Mojo on steroids, Spanish class, and other stories

Hi all!

As my title suggests, my mojo must have gotten a shot of steroids because I have three new starts and one has been finished! Warning- picture heavy!

But first let's check out the progress on two WIPs, shall we?

Here's The Journey by LHN. I love how the turquoise color really spiced this up! It's actually CC Mint Julep and it is now my favorite color. It's stitched on Slate linen, not sure of the count though. I wanted a 'rock' looking color besides the usual flagstone color which is mined nearby me. There are two more lines of stitching left in different colors below the white. Then I'll start the top portion of the up and down which represent mountains. The bottom would be upside down mountains! I'm seeing this finished in March. 

I also pulled out Blackbird by BBD. Here's what it looked like a year ago..

And how it looks after a couple days of stitching..

This is a DUCJ/FSAL2015 start! Pretty bad if you ask me! This is stitching up smallish. I always get my measurements wrong. I do use a a calculator to find the width and height of the finished design for a good piece of fabric and am always surprised when the design is small! It looks so big on the chart! Not much more to go now, the vase, branch and a few more leaves.

So startitis really got a hold on me and here's what I started..

Rojo y Verde, hence Spanish class in my title. Means Red and Green. Designed by Raquel Blanco/Maggi's Co Village. I bought this in PDF with a few other charts and freebies. In December we received emails from her notifying us she is closing her cross stitch business due to illegal downloading. That makes me so angry! There is a pinner on Pinterest that has a load of Maggi's Co graphs on her board. I don't know if she has permission to do that. I won't go into how aggravated I get seeing actual graphs on Pinterest. Grrr.. Anyway, I'm working with just 4 DMCs, two shades of red and green. I'm doing this on antique white linen, maybe 32ct. It's nice to use up the small pieces of mystery linen I have my stash! Here is how it looks stitched up, picture borrowed from the Internet..

It's the NOEL at the top right. As you can see, she had really cute designs. 

Next up is Merry Brew by PSS, a favorite designer of mine..

I just started this last night with the called for linen and overdyes while watching Top Gun! Once again, have a big ol piece of fabric left over and the design is shoved up into the left hand corner because I was expecting the design to be big! Lol. But I have a good 4 inches for framing so it's not so bad.

My last start is Snow Much, I believe, by Barbara Ana, and finished also..

It is sooo cute! The fabric is a Dahlia evenweave, don't know the count, from stash. I thought it was perfect for this design with the pink running through it. I changed the brim color of her hat because I didn't have the called for color. Her nose and the wording are DMC color variation threads. I'm starting to really like that DMC thread. I found a perfect backing fabric for this as I'm making a flat ornament out of her.

I haven't received my stash yet, :(  One of the items I'm buying is a brand new Market item so I think that's what's holding my order up. Speaking of Market, anyone seeing interesting items you got to have? I'm treating myself to a road trip down to Phoenix for the Market day at the Attic. I'm not sure what day it is, I'll have to checkout their newsletter to find the date. Going by myself since my daughter considers a walk inside a needlework shop to be some kinda H. E. L. L. Lol! 

I wanted to yell from the mountain top that the funny thing they saw in my mammography is BENIGN!!! Yes, I had to have an MRI two Friday's ago and just got word yesterday that I'm Benign. I can't tell you how relieved I am! So ladies, if you're over 40, please go get yourselves a mammography if you don't already do it. I hadn't had one in 10 or more years. I will now be getting one every year since I'm 52. Eh.

Thanks for your comments everyone. Wish I could put up an email so I could talk back to you. The email I stated in my last post for Barb to send me her mailing info resulted in a couple of trash emails. I just hate that.

Have a wonderful weekend

Winner and progress

I have drawn a name and the winner of the PS chart and fabric is...............BARB the Wicked Stitcher!

Whoop! Whoop! Email me at        Barb, to let me have your mailing address. 

I have been stitching on The Journey...

I must say that stitching up and down, up and down is pretty boring! I'm really hankering for a new start of something and really fighting the urge. I would prefer to finish this but....I might start a few new things this weekend. I'm watching Downton Abbey season 5 right now and I have the 6th season in DVD. There again, I'm trying not to watch the entire final season! 

Yes, it's been a weekend of fighting my urges! Speaking of fighting urges, since I don't have a significant other, I bought myself a little package of chocolate truffles and bought some stash! Can't wait for my stash!

Thanks for stopping in! Wow, those of you in the upper Midwest and the East coast are just getting walloped with cold. Hope you're keeping warm and safe. Not to make anyone mad but it has been in the middle 70s here where I live! Front door is open, heater shut off! Oh, and...

Back with a finish

I'm back! And I have a finish, yay. More cemetery pictures too, hehe. The last one has a story about Nicolas Cage. Just scroll on by the tomb pics if you don't want to see more!

I was up until 10:30 last night putting in the last stitches. You know how it is, you stay up late because you're so close to a finish. This is Whoo's There by PS..

On 32ct something linen with all of three DMC's. My favorites are the two skeletons. I'm also seeing some cat hairs in this! Ha. I think I'm going to do a cube finish with this as soon as the finishing juices get flowing again. This is my 3rd finish in 2016.

