Waste Knot, Want Knot...

Today's SBQ is: How do you secure your thread when you begin a new one? Specifically, do you or have you ever used a waste knot?

Most of the time I use the loop method when starting with a new thread, if possible. If I am only using one (or three) strand(s) then I weave the end of the strand(s) either under new stiches or existing stitches.

I have really made it a point to avoid writing in my blog about work. Even though I like where I work, and most of those I work with, lately things have been pretty strained. Our company was bought out by another in March. The company which bought us also bought another company in Miami. Last month the first round of layoffs started and it pretty much surprised everyone who they let go. What was even more confusing was that they turned around and HIRED new people. The scuttlebutt has been the next round of layoffs would be in December. Merry Holidays to us! So with the month about to start, you can imagine why some would be more than a bit stressed out, despite the fact that we are being offered very generous severance packages.

Making matters worse, is that it has already been decided that our company will move to the offices of the company in Miami. Most of us here live in North Broward. This other company is just west of Miami International Airport in an area known as Doral and 40 miles from our current location. Considering how awful Miami (and South Florida) traffic is, you can imagine that not many are eager to hear of this. I, for one, have no intention of driving 90 miles per day, especially since I moved to Lauderdale by the Sea, in part, to be 3 miles away from the office.

However, we were told today by our VP (who is leaving at the end of the year) that they were letting go two people in Accts Receivable and that no more layoffs were planned until next year because the company was concerned about attrition due to the new location. So now people are breathing a sigh of relief that the end is not as imminent as first thought. A very important thing to know this time of year. Our VP also told us that the move to Miami would not take place until March and, if we were not willing to go to the new location, we would still be offered the usual severance package.

I am happy with the news. I rather be laid off early next year than in December.

Some Things about Me!

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You? "Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh."

ARE YOU:
1. A Cuddler? Yes
2. A morning person? Not bloody likely...
3. Are you a perfectionist? Yes, unfortunately (I think a lot of stitchers are)
4. An only child? Nope I have two brothers
5. Catholic> Yes, but also Jewish
6. In your pajamas? More often than not.
7. Currently suffering from a broken heart? Thank G-d NO!!!
8. Okay styling other people’s hair? You're kidding, right?
9. Left handed? For some things - I am actually ambidextrous
10. Addicted to MySpace? HA! Got a My Space, but I'm really too old to hang out there.
11. Shy around the opposite gender? Not shy around anyone...
12. Loud? Hardly ever.
DO YOU:
12. Bite your nails? Never have.
13. Get paranoid at times? Hardly ever.
14. Currently regret something that you have said/done? Not presently
15. Curse frequently when you get mad? Sometimes, not often...
16. Enjoy country music? Most of it, yes.
17. Enjoy jazz music? Most of it, yes.
18. Enjoy smoothies? Nope - too high in calories
19. Enjoy talking on the phone? I hate the phone
20. Have a lot to learn? Yes
21. Have a pet? Not presently
22. Have a tendency to fall for the “wrong” person? Never
23. Have all your grandparents died? Yes, they have
24. Have at least one sibling? Yes.
25. Have been told that you are smart? Often
26. Have had a broken bone? Nope
27. Have Caller I.D. on your phone? Absolutely
HAVE YOU:
28. Changed a diaper? Yes, but it's been a long time.
29. Changed a lot over the past year? Constantly learning, constantly changing.
30. Had friends who have never seen your natural hair color? No
31. Had surgery? Yes.
32. Killed anyone? Wanted to, don't think the jail time is worth it
33. Had your haircut within the last week? No.
LAST PERSON WHO:
1. Slept in the bed beside you? R
2. Saw you cry? R.
3. Went to the movies with you? N.
4. You went to the mall with? N
5. You went to dinner with? Stitching friends
6. You talked to on the phone? R
7. Said ‘I love you’ to you and meant it? R
8. Broke your heart? No one
9. Made you laugh? C
WOULD YOU RATHER?
1. Pierce your nose or tongue? Neither
2. Be serious or be funny? Funny
3. Drink whole or skim milk? Whole.
4. Die in a fire or drown? Drown
5. Spend time with your parents or enemies? Parents.
ABOUT YOU!
1. What time is it? 12:26 PM
2 Name? Trish
3. Nickname(s)? Tootie
4. Where were you born? Miami, FL
5. What is your birthdate? December 27
6 What do you want? A fat retirement fund
7. Where do you want to live? Where I live, on the beach!
8. How many kids do you want? No more!

