I thought I would share an updated progress pic of my Lady Alexandra.  I’m still plugging away on her and making some decent progress from my last update, I think.

I also recently received a Christmas ornament from my dear friend Darla.

Isn’t it adorable?!  I can’t wait to hang it on my tree in a few months. Thanks, Darla!!! xoxo

I realized I also forget to post last time about what a great time I had last weekend at the beach with Terri and Darla.  It was kind of a last hurrah girls weekend before Terri heads off to Arizona in a couple of months.  We stayed at the Del Mar Beach Resort on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and had a BLAST!  There was plenty of eating, drinking, stitching, and most importantly, LOTS of laughter and good times with great friends!  You would think we all would’ve taken plenty of photos since we all blog, but …. yeah, not so much.    Here are a few I did snap:

We got to visit with Terri’s pups for a bit before we headed to the beach.

Beach time!

Not exactly a sign one sees every day.

Darla & I saw this cool flag print at a diner we stopped at for lunch on our way home.

Until next time …

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First and foremost, I want to wish all my fellow U.S. readers a very happy July 4th.  I hope everyone has a safe & happy holiday filled with fun, friends, and fireworks.

I know I haven’t posted in a long time, but that’s mostly because my time has been filled with school and work which left little time for stitching.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually stitched this year.  On the other hand, I could count the number of new professional certifications I’ve earned this year, so it’s all good.

That having been said, I actually DID get in a bit of stitching a couple of days ago at Stitchy Saturday at my LNS.  I was so much fun spending time with Terri, Darla, Sarah, and the rest of the gang.  Since it was the weekend leading into July 4th, I decided to do some “patriotic” stitching.  I pulled out my Little House Needleworks piece called Sea to Shining Sea.  I got a pretty good amount done of the Southwest panel.

It was the perfect way to end a long and stressful week of testing.  Not to mention that fact that if it weren’t for the monthly Stitchy Saturday gatherings, I wouldn’t get any stitching done at all.

Until next time …

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I had such a fun weekend. It started with a Stitchy Saturday at the LNS. I arrived late due to a work emergency, so I didn’t get that much stitching done. What little I did accomplish was on my Sophie stocking from Shepherd’s Bush. I don’t have an updated photo of it, but I’ll try and get one posted soon.

After that, I had a lovely early birthday dinner (it’s actually not until Thursday) with Terri and Darla at Rainforest Cafe over in Downtown Disney. The whole day was just filled with fun and laughter. It was just what I needed.

Terri stayed the night at my place, so we headed back over to Downtown Disney this morning. Our final destination? Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen for some beignets and chicory coffee. Sooooo yummy! I was even a good girl and only ate two out of my order of four. I gave the other two to Terri to take home to her DH.

So, where exactly does the “cuteness” part of this blog post come in? Well, I just have to take a minute to share a few pics of a little birthday present that my friend Cindi gave me when we were at the LNS. It’s a kitty in a bunny costume pincushion that she found on etsy. She knows I love both bunnies & kitties, so she said she just had to get it for me. She doesn’t have a blog, but I know she reads mine occasionally.

Front View

Side View

Back View

Close-up of the Face

Isn’t that absolutely adorable?!! Thanks again, Cindi! I love it so much!!

All in all, I great start to my birthweek. Until next time …

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Yes, the time has come for me to admit that I have hopelessly fallen off my no-stash diet challenge. Thank goodness I’m doing better on my actual weight loss diet than I did on this challenge. I did manage to get 11 projects finished, so I made it almost halfway.

My latest finish was the first shoe for the Hagatha’s Slipper class that I took recently from Margaret Bendig. I finished this part up on Friday night, so now I just need to do it again in reverse for the opposite side.

What caused me to stray from my challenge? Well, once all of the Halloween designs started coming out recently, I knew I was doomed. I *love* Halloween stitching! Here are my latest purchases that I picked up at my LNS yesterday when I was there for our monthly Saturday Stitch.

Click to enlarge

I’m going to leave my 25 Projects page (also linked at the top of my blog) in place. After I make a few purchases from the St. Charles fall market for TNNA coming up in a couple of weeks, I plan to get back on my challenge and make NO MORE purchases until I finish the remaining 14 projects to reach my goal of 25.

Speaking of the St. Charles market, have you seen one of the new designs coming out from Paulette at Plum Street Samplers? I’m not usually much on the whole Adam & Eve samplers deal, but this one is a MUST have for me! It’s called “Garden of Eerie” and cracks me up every time I look at it. What an incredibly fun design!! (Hey Darla, did you spot there’s a vulture on it?! )

Paulette has three other designs coming out at market as well. You can see them on the Kelmscott website since they are the distributor for her designs.

