About Me

My name is Melissa and I’m 44 years old. I’m originally from middle Tennessee, but I now live in southern California. This blog will chronicle the various day to day activities of my life. It will mostly include details of my stitching and my weight loss journey.

I’ve been stitching for over 30 years in one fashion or another. I began with embroidery when I was 8 years old and very quickly moved into cross stitching from there. I also learned to crochet as a child, but it’s never been a passion. I finally learned to knit in the early 1990’s. I was so addicted to knitting at one point, that I even bought my own spinning wheel and began to hand-card my own fleece and spin my own yarn. Sadly, the spinning wheel had to be left behind when I moved to California in 1997.

These days, my primary focus is on cross stitching, but I do still knit occasionally. I enjoy doing a lot of charity stitching using both mediums. Most of my charity cross stitching is making squares that ultimately are made into blankets for medical patients (primarily cancer).

I will occasionally post pictures of my stitching in my blog. At any points though, if you would like to see some pics of my stitching, check out my online photo albums.

I also enjoy stamping and making handmade greeting cards. I’ve only been stamping for a couple of years, but really enjoy it when I have the time. I was introduced to all of this by my dear friend Tracy. She’s a consultant for Close to My Heart and does some AMAZING cards and scrapbook layouts.

I recently began experimenting with digital scrapbooking as well. As much as I love the tactile process of making cards, if I’m going to scrapbook (not really my thing), I prefer to do that digitally. It makes it much easier to share with my friends and family who are scattered all over the US and Canada. I’m using Memory Mixer II software for my digital scrapping.

As for my weight loss journey, I am following the Weight Watchers program. The program works great for me. At my lowest point, I had lost 138 pounds. Unfortunately, I then went through a very ugly divorce and some major health issues which resulted in regaining 50-60 pounds. I’m now working to try and get those pounds off again and then continue on to reach my goal.

This renewed interest in getting healthy and losing weight again has also reignited another goal of mine — to get back to running again. I ran when I was younger and enjoyed it immensely. I haven’t done any regular running in YEARS though. My hope is that with losing more weight and staying focused that I can ultimately run a 5k (3.1 miles) with no walk breaks. I would also one day like to complete a half marathon (13.1 miles) and a super sprint distance triathlon. Distances in the super sprint triathlon classification can vary from race to race, but it’s typically a 400m (.25 mile) swim, then a 10k (6.2 miles) bike ride, followed by a 2.5k (1.5 mile) run.