The Other Half...

I've scrolled the fabric up and took a picture of The Rose Garden's top half. Certainly gives another perspective. It's fun to take pictures of finished stitching - not so much fun of empty fabric - LOL. I don't believe there is discoloration on the fabric - at least I didn't notice it this morning. I think those are shadows from the celing fan and the hanging cords.

Today is Tuesday again, and time to go back to my LNS for the weekly SAL. I will be bringing this piece with me today. Plan of attack for this piece is to stitch the right hand side first - there are two butterflies up in the top right corner and then work left towards the left corner - which is where all the work is.

On another subject, I was looking over my Prairie Schooler collection these past two days - so many patterns I want to desperately stitch!!! It's frustrating sometimes when I think of all I want to stitch and what little time I actually have for stitching. Oh well, I'll just have to get over it.

Update

I have been stitching on "The Rose Garden" lately. I picked it up yesterday for the first time since the end of August. I'm glad I am back to stitching this piece. I really do love it and it is high time it got finished. This bottom portion is all stitched except for a few french knots around the saying, which I will do later. Sometime later today, I will scroll the fabric down to reveal more of the top portion which is what needs to be stitched next.

If A Flower Bloomed has been adopted by my good friend, Ruth. I'm glad 'cause it kinda "stays in the family". LOL

Piece Up For Adoption

Sorry I've been away. The kid left Sunday after being here a month and I had simply lost the habit of coming online and posting. Another reason, which I just realized yesterday, is that I simply don't like stitching what I am stitching (If a Flower Bloomed). Last night I was at my LNS's SAL and I remarked that I didn't know what I was going to do with this piece, because I really didn't want it in my home and that I probably would donate it.

Well, that set off an alarm. If I don't like it, what am I doing stitching it? I am stitching it because I started it and I believe that I should finish everything I start. Last Thursday I was at EGA and one of the ladies was speaking and one of the things she said kinda struck a cord. She said that one of the things she had learned from EGA was that it was okay to not finish a project. That if she had stitched all she wanted of a piece, and felt she didn't want to spend any more time on it, that it was okay to leave it unfinished.

That is going to be difficult for me. If I stop stitching it, and come across it again a few weeks or months from now, it's going to bug me that it's not finished. So, I am thinking of putting it up for adoption. If any of my regular readers feels she wants to finish it, let me know. This piece is on 28ct lugana/jobelyn in light yellow (buttermilk?) and is stitched solely with DMC floss. Chart will be provided.

It really wasn't my intention to meet my 12 WIP goal through adoption but I guess now the next thing to do, before I waste my time on more projects I really don't want, is to re-assess the pieces that are pending. Who knows? Maybe more pieces will be placed for adoption.... However, for now, I think I will go back to stitching on "The Rose Garden".

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

SBQ

Today's SBQ is:

Do you stitch Christmas ornaments? If so, how many do you stitch each year and for whom? If not, why not?

Well this is a funny question considering my post of two days ago!

I do stitch Xmas ornaments - not a whole lot of them - maybe two or three a year. Sometimes I keep them, sometimes I give them away to a close friend.

I do not put up a tree each year so I do not have a great need for ornaments, however, being as to this is MY stitching and xmas is the only time of year I will have time to enjoy them, I have purchased a small 3ft wire ornament display tree so I can put them out without having to go through the whole rigamarole of decorating a tree.

More Office Pranks

Since Son #4 took off on a cruise with my camara - and therefore I can't take pics of my stitching - submitted for your amusement is the aluminum foiled office. This is a prank that took place a few days before the Post-It note prank I previously wrote about. Both ladies are extremely laid back and took these pranks with good humor. Naturally, we all helped clean their offices so they could get back to work.

Tuesday night was the SAL at my LNS. I picked up "Who's The Boss?" framed, but didn't buy anything else (Wow! What self-control! LOL). Emily from Stitching Bloggers came to our little SAL. It was fun meeting someone from an online group (see, online people really DO exist!) and I feel that she's going to fit in with this nutty group just fine.

