Incoherent Scribblings

Back to the Rotation

Here are a couple progress pics of what I have been working on this week. As you can see I got my rotation mojo back!

I only worked on “Above the Clouds” for about an hour and a half on Monday so my progress didn’t really warrant a progress scan, but on Tuesday and Wednesday I put some serious work into “Catch the Wind” and “Four Seasons Cats – Spring.” And seeing as I haven’t shown any pics of either of them for about a month, I definitely thought it was time to show off how I am progressing.
CtW is coming along quite nicely. I am about 80% finished with Anna and think it is quite likely that I will finish her next week. It will be exciting to finish Anna and move onto Mary because once I start Mary I can start counting down the stitches to my first major happy dance of the year.

My spring cat is also finally starting to take shape. I finished the pillow that she is sitting on last week and this week I started the actual kitty. It is my tentative goal to stitch each cat during its appropriate season and if the rest of the seasons stitch up as smoothly as spring is, I just might manage it.

Finally, for those of you who were wondering who the recipient of the little ornament that I made a couple of weeks ago was… It was my mom and the ornie was her Mother’s Day present, which of course I didn’t decide to make until the Friday before Mother’s Day.

Such last-minute gifts weren’t a problem when I used to live nearby, but now that I live on the other side of the world “last-minute” tends to turn into all-out-late. However, I did call her to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day and told her something was on the way, so overall I still think I can count myself as a good daughter.

Special Favorites

This week’s SBQ was suggested by Nancy and is:

What is your favorite specialty stitch? Which one is your least favorite? Why?

I don’t do a lot of specialty stitches because I tend to prefer good old-fashioned cross stitching. However, if I have to have a favorite I think I would choose eyelet stitches because they are easy to do and I like the way they look. Lazy daisies, on the other hand, are my least favorite specialty stitch because no matter how hard I try I just can not get them to look right!

May Stitch-A-Thon

Thanks for all the birthday wishes today. As I keep telling everyone who asks, “It is a beautiful day to turn 27… again!” I have to say that my 27th year of life was probably the best one so far… ergo my decision to stay that age indefinitely.

I wasn’t sure how much stitching I might accomplish over the weekend, being it was my pre-birthday weekend and all, but I went ahead and participated in the Friends Gather Stitch-A-Thon anyway. My entry for this month was “Fairy Flora” and my goal was to at least give her some arms, and if time permitted, a head.

As you can plainly see, Flo now has arms and a face, so apparently I met my goal. What you might also be interested to know is that quite a bit of my progress was accomplished while Hubby and I watched the Eurovision Song Contest. (You can read my reaction to that whole thing here.)

I have to say that I was really amazed at how much I got done because I was having quite the time trying to keep track of my progress while watching the contest close enough that I could also make snide remarks about the music and costumes!

And now I am off to eat cake and ice cream… Cheers!

Breaking the Silence

I know it’s been a long time since I last updated, but honestly I just haven’t had a lot to say about my life in Germany lately.

Even so, I did do a very European thing the other night: For the first time in the four years that I have lived here, on Saturday night A. and I watched the Eurovision Song Contest.

From what I understand, the Eurovision Song Contest is about as important around here as the World Cup. (For my American readers out there, the World Cup is this big soccer tournament that is held every four years and is just as important to the rest of the world as the Super Bowl is to Americans.)

Though A. had seen the Eurovision Song Contest numerous times as a kid, we had never bothered to watch it since coming to Germany because we don’t listen to the kind of music it is usually associated with: Catchy pop songs, big ballads, and folk music.

However, this year was different: This year rock came to Eurovision from Finland in the form of a “horror rock” group who dress in monster costumes and call themselves Lordi… Now that is the kind of music that A. and I listen to!

As with any shock rock group, Lordi stirred up controversy in Athens even before they went on stage and of course, this made A. and I all the more eager to see them perform. The “controversy” is nothing that any fan of Alice Cooper, Kiss, or Marilyn Manson hasn’t heard before: They are Satanists; they are corrupting family values, etc., etc.

Lordi was scheduled to perform seventeenth out of twenty four entries, so A. and I had to sit through 16 mostly whiney songs and then had to wait as the German commentator warned parents to shield their children’s eyes for the three minutes that the monster rockers performed. (Interestingly enough there were no warnings given when scantily-clad women from various countries performed. Oh yeah, that’s right, we’re in Europe, not America: Sex is OK here, violence is not.)

“Hardrock Halleluiah” was the song and as a hard rock/heavy metal fan I think I can say it wasn’t too bad. In my opinion it was far from the death and/or speed metal that I was all too familiar with in my youth and frankly I wasn’t even close to shocked. I rather enjoyed the performance and though I was rooting for them, I really didn’t give them much of a chance to place very highly, let alone win.

Yet win they did and it pleased me to think that in this pop-and-hiphop-infested world that maybe real rock and roll isn’t dead after all.

Happy (Early) Birthday to Me!

Technically my birthday isn’t until Monday, but I received a bunch o’ presents this week and I just had to open them right away! On Wednesday I got three packages in the mail. Two were from ladies in my SBEBB Birthday Exchange Group and the other was from my mom. And then today I received a package from the third lady in our little group.

The first package that I opened was from Dawn. I was most anxious to open this one because it was the first I had heard from her since they moved last month. (For those of you who are wondering, she is doing OK.) In the parcel I found a letter from her, some DMC, a couple of charts, and of course the stitched exchange piece.

For the exchange she made me a wall-hanging from a Waxing Moon design that says, “You’ll always be my best friend… you know too much!” I love this wall-hanging because it so accurately describes our friendship: We have been best friends for so long that we definitely know too much about each other! And the funny part is I have a design that has that exact saying on it that I have thought about stitching for her numerous times!

I then opened my package from Melissa and to my delight found that she had stitched me a redwork piece and finished it into a trivet. I have admired the trivets she made for the other ladies and was hoping she would make me one too!

I love her stitched piece, but she really made my day with one of the extra goodies she sent along. She sent me one of the pieces on my wish list… (drumroll please) TW’s “Tapestry Cat!” Oh, how I have been dying to get my hands on this chart! I only have a limited number of ONSs that I can order from and none of them has ever had this chart so I am thanking Melissa from the bottom of my heart for this wonderful surprise. (((HUGS)))

I finished off my Wednesday present-opening-gala with the package my mom sent me and discovered she had also sent me a handful of DMC. I have looked at my checklist and I am now only missing about 20 DMC colors and I will have a complete set. Super! Thanks Mom!
And finally today I got my last SBEBB Birthday Exchange package. It was from Cathy and she stitched me a lovely little needlebook with purple pansies. This is my first needlebook and I will definitely put it to good use: Right now my needles are just stuck in a scrap of Aida cloth. Cathy also sent me a postcard, some pins, and some pansy embellishments.

So far I think I can say I have had a pretty good birthday. Hubby gave me the green light to order some stash as one of my birthday presents from him (I am planning on getting L&L’s “Celtic Summer,” Mirabilia’s “Blossom Harvest,” and maybe some other things.) and though he has to finish a paper for a conference this weekend, on Sunday he has also promised to take me out to dinner and, depending on the weather, either to the zoo or a movie.