Change of heart

I think I am growing old. The other day someone shared a photo on Facebook. It was the interior of a beautiful house, with a trail of red rose petals running from the entrance, across the room and up a flight of stairs, and my first thought was "well, I'm not cleaning that up". It made me giggle and then wonder about how I have changed through my life. As a kid, I just thought it looks like fun. In my twenties, I thought it is incredibly romantic and sexy. I had my daughter at 29, so in my thirties, my first thought would have been, "the kid's gonna choke on that", seriously, don't put anything within her reach that fits in her mouth and isn't food. Now I am going on 40, and all I can think of is "whoever threw those on the floor is going to do the hoovering, and if you step on it and it stains the carpet, I'm not gonna be the one scrubbing that clean either".

My conversion

Many of you lovely stitchers have asked me about how I converted Rose of Sharon to the colours I am currently working with. I promised a post and here it is!
First I checked the chart to see which symbols correspond with which colour. I grouped the yellows of the dress and the blues of the ribbon in two columns in my notebook, going from lightest to dark. Then I started picking DMC purples for the dress. I quickly realized that regardless of their amazing range, I will not be able to get the desired effect with just one brand. One of the perks of working in a needlework shop is that I am surrounded by stash, that is currently not mine, but that is just a glitch in the Matrix, sooner or later they will ALL be my prescioussss! So I filled the gaps with Anchor floss. For the longest time I could not decide on the colour of the ribbon, but Stephanie's beautiful Forest Bloom fabric gave me the inspiration to use a green shade and I didn't regret it.
So now you know the story and you will know the numbers too.
Original (DMC)/ My version
676                    DMC 3836
680                    DMC 3834
729                    DMC 3835
745                   Anchor 90
746                   Anchor 103
829&680          DMC 154
931                   DMC 3812
932                   DMC 958
3752                 Anchor 186
3756                 DMC 964
In case you were wondering, yes, I am planning further changes to the design, I want to stitch the columns in full as they would look weird on this fabric otherwise. I wanna change the flowers' colours too, but I will cross that bridge when I have dealt with the troll hiding under.

Facebook isolation

I have spent a little time winnowing my "friends" each day since my last FB post. I had 948 contacts when I started, now I am under 200. And let me tell you, it doesn't feel good.

No more Facebook

I recently purged my Facebook account. Last year I spent irrationally much time there, mostly playing FarmVille, Restaurant City and other virtual build-and-manage-an-environment games, befriending strangers just to get more neighbours so I can collect virtual tripe by the dozens and exchange them for rare and seasonal in-game items. At a time when real life didn't offer many chances of success and had no positive feedback, these games gave me proof that if I stick to doing something on a daily basis, I can build something big and beautiful. And in that way they were helpful for a while and made me feel better. But then I became addicted and needed to add more and more games, till I found myself clicking those things all day long.

Do you know the worst part? At a time I convinced myself that I am doing it for my daughter, because on my virtual farm I had a pink virtual house and stuffed its virtual garden with virtual toys, a virtual see-saw and virtual swings, etc, while in reality I spent less time with my baby, because I stole time from playing with her so I can build an unreal environment she may enjoy looking at but will never be able to access. How dumb is that? Yes, Tamara likes the way the virtual puppy wags its tail, but she doesn't enjoy my spending 20 minutes daily on virtual feeding it. And that is just one game.

Anyway, I snapped out of it. I removed 75 of my 85 games. I removed all the pages I was a fan of. Why on earth did I ever decide to "like" Celebrity Birthdays in the first place? And did I really think I can save the rainforests by sending 10 virtual seeds a day? The games I have spared are only there because I feel sorry for the time and energy I invested in building them. 

Next I am gonna start to remove all those friends I don't really know. I am only worried about accidentally removing a few stitching friends, as I remember most of them by email addy and not by full name. Should it happen to you, please let me know. I wanna use Facebook for what I believe it was invented for, to keep in touch with real people who are really important for me in my real life.