Strawberry Jam

Well, I made my modest Stitch-A-Thon goal of finishing this motif. It may not look like much stitching, but there is a huge amount of backstitching. Not only on the jar, but tons and tons of backstitching on the green ribbon and around the cloth top. I did take a few stitches on the next motif, a heart. But I think that is all I will do until I come back from San Francisco. Tomorrow I will need to kit up the stitching I will be taking with me.

Tomorrow we also need to pack and get the cats ready for the catsitter. Generally packing is not much of a chore for us as we have clothes and toiletries in San Francisco already. But this time we need to take extra things for the hotel and convention. Plus we are running a room party for Westercon on Saturday night, so there are all kinds of party supplies that we will need. (Probably not the stand up Elvis.) Maybe this is the last hotel party we will have to run EVER! Hooray. I like parties in general, but running a party in a hotel is just a little bit wearing after the hundredth time. We have been running hotel room parties for this Westercon since 2004. We are toast. And there are dozens and dozens of things we need to do when we get to San Francisco, besides the convention. No rest for us until the middle of July.

A Bit More Rouge

After a few days of Hawaiian Mandala, it was time to move from blues to reds. This next section of Rouge is not so much of a picnic piece. When I finish the backstitching it will say Fraise, French for Strawberry, as in jam. I want to work on this section until it is done, then move on to the next section, a plaid heart. I don't know if I will get back to Hawaiian Mandala before we leave for the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday morning.

Things are moving on the convention here in July; moving slowly, but moving. But the convention we are going to in Santa Clara is having major problems. Although the convention has been running for decades, we are in a new hotel this year. I am not a department or division head, but I am on the board of directors. So I am spending many hours on the phone with different people trying to talk them out of trees. They don't call some people Drama Llamas for no reason! I will try to stitch this weekend, but I don't know if I will actually put in enough hours to call it a Stitch-A-Thon.

Q & A

I don't have much to add to this week's SBQ, so I thought I would answer these questions instead.

Why did you start your blog?

I've been stitching for many years, but on a very haphazard basis. I could say I had lots of UFOs, even though I thought of them as very slow WiPS, and not many finishes. I started listening to podcasts and thought about starting one of my own, but when it comes right down to it, stitching is a visual hobby. I thought that a blog with lots of pictures was the perfect way to both encourage me to stitch on a more regular basis and to share what I was stitching with others. It has worked like a charm.

How did you come up with your blog name?

I knew I wanted to finish some cross stitch, but I also do needlepoint and sew. I wanted a name that would encompass everything that you could do with fabric and thread. I also wanted to celebrate my passion, so using the word "desire" points up both the activity of stitching and the passion to expand my stash. I am a sucker for beautiful patterns and beautiful fabric.

Do your friends and family know about your blog and if so, what do they think of it?

Neither my family nor my in-laws are very computer literate. My mother is a extremely talented needlepoint stitcher and designer, but is suffering from macular degeneration which makes seeing anything on the computer screen difficult. My mother-in-law is also a talented needlepointer, but refuses to own a computer. Most of my friends do not stitch, but I do have one friend in Florida who reads (and comments) on my posts anyway.

How do you write posts?

I usually wait until I have some visible progress on a project to show, then post my progress, and possibly a little more about the other things that are going on in my life. This is a life blog, so I might make a post about my new iPhone (still love it) or other things that I am passionate about. Overall, I do try to focus on stitching. I use Facebook for general life status and LibraryThing for book reviews.

Have you ever had a troll or had someone leave unkind comments?

Trolls, no, spam, YES. I use Google Reader to subscribe to 68 stitching and sewing blogs. I also subscribe to comments on my own blog. About a month ago I noticed an odd comment, basically just a link to a website that seemed to be pushing antivirus software, but seemed more like a virus itself. I deleted the comment immediately and reported the blog to Blogger. I got a few more spam/phishing comments, but they seem to have gone away recently.

Do you check your stats?

I used to use BlogFlux mapstats to check where people were coming from and what keywords they were using to find pages in my blog. Now I use Google Analytics, which has a much more interesting set of stats and better maps. When I set up Trade for a Sheep to pass on some of my unused patterns and kits, I wanted to know if people who were reading Threads of Desire were clicking over to the new blog. I am still fascinated with what keywords, rightly or wrongly, point to my blog, but I probably don't check my stats more than once a month.

Do you care how many people read your blog?

Not particularly, but I guess I do get a bit discouraged if my readers seem to have decreased. I am never going to be hugely popular like a political or technology blog. I just remind myself that this is mostly for my own encouragement.