Theme for 2007

Trish's Stitching Theme for 2007..... (drumroll please......)

The Year of the Ornies!

May not seem overly ambitious at first glance, but upon closer inspection, let's consider just how many ornies I plan to stitch next year, along with bringing down the active number of WIPs...

For starters, this is the list of ornies that I want to stitch with my online group Stitchers Time Out:

Dec - Raise the Roof Designs- An Arm and a Leg
Jan.- Erica Michaels- Lights of Advent
Feb.- The Prairie Schooler- Winter
March- Val's Stuff- Be Merry
April- Little by Little Design Co.- Winter Joy
May- monsterbubbles- Feliz Navidad
June- JBW- Peace on Earth
July- Brittercup- Britty Christmas Puppy
Aug.- Full Circle Designs- Moonlit Joy Ride
Sept.- Glory Bee- Noel 2006
Oct.- Country Cottage Needleworks- Winter's Eve
Nov.- Heartstings/ The Artists Collection- Merry Santa
Dec.- Amaryllis Artworks- Angel Dog

Besides these twelve 2006 JCS Ornies, I also want to stitch:

1) Cross Eyed Crickets 12 Days of Christmas (Leaflets 249-252)
2) Prairie Schooler's Santa's 12 Days of Christmas (Leaflets 125-127)
3) Margaret Sherry's 12 days of Christmas

So, if you're keeping count, that is 48 ornaments for next year, or 4 per month, or nearly one per week...

If this were not enough, I also would like to bring the number of active WIPs down from 12 to 5. I think I may have mentioned this on a previous post. Most of the remaining WIPs have a lot of work left to them.

Now tell me it's not ambitious...

SBQ & Small Update

As y'all can see, I haven't stitched much since the last time I updated - don't even remember when that was right now. At the rate I am going, this will be finished by the Fourth of July next year. Still, it's nice to see some progress and I did reach this week's goal of finding some time to stitch. See how easy it is to see things positively?

Today's SBQ was suggested by Jan and is:How many different brands of "complete" embroidery floss sets do you own? How do you keep track of it? (i.e., spread sheet program, index cards, palm pilot, etc.)

I am not completely sure because threads are constantly coming out from all manufacturers, save maybe Anchor and DMC, but I am pretty sure I have all, or nearly all, complete sets of DMC (from regular floss to their new specialty threads), Anchor, Weeks Dye Works, Gentle Arts Sampler Threads, Crescent Colours, Needlepaint Threads, JAR Designs, and Six Strand Sweets.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of them.

As some of you might know, I enjoy playing computer games - mostly The Sims 2 and "tycoon" type games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, etc.. For the past couple of days, however, I have gotten really involved in a silly simple game called "Carrie the Caregiver" from Shockwave.com which surprisingly is currently #1 in downloaded games. I downloaded it because I as bored one Saturday morning waiting for the people in my life to get ready to go out - and ended up addicted to it. I guess it's true that babies are irresistible. :)

Office Pranks

A co-worker has been out on vacation for two weeks now and is due to return tomorrow. We wanted to show her how much we missed her, so we came up with this little prank. We only do things like this to those we like. We can't wait to see her reaction!!! Last week we covered an office in aluminum foil. We call it a team morale boosting exercise... LOL

It was a lot of fun last night at my LNS's SAL, even though we were only about 8. I picked up the two of the latest Elizabeth Designs charts, "WelcomeSampler" and "My Country House", the last of the BC's Summer Snapperland ("The Beach") and the latest issue of Stoney Creek magazine.

I also placed an order for two Permin kits, Harbour (70-8411) and Blue Flowers (12-5187). The first I fell madly in love with, the second I did too, but I was sitting on the fence because it came with Aida, but my good buddy Orrell, enabled me me off the fence! (What are friends for?)

I read a really good exerpt of a book this morning, "The Power of Nice" by Linda Kaplan. I hope y'all would check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Back from being MIA

Nick is recovering really well. He's now able to begin bending his knee and gets around the house quite easily. He's still in no position to drive off by himself or walk/stand for long, so he's pretty much housebound unless one of his brothers, friends, or parental units take him out. It's not fun to be 21 and have all that energy and be stuck inside all day. I've told the kid to spend some time out by the pool and get a tan for heaven's sake (he looks like spaghetti without sauce) - but so far he's not done so. I've had to make up things for him to do to keep him interested. Right how he's learning Photoshop CS2 and it seems to be keeping him busy.

