Another Thing I like

I love daisies.  I have always loved daisies.  Oh, I know there's been times when I might have thought some other flowers were my favorite.  Like roses.  Everyone likes roses.  Aren't they supposed to be the queen of the garden?  So I went through a period when roses were my favorites.  I'm even considering planting roses along my back wall.  But they'll never have the place in my heart that daisies are occupying.  Deep down I never gave up the lowly daisy for the queenly rose.  They're so sweet and fresh and innocent.  Daisies were my wedding flower and even now for all special occasions, I still get my daisies.  Besides what other flower can tell you for certain if he loves you or not?  So I'm gonna take a moment and stop and smell the daisies today.  No mores roses for this gal.  I'm Team Daisy all the way.

Starting Over

Now I think I mentioned a small something like a new grandbaby.  So I have all these plans to cross stitch and knit  lots of stuff for my first grandbaby and those plans are still in place.  I just have to change the materials I have to use.  I was going to knit a circular afghan in a gorgeous pastel striped yarn.  The yarn was about 5 different colors including pink.  Now apparently pink is and will forever be forbidden in my dear daughter-in-law's home.  She hates the color pink.  So I had to abandon the first yarn and set out on a quest to find new yarn.  Now I have a big yarn stash.  I bought LOTS of yarn when we closed our yarn department at work.  So I did what any respectable knitter would do:  I checked my stash first before I went out to search for the new yarn.  Guess what?  Most of what I owned is, wait for it... pink!  Yep, I didn't have a single baby yarn that would work.  So I set off to Hobby Lobby first.  Nope, nothing suitable there.  I went Michael's.  Do you know how hard it is to find a baby yarn without pink in it?  It's almost impossible.  I was about to give up when I discovered this yarn in Michael's.  They only had 5 skeins of it but it is just enough for the afghan I'm knitting.  And best of all, there's no hint of pink in it.  It's lavender, sage green and taupe.  All pastel.  Now it won't give me the striping effect that the original yarn would have but I'm going to use it anyway.  Maybe I'll whisper the word pink over it while I'm knitting. : )

PS Chris and Annette, if you're reading this, remember I love you lots!

Stitching and Stereotypes

Loretta at Stitching the Night Away has an interesting question for Blog Hop #4.  It's one I've never asked myself before and I'm not sure what my answer is going to be.

Do you experience this same assumption from society in general that just because you’re being crafty you’re also driven by some unseen force to be in constant 1950s housewife mode? and then…. Who actually does the cooking and the cleaning in the household? I’d also really like to hear some words from the men in the crowd who stitch on this topic. What sort of societal reactions do you get and what ridiculously wrong assumptions do people make towards you when they see you working on needlework?

I don't think anyone who knows me considers me a 50's type of gal.  I'm pretty independent and take care of a lot of things on my own.  But my husband and I usually share the household chores.  Usually whoever sees that a job needs done just does it.  No job separation here.  Sometimes he cooks, sometimes I do.  If one of us sees the dishwasher needs emptying then we just do it.  I keep track of what maintenance my car needs.  There are certain things I really don't like doing (like vacuuming) but I do it anyway most of the time.  A lot of this stems from the fact that David traveled a lot when we were first married.  He was sometimes gone for several weeks at a time.  So I either learned to do certain things or they didn't get done.  So some of this was out of necessity.  But you do what you have to do when you have to do it and honestly I'm not too concerned with what other people think.

My "craftiness" comes from a frustrated desire to be an artist.  I would love to have the talent to create beautiful paintings but sadly I'm missing that gene.  So I cross stitch and pretend my fabric is a canvas and my threads are paints and I can create works of art that way.

This was a good subject to discuss.  I hadn't really thought about this before and it made me think about my perception of what I do and other's perception of me.

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QGT Update - AGGHHHHHHHH!

Okay, here is my update for Quaker Gone Tropic for this week.  Now it looks like I did get more than usual done this week.  Well, guess what?  The entire boat has to be frogged!  Oh, I think I can salvage the top 5 rows but the rest has to come out.  See, I'm not just 1 or 2 stitches off.  And I'm not just 1 or 2 rows off.  I could live with that.  No, I'm 6, yes, you heard that right, 6 rows off!!!  I suppose I could just fudge it, but I would have to really adjust the other side of the sail, which I haven't even started yet.  And that is more of an undertaking than I wish to start.  So it has to come out.  And lest we forget, it's over 1 which makes it even harder to frog.  So when I finished banging my head against the nearest wall, I decided to frog it in stages.  2 - 3 rows at a time.  That way it won't seem so overwhelming.  I'll start on another section of the chart so I don't fall too far behind on this one.  I was hoping to get this one finished before too long cause I want to start on stuff for my new grandbaby (and that's a whole nother post).

Guess What?

This is my newest project that I've started.  Yes, I do have hobbies other than cross stitch (hard as that is to believe) such as knitting.  I bought this afghan kit from Mary Maxim last year and stuck it in my stash closet.  I didn't have a particular use for it at the time.  I just knew I really liked it and best of all, it was on sale!  So I figured if nothing else I would knit it up and give it to charity if I couldn't find another use for it.  Well, I found another way to use it.  Can you guess what it is?  Yep, I'm going to be a grandma!  My youngest son ( and middle child) and his lovely wife are having their first baby and our first grandchild.  They've been married for 7 years and I can honestly say, we never bugged them about it.  In fact, we had sort of given up any thought of having any grandbabies in the near future.  But they called us a couple of Saturdays ago and gave us the good news.  It looks like the baby is expected either around Christmas or New Years.  So I finally have an excuse to knit this lovely blanket.  The yarn is very soft and of course it's washable.  And I love the colors.  So I'd better get knitting on it .  I'd love for them to have it in time to bring the baby home from the hospital.  And as cold as it gets in Minneapolis in the winter, I suspect they'll need more than one!

Quaker Gone Tropic Update

It looks like I've forgotten to update my QGT project for a few weeks.  I am making slow but steady progress on it.  I think I have finally found a way to stitch it at night without my magnifier light reflecting off the TV.  I'm going to try it tonight and see how it works.  I also discovered that I have a hard time following a chart that has so many pages.  I had a lot of trouble with the mermaid motif being charted across 4 pages.  I actually ended up cutting the chart up and taping it together so I could finish it.  But I'm very pleased with how this one is working out.

Goals? What Are Those??

Do you set stitching goals for yourself and how do you plan them out? (Weekly, monthly, annually?) What are your current stitching goals (if you don’t mind sharing)?

In addition to setting goals for yourself, do you have a special reward that you reserve for when you reach a stitching goal?

This is the question of the day.  Do I set goals for my stitching and if so do I reward myself for reaching those goals?  To be perfectly honest, the only time I set goals is if I am stitching a gift for a specific occasion.  For instance, Christmas or birthdays.  One time, my cousin's daughter was getting married and DH suggested I stitch them a wedding sampler.  Well, my deadline was 2 weeks so I told him I would do it only if he agreed to do everything else around the house.  Well, he agreed and the sampler was finished in time to have it framed and mailed and sent off to the wedding.  I wouldn't make a habit of that though.  I do find if I put goals out in front of me that I begin to resent the time I'm spending on that piece.  I'll find any excuse not to do it.  So I generally don't make goals for myself.

As far as rewards go, I don't usually do that either.  I don't know why I just never considered rewarding myself for doing what I love to do.  Now I do use cross stitch as a reward.  If I get my chores done, then I can sit down and stitch to my heart's content.  So I guess in that sense, I do reward myself.  Just not for stitching.   

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