Unofficially Up for a Challenge

Well, that was easy. I have completed the Monthly Mania series at long last. (I know I stitched some of these when we lived in Los Angeles, and we moved in February 2005.)

Monthly Manias
Heart in Hand Needleart
28-count antique ivory linen
Called for flosses

The next WIP to take a turn out of the basket is Bent Creek's Snowman Stocking. I have done a little work on it since the last time I showed it to you (July 30, 2008). I don't know how much I will get done today. I am going to finish a couple of writing projects this afternoon. Tonight, the dude and I (and one friend and seven strangers) are going to Han Dynasty's now bi-monthly Szechuan banquet. I am so excited--mostly because we finally found a Szechuan place that will serve really spicy food to gringos. (One of the reasons we miss L.A., or should I say Monterey Park.) Not sure how much stitching time I'll have.

Traveling Man

The good part of traveling and being stuck in airports for five extra hours is that it gives me more time to stitch. {You have to see the bright side.}

I managed to finish July:

Monthly Mania
Heart in Hand Needleart
Stitched on 28 count antique ivory
with the recommended flosses.

I started Rose Bunnie. I realized that I had only kitted a few of my traveling projects (Monthly Manias), and that I would finish the last of them on this trip. So I grabbed a smallish project. It’s so cute.

Rose Bunnie
Liberty Street Designs
Stitched on 32-count hand-painted La Fern Liberty Fabric
With lots of color substitutions: WDW Carrot for the carrot; GAST Harvest Basket for the bunny; DMC 3740 instead of Anchor 894/DMC 224—the DMC was too shell pink to match with “light wineberry” (DMC 778). I’m going to use white Whisper instead of light brown for the tail because that’s the kind of bunny that roams these parts.

I also had a little time to work on the Apple Sampler.

Another good part about traveling (outside the airports) is that you have the opportunity to meet people who you never would have known existed if it weren’t for stitching and blogging. I got to meet Jacque. I don’t know how it works that I have enjoyed meeting so many different blogging stitchers IRL. For me, the real wonder is that I have truly enjoyed it. Meeting new people is sort of difficult for me. I never know what to say…but you wouldn’t have guessed it Saturday night! What’s really sort of a marvel is that all we all have in common is making little exes on fabric. And yet…

I called Jacque after we got to our hotel and we made dinner plans. She took the dude and me out to a nice Italian place where I ate as many vegetables as they would give me (you have to do this when your main goal is to eat lots of Q). The dude—why he lets me drag him out with so many strangers I’ll never know—enjoyed himself too. Then we tried to find some nightlife—there was lots of it, but not so much parking. We ended up back in our hotel in the Drum Room, where Frank Sinatra used to hang when he was in town. Jacque promised to come to Philadelphia so that we can take her (and Mark!) out to dinner. Note to self: research Philadelphia nightlife. (We are so lame.) Thanks again, Jacque, and do let me know when you’re coming to town! Full report on the Q here.

Up from the Deep Blue

Here is my mermaid arm. I did start her body last night--the blackish-green stripes. I am stitching this on a hand-dyed fabric I bought from Carol. I'd tell you what it was, but that would mean I'd have to find the other half. Maybe I'll run across it and write it down and remember to tell you. Maybe.

On the bus, I finished June:

I know I complain a lot about public transportation, but in the end I much prefer it to driving. I hate driving, and I just spent 15 years doing it in Los Angeles. Sure, public transportation is green and all that but it also costs less than parking. There's no free parking at work, not even for the president--I'm guessing most people who work in major cities face this. It would cost me $8-12/day to park and that's after the university underwrites it and then it's in the remote lots. You pay a lot more to park closer ($20/day). SEPTA is $56/month. Trains run every 6 minutes and four bus lines run by my house so I never have to wait very long, if at all. I get to stitch or read on the commute. We've even made friends with a woman in our neighborhood because we wait for the bus with her. We're acquainted with more people too--fastwalker, Irishguy, and Operawoman (we need to find out their names). It's nice to have a little chitchat every day with people a little outside your circle. And the bus drivers--the one who called me his girlfriend until he asked the dude how his girlfriend was doing, and the dude broke the news. Now he calls the dude his buddy. And Crabby--I finally broke her down and got a hello out of her. See, public transportation is like a little game. Mostly, you win.

