Sew Dance

I'm not quite sure I can believe a year has gone by. It's been a busy year. I started and finished my Masters this year. I took a break from dancing due to lack of funds and when I started to get back into it, at least socially, I found another amateur to dance with. We have our first competition together in mid-January. These were last years goals: Find a part-time job. Complete a UFO in my stash (or complete at least 4 pages of a BAP). Lose five more pounds. Complete my Masters with a 3.5 GPA. Get an internship. Rip my CD collection to my computer. Write another story. Attempt Script Frenzy in April (coincides with one of my classes) How well did I fair? Didn't quite look hard enough plus school kept me pretty busy. I finished lots of projects but none I would really consider a UFO. Seven cross-stitch, 1 dress, and five crochet I actually lost 10. I think this makes up for not quite reaching my goal last year. Completed my Masters with a 4.0. Got two fo...

I solemnly vow I will only stitch from the stash I own at the time of this post. That being established, let me list the projects that stash consists of that are not missing any key components. Key: Bold = current WIP Italic = kit Cross-stitch and other needle crafts: Argentine Tango - RTO Beauty From the Deep Best Friend Black Stallion Buterfly Pillow (needlepoint) Cat Purse (plastic canvas) Cat stocking Cats...  Cats on the Quilts (longstitch) Celestial Dragon Dance Me Out Dancing Couple Dragon Carousel Fairy Melody Fairy Spell Fantastic Landscape Fantasy Triptych Felted Penguin Flowers Foxtrot - RTO Frog Pile Grand Ball Horses of the Apocalypse In the Garden 'insanity' Kitten Recital Legend of the Dragons Legend of the Spellcasters Millennium Mystical Wizard Peacock Tapestry Put Your Red Shoes On (currently being worked on) Sacred Connection Seashells (needlepoint) Show Horse corral (needlepoint) Stargazer Lily Stroke...

She has legs! Soon she'll have the red shoes from the title. This piece is still giving me fits. Earlier I thought they hadn't given me enough of one color and I'd have to pull a similar color from my DMC stash. I put it off because I didn't want to get up. Good thing I did because the next day I realized that was one of the colors they gave me a full skein of. I'm still frogging. I used the wrong color on one symbol. And why, oh why, did Golden Kite have another up to 60% off sale? Good thing I'm participating in Mel's Stitch From Stash (see button on the right). It'll give me an additional incentive not to buy things. I'm going for one last stash binge tomorrow and that's it unless I absolutely need something. Anyway, these are my newly acquired pieces. And does anyone know if they sell 18ct fabric that can fit a 51x42 design? That's with 3 inch margins on all sides. The Green Parasol God Speed Call to Arms Hafenansicht ...

First milestone: I am almost halfway done with Put On Your Red Shoes. I'm still having to frog more than I would like, but I'm catching the mistakes fairly quick and correcting them before it affects something else. Second Milestone: I am done with my Masters. Today was the official end of the semester. Two of my three grades are posted, including the one I was iffy about. I know I didn't fail the course but the traffic getting down to my final was horrible and I didn't have time to look over my notes right before the test began. I thought I would've had to go to class to show my final for another course but he said just to email it to him. Therefore I was officially done Thursday afternoon as soon as I hit send. Next up: Finding a job and getting ready for a ballroom competition in January. I may or may not have mentioned this before, but I found an amateur partner. We've been practicing since September and will be competing in our first competition i...

I think I've had to frog more of this piece than I have all year. I keep messing up either with counting or with a color blend. I thought I had the blend right, but I didn't and had to frog that. I realized I miscounted the right side but that was an easy fix. Just add another column to the far right. I'm surprised I managed to get this far with it. More bad news, my Daylight bulb burnt out earlier in the week as well and I didn't have an extra. The good news is GE makes an equivalent bulb for less than half the price. And it's a bit brighter. I have two more days of school, both finals, and I will be finished. A Masters degree in one year. Now I just need a job.

Didn't work on the stocking I had started. I had an urge to go back to my cross-stitch. But I felt like either picking up one that was already started or one of the kits. After my random number generated several that didn't fit the bill, I ended up with Put On Your Red Shoes. Not a bad start considering I had to frog most of what I started due to two counting errors on my part. I put my Christmas tree up today while Onyx was trying to get into everything. And I officially have 2 weeks left of school. One week of classes, and one week of finals. Then I'm done! I have to update my resume and start applying for jobs as well.

First off, there won't be much progress with my crafts this week because I spent most of it attempting to finish NaNoWriMo when I was really, really behind from not writing for several days.   As you can see from the graph, I somehow managed to write ~15,000 words in 3 days. I won! Now for my slight craft progress. I finished the one sleeve on Sunday. As I was getting bored with the same stitch pattern, I started working on a felt stocking for myself. Don't know if it'll be done in time for Christmas but it's started.  Then there's Black Friday. My mom and I actually went to Old Navy and Macy's when they opened on Thursday night. It was relatively quiet. The stores I went to on Friday were fairly quiet as well in the late morning. Among the few skeins of ruffle yarns I picked up, there were a few of latest Butterick patterns that they got in stock since last week. The fabrics pictured below are mainly for 2 craft projects and a nightshirt for ...

Interesting how they almost redid the opening from the first show. Slight differences. Bill n. I'm pretty sure the tricks were by someone else and a very good editing job. The others parts were still bad. Elizabeth. Still have a problem with her knees being bent the entire dance. Christina and Brant. Not bad but Christina pulled it off better. Valerie. She seemed to forget the routine again and wound up on the wrong foot. Snookie. She's easy to lift. Leah. Very timid again. Bill e. Bill and samba don't work together. Corbin. His new yorkers and lock steps could have been a bit better. He did look a bit out of sync with Karina in the cha cha. I'll agree with the scores. Jack. Really weird combination of dances. The salsa looked a bit odd but he never did it this season. Too high based on the level of Corbin's dance. Amber. Not really a samba song. The technique want really there. The Quickstep was better than the samba by a lo...

It's the finale! Did they match the outfit colors for Kelly and the troupe on purpose? Round 1: judges pick. the redo dance Bill.  V. Waltz. It looked about the same to me from what I remember. I'll give him the scores. Corbin. Quickstep. It seemed slower this time for some reason. I'll agree with the scores. Jack. Jive. The kicks and flicks were better but his triple steps were not. Maybe a little high. Amber. Charleston. Same critiques as last time. Too much hip hop. Too high for me. Round 2: samba relay   The song is slow for a samba.   Jack. He tried but the technique hasn't improved from his solo dance.   Amber. I felt like she didn't really move. Samba is a traveling dance.   Bill. Um what was he doing? Some of the arms looked funky.   Corbin. Only one that looked like he was doing it right. They kept it fairly simple though.   They got the order right. Round 3: freestyle   Bill. I give him...

Not much craft progress this week, again. My sleeve It's almost done though. I have added to my craft stash though. Despite my saying earlier that I wouldn't buy any more cross-stitch this year, Golden Kite's sale was too hard to resist. I procured the following patterns which I probably won't stitch for quite sometime... Midsummer Eve The Oriental Dragon's Garden The Arts - Poetry The Arts - Painting The Arts - Music The Arts - Dance The end of the Ball The End of the Song I am Half-Sick of Shadows The Kittens Recital The Crystal Ball On Top of the World I have 17 more on my wishlist and that's after I eliminated several that I felt I didn't like as much as when I first chose my patterns. Then today I stopped by Joann's because they had a one day sale on Butterick and vogue patterns. I went in for the patterns, they didn't have the newly released winter collecti...