Partially inspired by the Crazy January Challenge (which I will NOT be joining, kthxbai).

Current cross stitch WIPs:
Lady of the Flag (goal finish for 2011)
Nordic Needle Rose
Starry Night
Autumn Sunset Sampler
Pennsylvania Dutch Valentine (from 2008 Cross Stitch a Day calendar) (easily finishable)
Snowflake (don’t know where this came from, there’s no URL on the print-out) (easily finishable)

Yarn WIPs:
white cotton crochet hat
pink acrylic crochet hat

Sewing WIPs:
sleeveless cotton shell for Mini
bunch of patterns cut out but not yet pinned to fabrics

Gee, this doesn’t seem like all that much… And Buggie gives me a hard time about all my WIPs?!

However!!!

I *am* going to join Jenna M. in her Not-So-Crazy January Challenge and finish-finish 15 Fuffies this month. I haven’t yet decided which 15 (I’m taking a brief break from the sewing project because I boogered something up and needed to get my head descrambled), so I’ll have to post that later.

December has been a crazy month around here. I would be glad that it’s over, except that I know most of the crazy isn’t actually over.

My older daughter applied to three colleges. Her first choice (BYU-Idaho) and third choice (Aurora University) have both responded and accepted her. Aurora is offering a 50% scholarship off a base tuition of somewhere around $25,000 a year. The BYU scholarship application process opens this week, but their base tuition is around $4,000 a year. Yes, you read that right. Her second choice (BYU-Provo) won’t respond until February, but since she’s been accepted at Rexburg where she really wants to go, it’s a moot point anyway.

Because we are converts to the LDS Church, there are additional scholarships and grants available to us that applicants born into the church cannot access. I’m hearing rumors that we can pretty much count on at least 25% coverage from those additional resources. Plus with her academic record, she will definitely qualify for more. I truly believe that I won’t have to worry (much) about the financial aspect. If she’s meant to go to Idaho, it will happen.

I’ve gotten some more done on Autumn’s Sunset Sampler, but not enough to take a picture. Filling in these blackwork leaves takes a TON of time for what seems to be very little progress. I think it’s time to take this one off the floor stand for a while and get back to Lady of the Flag and that over-one skin. What WAS I thinking when I did that? LOL.

Christmas went well. As usual, I hosted my entire family. I made turkey, gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, Cracker Barrel-style green beans, corn, breadsticks and salad. My mother contributed a couple frozen pies that I heated up, and my SIL brought appetizers. Not an elaborate meal, but plenty good enough. The kids got lots of clothes from everyone plus some movies and other fun stuff. I got the pasta maker I wanted and the Ball canning book, plus a Visa gift card that I used to order the pressure canner I wanted. That will be arriving later this week.

So….. 2011.

I only had two resolutions for 2010, and I actually managed to succeed in both. Get a job, and lose weight. I didn’t lose a lot, only 5 pounds, but I didn’t set a target so merely being at a net loss counts as a win.

For 2011, I’m going to keep it simple again. Continue to lose weight (and again, I’m not setting a goal number, that seems to actually jinx me), work on building my food storage to a 3 month supply level in all categories, and finish Lady of the Flag. Uh oh. Did I just say that?

With another finish!

Pattern came from Sprite Stitch and had actually been requested by our own dear friend Abi. In fact, I first saw this as a finish on Abi’s blog.

I’m annoyed with my fabric, though. It turns out to not be even in both directions. The pattern is 32 stitches square. The finished product is 2 7/16″ by 2 3/16″. It may not be easily visible here on the screen, but oh is it obvious in hand. I had planned to make a rainbow backing and stitch it into a biscornu. Clearly that isn’t happening now. Ah well.

But hey! Two finishes this year!

The Christmas Elf Fairy, designed by Mirabilia. Dubbed Chrissy at some point while I was still working on her dress.

Started March 2008 in Dallas, TX. Finished 11-17-2010. Spent waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time languishing in a box somewhere.