999

June, the Monthly Mania
by Heart in Hand*
28 ct antique ivory linen
with the recommended flosses

I think I chose to stitch this series because I liked June's dragonfly so much. But at the time I bought them, I was living in L.A., and I thought it was very un-June**.

People like to say that Los Angeles doesn't have seasons. This is bullshit. There is summer, but it is not endless. In the late fall there is Santa Ana season (often confused with fire season). The dry, often hot, winds have been written about most eloquently by Joan Didion in Slouching Toward Bethlehem. What I like most about them is that they scrub the air clean. When we'd get on the 10 to go to work, we'd come around the curve on the La Cienega on-ramp and a mountain would appear. The rest of the year it was shrouded by smog but during the windy season visibility was so high you could remember that Los Angeles was surrounded by hills and mountains. The worst part of the winds was they'd blow out the pilot in our in-floor heater, and we'd have to go through complicated machinations involving a wire hanger, scotch tape, and wooden matches to relight it. Other people think the winds are bad because they sound haunting (said to drive people insane), raise dirt, and fan fires. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the fires were worse than the dude and I getting a little cold, but you get the idea that this is not a pleasant season. Winter is brief and rainy. So brief, in fact, that many Angelenos forget every year that it rained the same two to three weeks last February. A lot of rain, with a lot of drivers who cannot drive in the rain. Because rainy season followed fire season, there were much worse ramifications than being behind some slow driver on the freeway or ahead of a speeding driver on the surface streets. Still. L.A. had weather, and it could be nasty. Then, there was June Gloom.

I often told our guests that June was not a good month to visit***. They insisted on coming to L.A. in June anyway and then spent their vacation complaining about the weather. Every day in June begins foggy and cloudy, sometimes drizzly. Depending how close to the ocean you are, the sun would eventually burn off the cloud layer and you have a halfway decent day. The closer to the ocean, the longer it takes, and some days are gloomy all day long. This made June the longest and most depressing month. (Kind of like November for New Englanders.) In fact, when Bent Creek released their monthly snappers+, "May Blooms" I thought surely would be followed by June Gloom. It turns out they went with "April Glooms" and "June Zooms." Angelenos would definitely have to reverse the two.

But now I am back on the east coast where we have seasons that are considered standard, and dragonflies may or may not zoom in June.

*Brave Astronaut, have the best pal check out these possibilities for the other Decembers: Snow and January. There's the whole set of Wee Santas too.
**it occurs to me that this is a problem faced by the entire southern hemisphere
***Visit in October or April.
+someone really has to tell them what a snapper is

Where's My Blue Bird of Happiness?

I didn't start Spring Flowers last night. When I went to pull the floss, I realized that I had hardly any of it. I spent most of the night addressing the belated New Year cards instead; just one batch left to do (international friends and family). I don't know what I am going to work on tonight. Everything I look for seems to be hidden away.

I finished the May Monthly Mania this morning on the El. On the way home, I started June to the sounds of this kid hockling away. It was sort of a snot snort mixed with kennel cough (if your dog's had that, you won't soon forget it). I think he must be really sick, like with some kind of lung disease rather than just bad manners and a cold. But even while I chant, "it's medical, it's medical" to myself, it's grossing me out so much that I actually dry heaved tonight. So that's what it's like on my commute (this is the second day with that kid; I'm going to have to leave earlier).

Dear readers, I wish I had the energy to make this post even remotely interesting, but it's all just weighing rather heavily on me right now.

Miss April

I completed the stitching on another of the monthly manias. I may get these all finished this year!

I've got nothing else. Work is sucking the life out of me. The only positive is that I have time to stitch while I am commuting.

Adult School

Tonight when I was leaving work, big fat snowflakes were falling bringing a certain festivity to the city. I was really looking forward to coming home, opening the drapes on the picture window, turning off all the lights, and watching it snow. Alas, by the time I got off the bus, the big fat snowflakes had turned to sleet. Very unpretty. And I left my favorite hat on the bus this morning.

While I'm whinging, I'm still not well. Why just nausea? Why isn't this turning into a full-blown yuck? (The dude has it too, so no funny suggestions.)

