Enjoying a sense of peace one stitch at a time
I just heard word that Vonna has received my tiny gift of friendship this week – which means I can now unveil the scissor fob that I made for her. Vonna to me epitomises “the patriot” so I just HAD to make a fob in red, white and blue for her! Thankfully it arrived in one piece, which is always good news. Here’s the fob that I sent:
Here’s a better view of the finished section of Periwinkle Promises’ Acorn Needlebook:
You may/may not be able to tell, but the different green is in the final leaf on the top right of the centre acorn section, along with the backstitching on the top half of the same stem.
So far no more stitching done tonight as I ended up taking photos of my scissors fobs (I’d actually made more over the weekend than I remembered) – and I made another two identical copies of one of them tonight as I love the blend of the beads together … unfortunately I’ve now run out of those beads, which is a shame 😦
And I’ve also run out of camera battery … now all I have to do is find my battery charger … LOL – I feel like I’m living in the Bermuda Triangle right about now!!! 😛
Before my battery ran out, though, I did manage to grab a really quick of two pairs of earrings I made for myself recently too … there just may be a few more pairs in the making soon too – I’d forgotten just how much fun making jewellery can be! 😀
I still laugh when I think of that term … “Hump Day” – I’d never heard of it before moving to Aussie, and remember the first time I ever saw it … sitting at my desk in the call centre, a ‘flasher’ went up on the wall advising it was Hump Day today … bearing in mind, a Flasher isn’t some pervert in a raincoat (well, not in this situation anyway!) – in the call centres many have a neon display on the walls on which messages flash up during the day. Mostly it is in relation to the number of calls on hold etc, so you can time your rise in blood pressure according to the colour of the wall display – green static text means all is good in the world and customers aren’t getting hot under the collar (aside from those that awake in a whingeing state and continue like that 24/7 regardless of the situation) … when the text turns to red, wait times are starting to build up somewhat … then when the red text starts to flash, it’s time to reach for the blood pressure medication (which is probably what the customers are doing at the same time!).
Anyway, I digress … I remember sitting at my desk watching that little neon board glowing green with “Welcome to Hump Day” text, and smiling to myself while raising one eyebrow (I’m so multi talented doing two things at once), thinking how cool it is that Aussies are so organised that they have an entire day devoted to … um … humping. It also means that everyone has a fair chance at it LOL. It was days later before I finally had to cave in and ask someone what it actually meant – giving them no end of amusement at my expense!!
For enquiring minds, according to Wikipedia they have the following to say about Hump Day:
An American English idiom for Wednesday is “hump day”, a reference to making it through to the middle of the work week as getting “over the hump.”
Quite boring when I found out the true meaning … I much preferred my version (even though I did realise there was not a day dedicated to humping – just my perverse sense of humour interpreting it that way) 😉
Anyway, enough of the waffle and twaddle – and on to MUCH more important things! Tonight I managed to find my temporarily misplaced Lumix camera (perfection-plus for those stitching macro shots – I’ve missed it heartily!) … which means I can finally take some decent photos of recent scissor fobs and stitching … aaaaand I’ve decided to offer a little giveaway just for the hell of it (well, kind of a mini blogaversary, seeing as I actually missed my anniversary a couple of weeks ago!) of one (or maybe a couple) of my scissor fobs. I’m going to create a separate post just for the prize draw comments, so watch this space very very soon …
In the meantime, I’m off to find a glass of Chardy and put my final stitches into my Acorn Needlebook pincushion – might even squeeze in another episode or two of Season One of Buffy 😀
Today has been the perfect weather for being lazy and having a ‘crafty’ day – I spent a few hours making some more scissor fobs and working on my stitching rotation while watching Season 1 of Buffy (I’m new to Buffy – my flatmate left me the whole series to watch while she’s away, bless her). The weather has been shocking all weekend, with wind and rain present for prety much the entire long weekend, but it brought out some lovely rainbows in the late afternoon today 🙂
Stitching-wise I finished my first rotation slot by completing 4 sections of Boo Club – these are sections 5-8 … unfortunately I still haven’t put my hands on my little camera that I use for all my macro/stitching work, so the photos are really bad (not to mention they’re taken at night) – the colours in these one are WAY different to the piece in real life. With any luck I’ll find my camera before I finish it all … I’m really missing my little Lumix!!
After I put Boo Club away, I managed to put a few more stitches into my Acorn Needlebook by Periwinkle Promises, finishing the main piece of stitching. This was put on hold originally because I ran out of the dark green silk in the kit. I did find, however, that the new skein of silk that finally arrived is a totally different colour to that that was in the kit … the needlebook is for me, so I just stitched it in the ‘odd’ colour – I can tell the difference, but it’ll be fine. I then stitched up the three pieces that will be the needle pages – I just have the pincushion left to be stitched, then it’s time to put it all together I guess (once again, sorry for the dreadful photos).
