O Tannenbaum

I just remembered! I have shown you the wonderful crochet snowflakes I made last year for my holiday decorations, but I was too busy to share photos of my Christmas tree. So better late than never, here are some photos of my usual (plastic) tree with the new ornaments. 

Lights off - sets the mood

Lights on - behold my magnificent crafting skills!

Throw Back Thursday

Did I ever tell you about my incredibly brief venture into modelling?

I was nineteen and obsessed with teen fashion magazines. Several times I read in interviews with famous singers and actresses that they started out as models because they were shy and thought modelling would help that. I was very shy, so I thought I'd give it a go. I did, and I never regretted it. I found an agency that would teach girls the essentials, then organized contests and hand pick the ones that would get a contract. They offered several training packages, and, incidentally, the ones who would pick the most expensive package would be the ones that got through to the next round. Fascinating coincidence, isn't it?

What a wonderful world

I have been sick for over a week. Sore throat, runny nose, constant coughing. I did, however, go outside a lot, as life goes on and things must get done. Did a bit of xmas shopping too. I find it amazing, because normally my depression won't even let me out of bed when I feel weak, and I recognise the irony in using the word normally to describe my non-standard mental issues.
During my rounds I was blessed by witnessing some amazing natural phenomena. I am very proud of my ability of spotting beauty regardless of my moods. It helped me through many a dark days, and I am very thankful to have it. I snapped a few photos with my mobile, let me share them with you.

Back to blogging

I missed blogging, but due to recent rearrangements in my job I just couldn't find the time and/or energy to do it. It's been a long winter and I missed my sunshine. I mostly run on solar power. Also, I have more and more problems with blogger, so I started to experiment with Wordpress. I may move my blog there. I will let you know if I do. Here is a brief recap of important things that happened, told mostly in pictures. 

Look back at Xmas

These two boxes are gifts I have made for stitchy friends because I knew they would appreciate them. Now that they have their presents, I can show you all! The chart for the fall leaves is a downloadable freebie from the DMC site, the other one with the blackwork, or in this case, bluework, is a chart from an old World of Cross Stitching magazine. Sorry for the bad quality, these are cell phone pictures.

July WIPocalypse at long last

I think I didn't post in June. That's because I got my new job in late May and had a lot to learn and even more to do. But I never stopped stitching, and here is proof!
I apologize for picture quality, I snapped these with my cell phone.

Almost mid-month April WIPocalypse report

March had been a pretty hectic month and a particularly unlucky one for our family, so I am glad it is over. Here's hoping it will never surface again. Not only were most of us really sick last month, my baby was also bit by a dog very badly. I will never ever get her screams of pain out of my head for as long as I live. Never. Ever. It's been almost a month since it happened, but I wasn't ready to talk about it until I could see it healing. She was bit on her thigh and most of the minor bruises are almost gone, but two big holes where the dog's fangs have pierced the skin are still healing and will take at least another month before they are closed. For now, we change bandages several times a day to make sure the wound gets some air too. My girl still refuses to look at it. It seems the horror of being injured is multiplied by the disturbing sight.

And now for the regularly scheduled stitchy news. 

Stuck at home

My baby has been having a lot of health problems lately. She's been missing some school days too. Illness also makes her very emotional and so she cries even if I just try to pop outside for bread an milk although she knows the shop is just around the corner. Despite her demands for my non-stop attention I have managed to stitch quite a lot, I'm just getting sick of being grounded for weeks. I wish her a speedy recovery, mostly so she will be her old happy and healthy self, but also feel a bit selfish for wishing to get outside, at least for 30 minutes a day, or I'm gonna be sick too soon. Also, I want our old sleep pattern back. She cannot sleep well because of her illness and I wake up every time she turns in the bed. My head has been aching for the past two days. Medicine wanted.

Dimensions Gold set Lace and Roses

Happy puppy with pigtails and rocker girl t-shirt.

Golden Sunday

 We usually have the same glass fibre enhanced, colour changing plastic tree that comes with its own ornaments already wired to the branches. This year my girl wished to decorate a christmas tree for the first time, and I gladly obliged. The tree is still plastic of course, and the majority of the ornaments are purple and pink, as those are her favourite colours. We still need to buy some lights and the top ornament will be a huge, silver colour silk poinsettia. We had that for a month, and yes, she spotted that in a Tesco and begged granma to buy it for her. So the tree is really according to her taste this year! I can't wait 'till it's present opening time.


