Happy day after Mother's Day!

Hope everyone had a good Mother's Day!  I did.  :D

But first off, let me show you my progress on Susan Rambo.

She's so pretty!  Although I do think the squirrels look a bit hunchbacked.

And like they have weird, pointy helmets on.

I used 931a for the color for the squirrels instead of my substitute for 603 (931), since I thought it looked more squirrel-like.  (It looks a bit more purple IRL.)  I've just about come to the conclusion that I may do the same from now on -- just use 931a for all the places where it calls for 603.  I've also discovered to my consternation that the yellow-brown used in the wreath around the parent's names to me should be much greener in color.  I get the sinking feeling that the piece shown in the SANQ mag must be the original and not the model?  Dunno.  Anyway, that same color was used in the grass under the squirrel.  I subbed  the lighter green from the border instead.  I wish I'd realized this before I stitched that wreath. Hate that yellow-brown color on the wreath.  But I'm way too lazy to frog it.

As for Mother's Day, it was a gorgeous day here so we took advantage and went wandering around our favorite antiquing town, Cold Spring, NY.  (Not Cold Spring Harbor.)  The boy child should have been studying for his music theory AP exam, but what the heck.  I think he was about as ready as he was going to be.  We had fun wandering around and looking at the antiques and the people.  Sat by the riverside for a while too, but it was a bit too windy and chilly to stay long by the waterside.  We also went to Barnes and Noble to check out the written word, so that was nice.

Guess what the father type got me for Mother's Day?  (How did he know what I wanted?  :D)

You should be hearing squeals of delight about now.  Yes, my very own, antique toy Singer sewing machine!  I love it!  It's in great shape too!  Came with the original box and clamp.  Even had a little pack of needles and a little key.

Mia has been very curious about it, as you can see.  I think the main attraction for her, though, was the wrapping material the clamp was wrapped in.  She thought it was the greatest toy.  lol!

I got to talk to the girl child by video chat for Mother's Day as well.  She managed to make me cry with her little Mother's Day post that she sent me.  She's busy writing final papers for college and worrying about possible summer jobs/internships so no time for her to come home.  But at least we got to talk.

Can I just put in a slight off-topic here and say wow?   Novak Djokovic is unbeaten so far this year in tennis.  He's managed to beat Nadal in their last three meetings (all finals), their last one being on clay, Nadal's surface of choice.  Wow.  I'm impressed!  He's 32 and 0 so far in 2011.  The French Open should be interesting this year!

Sorry about that.  Now for something more on topic.

Here's the boy child torturing Mia by picking her up in a bag.  She'd been doing her usual thing of enjoying hanging out inside the bag.  Don't think she was pleased to be up in the air.

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi.  It's a pleasure to read your comments and to talk with you all.  Hope you have a great week.

Jane retaliates, enlists frogs, triumphs in the end

Well, Jane won her point.  She got all time dedicated to her this past week -- which was considerable with Wimbledon having started.  She did make life interesting though.  Those flowers on either end on the bottom border -- I just wasn't satisfied with that awful new color.  I tried a substitute color on the bottom right flower, but still wasn't happy.  Then I took a look at the model picture and decided to go with a slightly darker color that had been used but sparingly up at the top of the sampler. 

Which of course meant -- Jane got her revenge.  I spent hours frogging those fill in colors on the flowers.  But I think it was worth it.  What do you think?

Yes!  Jane is finished!!!!

Here are the two flowers in question, along with the beautiful middle flower.   Number one,

And number two.

I like this color a lot better than the skin tone color.  The absolutely gorgeous middle flower will forever be remembered by me as the flower that took forever to stitch while watching the forever longest tennis match ever.  Won by American John Isner at Wimbledon, court 18, 70 to 68 in the fifth set over Nicolas Mahut.  Absolutely amazing!  I think there were 109 aces for Isner, 105 for Mahut?  Or something like that.  Geez!  The fifth set was longer than the former longest match in history!

Anyway, here's the rest of the sampler.  I love it so much!  But be forewarned -- the colors were marked incorrectly in more than one place, especially at the bottom border.

Isn't Jane wonderful?  She deserved to retaliate.  :D

Here's the list of colors that went into a second skein.  I used AVAS with 40ct linen.  4136 (marked as such in the chart), 3724, 2636, 2216, 2235, 526, 2611.  I came close to needing another skein with a few other colors as well. 

