Catching Up

It’s seems like I’ve barely had time to breathe over the past couple of weeks. I have been burning the candle at both ends, working on a website for a good friend on my personal time and working hard at work. I’ve barely had time for anything else and was not getting a full night of sleep for several days at a time. It turns out that my body will only put up with inadequate sleep for 3 days in a row before it forces me to take downtime. It’s good to find out exactly what I can get away with, I guess.

My career has suddenly decided to take off and I’m uncertain of how I’m going to keep all of the balls in the air. I’m really hoping that I don’t drop one and if I do, I hope it’s not a really important one. So I do my very best and cram my work hours with planning projects; planning, scheduling and facilitating meetings; doing actual work on said projects; and guiding my first new hire. It’s challenging. A good kind of challenging, but challenging nonetheless. I’m finding it hard to keep my brain from flipping over from multi-tasking mode to complete spaz mode. It gets a little fritzed sometimes.

In addition to that, I have personal things that I need or at least want to do. I wanted to get some stitching done; I’m craving quick finishes. I’m working through an upgrade of my online store, after which I need to load it up with all of the products that I’ve bought in the past year and a half and never found time to get listed. Then I need to start driving business to said store. There are, of course, other tasks on the personal to do list after that, but the upgrade will be my main focus for this weekend.

I do have some stitching finishes to show for the past couple of weeks.

First is Assisi Winter Bookmark, a freebie from Tor Rhuann Designs.

This has been in my WIP pile for years and I finally decided on an approach for the backstitching colors that worked reasonably well. The bulk of the stitching was done with a DMC overdyed floss. The border is silver Kreinik braid, the center outlining is done with white DMC floss plus silver Kreinik blending filament and the rest of the outlining is done with DMC floss. I have the backing fabric picked out already, I just need to create a tassel and then put it all together.

Next up is a finish-finish. The is my first attempt at the Pine Mountain My Dad pillow that I had done on my own fabric and realized too late that I had chosen the wrong count. So, I made it up into a pillow for my biological dad’s 60th birthday.

He loves it, which is always a bonus. 🙂

Next up is another that has been languishing in my WIP pile for years, mostly because I discovered that I absolutely abhor working with DMC satin floss and had to decide whether to bite the bullet and complete it or toss it. This is the Peace on Earth Dragon by Dragon Dreams. It’s from one of the older Just Cross Stitching ornament magazines. Maybe 2002? I didn’t have the recommended colors of satin floss, due to my aforementioned aversion to said floss, but I did just happen to have two acceptable substitutes.

And finally, it doesn’t look like much, but this is Strawberries & Cream from Janie Hubble Designs. It’s from her latest free newsletter and will be made up into a strawberry pincushion. I actually have grandiose plans of stitching up 4 of these total. We’ll see if that actually happens. 😉

This picture was taken with my new digital SLR camera, a Sony NEX-5. It’s a hybrid model, with a lighter, smaller body, but full sized lenses. It’s exactly what I was looking for, a good quality first DSLR for a person used to, but outgrowing, a point and shoot camera. It has a lot of features that will guide me through learning how to use manual settings, which is perfect. It has gotten good reviews and so far I am quite pleased with it, though I haven’t had a lot of time to work with it.

That’s it for me for now. This is my quiet time on a weekend morning, so it’s time for me to go downstairs, finish up a little stitching project I started last night and catch up on Game of Thrones before Terry wakes up. TTFN!