Annette's Acre

Here’s my completed You Were Hatched:

It’s on Platinum Pizazz by Silkweaver. Upon reviewing Silkweaver’s site, though, you can tell how long ago I started this as the color is no longer available….yikes.

I plan to finish it as a stitcher’s bourse using the fabulous directions found here (thus why I left off the border). See, we already have a framed piece in the house as my daughter received one as a gift last year K is also doing a braid for the finishing.

I have pulled out Autumn Queen and am stitching away on her lower half. While I may not push thru to finishing her, it’s definitely good to see progress. I will probably dig thru the WIP pile this weekend to see if I can find anything else close to finishing or maybe pull out Skeleton Crew as I ordered Sleepy Hollow today!

We’ve all heard of “start-itis” right?  You want to (or do) start a bunch of new stuff because your current projects just don’t *do* it for you right now?  Heaven knows I’ve suffered more than a few bouts of that in the past.

Right now I’m suffering from the opposite: finishitis.  After finishing my Blackbird Designs piece and the Little House Needleworks piece, I had promised myself a new start.  I even cut fabric and had needle in hand……(Daisy Lane Cottage by Little House Needleworks, a birthday gift).

Not a stitch was made.

Instead, I pulled out “You Were Hatched” by Teresa Wentzler and have been working on that this week.  In fact, I’ve got two colors of backstitch to finish and it’ll be complete.  Look for a pic in a couple days of my version (no border).

When that’s done, will I start my Cottage?  Or maybe Lynne Nicoletti’s Fortune Teller that I’ve also been drooling over?  Maybe Chatelaine’s Tuscan Garden Mandala?  It’s all kitted and ready to go….

Probably not.  I’ve been looking at my Michael Powell Cottages WIP and even have Autumn Queen ready to go – she lacks the bottom of her skirt only.  That would be a very satisfying finish.

I figure I best take advantage of my finishing mood while I can

Biscornu Exchange Results:

Here’s what I sent along with some Crescent Colors floss (sorry for the blurry picture!):

Here’s what I received:

I do love biscornus!  This is such sweet purple-y goodness…..

Can you believe it?  After weeks of bits of stitching here and there I have yet another finish:

Little House Needlework’s “Love” from their Scripture series with Crescent Colors threads on platinum Murano.  There’s a black border charted, but given that I plan to make a “frame” pillow, I left it off.

I have been spending some time on a Good Reads website cataloging books and looking at how others rate the same books I’ve read   Given that I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of books in my lifetime, it’ll take a while to make a dent in my personal library.  If you do decide to track your library, please do add me as a “friend” as I love to see what others are reading. 

More Comment Chat:

Yes, I do have Akismet activated and it works quite well.   I’m continually amazed at the people that have the time to go out and spam blogs. 

More on Comments:

At this time I plan to leave only the latest post open for commenting   You would be absolutely amazed at the number of spam comments left on old posts (we’re talking *thousands*).  I’m also requesting “first approval” for new commenters.  Once I approve your first comment, you’re free to comment to your heart’s content an any subsequent post, but in the interest of cutting down on spam…..well, I’m sure you all understand, right?

Thanks all for the advice on rescuing my history!  The challenge I have is not with the database itself (I poke around in data warehouses all day with SQL) but with *connecting* to the thing on my webspace.  If I could figure how to get into the tables, I’d just truncate the blasted comments and be done with it! 

And for some blatant blog fodder stolen from Terri:

You get to answer with one word. (feel free to snag)

1. Where is your Cellphone? - pocket
2. Relationship? – married
3. Your Hair? – grey
4. Work? – demanding
5. Your sister? – In-law
6. Your favorite thing? – palms
7. Your dream last night? – forgettable
8. Your favorite drink? – Coke
9. Your dream car? – Jaguar
10. The room you’re in? – office
11. Your shoes? – comfy
12. Your fears? – loss
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? – vacationing
14. Who did you hang out with this weekend? – family
15. What are you not good at? – waiting
16. Muffin? – english
17. One of your wish list items? – yarn
18. Where you grew up? - Michigan
19. Last thing you did? – email
20. What are you wearing? – casual
21. What aren’t you wearing? – shoes
22. Your pet? – dogs
23. Your computer? – Mac
24. Your life? – busy
25. Your mood? – quiet
26. Missing? – daughter
27. What are you thinking about right now? – relaxing
28. Your car? – Jeep
29. Your kitchen? – unused
30. Your summer? – hot
31. Your favorite color? – red
32. Last time you laughed? – today
33. Last time you cried? – yesterday
34. School? – no!
35. Love? – surrounded

I’ve been futzing with computers for years.  I usually find a way to bend them to my will but I’m officially throwing up my hands on this one.  The old posts are locked in a MySQL database on my webspace, but no amount of coaxing will spit them out.  The comment table is hosed and it’s blocking the code that I could potentially use to export the rest of the posts themselves into an import-able file for this new database. 

I did fix the security on this one, though, so stray comment hackers won’t be able to break my new tables.

I know that quite a few folks are either more WordPress-savvy, or simply more web-code-savvy than I, so if you care to offer assistance to recover the last four years of posts, I would greatly appreciate it!  I will leave the offending database up and running in the hopes that I can slowly copy/paste the posts into an import-able format.

On to more pleasant news.  I’ve got three finishes for July and I can show two of them right now

First, Blackbird Designs Garden of Life:

It’s on Alabaster R&R linen done with a mix of Gentle Arts, Weeks and DMC threads.  I can say that if it wasn’t for the SAL group that I stumbled upon shortly after beginning, I wouldn’t be anywhere near complete!  Even though I fell behind, there was *plenty* of motivation to keep on going

Next it’s Raise the Roof’s Cream of Ort Soup (for Mom’s birthday):

All that red takes forever.  It also needs more than one skein of 321, so if you have this fun little freebie in your stash, be sure to have plenty of red to hand.  Mom loved it!

My third finish is for a Biscornu exchange and as soon as it reaches its destination, I will happily show it off. 

With these finishes I’ve made great headway on my “obligation” stitching.  I’ve no outstanding exchanges (though there’s a new one tempting me on the Rotation BB…must be strong), I’m on the last round of the UFO RR (and it’s a piece I enjoy working on, so no worries on making progress the next week) and I’ve *finally* got the last three pay-it-forward stitchings worked out (and the first one is begun).

I even got home before 7 three nights last week – a new record.  Could this mean work is easing a bit?  Maybe, but the fact that I’m poised for a pseudo-promotion may keep it going strong.  (Pseudo as in it’s a change of responsibilities, but no $$ or title change…story of my life).

That’s the status….until next time….