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!

Curse it!

Beware! A cuss word- H-E-double hockey sticks, is featured below. fair warning!

I have two finishes! Yay! Here is Things That Go Bump in The Night..

This is found in the special Halloween 2014 issue from JCS. I started this last year. Fairly easy, on 32ct black linen with DMC. It's like stitching with my eyes closed, it's kind of hard! Lol. The words went fast but the two ghosts- Not! 

Up next is the reason for my warning!

When I saw this on Pinterest, I had to have it! It's on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/cspinney

Cost-a measly $5! So fitting wouldn't you say?! She has other designs at her shop. I think this is 28ct Monaco fabric. Anyone remember this fabric made by Charles Craft? It's nice to use up small pieces of fabric from the stash. I plan to turn this into a wall hanging, backed with mounting board, fabric, and blinged out! And hang it where I can see it first thing in the morning!

Aside from my small 3 hour break of stitching the above Etsy design, I have accidentally blundered into a rotation of sorts! The scary design was part of my 3 WIP rotation. I had it, The Journey, and Whoo's There by my stitching spot here on the couch. Those three were all I stitched and I found it to be a rotation kind of thing. I get a little bored just stitching on one WIP so I grab the other of the three. Now I'm down to 2 WIPs in this rotation and it seems to be working well. Well, until something else grabs my attention. Ha! After I have finished those two, I'll pick another 3 WIPs to work on. I'll juggle the size of them so I won't get overwhelmed.

Thank You to all of you for your comments last post! I feel empowered for taking stock of my health and am glad I did when I did. Two, three weeks on the medication and I feel real good. I haven't fallen asleep at work like I was doing, I've lost almost 9 lbs., clothes are fitting better, and I'm not so fuzzy headed like before. I wouldn't have ever thought that a low thyroid would throw all sorts of things out of wack! 

I thought I'd comment on a few comments here:

Vicki- I like the ability to keep track of the cholesterol and carbs I'm eating daily. It helps immensely.

D1-D2- I was amazed to find all the things that can happen with a low thyroid!

and Carol- Wow, you are tiny! I think I was 115 lbs when I was 10! I had known a cholesterol problem could be genetic. When I saw the blog with the portfolio, I just remember lots of unframed Mirabilia's being stored into it! 

Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Those of you in the big storm's path, hope you stay warm and safe!

Post

Hehe. I know..not a very original title! I'm flying solo so therefore I have to come up with titles of my own making! No Gifted Gorgeousness January or anything like that!

I have some progress to show on The Journey by LHN..

Perfect! Here's a picture that shows the real color of this fabric. It looks like slate as I wanted it to look like. I think it's WDW Beige. I went kind of crazy on the horse though! The right side is stitching left to right and to the left I manipulated the colors of the thread and skipped about creating the half circles and such. 

Here's how it looked before

Journey has been put aside though to work on a Halloween ornament that is three quarters done.

Last year I recall reading a blog in which the blogger bought these portfolios to keep her finished but not framed stitching in to protect them. I finally bit the bullet and bought me a portfolio at Hobby Lobby and here is what I've done with it..

As you can see, it's a big one and can fit a 13" x 18" project in one side with about one or two inches of fabric sticking out at the top. It uses archival, acid-free paper.

As you can see, the LHN design sticks out at the top a bit. It cost $18.99 I believe and would've been a little cheaper with the 40% off coupon. I love it! I didn't really have a place to store these bigger pieces and now I can keep them flat and protected.

Four years ago, on my birthday at the end of January, my gall bladder was removed. I had a follow up with the surgeon and then my family doc wanted to see me. That was 4 years ago. Fast forward to now, I'm falling asleep at work, the kind where your eyelids get heavy and you jerk yourself awake, mood swings are absolutely crazy, ask my daughter! I finally went to see a doctor and boy oh boy, am I messed up. The diagnosis? Hypothyroidism, diabetic, cholesterol out of this world. Yikes! I've been pleasantly plump my entire life, flirting with the pre-diabetic label for years. Now I've crossed the line. I'm not on insulin because my numbers are just above the cut-off point and doc thinks my efforts to lower my bad cholesterol will probably lower my blood sugar numbers. I'm taking cholesterol pills and thyroid meds and I have not tried to fall asleep at work! It's been a wake up call and I joined up with Lose It! It's a weight loss app and it working wonders! I was with Weight Watchers before. Change is good! I've lost almost 7 lbs so far and I'm either doing the exercise bike or low impact aerobics. I had been warned about diabetes because I'm an American Indian and we have a higher incidence of Type 2 diabetes. I'm grateful for the insurance I have through work and my bills haven't been all that big. What's next? A mammography and a colonoscopy. Eww! I'll have the rear end thing done after this month, lol!

What else is new? I'm returning to college! This time for a certificate in Medical Records Technology which could open doors for me to get into Coding. School starts on Tuesday, next week, and my two classes are online. So I'm quite excited for that. I'm ready to get out of what I'm doing now, electronic assembly. Change is good as I said!

How's that for an update?!

Harry Potter-The Order of The Phoenix is on soon. I'm sure you've heard Alan Rickman died today? He played Severus Snape in the Potter movies, among others. I almost felt like crying when I heard. I've read the books and have watched the movies umpteen times. We've had some celebrities pass away this month, it's scary. Take care everyone. Glad you stopped in!

Elvis, Elvis, let me be,

Keep that pelvis far from me!

Quick! What movie was that line in?!

But seriously, I forgot to tell you in the last post that Elvis spoke to me while we were in Vegas. I'm serious! I'm not delusional! In our walks at the Venetian trying to find places, we happened to run into an Elvis impersonator! As he passed by us, he said to me "how ya doin' darlin'". Eek! I smiled the rest of the day over that!

