Where did October go????

I didn't make one Halloween piece which I had all the intention of doing. I am finishing the last row of border on my lapghan to donate to the Soldiers Angels project for the veterans. I usually love crocheting and this project got put on hold many times already! Good thing for deadlines. The original deadline was Nov. 1 and they extended it, but I needed to get closure on this project. I will post a photo when I get home.

My catitude piece is coming along slowly but I am making some progress. That seems to have been put on hold for a few days, too.

Believe it or not, we have seen snow flurries here! It's way too early, but not too early for Rochester NY. We have had Halloweens where my kids had to wear winter coats and boots because it was snowing. Not often, mind you, but those are the Halloweens one remembers, right? This week we will be going from 32 degrees and blustery to a balmy 60 degrees for Halloween. I just hope I bought enough candy. I've been really good and haven't broken out the bag for myself and other hogs in the family!! By Halloween, I usually have to replace the early purchases of candy. Who hasn't done that????

Hope everyone is well. Thanks for stopping by! Hope you have time to leave a comment. If not, maybe next time!

WIP

Here's the progress I've made on my Cattitude. It's been fun working on. I am going to change the colors on the kitty a little to make it look more like my cat. So far it's close! As you saw in a previous post - my kitties love to help me cross stitch!

I am getting concerned about the increasing pile of pieces that need to be finished. It has bothered me that we don't have different terms for finishing the cross stitch vs finishing the cross stitch in it's final state! I might have make up some new terms!

One more night of work and I'm off until Monday at midnight. My youngest son is coming home for a few days which I'm looking forward to. No plans just yet- I'm sure he'll sleep a lot. His job entails him working long hours and I know he will just want to catch up on sleep - that's ok with me. I can relate to being sleep deprived.

Thank you for stopping by! I appreciate your comments- it's a high point if you know what I mean!

cross stitcher magazine

The Cattitude piece I am working on comes from a collection by Margaret Sherry. A while back she did a calendar with all Cattitudes. I haven't seen the Cross stitcher magazine here - it originates in Great Britain, I believe. Well, today at Joann's they had a copy and it had a 16 month free calendar and each month has a different animal cross stitch. She just captures animals in the cutest way. I was going to use my coupon on it, and then realized I probably wouldn't make any of the patterns, but wanted to give you a heads up if you like her work! It's a good bargain with a coupon. Joann's doesn't carry many copies of each magazine - you have to get them right when they hit the market.

I totally need a tutorial on photographing my cross stitch. I just looked at the sheep and the photo is pathetic! The background is a lovely green and the sheep really stand out on it. It's crisp and neat, but the photo is horrible! Anyone out there ready to give a tutorial??

I'm all set to take a drive tomorrow and see the foliage changes. It should be just about peak at this point and for a change, the weather should be sunny. We are entering the cloudy season here so the sunny days are treasures.

Thank you to all who have posted.

PS - Shel - I will do my "tag" information soon!

Stitch pink

Here's a link to a contest/drawing linked to Breast Cancer awareness:

http://stitchpink.blogspot.com/2008/10/contest-breast-cancer-wallet-and.html

Coincidence that I just found this link? I think not!

Baa....

I finished this a few days ago and while the photo doesn't do it justice, it came out lovely. I just love it. I was going to try making it into a needlebook, but the fabric matches my bedroom so I might frame it and hang it in a perfect little spot! Funny thing is - it's a simple little pattern and I ripped more than I have before. I made a tiny error on the border - wrong color for half of it! Working nights and not having perfect lighting made the difference. I was ready to just put it aside when I faced the prospect of ripping, but sat having a conversation with my son and was done ripping before we finished our conversation! It was painless and I just enjoyed finishing it up!

I am a cat lover and fell in love with Daffycat's blog cat with the embroidery floss wrapped around it. After some serious searching for the pattern, I was able to get it on ebay from England and paid an arm and a leg for it! The magazine it was in is 6 years old and luckily, someone was ready to clear out her stash. It's fun stitching!

October is breast cancer awareness - friendly reminder for all my friends to schedule their mammography. The new machines are wonderful and are much gentler. It's worth a few seconds discomfort - and I mean a few SECONDS of discomfort to save your life. I have known too many women who avoided the test because it might hurt. I'm sorry to say they hurt a lot more after their mastectomies... and two families are in terrible pain from the loss of their mother/spouse. Don't delay - do it today!! And take a friend, sister, mother, coworker with you!! You can both look silly in the little gowns together! Keep me posted if you do it....

Love

I dumped out my work craft bag and found a few pieces that I haven't shown you. I really like how the love turned out, though the photo is a bit blurry. I need a tutorial on getting good shots of my cross stitch.
A few years ago, I adopted a second cat who I named Sasha. She is as sweet as the day is long and quite shy. My other cat is named Sweetie and once Sasha arrived on the scene, we should have renamed Sweetie Meanie. She hated and I mean HATED Sasha. Nothing we tried worked to get them to live peacefully together. We had to resort to having an upstairs cat and downstairs cat - much like the series "upstairs downstairs". Sweetie terrorized Sasha. They had limited visits on the same floor each day with little improvement on Sweetie's part. Sasha was terrified of Sweetie and so life went in our household. I consulted numerous articles about how to introduce them to no avail. I was not about to give up and continued to provide them with "supervised visits". Fur flew, tails bushed out, chasing ensued. Fast forward 18 months. Sasha is twice the size as Sweetie, though Sweetie is clearly boss of the house. They have been able to live in relative peace and by peace I mean the tail bushing has stopped and Sasha isn't as terrified of Sweetie. They fight and chase each other. I read that if there isn't hissing, bushy tails, claws exposed or blood drawn, you can let the cats work out their territory by fighting. It was hard, but all the conditions seemed right. Little by little they became slightly more tolerant of each other but continued the daily fights until the present. We keep the door to the upstairs open and each cat can roam freely around the house. I wouldn't say they are friends yet. They continue to chase each other although the aggressor changes from one minute to the next leading me to believe that they have not worked out the pecking order. They both want to be boss. One will chase the other into the kitchen and on the way back, they reverse roles. It's been an interesting journey. Then the other day my husband reported seeing them both on the couch - not together, but still on the couch. The next day he called me to come quickly. I didn't think I could photograph them fast enough but they sat quietly looking at me as I took their pictures. I must say - Miracles do happen!I never gave up believing they could live in harmony. The articles all said that it might take a few months - if it took longer than that, it was unlikely that they would ever would work it out. I guess 18 months is "a few months" in cat time! I'm really happy about this progress. Sweetie is on the left, and Sasha is on the right. The pics don't show the size difference, but Sasha really is twice the weight of Sweetie.