My Stitching bits and bobs order arrived yesterday so I have all the silkies for the Dragon Dreams Lost Dragon Sampler. I have decided to stitch it on the same fabric as the evening dragon I jsut finished as I think all the bright greens and deep purples will just look scrummy on it. I plan to start it inbetween doing stuff on Aredhel this weekend. I took a piccie of the pretty threads and fabby too. I can’t wait to get it started .. and finished. He is just so cute and I even think I know how I will do the finishing… I have some gorgeous purple velvet that will make a great backing fabric / edging for a bell pull style thingy.

The other thing I forgot that was in the package was a yard (yes a yard) of Queen Annes lace 32ct Jobelan that I was going to use for Chatelaines Japanese Garden. It is a lovely light neutrtal colour. But since Nancy sent me this huge silkweaver solo for my Round Robin I have been looking at it thinking maybe the solo would work well for japanese garden. I will decide what fabric I am going to do my Round robin on once my taupo gets here from country stitch (should be early this coming week) and then make my final decision on Japanese garden.

Well Doom maybe a little dramatic as I am sure a Santa on a sled isn’t really going to herald the end of the earth as we know it.

I finished another whimsical Santa and as you mat have guessed while they are still as whimsiccal as ever the whimsy is slowly draining from stitching them. This gives me eight of twelve panels complete *happy happy happy*
With the panel done I go now to dive into the fifthe weekend SAL and stitch many a little cross of 310 into Aredhel. (apologies for the dodgey picture)

I finished my first project for my 10 project challenge!

It’s the Evening Dragon freebie from Dragon Dreams. I got it in my last order from Stitching Bits and Bobs. He is so adorable and stitched up in two nights :D. It is stitched on 32ct opalescent lugana in this gorgeous soft prurple colour. I doesn’t have a name it just says limited edition. I got it as part of a fabric of the month package from silkweaver some time ago.
I made a couple of changes becasue I was missing some threads. Firstly the yellow areas of the dragon I subbed Kreinik 028 #4 Braid in instead of DMC 743 and the Knights shiny bits were stitched in Kreinik #4 102 not the called for 001V vintage silver. The words were stitched in Kreinik 060 #4 braid midnight (love that colour) and to avoid doing french knots the knights eyes and dragons nostrils are mill hill petite beads #42014. You can’t see the sparkle much in the picture but it’s there 😉 I am thinking I might try turning him into one of those cute little flat fold thingys I have seen about on peoples blogs and send him to my nephew for Christmas. (well 2nd cousin actually but he calls me auntie)

I have three packages full of stash I’m waiting for that were ordered before I signed up for the project challenge. One is all the specialty threads for the lost dragon smapler which will be my next start. It should be another quick stitch.

Okay Sue so I am a little late with the run down of melbourne trip. I blame Nic though. I was at her place until late last night while she force fed me chocolate and cheese and other nummy things. The silks we ended up with were so pretty I think we have both decided  that another order is a must. 🙂
And fudgey dear my fall to the darkside is mainly to see how quickly I can finish a number (10) of small projects and obligation stitching bits as I don’t intend to be off stash buying for long 😉 Will you forgive me my stint on the wagon?.. I will email you about the JCS thingy too.

So on to melbourne. It was really a whirlwind trip we got in late tuesday night so there wasn’t much time to do anything except our usual wandering the streets of Melbourne taking photos of the pretty buildings. The weather was lovely and drizzly with the usual wind we have come to expect from what is fast becoming one of my favourite cities. Wednesday I dropped Mr B off at his training and then headed off to shop. This meant however that I had two hours to kill before anything opened, the 10am – 11am opening times of anything but cafes is something I can appreciate…not being much of a morning person myself. I wandered around aimlessly and zen navigated myself through the centre of town and out to fitzroy, hitting Brunswick street (my favourite shopping district)

just as some things were opening at 10. I really need to figure out the whole tram thing next time I could hardly stand after the amount of walking i did over the two days lol. I shopped my self silly buying cute bits of jewlery, including a gorgeous little miniature pocket watch, I consider it my best buy of the trip …well that and the Nightmare before Christmas storybook.

I eventually headed back into town and met up with Mr B for lunch then wandered about some more before hitting haighs and picking up choccies for everyone I had promised them too and a few violet creams for myself. I always have fits trying to decide what to buy in Haighs there is so many delicious looking yummies. Me decisions made I headed back to the hotel to wait for Nancy and Sharon… boy was I nervous I am not so good with the whole meeting new people thing I am rather shy, contrary to popular belief. So I stood myself and my blue hair outside the hotel and waited. Quite surprisingly I managed to pick Sharon and Nancy from up the street and once they got down to the hotel we designated Sharon the decision maker and followed her lead inside for coffees.

