January 31

It's WEDNESDAY! The weekend! (Same as Friday to in the REAL world)
Got up, dressed, straightened up my stitching area, checked e-mail & message boards. Tried to vacuum but nothing is getting cleaned up. Checked the bag, cleaned out the wheels, the brush bar, the belt holder thing and still nothing. So much for my wednesday cleaning. Today does not seem like it's going to be a good day.

I thought those snotty brats had gone back to school but ALL morning it has been slam the door, scream, cry, slam the door, throw toys at the sister, scream, cry, slam the door, push sister down, scream, cry, slam the door. Kick the soccer ball at the 2 week old brand new car in our drive way, laugh, kick the soccer ball into the bushes, laugh, slam the door, scream, cry, throw stones at each other in the street. I'd love to just slap them all, complaining does no good either.

I stitched for quite awhile today and I'm very proud of my progress. To some it may not look like much at all, but it looks great to me. It's Scooba Dooba that was supposed to be a Christmas present for my husband but I didn't get it done in time. If I knew it would stitch this fast, I would have kept at it.










What greed! One of the boards I post on was having lots of contests. I entered 2 because I LIKED what the person was offering and I KNOW I would stitch them. I just noticed 1 persons name on 42 STRAIGHT posts, some of them all posted within seconds of one another. That is just plain GREED! Either that or trying to bump up post counts.

January 30

Flew out of bed this morning, my clock said 9:15AM. After looking at the clock on the coffee maker, it was only 8:05AM. Not that I had anyplace to go but I get more done when I get up at a decent hour. The voltage fluctuates so much here that the clocks gain so much time. I have since re set my clock. Checked e-mail and message boards, my connection is still holding up GREAT! Maybe it was just a glitch somewhere.

I kitted up 2 projects for February. February Heart Sampler by The Monkey Works and my San Man SAL project. I hope to be able to stitch another small Valentine project in February.
Nothing exciting to report the rest of the day. I "stitched" on Liberty Angel, all 50 some stitches. Watched an "interesting" episode of E-Ring.

January 29

Got up, got dressed, checked e-mail & message boards, internet whizzed right along. Cleaned up cat fur from last nights cat fight in the living room.

Sat down and finished up stitching my San-Man Tuck kit Swirly Heart. I stitched it on 28 count Platinum Pizzaz opalescent fabric with Eterna Silk floss that a friend sent me.I haven't heard anything from Sandy about how Tracy is doing and I'm getting worried. I know she is very busy taking care of him and I hope he is ok. I've had a candle lit since I heard about him on Saturday.

Nothing else going on, SSDD
Sandy posted on her board that they are back home and Tracy is now recovering from another surgery but will be ok! I am SO relieved to hear that.

January 28

Ssshhhhhh, my internet is buzzing right along today and I'm able to get to all my favorite places again. Such a shame since I'm going to stitch as much as I can today.
I knew it was too good to last, long about 2PM when I logged on again, it was slow

What a sweet husband I have! He went to the grocery store to get some things for supper and came home with the mug warmer I had seen in a store flier a couple weeks ago. I had to explain the difference bewteen the mug warmer and the candle warmer I already had. I said there was a difference, and began with the ever popular phrase "I read it on one of my message boards". He also bought me a yummy mixed fruit smoothie. He brings me little surprises like that often.

I sat and stitched most of the evening, I'm almost finished with the little San Man tuck kit.

January 27

Got up, dressed and checked e-mail, the internet is back to the snail pace again! That hampster must have died that runs around on the wheel to make the internet go. So I went and stitched.

Eeewwww, that pipe that broke yesterday on the other side of our patio wall was the raw sewage pipe, now it stinks when you open the patio door.

I am so happy, my sister got a job! She has had an absoultely miserable year and 1/2. No job, her husband just up and left, and no money to pay bills. She was at the bottom of life and so very depressed. She got a part time job during the holiday season but of course that ended. Now she starts a new job soon so hopefully her world will get better. I've felt so bad for her and wished I could do something, it just broke my heart to see her in such an awful way. My sister is 10 years older than I am and she has 2 grown girls.

Not much more exciting news, I stitched some more, cooked stir fry for supper.

I finished my blackwork project

And I'm happy with it for a change. I put in the last 78 beads tonight but it took 2 hours to do.



When I finished that, I started a new SanMan project called Swirly Heart. It's a cute little tuck kit but I am substuting silk floss in place of the DMC and I'm stitching it on 28 ct. Precious Metals opalescent fabric. It shouldn't take too long to stitch up.

The water is back on so I guess they got the pipe fixed.