Lots of changes made to this one. First off, this was at least the second iteration out of a kit (originally belonged to Michelle, we swapped after I finished the Halloween fairy), so I didn’t have the fabric used on the model. I like my sparkly white, although now I kind of wish I’d had sparkly ice blue so the white of her ermine showed better. Ah well. I also had to replenish some of the fibers and did not like the available dye lots on the reds that needed refilling, so I ended up swapping some of those out for DMC in frustration. Finally, Wisper absolutely hates me so I used plain white DMC instead in those spots.

So, yeah, I’ve been a little busy lately. [sheepish]

Work is great. I’ve got lots of little catch-up type projects for when we don’t have an active deadline. Boss was without a secretary for over two years, so there’s a lot of maintenance type stuff piled up LOL.

I haven’t been doing as much cross stitch, but I am doing a lot more crochet, especially during church while listening to talks and lessons. And I’m slowly learning to knit, which has been on my someday list for a long time.

There’s been a lot more cooking and baking from scratch going on, largely because the budget is so horribly FUBAR right now. I’m making about half of what I did at the downtown firm and I’m anywhere from 6 to 18 months behind on several bills. There’s been a ton of juggling going on, and I am so thankful for the welfare program available through my church. It’s definitely led to some interesting meals, but most importantly, we’ve had food on the table every night.

Buggie has her driver’s license at last and is doing housework for my mother to pay for her portion of the insurance and gas. She also babysits for neighbors and friends from church. Mini is still catching up at school at her own rate, and is definitely more social and better controlled than she was a year ago. I would not be surprised to know that regular church attendance is helping with that as well.

So, yeah, still here, still struggling, but still doing reasonably okay. And still looking forward to what each new day brings.

From Lee, this month’s Stitching Blogger’s Question.

Stitching is an activity that tends to be solitary. Sometimes I wonder if we choose stitching because we are more comfortable with pursuits that we do alone, or does our stitching cause us to be loners? So what do you think?

Personally? I started stitching because my aunt and The Last Supper as a WIP laying out when I was babysitting my niece one day, and I was working for a Joann Fabrics and could get kits for cheap with my employee discount.  I continue because I love the process. And sometimes I actually manage to finish and frame and display something, too!

Since we’re stitching alone most of the time, it seems to me that we get great joy from coming together with other stitchers.  It can be such a good feeling when we find a group of people who speak our language and understand our stitching excitement and passion.  But since not all stitchers are perfect, not all groups can be perfect either.  So…if you could create your own perfect stitching group, what characteristics would make it perfect?

I’m not perfect? LOL

Seriously, though. While I enjoy stitchy G2Gs, I find that I get very little accomplished on a project during those sessions. I don’t know whether to blame the projects or my brain, but it is generally difficult for me to actively work on a cross stitch piece and hold a conversation. I can do so in sequence, but not in parallel. Some crochet, especially the simple double-crochet cluster baby blankets I’ve been doing lately, is fairly easy for me to multi-task with, and I have taken to keeping a WIP in my church bag so I can knock out a couple rows during sacrament meeting and the passing period between Sunday School and Relief Society.

So I guess my perfect stitching get together would be one where we have lots of WIPs with us to show off – so long as we have sufficient progress to display since the last one, I guess – lots of clean snacks (because I love to nibble) and beverages, and an understanding that we’re going to spend a lot more time chatting and being silly than actually working on our respective pieces. My sister once lamented that when she comes over for a stitch-n-bitch, there’s way too much bitching and not enough stitching. Clearly, she has a very different mindset than I do here

Well, now that was not fun… somehow I managed to delete the admin panel from my sidebar. Took me a while to find out how to log in so I could post! LOL

Anyway….

I’m possibly getting ahead of myself a bit, but I decided it’s time to start putting out feelers.  I’m getting close to completing Mirabilia’s Christmas Elf Fairy and wondered if anyone out there is interested in her.  I’ll be honest, none of the other Mirabilias are catching my eye, and I’ve been on the Abstinence Wagon for so long that I have no idea what’s out there anymore. So this could be an adventure!

