Incoherent Scribblings

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Outi and is:

What is your favorite past time while stitching? Do you just enjoy silence, listen to music/audiobooks or do you “watch” TV/movies? Do you have specific favorites you listen to/watch while stitching?

Honestly speaking, I like to do all of the above while stitching. Depending on my mood, sometimes I enjoy the silence, other times I listen to my last.fm station or my music collection, and sometimes I “watch” television shows or movies. Since I don’t own a television, I only watch a few select programs like House or Heroes on my laptop so obviously they are some of my favorites to “watch” while stitching.

However, I recently discovered the joy of listening to audiobooks while stitching.

I quite enjoyed listening to Harry Potter 1 and 2 during my drive over Christmas break a few weeks ago, which made me wonder if I would like to listen to them while stitching.

After all, if one can entertain his or her brain by listening to an audiobook while performing a mechanical task like driving, wouldn’t another mechanical task (like stitching* ) work just as well? So I set up a somewhat odd corner in my living room consisting of my stitching, my chair, and what I have dubbed my “all-purpose entertainment center” (aka my laptop) and started to listening to Harry Potter 3…

… And 4.
… And 5.

* Before anyone gets up in arms, as a stitcher I know that cross stitching is a creative outlet, but the fact is inserting a needle and thread into a piece of fabric over and over again is a pretty mechanical task… I think we all know what I mean.

First of all, if you haven’t figured out by some of the cryptic blog post titles here and there, I am seeing someone. As I told my mom, it is not the dude from the laundromat, but the situation is complicated and I am still trying to sort things out. I am not sure where it is going or if it will go anywhere, but he makes me laugh and for now that is enough.

Of course, all the time I am spending with him has drastically cut into my stitching time. I take my stitching with me because we keep insisting that we need to work on spending time in “companionable silence,” but for some reason when something gets unzipped, it isn’t my stitching bag!

Nevertheless, I did get some stitching time in this weekend while watching Season 1 of House M.D. As you may or may not know, when I moved to Texas I left my $10 yard sale TV in Iowa. As a result of this TV-lessness, I have been totally jonesing for Dr. House and finally decided to join Netflix so that I can watch TV shows that I missed while I was in Germany or have never seen in English and movies on my computer.

Writers strike or not, with no TV I have obviously not yet seen the current season of House, but I am thoroughly enjoying seeing all the previous episodes in order. I figure by the time I catch up on the first three seasons, Season 4 should be close to being released on DVD.

Anyway, while I was drooling over Dr. House, I worked on Outi’s replacement birthday exchange piece. Though I have no pictures to share at the moment, you can rest assured that I did not drool on the linen.

And as I usually say when I have no pictures to do the talking for me and I am running out of things to say, the exchange piece is coming along nicely, I am enjoying stitching it immensely, and I believe it is on schedule to be finished and mailed by December 1.

TTFN!