I picked up another WIP that was a Crazy start in January. Here's The Journey..

Designer is LHN. And how it looked almost a year ago...

I'm enjoying this one. My plan is to stitch on each WIP until they are DONE! We'll see how far that goes, lol.

As I do about this time of year, here is my reading for 2016..

I'm sure I'll be adding to this pile throughout 2016. My Shelfari account says I read 22 books in 2015. Wow, I didn't think I read that much since I stitched a lot!

I counted up my finishes and the total came to 25 with 15 of those DUCJ/FSAL2015 finishes and 10 non-Crazy finishes. And most of them are waiting to be finish finished or framed. 

Thanks for hangin' with me!

An overhaul

Hi all! It's been awhile. I've had to fix a few things, hence my title. I had to change the two emails that were connected to this blog, comments went to one email and comment moderation went to another. It was that second one that was giving me problems. My family and friends started calling me asking what was going on with the emails I was supposedly sending. After they told me what kinds of emails they were getting from me, I had a feeling my email account got hacked or something. It definitely wasn't me sending them this stuff. How terrible. My iPad email is through iCloud and I ended up having to cancel it and then make another. In iPad alone I couldn't find a way to change this email. I had to search for instructions on how to do this. I did it and then ended up wiping out my Notes among other apps, where I had important things typed down, recipes that sounded good. What a pain but I now have a new email. The other email account that sent me your comments I had to change also because of all the spam I started getting. Around July is when all that crap started. I never used to get all that before so I was befuddled. That took a phone call to Centurylink that lasted an hour just to lose the old email and establish a new. Viola, no 6 or 7 spam emails a day like before. Unfortunately it means that if any of you have a personal question for me, you'll have to communicate with me through the comment section on this blog and I'll send you my email. If you comment on my blog, I'll respond right underneath your comment. It sucks to have to go this route. I hope none of you received any awful messages or emails, I want you to know I would never do that. Its seems that not only do you have to be aware of normal things like locking your doors, and strange cars parked in the neighborhood, but you have to be careful of things on the World Wide Web and people who don't have anything better to do than mess with people's lives. I really don't know sometimes. So what did I learn after this fiasco? Change those passwords on your emails often!

I also overhauled how and what I stitch. I think I was stressing out over all these ornaments that I stitched and needed finishing. I quit stitching on them after deciding that the world wasn't going to fall apart if I didn't get these ornaments finished. So now all I'm going to stitch on are my WIPs, the big ones. When I feel like finishing up an ornament, I'll do that. I'm joining no SALs in 2016 and I'm pulling out of another that I tentatively said I would join. Would you like to see what I picked up after my new way of stitching? Here is Winter Wind by PSS, all finished..

This design is found in the Jan/Feb 2011 JCS issue. Fitting for the crazy weather we're having here. It has snowed almost every weekend and for a couple of days the high temps never climbed higher than 40 degrees. But back to this pretty design...I had some reservations over the colors of the snowflakes. Timber? Stepping Stones? All Classic Colourworks but after looking at it after I ironed it, it works! It's very pretty and I'm glad I picked it back up. All I had before was a few snowflakes on the left and 3/4 of the house. It's on 36ct quicksilver linen by Lakeside. Here's another angle..

I love houses, labor intensive but worth it!

I also finished my Fleur d'Orleans by Ink Circles before my about-face, lol!

The fabric is much more whiter than the picture. I used DMC and 32ct antique white linen. Now that I look at it, something's missing..like beads maybe? I'll have to go back and look at the chart, ha.

My daughter and I headed to Las Vegas the first weekend of December. We took my new ride and it drove perfectly. We stayed at the Venetian and wow, what a lovely room!

Two queen beds, a sitting area, a gorgeous bathroom. I was quite content to ignore the sights and just stay in that room! There was also a well-stocked mini fridge..

Next to the lime Powerade at the bottom left was a bottle of Moët Chandon Champagne...ooooh! But! If you lifted anything in this refrigerator for more than two seconds, you got charged for it! If we didn't use anything, $100 was credited back to me. Whew! I told my daughter to not touch anything! The Venetian was super nice and we discovered there was a Carlo's Bakery inside, you know, the Cake Boss? We finally found it but there was a huge line of people and I wasn't up to waiting. I really wanted cannolis though. Shucky darn! Also inside is a short canal where you can take a Gondola ride, high end stores like Coach, Dooney & Bourke, Ralph Lauren, etc. we also found macarons

I really wasn't impressed. Somewhat dry I thought. Maybe in France they would taste better!

Well, that's it in a nutshell. I almost gave up blogging after my email account problems. I decided that I like doing this though so I'll continue for a bit. I'm also trying to limit myself on blog reading! It's hard but I can sit for 3, 4 hours on a weekend morning reading blogs and that is doing me no good as I'm ignoring housework, and being a slob. I did this with my Facebook also as I was spending a lot of time on it. I just need to move it! Move it!

This is certainly turning into a novel! But I have a couple more pictures for you, all season appropriate, lol!

Ignore the man! This tree used to be a bush. It's just a juniper that's in the median of I 17 between Flagstaff and Phoenix, AZ. Twenty-some years ago, someone began sneaking out there to decorate this bush for Christmas. Well this is what it look like now. It's grown and the ornaments have gotten bigger. The highway patrol has not been able to catch anyone decorating the tree so it continues on. We're glad of it!

Downtown Prescott, AZ. my hometown. As you can see it snowed! And we're supposed to have a white Christmas too, but after that it can melt! Haha.

I wanted to come back and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I'm glad you all haven't absconded and that I still have followers! Take care.