is a bit too small for a flat fold so I think it will be a little pillow or a ornament type thing.  I stitched in on a shy blue over dyed fabric using Carrie's Creations Over the Rainbow for the gymnast and then Tarnished Gold from Gentle Arts Sampler Threads.

I have also reorganized my floss into baseball card holders and 3 inch binders and lined them up on my self.  It has really cleared up space around my stitch area and I really like it so far.  it was a bit tedious to put together because I put a piece of velcro on the tops of each openning so that the floss wouldn't fall out.  The other advantage is I can see at a glance all fo the colors since they are in clear pages.

My little girl has started competing in gymnastics this year.  She is competing at level 3, the first level that you can compete at.  At this level, they are ranked ( 1st, 2nd, 3rd ect) instead everyone who receives a 9 or better gets a blue ribbon, an 8 or better receives a red ribbon, a 7 or better gets a white ribbon and anything lower than that gets a rainbow ribbon.  Then everyone gets a trophy for the all around.

At her first meet, she received three red ribbons for beam, floor, and vault and a rainbow on the bars.  She fell on one of her skills, the stride circle.

At her second meet, she received two BLUE ribbons for the floor and vault and two red ribbons for the beam and bars!  She was so excited to get blue ribbons and to improve so much on the bars.  She has one more meet to go in March before she moves on to Level 4. You can see some pictures in the Gymnastics album.

I have managed to get in some stitching lately, mostly by ignoring the house :)  My Georgia O'Keefe White Trumpet Flower is now 1/3 complete!  The entire top row is complete.  At the rate I am going it will be done in time for my DD Mardi Gras auction by the time she is a 6th year! 

I also have another small finish!  I finished the Mill Hill Coffe Cup pin but I am going to make it into a kitchen magnet.  Since the flower is taking so long to get done, I have been doing smaller ones for the auction.  This year I didn't get anything done but next year I plan on giving the Cappucino kit I finished the other day, the matching Latte piece and this magnet. 

My next project to work on is my fractal.  I plan on finishing another page on this one before moving on in my rotation.  I think I will finish this one this year.  I only have 1 1/2 pages left.

I have two finishes so far for the year!  I am rather surprised since my stitching time is severely diminished since I have started working.  I am getting more time in on my small travel projects since by the time I get home and do all of the home things, I am lucky to get a half hour of stitching in.  Good thing I really like my job!

The first finish was #18 on the EMS advent calendar.  I didn't get them all done before Christmas this year.  There's always next year.  The second finish was a Mill Hill Bead and Button Kit Cappuccino.  I plan giving this one and the Latte and the matching pin to my DD school Mardi Gras auction next year.  I didn't think about it soon enough for this year's auction. You can see pictures in the new 2010 Finishes album.

I also had another birthday come and go on 1/28.  It was a really nice birthday with lots of goodies from the ILCS Birthday Club group.  I want to thank everyone again for all of their great gifts!  You can see pictures of all of the goodies in the 2010 Exchanges album.

I have also decided to change my rotation a bit.  Instead of working on each project for a week, I am going to keep working on each one until I finish a page.  I think I will see more progress this way.  I started it but then got distracted with a couple of small projects!

I also decided to add the books I have finished this year to my notes section and my review section.  I have managed to finish two books so far this year.