 After that we went skating. She has ice skating lessons once a week because her school specializes in PE training and sports, and all first graders learn ice skating. It was soooo brilliant! I hope to do this again very soon.

Finish update

As I have promised, here are a few photos of the finished Ink Circles piece. It looks even better in real life. Here you can see two totals and a few close ups. Most of the pictures can be seen after the jump.

This is going to be a beautiful pillow.

Circles progress

I still haven't found a time slot where I could stitch regularly, but I did manage to squeeze in a couple xs into my schedule. I have made some progress on Cirque les Cercles by Ink Circles. I can only hope I spelt that one right. Anyway, as you can see I am on the last page and very close to finish.

I has a puppy!

Picture heavy

 Here is my baby in the progress of teaching her bunnies to beg. They are truly adorable creatures, but no match for my girl!
I added several pictures of my parents' garden. I wish I could arrange the pictures better, but Blogger is really terrible in that respect. The pictures are difficult to position and they don't stay where I put them in the editing frame, so I have to keep switching to the preview. Next time I will simply add a Picasa slideshow but I just cannot bother now.

Meet the survivors

You may remember my telling you that after a long time I have decided to try and look after a few plants. That was a year ago. Two of the four plants didn't make it, but I'm very happy with 50%. Especially because I know better than anyone else how little I cared for them in the past year. There were times when I forgot to water them for over a week. These were quite frequent times to be honest.

Somehow these two plants didn't just survive, they flourished. Look at these beauties!

I also managed to fall in love with a new plant. It's a beautiful multicoloured primula. I plan on planting a few more flowers this spring again. I hope my baby will help me tending to them!

Ink Circles progress

These are not the latest pictures, I will have to do some scanning before I can post those. These are after finishing page 3, and I am almost done with page 4 now. I put up a folder for this WIP on my Picasa albums. 

Brought to you by Motorola

The sweetest little girl I have ever seen in my whole life.

Another WIP

I still didn't find the hand dyed floss for my x-mas SAL, so that is put aside in my UFO pile for now, but I will definitely finish it as soon as I put my hands on more floss. But since I was going through my UFOs I found an earlier project, that happens to be another x-mas SAL. At the time I couldn't finish it because I couldn't print the chart. I ran out of ink and couldn't afford a new cartridge. I know. Anyway, long story short, I got the ink, the chart, the floss, so I dusted it off and am determined to finish it this month. As you can see, I changed it to say 2011, and I plan to make it to a nice pillow for my girl this X-mas.

 The photo isn't the best quality, as I took it with my new cell phone. Yes, I have a new phone. The old one was kinda, well, old, and mom found a sweet deal at a provider, so she bought me a new one. I love it most because it has a big screen and a radio. And just look at the pretty pictures I managed to take with it! Of course, there is no way you can take a bad picture of such a pretty face!

The wonderful world of cats

I just love cats. I always have. Somehow they were never the number one favourites, but were always there in the top three. 

I am always annoyed when someone asks me if I am a cat person or a dog person. Surely you can love them both? It's not like there is a law that makes you must choose sides. Also, they are like apples and oranges. They have different attitudes and give love in a different manner. Why should you have only one kind? It's like saying one loves only daughters or sons. You cannot compare the two and you shouldn't have to live without either. I've had dogs and cats in the past, and I am looking forward to the time when my financial status and housing situation allows me have them again, that is, when I have a place that is bigger than a cubicle and at least feeding them would not mean that I cannot have more than one meal a day. Until then, all I have is dreaming and looking at animal pictures.

For my baby

I have collected a few adorable animal photos from the web that have a parent and offspring in them. I will print them for my baby but I also wanna share them with my friends. Here you go!

Kids of any race will nag mom while she's working

NaBloPoMo

I just found out about this thing called National Blog Posting Month, which is a bit of a shame as it is the 2nd of November, so I am already one whole day late to join. I always wanted to try daily blogging, I remember last year's Blogtoberfest, I wanted to do it this year, but somehow missed the beginning of October. I sometimes do that. I let go of the perception of time and it takes advantage of it and just whizzes by. But I will grab it today and try to blog at you every day this month. Stay tuned for my second post that I wanted to post yesterday. :)
Also, here are some lovely images after the jump just so you have something truly lovely to look at.