In the good news front, I received the adult school catalog the other day and it looks like I will have new beading and sewing projects to show you starting in late February. Yay! I think I might work on Sissy's weekender bag on Mondays just to get into training for being back in sewing class. That, and classes start the week after Sissy's birthday, so I am going to have to go it alone. Well, not totally alone.

Here's a scan of the April Monthly Mania, which I did not forget on the bus.

Purging Verge

I am glad to know I am not the only one who is not in love with work. Sissy thinks I am a freak because I don't love work. I seem to meet all the people who love it, or at least who are unwilling to talk about not loving it.

---

I am on the verge of barfing. I have been slightly nauseated for almost 26 hours now. Last night when I got home, I couldn't eat. I was born at 6:13 pm and I haven't missed dinner in over 40 years. Really, I'm the kind of girl that eats solid food through strep throat and after oral surgery. The nausea is my only symptom. (Although this morning the dude said I felt hot, which is about as accurate as our thermometer.) I finally ate at 2:00 but I just had some crackers. I think this is the longest I've gone without eating. Even when I fast for my colonoscopies, I still eat jello and popsicles constantly (jelly and ice lollies for my British friends). I don't feel good but I really don't feel bad enough to stay home; I'd just end up cleaning the kitchen and doing some laundry.

Here's something I finished yesterday:

Odds and Ends

I went to the fiber store this weekend and bought a bunch of flosses that I needed for my Monthly Mania charts. I got back to work on February today which means I have finished neither April nor February, as you can see. While I was at the needlepoint store, I found these Nano cover needlepoint kits that are still not shown on the AMH website. I got the pink and green one.

My at home project is Mirabilia's Emerald Mermaid. I am working on this as part of the SAL with Michelle. So far she's just an arm (the mermaid, not Michelle). She does violate the "Selfish Stitching in 2008" mandate, however. Maybe I'll start something new and selfish this week.

Thanks to all of you who kept a good thought for my sister. Last week, we finally found out that she does have a spindle cell tumor, but it is benign. The pathology took so long because spindle cell whatsit is so rarely benign that no one in the lab had seen it. They had to send it to a pathologist at Harvard. Of course, my mother thinks it was the nuns in Canada that Father Rick had organized. I think the diagnosis just confirms my feeling that my sister is a freak of nature.

It's supposed to be Delurking Week, but I can't find anything on that for this year. Last year I found out about it on, like, Friday so I didn't participate. Now I am ready but the nation, nay, the world is not. Why so cruel? I know only about 10% of the people who visit here comment. I know I don't always comment because sometimes I don't have anything new to add to the "conversation," but still 90% of you? Recently, I wrote in response to SharonB's post about commenting that commenting rarely feels like entering a conversation. I know how difficult it is sometimes to respond to the comments. There are lots of things that keep me from responding, the main one being which medium to use? It's a pita to e-mail partly because of the yahoo address Anna has and partly because you sometimes have to search out a commenter's e-dress; or if you respond in the comments, you worry that the original commenter won't reread the comments to see your response; addressing comments in posts just makes my posts too long...and on and on. But I will ask you one thing: lurkers, would it kill you to comment?

Matt Damon Musings

I was stitching the April Monthly Mania bunny while watching Bourne Ultimatum and with the other third of my brain I was thinking about Matt Damon. With his score "Sexiest Man Alive," I know you think I was thinking thoughts like this, but I was actually thinking that Matt Damon has hit a trifecta of sorts.

We hold these truths about movies to be self evident: the book is better than the movie, the original is better than the remake, and the original is better than the sequel. Matt Damon has managed to upend these truths in a pretty spectacular way, especially if you dig the action movie.

Sure, the Bourne Identity is a spy novel, but it is a best-selling classic spy novel. When I finished reading it in preparation for the movie release, I wanted that week of my life back. That book is remarkably bad. And I read fiction about needlework.

When Ocean's Eleven got remade, my crowd went to see it. By chance, the original was playing on teevee that day so we watched it. Let me tell you, there is no comparison. Sammy Davis singing that "Ocean's 11" ditty while he drives the garbage truck, how weird is that? (Though I did enjoy the way the remake played with the audience who knew the original.)

While we were watching Bourne Ultimatum, it was clear that the crew that put this movie together isn't resting on their laurels.

All this and a bunny too.