My No Job Goals

Today is the first day of me being without a job. Again.

I have set certain goals for myself - both daily and long-term. The most important of them might be continuing to get up with DH in the mornings. I am so not a morning person. And whenever I'm without work, I tend to fall into a 12 hours up, 12 hours down sleep schedule. I know, it's excessive....but I defend myself by saying that as an infant I used to sleep 23 hours a day. It's true! It's just the way I'm made...

So, today was a success! I was up 1/2 hour before DH left for work - I've fed the cats, put the dog out, eaten my breakfast and done my morning computer fun time. All a very good start to my normal routine mornings.

Today's goals include getting signed up for unemployment...calling the various temp agencies I'm connected with...finishing the laundry...vaccuuming, both upstairs and down...and making sure the old supervisor approves my last timesheet. We'll see how successful today's goals are...

Some of my long-term goals were discussed in my last post. I really want to start on DNephew's quilt soon, though - since DSis is pregnant again, the race to get DN in his big boy bed is starting. We're hoping that him having a quilt of his own - that can only be used in his big boy bed - will help give him incentive to want to use it. We'll see.

I am 1 1/2 lengths of thread away from having a complete skein of floss in The Dragon. Let's see - I think that took a week to accomplish - not too shabby. Once I get that done, I'm going to count the number of stitches I got out of that skein and recalculate my usage chart. You see, the usage chart that came with the pattern is if you are stitching over one on 25 count fabric. I'm stitching over two on 32 count fabric. I doubled everything and added a couple for safety's sake, but I'd like to know if I'm short on anything right now, rather than when I get to the end of the project. Nothing stalls a finish for me better than running out of materials at the end of one.

I'm planning to spend Wednesday at my Mom's basting Summer Days. Her new apartment complex has a Great Room with tables that are perfect for basting quilts. She said that Wednesdays are days the room is usually empty, so we're going to try to get that done....I guess I'd better get the backing sewn...and make sure I have a batting available in the stash....hmm...

To Grid or Not To Grid - That Is The Question...

Oh brother, I'm paraphrasing Shakespeare - run for the hills!

Once I moved past my mourning period for Joyful Summer, I was able to focus on the Dragon for DH (you see - I made a deal with myself - no Dragon until I finished something. I picked my smallest WIP).

The first question I needed to address on a project this large, was whether I wanted to grid the fabric first or not. There are pros and cons to both gridding and not gridding. I suppose the largest con in my opinion is the huge amount of time it takes to do the gridding - only to take it all back out again. And yes, there are those that claim the time saved by using the gridding during the stitching process more than makes up for the time spent actually doing the gridding. I'm not sure I agree with them.

One can make the argument that gridding cuts down on counting errors. Anyone who has done cross-stitch for any amount of time will know that stitching errors are not a result of counting mistakes, but rather occur on their own time - for their own reasons. Running a line of thread through the fabric every 10 stitches won't stop the wanton glee a stitching error gets when it decides to rear it's ugly head.

Then there's the argument that gridding makes sure your design is centered on your fabric. This is true, and helpful if you want to start on the edge of the design. However, this argument doesn't hold water if you usually start in the center of the design. Being a center-starter myself, I don't tend to worry bout such things.

You can argue that gridding ensures you fairly quickly whether your fabric is large enough or not. However, being pretty adept at mathematics, I tend to trust my figures when working out fabric sizes.

So, after all this, how does it apply to the Dragon? Well, since this piece is a solid-stitch, I decided I wanted to start in a corner. I'm hoping to get all the background stitched first - leaving all the interesting bits for last - to spur me on.

So, I made the decision to grid the pages into my fabric. It won't take nearly as long, it will tell me pretty quickly if I have enough fabric or not and I'll know exactly where to start on the fabric for the corner.

And, after working on it all day Sunday, I got 5 lines in - of a 30 page pattern....yeah, this is going to take a while....what was my largest con to gridding again???

No Happy Dance for Me...

I finished this cross-stitch piece last weekend. It's called Joyful Summer and was designed by Country Cottage Needleworks and is stitched on 28 ct. Barest Blue Jobelin using the threads called for in the design. The picture makes it seem much darker than it is in real life - I never claimed to be the photographer in the family...
I left a couple of motifs off, as it felt finished when I got to this point. And who am I to argue with a stitched piece?

I planned to post my happy dance online - because that's what nearly everyone online calls a finish - a happy dance. However, I realized I didn't have the motivation to take the picture, photoshop it, and then post about it. In fact, as the day progressed, the more depressed I became. I found I had no motivation to do anything - quilting or cross-stitch. I ended up spending the evening eating popcorn and watching sappy love story movies.

By the next day, I found I could start work on the Dragon piece for DH (more on this later). After all, that was the whole reason I finished Joyful Summer - so I could start the Dragon guilt-free.

Apparently, instead of the happy dance I was expecting for finishing a very cute piece - I needed to go through a period of mourning for finishing a very cute piece. Let's say it all together this time - she's crazy.

Oh well, it's on my design wall waiting for me to have an inspired idea about framing. And meanwhile - on to the Dragon!