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It is now almost 3.30am, and Mum has just gone back to bed after I woke her up at 2.45am … I don’t know what I would have done without her tonight, but I can say I would have been sleeping in the car for the night!

I finished work at 2am, and got home just before 2.30am, only to find a not-so-lovely huntsman spider sitting waiting for me right above the security entrance door into the building. My pulse rate quickened a lot, but I ducked off to my car and grabbed my can of surface spray from the glove box (yes, I am such an arachnaphobe that I carry a can in my car!), returned to the building door and stood at a safe distance and sprayed that sucker!  Everything was going swimmingly as it ran off away from the door, but then the ‘little’ bugger doubled back and ran underneath the door!  For me that then put me in a terrible quandary – I literally stood rooted to the spot for 15 whole minutes, and was so worked up I was nearly in tears when I considered trying to open the door not knowing where the damned spider was!  After another 5 minutes I decided I had two choices … either sleep in my car for the night and deal with it in the daylight when the surface spray would hopefully have done its job, or wake Mum up at that ungodly hour to come to my rescue …

I almost headed off to my car to tuck myself in for a few hours, when I thought that Mum would be really worried when she woke up and I wasn’t home … after a while I just dialled that home phone from my mobile and woke her up.  I feel so bad I had to do that, but my phobia is just so great that I honestly couldn’t bring myself to get through that door any other way!  Another 10 minutes later and she arrived with broom in hand to let me in, saying she hadn’t seen it anywhere … feeling brave, I walked in the door, only to spy it sitting on the inside of the bottom step on the stairs – half a can of surface spray later and it was stunned enough to let me do a panic run past it, trembling like a leaf … I don’t know how the hell I’ll deal with the body later, but I don’t want to think about it right now.

When we got upstairs I just wanted to cry and my heart felt like it was about to beat itself right out of my chest … I even made Mum put her hand on my heart to feel how fast my heart was pounding and she couldn’t get over it!  I know I’m a big wuss-puss where huntsman spiders are concerned (in fact ALL spiders), and my body literally goes into ‘terror mode’.  No doubt I’ll be having nightmares all night tonight … but at least now my heart rate has returned to normal, and Mum my saviour has settled down again to try to get back to sleep.  I have to admit, though, I’ll always freak out a tiny bit when I got through that door now hmmmm.

On a different note I had an interesting ‘treat’ when I got into work … a big poster of my face saying “you’re a star” etc up on the wall by the main Supervisor’s desk – a publicity photo from the eXcel service awards … I felt so embarrassed, but quite proud at the same time.  I’d better get used to it, as apparently it’s going to be up all year long!

Rightio, time to go and try to get some sleep … I don’t know why, but I’m expecting it to take some doing tonight! ;P

Just a really quick post to say “g’day” and show that I’m actually alive.  Sorry I’m so absent from commenting on blogs etc at the moment, and I’m sooooo far behind on reading it’s not funny.  I’m only generally reading blogs and catching up on emails etc after Mum’s gone to bed, which isn’t ideal time-wise, and now I’m back at work again it’s even harder.

I have to say that while I’m loving having Mum here it is really distracting … you can just about guarantee that as soon as I start to concentrate on something or remember something I need to do, I get called way with a question or conversation from Mum, and it all goes out the window!  Thank goodness I’m still switched on at work, because my brain switches off as soon as I walk in the front door at home!  The ultimate one last week was posting off my Friendship Quaker RR to Katrina … already a couple of days late in posting, I was chatting to Mum when scrambling to get a pile of items together to take to the post office (including a couple of RAK envelopes) … I heard from Katrina today saying there was something missing from the envelope … the threads!!  Yep, in a major blonde moment I’d actually put the fabric into the envelope and left the threads sitting here on top of the chart etc … geesh!!  I keep thinking of all the things I need to do while I’m driving into work on my own, so I think I’m going to have to start driving with a pad and pencil next to me to quickly jot them down while I remember LOL.

Stitching-wise it’s been a slow week – I’ve managed to start the Peacock Needle/Scissorcase by CA Wells, but haven’t managed much progress.  I’ve already frogged the satin stitch edging on side one only to realise I didn’t think about doing any ‘sequence stitching’ … I’ll just have to leave it as it is, and if I have time and enough thread left over at the end then I’ll frog it again and restitch it.  Tonight, though, I’ve been laid up on the sofa as I’ve been dizzy and wanting to throw up all night since driving home … fingers crossed it’s just a 24 hour bug as tomorrow’s an important day – the real estate agent is coming to check out the cracks etc (hallelujah!), then we’re off to visit Gina before I start work at 6pm (my least favourite shift).

