Friday, March 20, 2015

Crawling out of the black hole

See what I did there?  I fell off the face of the blog again.  Though, to be fair, life hit some rather nasty speed bumps since I last posted. Had a few really gnarly wide spread service outages at work, followed by someone important to me taking his own life just 4 days before Christmas, followed by additional stressors at work...Kind of soap opera-esque, really.  So, stitching has been somewhat impacted of late - mainly with regard to Happy Bat.

Spring might be peaking in at us here in central Indiana.  We had a lovely week of mild (dare I say warm?) temps last week.  Next weekend I'm going to hang out with friends at Abe Martin Lodge for my birthday.  I'm looking forward to watching B and C play in the kiddie pool.  I will not be partaking.  Me?  In a swim suit?  NOT gonna happen! LOL


I've been trying to get myself motivated to start exercising so I can actually meet my goal for this year.  My goal is to be in fair enough shape to join my sister in the annual Dragon Boat race in Lake Orion, MI.  Thus far I'm falling behind.  Here's my problem - or rather, what I TELL myself is my problem - I work from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, Monday thru Friday.  I compulsively arrive early by 30 minutes, so that means I get on the road a little before 9:00.  If I get up at 7:20, that leaves me just enough time to shower, feed the cats, eat breakfast, wash my b-fast dishes and lunch box and make/pack my lunch for the day.  I get home around 7:30 and usually G and K have bedded down for the night (they get up for work at 5:00 AM).  Though, with the spring time change, they have lately been up watching TV.  So, to be unobtrusive when I get home, I usually just hit the sack and play with my iPad till I fall asleep 9:30 or 10:00. 


I've tried setting my alarm for 6:00 am so I can get up and have plenty of time for a workout before my typical morning routine.  Alarm goes off and I hit snooze - repeat till 7:20 am.  Two weeks of this and no change in behavior.  How about working out in the evening?  Every night I come home the girls have been watching TV in the living room.  Crap.  What's really happening here?  I'm finding lame excuses to NOT exercise.  Work in progress.


On to happier topics!


Pink Fairy Vomit is done - Huzzah!

Done! Framed, gifted and hung

B really likes it, and It was framed in time for Christmas.

In it's rotation spot, I've been working on Happy Bat - last progress pic was this

Getting started

And latest stitching session ended here:

Untitled

Just over half way.  This on has been challenging, to say the least.  I made an error on the outline of the wing where it goes up passed the tip tip of the ear and it didn't' become apparent till I was about a quarter of the way down the wing.  That resulted in a LOT of frogging.  I was less than amused.

On Konstantinople Hamam I decided to work form the center to the top, and then will continue clockwise around the design.  That helps me avoid stitching the same parts repeatedly.  Last progress photo was here:

Part 1 complete, minus the crystals

And latest progress is here:

Untitled

Yeah.  Everything between the middle part and this end part is rolled up.  You can peruse the album by clicking either of the pics.  Once I get the first tulip done I will unroll it and get pic of the whole thing.  

So that's it for now.  Later!