This weekend I went to the grand re-opening of "Always in Stitches" in Lake Park, FL with my good buddy Ruth. It's about 50 miles north of where I live. The new shop is gorgeous and has plenty of space to sit down and stitch and stay a while. My friend Anita part times on the weekend over there - mostly to help out - and she was there so we all had a fun time. Three other friends, Tillie Measie and Marlene had gone in the morning, but I am NOT a morning person on the weekend and as much as my family tolerates all the time I spend with my stitching friends, I do have to pay attention to them sometime! LOL!!!

I was pretty good, I didn't buy all that much because all I could think about was everything I am committed to stitch and, realizing that I probably wouldn't be able to start anything I bought for several months, if not longer, the pressure to buy and add it to my collection just wasn't there. I did buy quite a bit of fabric and threads, because these are ALWAYS necessary!!!

Also this past weekend, I decided to try out the new Vista operating system from Microsoft which will be out this month for businesses and in January for consumers. What a bust that was. I forgot that my monitor, a 19 inch Viewsonic A90 I bought around 1999 doesn't have drivers compatible for Win XP (even though it works fine with it), so when I loaded Vista it would not recognize the monitor and would render everything in a 600 X 480 resolution. Talk about huge!!! Needless to say, I was glad I had the foresight to backup the system before installing (which should always be done when major changes to the operating system are done), but I came really close to not doing so because, if y'all remember, I reformatted this computer in September. In any event, I am going to have to wait until there is a work around for my monitor to upgrade because I am not about to throw away a perfectly good monitor over an operating system. Besides, The Sims 2 is not currently Vista compatible, though it will work on it if it is adjust to run in Win XP mode.

That's it for now. See y'all later.

Paying it Forward

I seen an awesome post on Cindy's blog about Paying It forward! I think this is such an awesome idea and just had to do it!

It's simple as this:The first five people to respond to this post (via the comments section) will get some form of "art" made by me. Be sure that I can email you to get your snail mail address. Think of it as something to look forward to getting in the mail. It will be original, made by me, but it may not be immediate, as I haven't made them yet. I am not sure what it will be. There is a catch, of course, the way this works is that if you sign up, you have to blog this as well and continue sharing.

SBQ - NOV 1

Today's SBQ was suggested by Lee and is:

How did you decide on the title of your stitching blog? Was it random,or does it have a special meaning to you or about you?

The title to my blog came from two songs with the same title: "Just Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Collins (late 80's) and Phil Vassar (country). The first version (Collins) basically is about how, compared to others who have it worse off than us, we live in paradise. The second version (Vassar) is about how, despite things going wrong, we live in paradise if we have love in our lives.

I live in South Florida, hurricane magnet of the world. Around here, the saying is that "this is the price we pay for living in paradise". And, for all my griping about this place from time to time, you can't escape the fact that this place is drop dead gorgeous most days of the week.

If you take the above two together: 1) that I actually DO live in "Paradise" and 2)that stitching is not always without its challenges, however much we love it, there you have the title of my blog.

So, it's okay, it's all right, it's just another stitch in Paradise....

Time to Check In

Amazing, but true - finally an update! On Sunday I stitched with my local stitching group and managed to stitch about half the cat. These past few days I have not had much time to stitch, but I did finish the cat and I wanted to share him with y'all.

Nick went to the VA Hospital in Miami on Monday. I left the house - we live in Lauderdale by the Sea - at 6am. I dropped the kid off at 7:10. I made it back to work at 8:45. I really hate driving into Miami, especially on work days. There isn't enough money on this planet to get me to accept a job in downtown Miami. I mean, if I want to drive 2.5 hours, I want Mickey Mouse to greet me at the end! (Orlando is roughly a 2.5 hour drive from where we live).

Nick is doing better. He is now allowed to start bending his knee and he can almost get it to a 90 degree angle by now. I was worried about him being able to return on a plane. We all know how much space there is between aisles. But it looks that - by then - he will be allright.

Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow is EGA and I am planning to go.