Work is going great. The boss has been letting me loose on new projects with little to no instruction, which honestly feels wonderful. The old boss never would have given me the kind of freedom I have here. Of course, Boss looks over everything after I’ve done it, but since it’s all going out over his name, that’s only natural and expected.

School is now done for the kids. Thank goodness, because I don’t know how much more of Buggie’s horribly terribly awful attitude I could have handled.  I do remember how bad Junior year was, and I didn’t even bother with ACT or SAT testing because I knew I was just going to end up at the local community college if anything. So I was sympathetic to the stress, but dang.

My calling at church is going very well. We’ve planned several good workshops and seminars for the next few months, and we’re starting to think about our big service project that we’ll do with the young women near the end of the year. Sadly, the charity I was really hoping for, Feed My Starving Children, is currently booked through about February of next year. So I’m keeping my eye open for cancellations, just in case.

The kids are doing well. Buggie ended up getting a 29 on the ACT without knowing any physics or finishing the written portion. Yeah, getting into college won’t be a problem for her. Paying for it, however, looks like it will be a big problem for me.

And I am stitching!  I’ve been working on the Christmas fairy during work and a crocheted baby blanket at church. Of course, I don’t have easy access to my camera for status pictures… LOL

The Stitching Blogger’s Questions have returned! Thank you, Lee!

Suppose we say that there are two types of stitchers.

There are those who enjoy the “process” of stitching.  They stitch for stitching’s sake and if something gets finished, so much the better, but it’s not necessarily the end goal.   Primarily, it’s the application of needle and thread to cloth that makes them happiest.

Then there are those who are “project” stitchers.  They move steadily through their projects, certainly enjoying their stitching time, but finding their greatest joy in the completed stitching.

If you had to pick one to describe yourself, which type of stitcher would you be?  I imagine that we could all say that we fall somewhere in between, but really think hard about this and try to pick just one.  And once you’ve decided whether you’re a Process or Project stitcher, tell us if your recognize that approach in other parts of your life.

I am absolutely a process stitcher.  I also has SADD – Stitcher’s Attention Deficit Disorder. Both of which might just explain my many UFOs.

Cross stitch (and lately crochet as well) is my therapy, my mental disconnect. It allows me to break away from whatever is stressing me and get back on an even keel.  When I was commuting to Chicago’s Loop for work, it was the best way I knew to get out of secretary mode and into mom mode.

Out of many hundreds of completed projects, I have less than two dozen completely finished at home. Possibly less than a dozen.  Oh, I’ve finish-finished more, but most of them get given away immediately once they’ve been mounted. I tend to not do the finishing until I know who is going to get that piece and why. I have a large file of fuffies waiting to be identified as gifts for someone.

My mommy got me goodies!

No, not the pictures, the cross stitch kit to make them!

See, when I was little, I absolutely adored the Holly Hobbie character. According to Wikipedia, the character was originally un-named and was “born” right about the same time as I was. I had several dolls, and my very first ever pair of glasses had small images of the blue girl on the temples.

A few years ago, someone came out with an updated version of Holly Hobbie. Probably the same jerks who decided to reboot Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite. Yuck yuck yuck. Stop frackin with my childhood. I did give the new Holly a try, honest. But the new Holly shared absolutely nothing in common with the girl in blue calico patchwork of the 70s, and the TV show that served as the foundation for the relaunch was – IMHO – more of the same little girl drivel that serves as the force behind most of the shows on Nickelodeon and Disney lately. Maybe I’m just too old, but eww.

So anyway, Mom was out shopping this last week, getting an embroidery hoop and needles so she could do some cross stitch pillows she got from someone somewhere. And she spotted this kit. She almost didn’t buy it because of the price, but she knew what my reaction would be when I saw it and decided that alone was worth it.

I literally SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEd when she handed it to me. I cannot remember the last time I saw a *real* Holly Hobbie picture. And when Mom told me it was mine, I squeeeeeeeeeeeed again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist stitching her for long LOL. I’m not as interested in blue boy, never was, but I know I’ll just *have* to stitch him as well to have the set up on the wall.