January 26

Got up, started laundry, checked e-mail and boards. We're zipping right a long right now, no problem. I think I have figured it out. After around 6-7 PM it slows down. I have no problem surfing around, e-mail is a bit slow and 2 of my favorite message boards refuse to budge. I think it is due to the amount of people on the boards at that time. The more people on the board, the worse it is and that just sucks. So I've narrowed it down to just 1 board, everything else on the net runs just fine except that one board.

All I got done on my WIP last night was 48 beads. I HATE beads but that is what makes the project so I'll plod on.

Oh lovely! Water came spewing from a hole in the ground right next to our patio wall. So now our water is shut off until they can get the pipe fixed which will take HOURS! Which means I can't do any more laundry, I can't run the dishwasher, well I guess it also means no cooking, LOL. At least I got the 3 important loads of laundry done.

Nite Nite

Poor tired Spot kitty had a long day

January 25

Got up, TRIED again to check e-mail and no connection. This is way beyond acceptable, something needs to be done, this is my link to the real world. Internet withdrawl is NOT a pretty sight.

Finally came back up. It was horrible yesterday, taking between 15-30 minutes for a single page to load and only after 3 refreshes.

The connection held out for a good while, proabaly until around 5PM, most likely when the natives woke up and got online.

It was cloudy and very overcast yesterday afternoon, you could amost smell the rain in the air but nothing. Today it's cloudy again. Husband went diving but I didn't go and sit on the beach.

Husband had a good couple of dives so that is good

I finished the stitching on my blackwork project yesterday, so now I have to add the beads.

I added the beads around the outside and that's as far as I got today. All 48 beads.

Another boreing day here, the high was around 88 so I guess winter is over.

January 24

Got up, got dressed, TRIED to check e-mail and boards. Today the damn internet connection is horrible. There is a connection, but it's taking 5-10 minutes for pages to fully load, if at all. This is beyond annoying. I suppose I should just be glad we have internet in this god forsaken place. Our friends on dial up can't even connect at all. While I wait for pages to load I play Hoyles Solitare games.

WAHOO it's the weekend here, Wednesday here is like Friday in the REAL world, our weekends are Thursday & Friday.

The brats are out playing in the street screaming as usual. I'll be glad when school is back in again.

My Blackwork SAL project is going along so fast. I just follow the pattern and stitch, I looked at it inbetween threading the needle and I can't believe how far I've gotten.

January 23

Got up, tried to check e-mail and found there is no internet conneciton. All of it is down. Did you know no matter how many times you reset your DLS box and beat on it, if the internet is down somewhere along the line it won't come up? This is just SO fustrating. We got the DLS because of the shitty dial up crap and 1/2 the time lately the internet is down everywhere! So I sat and stitched. This is the progress I made on my Blackwork SAL yesterday and in the early hours of this morning:
I'm stitching it on 28 count white lugana. This month I am using San-Man Strands floss in What a Teal. Each month the floss colors will be different to try and reflect the color of the month.

The bratty kids must be on school break. A whole litter of them were screaming in the street again this morning. These kids are rude, obnoxious, snotty, mean, undiciplined, ill mannered and totally disrespectful BRATS! Plain and simple. They think the whole compound is their playground and they can play WHEREVER they want to no matter who's yard it is. They don't speak or understand English so there is no telling them to go play in their own yards. They just laugh and think it's funny when you try to tell them go away. I was told 5 years ago when we moved to this villa on this street that it would be kept as a "Westerners" only street and NO "locals" would live here. HA, not so anymore. I so want a fence put up between my house and the houses on either side to keep the brats out. THEY are the ones who need to put the fences up since they are so anal obsessive about their privacy.

It is another nice, breezy, fairly cool day today. The thermometer said it was 93 at 2:30PM
Stitched for a couple more hours on my project, it is stitching up so fast, I can't believe it. Today I put in 1051 stitches in almost 5 hours.

January 22

Got up, got dressed, checked e-mail & boards. It's a cool breezy day today, no sand storm, just breezy. Called maintence at 10:45 to come fix the overhead flourescent light in the kitchen. Told them it needs 2 new flourescent lights, he said, "Light bulb?" Well see what they bring.
Husband asked me yesterday if I wanted to go to the beach on Thursday, I told him we'll see. That means drag the weed whacker out to dispose of my winter growth of fur before wearing shorts in public. He and some friends are going to brave the "cold" waters of the Red Sea and go diving, me, I'll just sit in my chair on the beach and stitch.
2 Maintenence guys came at 1:30, one carrying a ladder and the other with a bag of lightbulbs, I should have known. I showed them which light needed replaced, "ok, I go get bulb. Any more need fix?" They fixed the light bulb over the stove and the kitchen light. I signed the work order and noticed what was written on work order "kitchen bulb broke".
It was a simply beautiful day, nice and cool, only 78 at the most. I could have left the patio door open with the screen door on all day except for the men bellowing and yelling at certain times of the day outside, that kind of ruins the atmosphere, and the screeching litter of kids next door that just scream and cry all day and slam bang doors.
I got my blackwork SAL project started and I'm kind of proud how far I got, maybe blackwork won't be bad at all. 740 stitches done in 3 hours 47 minutes. I could have done more but I didn't. Tomorrow is another day.