What kind of blogs/posts interest you?

I have sections in Google Reader on Technology, especially Apple; Stitching; a few Political Blogs; and some writing blogs. The only blogs I read on a daily basis are the Stitching blogs. I am interested in blogs that have a "voice", a point of view. I read some sewing blogs by people with interesting lives (though they might not think so). I also read an Australian blog on crazy quilting/creativity, even though I don't crazy quilt myself. I love progress pictures, even just a few stitches. We have all been there, just those first dozen stitches that point to a new start. I like to know what is going on in peoples' lives, though I don't have children and don't have much to contribute on posts about them.

What do you like and dislike about blogging?

Sometimes my husband thinks I spend too much time blogging or too much time trying to finish a section of stitching so that I can blog about it. I just like the pace of reading blogs first thing in the morning, doing some stitching, and catching up on more blogging in the evening. I don't like the pressure of blogging every day, but I don't think a week will go by without a couple of posts from me.

A Bit More

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the last post. Actually this is not stitched over one. It is 2 over 2 (silks) and 1 over 2 (metallics) on 32 count hand dyed (Silkweavers) Jazlyn. Jazlyn is a very heavy fabric, so the individual threads are not that visible except close up. I wanted a heavy fabric since this is a large piece (21" x 21" when finished) with a lot of jewels and beads (most of the unstitched parts in the center of the cross stitch). I did manage to get into a more normal sleeping pattern. I even woke up before my alarm clock Sunday morning! But last night I again had a lot of trouble sleeping, so who knows what my sleeping schedule will be like the rest of the week.

When I came back to this after not stitching for a few days, I seemed to breeze right through. Although I still have a LOT to organize, I needed some stitching time, so I spent about four hours stitching last night. I even started the last corner motif with some green thread left over from finishing the green in the southwest corner. The next color that needs some attention is black for the border and some interior boxes. But I think I will put this down for a while and stitch something else.

We did get some things done in the last week. On Saturday DirecTv was out and put up a new five band satellite dish. This gave us a bunch more HD channels, but also a new non-TiVo receiver. The receiver has already had some glitches, so I don't know how long we will have television. I'd rather have no television at all than Cox Cable. We also had a meeting at our house with the publicity people for the convention that is barreling towards us. I fed them a lovely spring supper of Baby Greens with Shrimp and SuperSweet tomatoes; Veal Marsala, Flavored Basmati Rice, Fresh Asparagus with Lemon; and Homemade Short Biscuits with Fresh Strawberries. These were some of the best strawberries I have had in years. Some of them were overripe, but it was worth losing a few and get strawberries that were red (and flavorful) inside and not just white and cardboardy. Organizing again today, but maybe a bit more stitching tomorrow.

65%

I guess I was mistaken. I thought I would be spending more time on organizing and less on stitching. I have been working on some projects, but I also have been staying up later and later. I find myself stitching from 1 am until 4 am or 5 am. I have always been a night owl, but now I seem to be sleeping late into the day. This has let me finish more of Hawaiian Mandala, but I can tell that I will have to switch over to Rouge soon. Even though I love the color, there is only so much blue even I can stitch before I need some red or green in my life. At least with over 50% of Part One stitched, I can see the end of this part and look forward to Part Two. It has a lot less to stitch. Mainly some golden pineapples and red flowers at the four compass points. Back to organizing again.

Christmas Joy Finished

This is Christmas Joy by Angel Stitchin from the JCS Ornament 2006 issue. I made a lot of changes. The linen is a darker 28 count linen, because I wanted the snowflakes to stand out better than they did on lambswool. For the white, the recommended thread was WDW Snowflake (4125, not 2220 as printed). I used DMC B5200 for the single stitches and Rainbow Gallery Tiara T117 for the large snowflakes to give them some more sparkle. The letters are GAST Black Crow, instead of WDW Mascara (3910, not 1279). because I have some on hand that I am trying to use up. The red is WDW Turkish Red (2266) which I had on hand rather than GAST Cherry Wine (0330). The tree trunk is just DMC 435 rather than Crescent Colours Roasted Chestnut. No need for a variegated thread for just a few stitches. The green border is actually the recommended GAST Pine (120) which I had on hand. And the tree is the recommended Crescent Colors Jolly Holly which I had to order. I should have used DMC 435 instead. The pattern is still cute, but there is too much monotonous stitching with the same colors. I think I am about done with Christmas until November. However, I should stitch one more ornament for May since I am a featured stitcher on Christmas Ornament Stitch-Along. I think I can find a good pattern with candles or candy canes. I love candy canes.

