Gone, But Hopefully Not Forgotten?

I knew I'd had a lot on my plate these last few weeks, but could not believe it when I logged on today and saw that it's been nearly five weeks since I last posted! 

I've been working on things for customers, but also many of my own projects.  Like the "pirate quilt" for baby Gabriel.  I thought I was all finished with that last week and ran it through the wash only to have the appliques that I put on with iron-on craft adhesive fall off in the dryer!  Well, good thing I "tested" it before it sent it out.  Now, I have to find the time to applique them with hand sewing.

When last we met I was working on Opus Magnusson, the Celtic design inspired piece I'm working on for my eldest son (who just celebrated his 32nd birthday! YIKES!).  I was finished with rows 1 and 2 and had to make a start on row 3.  I had to wait for awhile to receive my shipments of Gentle Art Raven (black) which is the floss I have to use the most.  Well, this was another "good thing I . . ." because one shipment of five came and it was black, but with a LOT of green.  Which was not like the Raven I'd been using.  The second shipment came a couple weeks later and half was black with the same LOT of green, but the other half was a closer match to what I'd been using.  Now, I absolutely am not downing Gentle Art here because they always say that you should get all your thread at once because it won't always match what they're making down the road.  My problem was that although the designer gave the conversion COLORS on this chart (for Gentle Art floss), she did not give the AMOUNTS.  The second order was for 15 skeins and (remember - I'm on row 3) thank goodness!  I've been saving my tabs from the skeins so that when I'm done I can give a final account of how many skeins I actually used.  Hopefully it will help someone down the road.

Anyway, I used the skeins that matched what I'd been using to do my "coloring book" stitching on row 3 and then began filling them in.

And, of course, there were some changes.  I know, I said I wasn't going to change anything else.  But, look here - this is the original chart image -

Starting from the left, the horses mane - I was stitching the black and suddenly the horse looked more like a zebra, so I am not doing the black stripes in the mane.  The rabbits . . . I am sick and tired of that blech brown, and while I was stitching the outlines of the bunnies, all I could think about was Blue Bunny ice cream and Bunnicula.  So, MY bunnies are blue with red eyes.   Oh, and I changed the leaves on the tree a bit.  The next thing - we'll call it a dolphin, 'cause that's the only thing I can think to call it - I didn't like the posies or leaves so just put a sort-of celtic style sun over its head.  Lastly the men.  It really bothered me that they repeated from the top left corner.  So I was determined to make them be gone.  I pulled out my design books (and believe it or not, I had a Celtic drawing book in my collection from back in high school) and looked through them for inspiration.  I saw one sketch of a doe.  That got me to thinking that  not only is my son into fishing, he's also a deerslayer.  So I did the stag.  The green stuff with square swirlies behind him is meant to look like fir trees in the forest.  Does it?

Here are some close ups:

 You can see the red eyes on the bunnies here.

If you've been watching Revenge on ABC (one of MY favorite TeeVee shows along with Scandal and Mad Men), you know about the "8" on the back of the dolphin.  I also slightly changed the pattern and colors.

Here's the stag.  I haven't yet decided, but I may add something in the sky over the antlers.  Problem is, I don't know what I'd add.

The horse is going to get a circle spiral thing on it where the designer has her initials.  I just didn't like that.  In fact, I've already signed this piece in the lower right corner.   I'm not sure you can see it  in this photo, at the lower right in the border - I was really stupid and put in my initials and the year ('12) in over one - upside down!  DUH!

When you look at the chart picture, there is this fabulous border all around the whole thing.  I'm not doing that.  I am going to take a very small part of that border and do that.  It will be outlined with the black, but I'm going to use the black I got that has LOTS of green in it.  That way I'll hopefully use most of that up.  Then it will also have the green in it that is Gentle Art Tiger Lily.  I just love that green!

The other thing I've worked on is the needlepoint bird - remember I showed you the canvas I picked up?  Well, here's one side of the Blue Jay -

While I've been gone, I gathered all the information for the historical society's taxes to be prepared (thank God an accountant does that!), been a speaker at a DAR event for my chapter (they made sure NOT to tell me I had to sit up in front of everyone until we were lining up to go in!), provided sandwiches and been a hostess with my DAR chapter at a Naturalization Ceremony, designed the web page for my DAR chapter (not up yet), gotten the taxes for my family done (we were quite surprised that we had to pay this year - there went my furniture money!), my husband's landed a new job that he starts in about ten days (with a significantly shorter commute) and I've finally processed all our flex spend claims for the last year (before he leaves his current company) and we adopted a new member into the Family.  My garden is still a catastophe!  And the grass in the front yard needs mowed, but we're doing really, really well.

If you are the slightest bit queasy about mice, - especially dead ones - don't look at the next picture!

My son and I found this little guy outside out house a week ago.  We have a lot of feral cats in the area, but none will approach us.  This little guy did.  He was a Starvin Marvin and we brought him inside and gave him some tuna.  Within about an hour we'd decided he had to stay.  Buddy, the golden retriever, was none too sure about that.  For the first few days we kept Sebastian in a kitty carrier so that Buddy wouldn't eat him.  Then, with my husband and son out of town and the house quiet, I decided that I'd give communal living a try.  Poor Buddy got clawed in the nose once, and that's all it took.  He gives Sebastian a wide berth now.

We live in the country and we're the only house in our area.  Consequently, we get mice.  Thankfully, I'm not squeemish about them.  In fact, I welcome the black snakes that come into the basement, because I know they're not there to eat me, they're there to get the mice.  But I have long wondered what it would be like if we had a cat.  Sunday morning, I found out.  There was a bumping and thumping in the hallway at 6 in the morning and I came out to see Sebastian rolling on the floor.  Initially it looked like he was chasing his tail, but then this object went sailing through the air, he caught it and was rolling on the floor again.  I got close enough to see that it was a mouse - a dead one.  Probably the same one that had given me the stink-eye on the kitchen counter Sunday a week ago!!!  That'll teach him!  And I told Sebastian that his place in the household was now secure.  Hope you enjoyed!