As I'm typing this, poor Andy Roddick has lost in the round of 16 at Wimbledon to a surprise Chinese player.  I feel so badly for him.  I wanted him to win Wimbledon!  I wouldn't mind Murray winning either.  Or Federer or Nadal.  :D   But it would be fun to have a new winner for a change.  Oh how unfaithful of me to say that!  Wimbledon has been so amazing this time around.  So many surprises and great matches.  The women's side too.  Of course, I love Wimbledon no matter what.  It's my favorite grand slam event.

Big time summer mode going on around here now.  Don't know how that happened.  I feel like it should still be the middle of the school year.  Ah well.

Thanks again for stopping by and saying hi.  It's fun to see what everyone is up to!  Have a great week!

Yay!! and busy

Yup, Rebecca Robinson is done! Yay! I feel like I've been working on her forever!



I used 40ct Heritage from Picture This Plus with the called for AVAS. I love how it came out!



Now to get it framed. Along with my growing pile of samplers. Sigh.




In other news, we took the girl child back to college this past Saturday. Her school starts so late -- classes start the 17th! She's all happily ensconced in her single room (whoever heard of a sophomore having a single?) and excited about starting the year. She even got a new position with her job at college! After we unloaded all her stuff in her room, we went for lunch in town. Here's a poor quality picture of the girl child and me from the father type's cell phone.




Last night was the start of the new orchestra season for the boy child. He moved up to the high school level (10-12) orchestra, which means a symphony orchestra. Yay! I love symphony orchestras! I'm hoping the symphony part along with harder music will make the boy child more enthused about things. (He's really a rock and roll kinda guy at heart.) The youth symphony rehearses on stage. Here they are rehearsing on their first night. Only 4 basses! Another yay!



Basses are always easy to spot -- they always stand in the back on the right. And when the conductor asks the orchestra to stand, they don't have to do a thing -- they're already standing!

Speaking of music, 9/9/09 has passed. And our house shows it too. The boy child has Beatles Rock Band and has been playing it with his friends. A stereo limited edition set of the remastered Beatles CDs has somehow made its way into our house as well. :D It's nice that my children have inherited my love of the Beatles.

US Open is over. A new men's champion, a gentle giant of a guy. So young too! (Hate to say it, but it was nice to see someone new win. Sorry Roger! You're still my favorite!) Controversy on the women's side, and a mom as the champ. Yay Kim Clijsters!

I was bad and didn't post last week. How sad! But I wanted to post a finish and the finish didn't get finished till just now! Hope everyone has a good week. Or what's left of the week! I keep thinking it's Monday! Thanks for stopping by. I love reading your comments. :D

Progress, tennis, and etc

So I feel like I haven't made much progress on the Plantation Sampler. But here it is.



I switched to the medium blue-green for the verse cause I liked the color better.


I'm feeling restless on this project so I'd better get to the pretty picture part now to get myself back into this one!

Kim, of Threadheads, Unite!, is having another giveaway! She's going to be giving away some yummy April Cornell plaids. Sigh. I love woven plaids. I love April Cornell. So of course I entered. You should too!

And finally, I have to say congratulations to Roger Federer. I know, lots of you don't give a fig about tennis. But Federer made tennis history on Sunday by winning the French Open for the first time and thus completing a career Grand Slam. He's one of only 6 men to have achieved that, and one of only two (Andre Agassi being the other) to achieve this feat on three different surfaces. He also tied Pete Sampras' record for the most Grand Slams won, 14. He's been in 20 straight grand slam semifinals, and 15 of the last 16 grand slam finals. He's definitely up there as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. And I love the fact that he cries. Like Andre Agassi, one of my other tennis heroes, who was also not afraid to show his emotions. Here's hoping that Rafael Nadal overcomes his knee problems and that Federer and Nadal continue their rivalry. And here's hoping for Andy Murray as well -- wouldn't it be something if he won Wimbledon? I always held out hope for Tim Henman, and now I'll hope for Murray too. Wimbledon is my favorite of the slams. And it starts next week! And by the by, if Nadal manages to win the US Open this fall, he would complete a career grand slam as well. Wouldn't that be something!

It's the last week of classes at the high school here. Then a couple of weeks of final exams. The boy child will have his last exam on June 22 and then he'll be free! No more school till the fall! Unbelievable. Where did the school year go? Ack!!!!

I'm off to enjoy one of my last days sans kids. :D I'm putting off the errands and the cleaning for once -- not going to waste the time! lol! Thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments. I love to read them!