And on that note I’ll hit the hay for the night – I just thought I’d drop a quick note into my blog before I settled down … you’ll have to wait for progress piccies because I don’t have the energy to do it right now.

Hope in the meantime you’re all healthy and happy 😀

This week’s theme is “Architecture”, and for the first time in weeks I’ve been in the position of having loads of shots to choose from.  Here are a couple of my favourites …

First is this shot from the gardens at the back of the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tsai Temple in Hong Kong – I just love how the traditional buildings share the built-up skyline in the background.  This was one of our favourite places in Hong Kong from our visit last year. 

The second shot is of the Government Gardens in Rotorua, New Zealand – I love the architectural style of this building, it always looks so majestic in the gardens.

Slowly but surely the Etui is coming together … hopefully by the end of this weekend I’ll have enough stitched to at least put part of it together at the class next month – then I need to start working on the Peacock needle/scissor case.  Not much time being spent online at the moment … so just a very quick photo with the latest part of the Etui stitched – next up is one more small triangle and the small square base for the smaller pyramid.

After Nicki kindly offered me some blue silks to come up with a new colourway, I started thinking I’d love something in “Monet” colours … then a few minutes later I remembered I had a Silk ‘n’ Colors thread that was in that sort of colourway.  No sooner had I found that thread, that I looked at my couple of RG Splendor threads I had, and found a dusky mauve that matched … there was no hope after that! 

I’ve been dragging threads from all over the place, including pilfering one from the Stitching Leporello kit, and utilising the green from the original Pyramid kit.  Anyway, I can’t believe it, but I think I’ve come up with a colour scheme that I’m really really happy with!  It means I just have to buy a couple of skeins of silks, as some colours need extra lengths – plus I need to buy about 4 skeins of the Hand-Dyed Fibres premium silk (in Midnight) … anyway, without further ado I’ll show you my final choices (I just hope like hell I can get the remaining skeins from Karen at Dragonfly Dreams super-quick!).  The threads are in the same order that I’d be stitching them on the bargello bands.

I hope CA Wells isn’t too upset I’ve totally changed her colour scheme – but I have to admit I really love this new one so much better.  I wasn’t really looking forward to stitching it before, but now I can’t wait to get started, and that’s gotta be a good thing! 😀

The new threads are, from left to right:  Silk ‘n’ Colours 982 Summer Shadows, Hand-Dyed Fibers Midnight, mystery green silk from the original kit, Soie Cristale 7063, NPI silk 352, RG Splendor S936, and AVAS Soie d’Alger 2212.  Rightio, I’m off to start ordering (yes, you’d be right in thinking “aren’t you supposed to be stitching today?” … but there’s always tonight in front of the TV right? LOL).

Yesterday afternoon/evening I finally started laying out all the pieces for my CA Wells class for the Pyramid Etui – no mean feat in approx 36C heat, and I hate ‘gridding’ at the best of times. Anyway, my next challenge is to make a decision before I can start stitching. I keep thinking of the Sesame Street song “one of these is not like the others” … if you know me well, you’ll know where my dilemma is when you see the following piccie:  

I just can’t bring myself to have that dreadful lolly pink in my stitched Etui … in fact, if I’m honest I’d personally change ALL the colours to richer yummy ones, and one day I may stitch it again and do just that.  Anyway, the next piccie is what I’m thinking of doing, and wonder if it will look OK?  I had in the back of my mind that I’d rather substitute the pink, which is a stark contrast to the other colours in a way anyway, to a muted duck egg blue or very light turquoise – I found this NPI silk in my stash and think it might work out OK, what do you think? It’s either that, or find a pastel blue from somewhere, but there’s definitely no way the pink is staying! 😉

On the other hand, the Peacock Needlecase colours are just totally scrummy, and I can’t wait to stitch with them!  Check these out … it gets a resounding “mmmmmm, yummy” from me! 😉  I’m going to stitch the Etui first, mainly because I know I won’t enjoy stitching with those muted colours as much, and my treat at the end will be to stitch with these yummy ones!