January 21

This is NOT a good day to stitch at all.
Got up, checked email and boards. I got my days mixed up again which is nothing new. One group is starting a blackwork SAL project and another group is starting a stitchathon. So I thought I would check the fabric I cut the other day one more time and start stitching. The fabric is too SMALL AGAIN by atleast 3 inches all around. So off I go to cut another piece. Get that cut, sit down to stitch. Annie cat jumps up in my lap, a white cat that sheds when she breathes and likes to roll around in the dirt so she is always dirty. She tries to rub up against the WHITE fabric, so I let her out. Sit down again, Roxie starts screeching to go out, if you do NOT let her out, she pisses and shits on the floor, so out she goes. Sit down again, put in a couple stitches, realize Hey, it's NOT Monday, it's only Sunday. Put that project away. Let Spot cat in. Drag out Liberty Angel, try to find exactly where I am on this damn project, get settled to stitch. Stitch 7 stitches, change colors, spot cat jumps up on my stitching table and lays across the paper that has my threaded needles in it, put him out. Put in 6 stitches of another color. I HATE this kind of stitching and this project has so many of those. 5 stitches of this color here, 3 stitches of that color there etc. I'm about ready to toss it. Spot cat comes in, jumps on the table again and sprawls out knocking stuff off the table. I give up. Straightened up stiching table and walked away. It's only 2 PM.
I plodded on with Liberty Angel and got maybe a whole 100 stitches done today. not a whole lot of progress there.

YAY YAY YAY! I got to talk to my daughter on IM and all her birthday presents arrived! I am so happy they did! I got her a Vera Bradley lunch tote, a nice bouquet of flowers and a gift certificate to an ONS! Her husband and son got her a GC to FAshion Bug. I just love spoiling my kids!
I sat down to stitch after midnight to starty my SAL & Stitchathon and got in almost 180 stitches before going to bed. Good thing I checked it, I was off by 1 thread and it would have messed up the whole thing.

January 20

Today is my dear daughter's 29th birthday. Unfortunately I'm not there to make her a cake or celebrate with her, so a phone call later will have to do. I did send her a couple of gifts I bought online, I just hope she got them in time.
Got up, went to check e-mail, nothing is working, only 1 board comes up and that is all. Had to reset the stupid DSL box 5 times before anything would work. Checked e-mail, read boards then sat down to stitch for awhile. I am finishing the hemstitching on my January snowflakes sampler and it just breaks my heart to have to cut off a few inches of the beautiful fabric it's stitched on. I have learned though that stitching this series of patterns to stick with the recomended fabric because cutting and hemstitching opalescent Jazlyn instead of plain Jobelan is more difficult since there are more threads to a cut.
I tried to call my daughter in the evening but no one answered. :(
Finished the hemstitching on the sampler so now this project is done.

Another exciting day

Got up, cleaned up my computer area, started the laundry, cut a piece of fabric for a new project, finished the bellpull, started cutting threads and hemstitching another project, finished 3 loads of laundry, checked e-mail & message boards. Woo Hoo so much excitement here.

I thought we were supposed to have high speed internet. Not this afternoon, it sucked, pages wouldn't load and it was slower than dial up. I guess I should be satisified that DH opted for the private phone line and the DSL, those on dial up can't even connect.

Here's the finished bellpull

Another day over

So today I got up, checked my e-mail, read the boards, stitched, organized my WIP's, checked the boards again then stitched some more. Exciting day huh? The high today was 83.

We had Popeye's delivery chicken for supper, woo hoo!

I did decide I was done with my snowflake bellpull, so now I just have to finish it off and add a couple of crystal snowflakes at the point on the bottom.

My Works in Progress

I'll see if this works. I put the wip picture next to the finish project picture on some of them.

I have no earthly clue when I started this one, but I think it's been around since 1999. It's small and I could finish it up in no time. It's a Mill Hill bead kit

This one was started in either 2003 or 2004. It was my "Take to the beach" project, I'd stitch on that rather than take one of my "good" projects to the beach when we went on weekends. It's supposed to be an insert for those stupid take apart acrylic mugs and it's stitched on vinyl weave. It's got a mat to go with it but I never started on that.