Oh yeah, as long as I’m confessing, I should probably ‘fess up to not sticking with my new rotation plan either. I am actually in the process of reworking it though, so I’m not saying yet that I’m completely abandoning it. I’m playing around with a concept that Terri mentioned to me. Rather than selecting particular designs to incorporate into the rotation, each slot would be a particular theme instead. Here is what I’ve come up with so far:

10 hours on current projects (started within the past 6 months)
10 hours on older projects (started more than 6 months ago)
10 hours on seasonal projects (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc.)
10 hours on samplers
10 hours on canvas projects
10 hours on “anything goes” project(s) of my choice

I’ll just have to decide if I want to go forward with it. I made it through three slots of the previous rotation I had set up and found myself hating it the whole time. I think it’s the rebellious child in me. I just want to stitch on what I want when I want without some stinkin’ rotation telling me what to do.

I have a couple of floss toss pics to share with you all as well. I think since this entry is already getting pretty long, I’ll save those for another day.

Until next time …

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Sorry for not posting in a while. I left last Thursday afternoon and was out of town for nearly a week visiting my friend Tracy up in eastern Washington. Even though she was feeling a bit under the weather, we still had a great visit.

On Friday, we headed over to Pasco for the day. I had an appointment with her brother Kevin to get another tattoo. I had him do a piece in memory of my beloved grandmother. She grew beautiful irises and loved hummingbirds, so that was the inspiration for the design. Lastly, I had him add in “Gran” in a nice script since that’s what I always called her. Here’s a pic of the finish product taken immediately after he finished it:

The colors are a bit softer now that it’s healed for a little over a week. I’ll take another photo to post once the healing process is completed. I know you can’t really tell from the pic, but it’s on the side of my right thigh about halfway up. As a size reference, it’s probably about 6″ across at the widest part.

On Saturday we just kind of hung around at Tracy’s house. I got in quite a bit of good stitching time on Moonlit Garden. It’s the Loose Feathers #22 design from Blackbird Designs. Here’s my latest WIP photo of this design:

Design: Moonlit Garden (Loose Feathers #22)
Designer: Blackbird Designs
Fabric: 30-count Broomstick Brown from R&R Reproductions
Fibers: Weeks Dye Works
Progress as of June 23, 2009

On Sunday, we headed over to Seattle. Her dad was riding in the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge, so we went over to be his cheerleaders. Even though he had to ride through some rain and a bit of hail at one point, he still finished the full 100-mile ride and raised nearly $1000, too! WTG Jim!! Here’s a photo I snapped of him right after he finished the ride:

Monday was my last full day in Washington. We just kind of took is easy most of the day. We did head over to Moses Lake mid-afternoon to take in a movie. We went to see “The Proposal” and had a great time. It was a really fun chick-flick to see together. Of course, it didn’t hurt that it starred hunky Ryan Reynolds either. Oh yeah, Sandra Bullock was in it, too. The main cast was rounded out with Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, and Betty White (who was hilarious!). In an ironic twist of art imitating life, Reynolds is actually a Canadian married to an American (Scarlett Johansson).

After the movie, we headed back over to Tracy’s place and spent the rest of the day just hanging out and watching TV. We both did a bit of stitching, too. Tracy spent some time working on Psalm 145 from Little House Needleworks. Instead of working on Moonlit Garden again, I did a bit of guest stitcher work on her Sistine Chapel project. I’m still amazed she decided to undertake this project, but I must admit that it was kind of cool to put some stitches in it. Here’s a photo of me working on it with the full 2.5 yards of linen sitting in my lap. Following that is a photo showing what I stitched on the piece.

That’s pretty much it for the photos from my trip that I’m going to post to my blog. If you want to see more, you can find them here.

I’m also nearly a week late posting my monthly photo for the Totally Useless SAL. The new moon fell on June 22, but I was still out of town at the time. I actually haven’t had much time for stitching since I got home, so even though it’s nearly a week late, it’s still pretty accurate.

In this photo, I temporarily set my ort bucket on my canvas WIP of Plum Blossom Kimono by Margaret Bendig. This is a class that I’m taking through my LNS, and I’m behind on my stitching right now due to my vacations. Canvas projects just don’t travel as compactly as cross stitching projects. You might also notice the quarter on the canvas. It’s not actually sitting on the canvas. It’s a needle park that was given to me by my friend Cindi. It’s a California state quarter mounted to a rare earth magnet. She gave one to my BSF Darla, too. You can see a better photo of it here.

Now that I’ve rambled on so much, I thought I should finally explain why I used “Updating on the Run” as the subject for this post. Even though I was on vacation last week, I’m heading out again tonight. I have an all-day class with Ellen Chester at the LNS today, but then I’ll be catching the red-eye to Detroit tonight to spend some time with my friend Nick. I’ll be there for nine days, and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for updating my blog while I’m gone. If you want to know what’s going on with me, the best option would be to follow my Twitter feed (info in the side bar on the right).

Well, that’s it for now. I desperately need to get into bed since I have such a long day tomorrow. I still need to finish packing, too. Eek!

Until next time …

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