Bored yet…. hehe

Meeting Sharon and Nancy was the best part of my whole trip they are
both such lovely people and we chatted the afternoon away for about three hours. Nancy even brought along some of her stitching *drool* Her dragon fae is something to behold I thought the wips I had seen of it looked good.. in person it has stitched up incredibly. I was completely blown away. Bess too for that matter, it was truly insipiring.

I was going to take pics of them as the dragon fae won’t fit on the scanner anymore but we got sidetracked gasbagging and I completely forgot.. ooops. Next time I go down though I am going to make sure I don’t make Nancy drive all the way into the city… hook turns are truly scary and no one should ever have to deal with them .. that and a I still feel guilty about the parking fine lol. ( told you we talked for a while).

After coffee with Nancy and Sharon I wandered back into town and met up with Mr B and a dear friend of ours for some more shopping and then a walk up to lygon street to run the gauntlet of restaurants to find somewhere to eat. We had a lovely dinner then headed off to a local bar to meet up with more friends from the melbourne uni choir who had been practising for a concert we unfortunately won’t be able to attend. We eventually headed back to the hotel and called it a night. Thursday was much of the same with me wondering all over town, meeting up for lunch with friends etc and a bit more shopping.

The main difference to thursday though was I went and tracked down koko black a chocolate boutique cafe on the reccomendation of fudgey. Wow great atmosphere and a phenomenal aroma. I settled in with my laptop to do a little work and ordered a coffee and what AI thought would be a small

something off the menu. I have never been so defeated by a yummy chocolate thing quite so quickly. Three spoons of the chocolate martini and I was done for. It was so decadently rich and intense … highly recommended just take a friend :p
So there we are, we were at the airport ready to head home by 5pm and back to work friday morning. I am still madly in love with Melbourne as a
city and its crazy weather is usually a source of entertainment. I was giggling constantly at the people whining about it being 28 to 31 degrees down there. They really should come spend a summer in brisbane with our joyous humidity at 85% and 35+ degree temps. lol

I still dream of moving to melbourne and getting an old turn of the century terrace house that I can do up and fill with antiques.

Ok so anyone who reads stitching blogs must of come across this by now. On the 1st iof september over at the wagon BB (links to come later) a challenge was started that basically boils down to stitching 50 projects from your stash before you can buy new stash. This has been adapted to 10, 25 and 50 project challenges to allow for those of us who stitch somewhat larger pieces and 50 projects is likely to take more years than we have life expectency.

I toyed with this idea for the past week or so… I haev a lot of stash especially for someone who hasn’t really been stitching that long. But more over I have a lot of projects that I would love to see completed… and yes Fudgey that does also include that evil bookmark. So I have decided to give it a go… really what harm can it do. I have a number of gifts I need to get finished and I am sure I can squeeze in few smaller projects here and there along the way.

So I have signed up for the 10 project challenge (wish me luck) there are a couple of exceptions to stash acquisition these being my FOTM from silkweaver, the JCS ornament issue if I decide to buy it, a couple of M designs trees I want to get for gifts and any materials / Charts I need to get for the HAED RR. The only other expceptions are beads/ threads I need to complete an already started project. I figure all in all this shouldn’t prove too difficult as I have fabric under control for the RR (thank you nancy) and my kit and fabric ordered for Japanese garden. I may even find I am inspired to increasee my challenge to 25 projects but we’ll see. I really do enjoy impulse shopping way to much.

I will post the complete rules etc and the BB link later ( I am jsut too lazy to do links etc right now). Tomorrow I am off to Nics to comapre our new silk hauls and possibly even get some stitching in. I was going to participate in the UFO SAL this weekend but I don’t think it is likely at this point.. oh well, not to worry there is no way I will be missing the new start SAL in october it seems I may recieve my threads (courtesy of Mr floss fairy) for Return of Spring before then *bounce*

Tomorrow I will also be sure to post about my trip to melbourne 😉

Well I am off for a whirlwind trip to melbourne in a few hours but I thought I would post a few things before I headed off. My mail box has been overflowing with gorgeous bits and pieces lately so I have pictures to share.

Firstly all the wonderful goodies Nicki sent me.. I was so surprised when Nicki offered to send me her chart of the Tudor knot sweet bag once she had finsihed with it, so you can imagine my surprise when it seemed to have picked up a few friends in its trip across the Tasman. Along with the chart there were also two lovely small cuts of fabric and an adorable little kitty card. It certainly made my day at work yesterday 🙂

Then today I got my Silikes from Vicki Clayton !!!!!  32 skeins of delicious silks to fondle. Sue I still say you are so very very very naughty but thank you so much for that gift certificate. I am hatching a few plans for these silks which I will elaborate on more here once I figure out the details. The colours are so yummy, both the solids and the varigated. I am so taking these with me to melbourne so I can oggle them some more. I just haven’t had enough time to play with them yet. 😉

The other piccie is the cute little halloween charts Nic (the naughty little pixie) gave me on the weekend. They are adorable. I want to try and stitch the ghost to hang over the bar for out halloween party…. we shall see how I go. It should be a nice quick stitch though… hmm maybe I can use the DMC glow in the dark thread I have for the ghost.

