Thursday, May 19, 2011

What a week!


As you can probably guess from the title, it hasn’t been a great week!
MONDAY
Monday afternoon I went down to the basement only to discover that I should have taken a canoe! The water heater had burst and there was water everywhere. (Luckily all of the stitchy stash that’s down there is in plastic storage boxes!) So then it was a trip up to Lowe's to get a new water heater….yeah a real fun shopping trip! (That was sarcasm just in case you hadn’t noticed!) So, was told by the salesman that the installer may be able to fit the new water heater the next day – yippee!

TUESDAY
Got a phone call from Lowe's first thing in the morning saying that the installers would call with a time for the installation. So I waited all day for this call, only to get it 7.30 pm saying it would be lunch time on Wednesday before he could  get here.  Not much to do but wait – without any hot water! All I needed was for the electric kettle to break!

WEDNESDAY
Installer arrives, has one look at the burst water heater then tells me that I had bought the wrong type of heater! Arghhh!
He very kindly took the new one back to the store and the salesman called to tell me that luckily they had the correct one in stock…sounds good? I thought so too, till he told me the price! Half as much again. Couldn’t get any worse? Well, it could. Installation would be double the original price!  Sheesh, my little plastic credit card is in melt down mode! Although I have to say, thank heavens for credit cards!
Anyway by 5pm we were back in the land of hot running water, with the washing machine and dishwasher checking that the new water heater could keep up! So, it’s beans on toast for the next several weeks! (For non British readers that means a cheap meal because of the lack of cash!!!)
So do we breathe a sigh of relief? Everything back to normal? Well.... no!
I had been working on some new designs and had been struggling to get the lettering to fit and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. Persevered and got things to a stage where it was looking fine, then discovered that my cross stitch program was showing a ten square grid instead of the usual fourteen square grid! No wonder nothing fitted. Then I realized that the designs from early on in the week would be the wrong size too! I ‘m not sure how this happened, but it’s probably got something to do with my cat who has a habit of walking across the keyboard so she can sit and block the screen!
Anyway, so here we are on Thursday and I’m hoping that since troubles always come in threes, the week should only get better!

So, on to the stitching, which is no doubt why you are here!
Well I have a few little things to show you. First we have the progress with the mighty samurai….

The tail is as complete as I can get it until I get the threads from dimensions. I’m actually a bit disappointed with the kit as there is yet another thread that I have run out of. I’m almost finished the regular cross stitching and will soon be on the cross stitch that includes the metallic threads. I always leave the metallics to the end as I find they are such a pain to work with! So be warned, once I’m on to the metallics be prepared for the blog posts to be me moaning about how much I hate metallic threads! lol

I have been busy stitching up a design for a magazine, and since I can’t show you the front, I thought I’d show you the back! I love the colours of this one and it has stitched up pretty quickly – still loving those gold needles! This is one of a set of four which I hope to be able to show you soon.

And lastly, this is some stitching that I’m doing with my daughter. She wanted to make one of the little door hangings for a friend who is taking her black belt test this weekend.  Yes, my daughter has an ‘I can leave everything to the last minute and it will all be fine’ attitude! She probably realizes that I can’t go past a half-stitched design without picking it up and adding just a few more stitches! So, hopefully, she (or maybe that should read we) we will get it finished in time!

 It doesn't look much like anything now but it will be a girl in a Taekwon Do uniform and my DD is going to add the girl's name and the date of her test. I will post pictures when it's done!


In my haste to post the winner of the giveaway, I forgot to link to Lynn’s blog so you could check out her amazing work. I know this is probably really bad blogging etiquette so I apologize and send you all now to check out Lynn’s blog!

Until next time…happy stitching!


Rhona

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't envy you that week Rhona!
But at least the samuri is looking wonderful.

My daughter is exactly the same when it comes to procrastination. She's nearly 12 ... how bout your daughter?

And can I have that pattern? My son takes his black belt exam in about 5 weeks (I'll start mine early though!)

The mag desing looks fab. Can't wait to see it.

Mouse said...

ohh blimey you need that book a 101 ideas for beans ... hope things are getting back to normal and your designs fit ... thread heaven is wonderful for metallics and if all else fails buy petite treasure braid :) love mouse xxxx

Anne said...

Sigh! Not another thread colour!! Wow, they should have done their homework and included a strand or two of the colours that could potentially run out!!

Love the back of that design...looking forward to seeing it!

Anonymous said...

What a week you had! Let's hope nothing else goes wrong for you!

The progress on the Samuri is looking great. It's bad when you run out of thread of a kit. Happens to me most of the time.

Lynn said...

You must be glad that week is over with! Hopefully things go well from now on.

The Samuri is coming along nicely and I can't wait to see the front of your model stitch.

Siobhán said...

You must be glad that week is over!

Your designs are coming along so nicely. I can't wait to see your model!