I might not get in any more stitching this week. I have a hundred projects that I have been avoiding for the past month and now they are all looming over me at once. A huge project is catching up on email, especially email on Westercon programming. I also have several packages of snail mail which need to be posted post haste. Then there is the jungle of the sewing room to tame, an interview with Tim Powers to prepare for, the DirecTv unit to replace, laundry to be done, and a myriad of messes small and large to be put to rights. Not to mention that starting tomorrow it is my week to cook. I think much take out is on the horizon. Here's hoping that your projects go smoothly and quickly. Have a good week!

Stitching Blogger's Question of the Week

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

Do you have any pieces that you would liked passed on to future generations as family heirlooms?

Mmmm, I suppose once I finish Hawaiian Mandala, I would hope that someone would keep it and love it as much as I do, but I also know that that might not happen. Actually I am glad to see my projects used. Maybe it is just when I am there, but my nephew's wife does use my stitched bibs and baby quilt. As for the ornaments and such, well, we don't have children to pass them on to. Our closest (young) relatives are my sister-in-law's children, my nephew and unmarried niece. Both of my parents are only children, so there are no cousins on my side. My sister was married, but only has Borzoi, not children. Maybe I could sew up a dog chew toy. :-)

I got most of the red star on Joy stitched up while waiting for a tuneup and oil change on the car. We are driving to Los Angeles tomorrow for a meeting Saturday morning. It's about a four hour drive. I suppose we could do it in one day, but it makes for a very long day. Generally we either leave very early Saturday morning and spend Saturday night or stay Friday night. We are going to try to leave somewhat early and visit a few art galleries tomorrow, go to the meeting on Saturday, and drive home Saturday evening. I should have a finish to show you on Sunday. I hope everyone has a great weekend, especially since the weather is getting nicer for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

Tree!

I finished the tree (and all the tangly Crescent Colours thread). There is just the red star on top, the green band, the red border, and a bunch of over eight stars to finish. I need to pick a more complex design next time. Just filling in swaths of the same color is pretty boring.

Maybe I could have stitched a bit more yesterday if I had not spent six hours on the phone with DirecTv. We have been having satellite reception problems since we got back from Hawaii. Yesterday there was no reception at all, so we called -- a half a dozen times. They sent some sort of code to our receiver and viola! channels again. Oops, only half the channels we should have. OK, more codes sent and now we have all the channels we should have. Except this is a DVR (digital video recorder, like a VCR) and it would not record at all. Another call. When I unplugged the unit to restart it, no channels again. Despite unplugging and replugging the Satellite In cable, and changing the output on the dish at the multiswitch; nothing. All the while they are suggesting that we upgrade to their newer receiver (which is the focus of lots of anger about buggy software on DirecTv forums). But we were left with no choice. I've ordered a new receiver/DVR but not from DirecTv. I will have to have DirecTv come out and replace our satellite dish. Luckily the only television that we watch on a regular basis is Lost, and we can see it on abc.com. If this doesn't work, our only alternatives are Cox Cable or the internet. I wonder if the networks understand that they are losing customers because for a lot of people television technology is too expensive and too complex. People just want to plug their television into a power plug and turn it on. My husband often wonders how people less technology knowledgeable than us manage at all in this complex technology universe.

Better

Here is Joy about a third finished. It took a half an hour to frog the Weeks Dye Works Envy. I wasn't exactly following straight lines, so it took a little time to find out where to unpick the stitches next. I really didn't want to go after it with scissors. I was too afraid of nicking the fabric. Yes, the Crescent Colours Jolly Holly is just perfect. Green, but still light enough to let the letters show through. I still dislike this thread however. It still knots like crazy. And although it is a variegated thread, it is not variegated enough to make it worth finishing each cross as I go. I still am though. Force of habit. Just like I railroad everything. Next time I run across a pattern with Crescent Colours I am definitely going to change them for solid DMC (320 is a perfect match for Jolly Holly) or GAST or WDW.

Although I got a lot done last night, I don't think I will finish it completely this weekend. We are still spending some time at Corflu, the fanzine convention. We also have a lot of other projects (like Westercon) that need work, too. There are still two more levels of tree, a large star, the rest of the red border, the rest of the green side panel, and a whole bunch of stars to do. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Stash

You know how it goes. First you just need some supplies. In this case, I decided as much as I dislike Crescent Colours thread, if I wanted this ornament to come out correctly, I should just order Jolly Holly and frog all the beautiful Weeks Dye Works Envy that I had stitched for the tree. Yes, unfortunately, the Jolly Holly is light enough that the black lettering will not just disappear. So if I want to finish this ornament for the Christmas Stitch A Long this weekend, I better start frogging.