Thank you everyone for all your comments on my round robin dilemma. I have decided to go with number 3 and have started pulling the threads today. Mmmm yummy colours and I can’t wait to get started on her. I am currently thinking of stitching her on a piece of Highland linen from picture this plus but will need to look at all the thread colours against it first. The other options are Jubilation from silk weaver and splash also from picture this plus. I think splash will be a bit too dark though.

*** headless woman warning for Sue****

And to prove that I have been doing some stiching… just not a great deal. A picture of Rose of Sharon. I haven’t made too much progress on her since last time but she is slowly growing. I am surprised how long it is taking me to finish her really. The dress just flew by but the top of the arch seems to be going so slowly.

Oh I also got pressies from Nic… some cute little halloween charts (she is so naughty). I will post a pic of them later though. I’m off to sort through threads and start sectioning up my chart 😀

Round Robin 2.0 is breaking my poor fragile brain into tiny tiny pieces. I can’t make a decision and keep changing my mind everytime I think I have. The latest idea turned dilemma is Linda Ravenscofts: Turquoise. I love this chart, and thought (woo hoo) I will just do a sectioned up version of this much like the beautiful Sea of Roses Nancy did for round robin 1.0. If only it were that easy.

The chart is proving difficult to section without cutting eyes / noses in half etc. Nancy beautiful talented person that she is did a few mockups for me.. now I have 4 to choose from! I look at them think I have made up my mind and then change it again. This is where you come in, oh wonderful yet small and select group of people that read my blog. I need you to vote. Please end my suffering by placing a vote for layout 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the comments. I am sure it will not be pretty if I lose what little of my mind I have managed to retain thus far.

I have progress bars *points excitedly to the sidebar*. Finally after mnay months of trying to sort out the best way to get progress bars onto my little piece of the web I have done it (thanks adam for the help). I am a blithering idiot most times when it comes to anything to do with code. Now I can see just how little progress I have made on my current active wips. There are too many to list them all so I am only placing the “active” ones on the sidebar for now.

I have grand plans of a funky css based wip page … one day but that will take a great deal of learning and tinkering I jsut don’t have the time for at the moment. I have decided I am bored with my blog layout… which is problematic because I am too indecisive to choose a new one. The search continues for one I like though so eventually I hope there will be more changes about here than just the progress meters. Stitching pics soon I promise .. if not I will find some other pretty picture to post becuase my blog is looking all dull with just text on it. 😀

So…. yesterday I recieved an email “inviting” me to give a 15 min presentation at the student symposium for the research institute my supervisor sold my soul to for more money. I love the way they called it an invitation and then demanded that I send the topic of my talk in by friday. There was no “if you are unable to attend” option nor was there any indication that I had a choice in the matter at all.

This resulted in a substantial increase in my stress levels more accurately described as downright panic. They started running these symposiums last year… I attended and Nic volunteered to give the presentation in my place (something I will forever be greteful for). I watched as students were bullied and had thier work torn apart by academics that in some cases had not even bothered to pay enough attention to fully understand what the students were presenting. This humiliation and unhelpful nitpicking is not something I really wish to put myself through… I mean really who would.

After a day of terror I had finally decided that I would simply refuse to give the talk. People who presented well thought out and thorough work in the previous year had been crucified and I am in no way confident that my most recent rework of my project will stand up to that level of scrutiny. In six months time I hope it wioll be a different story and current progress suggests that is not unrealistic, but right now my data is not ready to be presented. I was not looking forward to the reaction such defiance would be greeted with by my supervisor in particualr my co-supervisor……

In a flash of inisght though it was pointed out to me that I simply won’t be around on the date they have selected for the symposium! They are holding it on the 1st of November and I have already booked leave for Halloween! So thank you Adam for saving me from the evil evil student symposium once again you have proven to be a most effective stress relief. Your little trip over from the big scary USA place is perfectly timed….

Oh and by the way we will be day tripping on the 1st of November to somewhere… anywhere outside of brisbane. That way it won’t be a liw when I tell them that I can’t possibly come in just for the day because I will be out of town 😉

In other work related news my supervisor is a complete fruitcake… today whilst trying to remember which one of his litany of failed project students etc was working on a particualr aspect of a project he declared “You are an oasis of brilliance in a sea of mediocrity” in relation to me … I almost fell off my chair laughing. Tmorrow he is bound to be telling me I don’t work hard enough.