Not sure how much more stitching I’ll get done this week – I guess time will tell …
Just a really quick post to show a scissor fob that I sent to Tessa last week – I’ve just heard that it’s been received in one piece, so I can show it now. Tessa loves ladybirds, so when I saw these ladybird beads a while ago, I just had to get them – and then decided to make one into a fob for Tessa … I was lucky enough to find a ladybird charm to finish it all off 😀
Glad you like it Tessa 😀
Tonight we drew the name of the lucky winner of the Summer threads out of the proverbial hat (actually it was numbered tiddlywinks out of a little plastic container), and Giovanna’s number came up (number 5, ‘cos that’s the order the comments were received in) – Giovanna, if you let me know your mailing address, I’ll try to get them into the mail tomorrow for you – otherwise it’ll be next weekend when I get to the Post Office next 🙂
Tomorrow will be a very busy morning for me – time to swap my expired Victorian drivers licence for a brand spanking new New South Wales one … yippee!! Then it’s off to pick up my sewing machine from the repair shop so I can get back to sewing some quilted wallhangings etc – the poor thing has not been a happy camper and hasn’t sewn in a forward straight line for some time – serves me right for not getting it serviced straightaway after being gifted it, but never mind, it’ll be as good as new when it gets back home tomorrow and I can start putting it to good use … double yippee!!
And a TRIPLE YIPPEE is due for it being a public holiday on Monday and having a long 3-day weekend … it’s been the week from hell at work (I’vwe been giggling all afternoon for the last couple of days due to over-stress), and quite frankly I don’t want to think about it again until Tuesday morning when I have to. Of course, if things continue to not go well next week, there’s a slight possibility of me having to fly up to Brisbane for a day’s work, so in some ways that’d be good LOL 😀
I have to admit I’m having major misgivings about my job at the moment – the job itself is um, ho-hum, kinda – very stressful, and not particularly rewarding in itself … but the worst thing is that since a couple of new team members have started, I really really dislike our team of staff! And we recently had to have a desk shuffle which put the two main characters that I dislike with a passion right in my aisle, with me sharing floor space with the one person that I really and truly struggle with. Perhaps that’s impacting on my level of enjoyment the most at work, but I have to admit I’ve never ever looked forward to my weekends and home time like I do now … 5pm just can’t come quickly enough for me each day – BIG words from a workaholic like me!
Anyway, enough whining about work … it’s time to hit the hay for the night … Katie and I just sat and watched a soppy chick flick which had us both in tears tonight (PS I Love You, which I’d never seen before … serious tissue supply required for that one!), followed by the latest episode of Supernatural, thanks to the magnificent world of downloading online due to the fact that Channel Ten can’t be bothered screening it until next year (insert as many expletives as you’d like in here, as they’ll be accurate) … after a great night in viewing and watching Katie dress up in her upcoming holiday gladrags, we polished off almost a big bottle of cider (Katie) and Chardonnay (me) and it’s time to get some shut eye before the alarm goes off at 0800 for me to put my ugly face on for my drivers licence photo 😀
I’ll just close with a further quick Congrats again to Giovanna! 😀
Enabling alert – This one is really really pretty … Check it out, if you dare! 😀
http://www.gayannrogers.com/site_2/Pre-Week_2.html
But I think the cheaper price is this week only (it’s for an upcoming class).
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I’ve also just been really bad and finally enabled myself, after seeing so many people stitching this first one … but I couldn’t buy one without the other, so these two have just taken a trip through PayPal and should be arriving via email shortly 🙂
You too can buy these from Jardin Privé 😀
This one I haven’t actually bought yet, but it most definitely HAS to go onto the wishlist – love love love this one, don’t know why I haven’t seen it before now! And now I’m going to stop looking!!! … Back to cleaning out the bedroom 😛
I don’t know what has been wrong with me this last year – I’ve been exceptionally terrible at fulfilling promises, and have a HUGE pile of items and gifts that need to be posted to people – I have a massive desire to get rid of the backlog, as it is cluttering my brain (not to mention my bedroom!), so I’ve been making a large effort today to get a few things parcelled up ready to go into the mail next weekend.
Along with that, I’ve realised that I will never stitch with the following threads – I apologise to the kind-hearted soul who sent me these as part of a “summer” theme exchange years ago, but I’m just not a pastels girl, and I just can’t see me using them. To that end, I have a card already filled out, and the threads are sitting in an envelope, ready to join the rest of the pile to be posted out next Saturday morning (the only chance I can usually get to the Post Office) – and I’m offering a prize draw for these to go to a more fitting home.
Soooooo, if anyone would like these threads, please leave a comment on this post only stating that you would like to go into the draw (if there is more than one comment – if only one person enters then they get the threads automatically). The closing date is this coming Thursday 1 October – that way I can draw the name out of the proverbial hat on Friday morning and it will give me chance to chase a mailing address on the Friday if I don’t already have it, so I can meet my mailing deadline.
As for the other parcels, there are a number of threads and scissor fobs heading around the world on Saturday … here is the only one I can show you so far, as I’m pretty sure Karen doesn’t read my blog. I just had to choose a dragonfly charm for her fob in honour of her old shop name of Dragonfly Dreams – I made this one this morning just in time to get in the mail today, along with the Lizzie*Kate pinkeep from a few blog posts ago 😀
This one has gone to Karen at The Stitching Post
I’ll post piccies of the others that have been posted out once I hear that they’ve been received … I don’t want to spoil the surprise in the meantime.
PhotoHunt
Feather Stitching 