But, of course, when you are browsing around an ONS, there are probably going to be a lot of beautiful things that you see there also. And if they have sheep, well, I guess I have no resistance at all. While I was so conveniently online, I just happened to spot these three booklets with cute sheep and they just jumped into my cart.

And I also have a weakness for Halloween designs. I had seen this ABC Halloween from Hinzeit stitched up in the Lexington, Kentucky, LNS. I looked all over for the chart, but they were out. Since Hinzeit charts were also on sale at this ONS, I also had to grab this cute flip flops chart, especially since I wear flip flops almost every day, except in Las Vegas in winter and San Francisco most of the cool, cool year.

There has been NO stitching since I got back to Nevada. We went to the Corflu meet and greet last night. I spent a delightful time talking to my friends from Florida, Tony and Judy.

Today James and I have been trying to plan out our trips for the rest of the year. We are trying to decide if we are going to try for 1K status (100,000 miles) on United airlines this year. Most years we are between 70 - 80,000 miles. We have a cruise out of Lisbon, Portugal, planned for October. One more transoceanic trip ought to give us enough miles. We have some time free in September. James is suggesting Bali or New Zealand, and I am thinking about Paris or Scandanavia. We have plenty of time to decide this. Maybe it will just be back to Hawaii. Just because we can travel, doesn't mean we have the energy to do so. But those empty spaces in the calendar do tempt us to fill them up.

As far as the house goes, we now have a new thermostat and a new external DVD burner for James. I still need to call the window guy and the tree guy.

Merrily We Row Along

I got another couple of rows done on Summer Ewe. I probably would have done more if I hadn't watched National Treasure: Book of Secrets on the plane. And even more if I hadn't turned the Q-snaps 90 degrees and started half a row with the cross stitch legs reversed. Oh, well. It's not hard to frog on 25 count fabric. I think I will go back to Rouge until I can finish the jam motif.

As I predicted, I didn't sleep on either plane. I wasn't too groggy, but I did sleep most of Tuesday and then went to bed and slept again almost the entire morning. I got up when the doorbell rang. We got our humidifier from Amazon! Now you may wonder why it took us more than three years to order a humidifier. Maybe it's from living too long in the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and northern California. In those houses we had DEhumidifiers. But I have had trouble sleeping. The bedding seemed scratchy even with fabric softener. Now I don't think it was the bedding per se, but I do think that dry skin and ultra dry bedding was making me itchy. Hopefully the addition of a large humidifier in the bedroom will bring the humidity up to a reasonable level and I won't feel so itchy all the time.

No matter which house we are in, a lot of time is spent on repair projects. Last night we took my husband's desktop machine to the Apple store to replace his CD/DVD burner. The result? Buy an external burner from the internet. It was way cheaper. Today the air con guy is coming to check out a blower in the back hallway that seems to be constantly on, even when the heating and aircon wall switches are OFF. At least the pool was emptied, the mineral line scrubbed off, and refilled while we were gone. It looks great. Now I need to call a window guy to fix the cracked window in the breakfast room and a tree guy to stake one tree by the side of the house that is leaning on the roof.

Warm Water Wash FINISHED

I stitched this for the April Stitch-A-Thon, but I had to cheat a little. I added the buttons this morning to finish this up. It still needs to be carefully ironed. But I won't be getting back to frame this in Maui before July, so it can wait until then. I still have the sheep I started on the SuperFerry to stitch on the plane tonight.

We usually take a United flight from Maui to San Francisco or Los Angeles in the afternoon and land in Las Vegas around midnight. But we were having a hard time finding a reasonably priced seat on those planes, so we are taking the overnight flight to Los Angeles and landing in Las Vegas before 8 am. I used to be able to sleep on planes, but as I have gotten older, that is simply not happening. So I might drift off for a minute or two here and there, but will probably land in Las Vegas and sleep for most of Tuesday. That's why I don't like taking these overnight flights. But we have nothing we absolutely have to do until Thursday night. This weekend is a fanzine convention in Las Vegas. I am not much of a fanzine fan, but my husband says we need to see and be seen by the local fans so that they will come to our convention in July. There is a lot for us to do before July, but I will be glad to have that convention over with. I don't have any major commitments for working conventions after that. Oh, except for designing the program book for LosCon over Thanksgiving and working the fan table at Denvention for Australia in 2010. And a couple of panels at BayCon over Memorial Day weekend. Stop me before I volunteer again!