Because I'm done, I would like to give the chart and the fabric away..

The chart has some dings on it. I always print out a working copy to use but for some reason, didn't here. But it's all good. The fabric is big enough for the design. If more than one person wants it, I'll choose a name a week from today. Let me know if you would like the fabric also or just the chart. Unfortunately, I can only mail in the U.S. 

Cemetery pictures! I think this tour was the highlight of my trip. Why? Because I'm weird that way and I'm a Halloween freak!

Here's the story: this is Nicolas Cage the actor's tomb. Yes, he bought a tomb! Which sets off jokes about his career being dead! Anyway, he bought a large house in the French Quarter, a more than 100 year old house that has some history to it. The history is of Madame LaLauri or LaLaurie and her husband who were said to perform medical experiments on their house slaves. You all might remember hearing about the actor and him going into bankruptcy and he lost this house among others. Now it is owned by a Texas oil family. According to our cemetery guide, money talks and Nicolas was able to buy a plot in the cemetery. He goes every now and then to visit his tomb to clean it up and wipe the lipstick off his tomb! I guess women like to kiss it, haha! It's in the shape of a pyramid and I'm not sure of the Latin wording on the front. There ya go!

One last picture of our trip, the place we stayed at..

Perfectly French Quarter!

Thanks and take care!

Oh and some responses to comments:

Heather-lol! My stomach was queasy but I managed to hold it together!

Barb- no beads! Tall people and those right at the barricade lucked out.

Vicki- it was 54 when we landed in Phoenix. That's cold for Phoenix as you know.

Linda- the furthest I had been East was either Denver, Colorado or northeastern Montana. Never

  say never!

Home and technology

I am home! I was never so glad to see Phoenix, probably the only time, lol. Our flight from New Orleans was pretty bumpy the first half of the ride. The pilot kept descending a little to avoid the turbulence, then rising up again. I was sure I was going to die!!

I'm keeping the feet on the ground for awhile.

Here are some pictures of the cemetery tour we took..

I have more but I'm not able to put up more. I took these pictures with a regular camera and now can't get these pictures over to my ipad. I've uploaded them to a regular PC and posting on the regular Blogger. So they may be small pictures. As soon as I find a way to unlock my laptop, I can upload the camera pictures to that and then email somehow to save to my ipad. Sometimes technology is a pain in the butt!

Tonight I will be stitching, yay! I am stitching on Whoo's There by PS and a lot of progress has been made. I think this weekend I can finish it up. I'll let you all know!

The Big Easy

Greetings from a sultry New Orleans evening! Yes, I am in New Orleans! I can't believe it myself! So my daughter and I flew here last Sunday morning. I've always wanted to visit for the Mardi Gras festivities and we got our opportunity.

It is so unbelievably humid here. Coming from Arizona where it's dry, we landed with 75 degree weather and 68 degree humidity. You could feel it in the air as we got closer. And we flew over a swampy area, first time seeing a swamp! We got ourselves a taxi and had to be dumped off two blocks away from our B & B because of a parade. So cool.

Three days into our vacay and what strikes me is there's a lot of water here! We in Arizona could sure use some lol. Here are some pics of our first three days...

The Colorado River has nothing on the Mississippi! Just huge!

We took an excursion on a paddle wheel boat and went downriver to the Chalmette Battlefield.

We came off the boat and listened to a very knowledgeable guide talk about the battle. Interesting.

And it was so windy on the boat. My daughter and her hair flying.

And we got to see these two Navy ships.

We also went on a ghost tour which was spooky good!

Today we jumped on a bus for a plantation tour. Here are some pics from that trip..

Oak Alley Plantation. What a beautiful place. Oak trees that are more than 200 years old. I might add that it was drizzling while here but it was still in the 70s. We took the tour inside..

Then we went outside to see the slave cabins..

And a not so antique cat! It's real but sleeping.

And I had to have a Mint Julep!

Which went straight to my head! I could only drink half of it though!

On the way to Oak Alley we passed by another plantation house. Beautiful. Also the fields behind these houses were just immense with most of them being sugar cane fields back in the old days. There are still patches of sugar cane being grown out in this area.

We also passed over the Mississippi again

Just amazing to me to see those huge ships floating along.

To close the evening, we stopped and had beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde with some jazz musicians playing on the sidewalk and powdered sugar flying everywhere. We then hopped aboard a carriage for a tour through Bourbon St. and some other interesting places. He agreed to drop us off at our place. We've really put some mileage on our feet so far and will add more tomorrow.

On the itinerary tomorrow is a tour through St. Louis #1 cemetery with the mausoleums above ground and two parades where we're hoping to collect a whole bunch of beads. We have ridden on a streetcar, a carriage and taxis. I didn't rent a car because I figured that most things were within walking distance, and they were. 

We have just tomorrow, we leave at 1:00 pm Louisiana time Thursday for Phoenix and back home to our kitties who I have missed. A cousin goes to the house to keep the cats food and water dishes going. I'm looking forward to stitching again too!  I'll post more pictures tomorrow of our cemetery tour and the parade.

Take care and hope you enjoyed my travelogue, lol!