Rightio, time to get motivated and put a few stitches into something – thankfully the heat is a lot lower today, so it should be a more productive day.  We still have a couple of DVD’s left to watch (we got ones that we can keep for 2 days), so that sounds like another perfect day of stitching and movies … at least for part of the day anyway.  Then we have to have a tidy-up session (there’s stitching stuff everywhere LOL) before we make a call to kick real estate agent butt! 😉

All my love to my online friends on this
special day of the year. 
May your hearts and homes be filled with
peace and love.

Just a quick note to wish my Dad a Happy Birthday … even though he doesn’t read my blog.  Hope you enjoy your birthday present – six weeks of peace and quiet from Mum 😉 LOL.  This photo was taken on his 70th birthday, two years ago when Fraze and I flew over for the special occasion.

Also, a belated Happy Waitangi Day for all my fellow Kiwis! 😀

KarenV and I have been having a discussion about starting up a “Finishing Blog” – and I’ve purloined Karen’s text from her own post as I couldn’t write it any better if I tried … so here goes:

“(We) have decided to go ahead with the idea of a finishing blog, along the lines of what Becky was hoping to do with the finishing BB, where we could keep a master list of useful links to tutorials, where people can ask questions about a particular finishing technique, where we can have monthly SALs or lessons on a specific technique and where people can share their finishing tips, pictures, skills etc. with each other.

So, if you think a blog dedicated to finishing techniques is a good idea and you think you’d want to participate, please leave a comment below, so that we can gauge whether it’s worth setting one up.

Note: we’d be hosting it on WordPress, not Blogger so you’d have to register with WP before being able to post to the blog, but it’s a quick and easy process and you wouldn’t have to set up your own WordPress blog.”

Please feel free to leave a comment either here or under the original post by KarenV (click on the link, and it’ll take you straight to the original post).  Also, let us know if you have any other suggestions as to what you’d like to see included, other than the ideas we’ve already come up with 🙂

Personally I really want to increase my skills in the finishing department – I look at my finishing pile and cringe with fear when I think about getting the sewing machine etc out … there are some wonderful finishing techniques out there that I really want to try out, and I think it will build my confidence no end to do some finishing on a regular basis – as they say, “practice makes perfect”!  I’m often amazed when I do actually finish something, how easy it actually was … but I just had to ‘get started’ 🙂  I for one am really looking forward to getting this underway 😀

First of all to get the mini vent out of my system … why oh why does the local Council have to decide on THIS week to start digging up the pavements in the street … I woke up to a bloody great digger sitting underneath my window early this morning, listening to it digging up the pavement … perfect timing, when this week I commence my overnight shifts and need to try to sleep during the day 😦  To top it off, the photo shoot for my eXcel award ‘publicity shot’ is during the day of my last day of night shifts, so I’ll be looking extremely attractive, especially if I hadn’t got any sleep compliments of roadworks … mutter mutter mutter.  There was a note in the mailbox saying the works are going to be going on for approx 2 weeks … oh happy happy joy joy! 😦

OK, that’s the venting over … now on to the good stuff …

I’ve just sent an email to the organiser of the CA Wells classes saying “count me in” – I have the weekend off, although I’ll need to try and get a shift swap the Friday before if I can’t get annual leave (at the moment I finish at 8pm), and I may need to leave slightly early on the Sunday to get a flight home, as I start at 6am on the Monday … but it’s probably do-able.  I’ve put my name down for annual leave for two days beforehand and one day after, but there are already too many people on the list, so I just may have to juggle my time a bit to get there for it.  Anyway, hopefully it will work itself out closer to the time … now I just have to hear back from the organiser to see if I’m definitely “in” 😀

My apologies to Carina today – unfortunately my shift today doesn’t allow any stitching, as I don’t finish work until 9pm, so there’s be no SAL stitching for me tonight, or tomorrow night for Bordeaux, so my apologies to Carol too … I hope to be able to make up for it at the weekend, though – I’ll try to get a few stitches into both projects during the day of my night shifts (I don’t dare take them into work to stitch on – the over-one stitching would kill my eyes in that poor light at work) ……. 

Ooh, I just had a thought … my night shift starts on Friday night, which means my sleeping days will be Sat/Sun/Mon, so hopefully the roadworks won’t be such a major problem … unless the Council works on the weekends, but I don’t think so – phew, that makes me feel better!!! 😀