This is a project from back in 2003, a Christmas Mystery SAL by Pam Kellogg. It's got a ton of metallic floss and beads in it. It's stitched on 28 count opalescent fabric that I dyed black. This is one that I would like to actually finish. It started out as a SAL but I never kept up with it.

Here we have Liberty Angel, another just HAD to stitch project by Leisure Arts. I think the chart was also my first e-bay win too. It's Liberty Angel by Leisure Arts stitched on white opalscent fabric that I think I dyed some strange color. I started this one April 15, 2003. I picked it up again last year and noticed that I had started the project on the wrong fabric thread so I had to figure out how to straighten it up. I was NOT going to start this over! So I stitched 1 row over 1 thread and got it back even. I would LOVE to finish this one in 2007 too but there is a shitload of white, ecrus in it, not to mention backstitching.

This is one I started in an airport somewhere in the world I think in 2004. It's a cute kitty bookmark kit by Pinn Stitch. This would make a good beach project or a project to take with me on planes.

This is another book mark kit from Sudbury House I started on Sept 28, 2006. I love the bright colors in this one. I wanted to take this as a "Stitch on the plane/airport" project so I started it before I left. I never did stitch any on the plane either so here it sits, but this is in a special project tote so all I have to do is grab the tote and off I go.

This is a real pain in the ass project, it's a kit from Dimensions that has all those stitches hanging outside the backstitch lines. It looks so messy so I am trying to stitch fractional stitches instead of whole stitches to make it look neater. I had this thing for flip flops, they look so summery and tropical sort of. I started this Oct. 24 2006 and had to put it away before it went flying across the room.

This is my latest WIP, Scooba Dooba by Raise the Roof Designs. I decided at the last minute to stitch this for my husband who is an avid Scuba diver. I started it, had the sea snake and the waves done then realized I had cut the fabric too small and there was no way to fix it, so I had to start it all over again. This is as far as I got. I took the picture off the leaflet cover, wrapped it in a piece of paper with IOU written on it, put it in an envelope and gave it to my husband for Christmas. He says he likes it. I hope to finish it this year. It's stitched on 28 count white evenweave with Weeks and GAST flosses.

Here is my "What the hell was I thinking" project. Lizzie Kate's 2005 Flip It Stamps. One of my boards was doing this as a SAL in 2006 so I joined. I thought it would be neat to stitch them on one long bell pull. That was a BAD idea, that thing is LONG. I stitched one a month until June, I didn't stitch anymore until I came back from vacation in September. I still have 3 months left to put on. It's stitched on 16 count aida banding with GAST and Weeks floss. The sides of it are filthy. I try to be so very careful to wash my hands every time I sit down to stitch but it's still dirty. I don't know how I am going to clean it since it's stitched with overdyed floss.

That's all that I could find, but I know there are a couple more around somewhere.

I hope you haven't fallen asleep looking at these. I'll try to remember to post pictures when/IF I stitch on any of these.

So after stitching for awhile I finished another snowflake for a bellpull I'm making. It's part of a SAL on one of the cross stitch boards I belong to. Trying to decide if I need to add another one or stop. Then I start cleaning up my stitching area and my SHARP scissors fall, hit my foot and land on the floor, but I keep on doing what I was. I looked down and apparently the point hit the top of my foot, missed a vein by 1/2 centimeter but it sure bled, now it's all red and just hurts.
Then I decided to organize my Works in Progress so I scanned in and took pictures of them. Guess I had more than I thought but not a lot judging from what some people have. I only have 9 but I know there are more somewhere around here. I'll have to figure out how to start another section and add pictures. On the bright side of organizing my WIP's ALL of them had at least 1 needle in them. A couple had several and 1 had a brand new, unopened package. Will I stitch on any of these now that they are organized, a couple of them maybe but is sure would be nice to finish them up.

This is confusing, I have no idea what I'm doing, I guess I'll go stitch for awhile.

Who/where I am

I am an American born and raised, married to an American born and raised, but for now, (and the past 20+ years) we live in a foreign country, a whole different world lost in time. You'll probably read about my life in this foreign country a lot here, it's isn't glamorous nor is it fun. But I have my reasons for being here which I won't discuss.
Our American home is in the boonie mountains of New Hampshire USA. There is a lake through the trees and across the "road", behind us is nothing but woods. At night when it's dark, it's DARK and any little noise echos across the lake and back.
My life in the foreign country pretty much revolves around cross stitching, Internet surfing, watching tv and going to the beach on weekends. Our kids are grown adults with families of their own back home so it's just me, my husband and our 4 cats. I'm in this foreign country from Oct-June, then back HOME from June - the end of Sept.

New to blogging

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