November SFS and Paradise Progress

Hello again everyone I hope you all had a lovely thanksgiving!  I'm sure you heard SFS is no longer a thing because of personal reasons on Mel's end.  I've decided to see it through to the end of the year though.  I know there are several other people doing this as well.

Carryover: $75

Allotment: $25

Spent: $60

Total: $40

That is the most I've spent in a long time on stitchy stuff and it was all in fabric.  I realized my last post was for GG on the 15th and I haven't stitched much.  I didn't take any stitching at all for thanksgiving because my flight was only an hour.  I did end up having to work the first three days of the week at a different location and so I flew in after work Wednesday night.  I like my new job but tomorrow will be my first time at my permanent location.  I'll let you all know how it goes :)

My thanksgiving was good once it actually happened.  Since I had to change my flight I was stressing out because my hubby booked it for two hours after I got off work which would have been fine but he booked it out of Los Angeles international which means the drive down to it was about an hour and a half.  I'm not sure I would have made it except my plane was late getting in.  But I was stressed about it the whole week.  

It was up to us kids to cook and we went to San Francisco to my father-in-law's house.  There were only 6 of us and the young definitely outweighed the old ;).  My hubby, sis-in-law and I chose the menu and cooked everything and it turned out great.  We made some hot spiked cider while we cooked and had a great bottle of wine with dinner his dad was saving.  He kept saying he was expecting to have to drive to get fast food because we were going to poison him lol.  We spent the rest of the night playing Disney trivia with shots of whiskey for the loser. Totally his sister's idea lol but it was fun!  The next day we helped them decorate for Christmas and then flew back.  Saturday I met some local ladies for their monthly stitching session.  It was a lot of fun!

I said I didn't get much stitching done and I really didn't!  My bug has left for a bit but I've been trying to power through it.

Last post I was here:

Now I'm here:

This is about 3/4 of a page and the yellow is all DMC 444.  After another page and a half I'll be out of the yellows and most of the oranges completely.  I'm excited to get to the halfway mark so I guess I need to start stitching :)

See you all next week!

So Close: November GG

Hello all this is my post for November's GG.  Gifted Gorgeousness is run by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching.  It seems like I do a lot of her SALs lol.  As always my GG piece is Paradise which is a present for my cousin for their wedding.  

The so close is that I'm so close to another two pages being finished.  Well one really but I'm stitching two pages at a time so I'm just counting them together and updating my progress bar with the finish.  I'm also so close to starting my job.  I'm supposed to start on Friday.  They were a little late getting me the paperwork I need so I hope that doesn't affect the start date.  I had to get a tb test and fingerprinting so I did all that on Friday and got the results of the tb today.  So they should have all of that paperwork tomorrow.  I'm having trouble determining when my time off is for thanksgiving break.  We have flights booked from before I got the job for Monday through Friday.  One of the school sites says they're off those days but the other sites says only thurs-fri but nobody will give me the actual dates.  They said I'll get my schedule at my orientation which means I would have like 1 day to change my flight.  So frustrating.  It's been bugging me but I've been trying to let it go.  I think it's the full week but the problem is out of their dozen or so locations only two are off the full week but I'm not sure if one of those is my location because their website is very confusing.

Well that was longer than I was expecting lol onto the pictures!

Last GG:

This time:

Almost 4 pages!  Wow really?  I'm really only missing a hundred stitches and like 6 colors.  It seems like I'm always a few stitches short.  I would've had the page finish today but we spent the whole day out lol.  I won't have this much progress again for a long time.  I start my school on the first and that's going to take up most of my time.

Update:  I finished the page about 2 hours after I posted :D

New Start and Element Finish

Hello again faithful readers!  I have to say I've been over the moon the last few days.  Why you may ask?  I got a job!!  After being here for two months I'm happy to say I'll be a tutor at one of the alternative schools doing everything from K-12.  There were two jobs I was in the top running for and although I didn't get the other one I was told I was their second choice and the other person simply had more experience.  I was really surprised I got this job as it said I needed to have 2-3 years of tutoring experience and I have none.  But I am starting my masters program for teaching in December.  The best part is that the job pays $10,000 more a year than I was hoping for.  Now I can finally start paying off my student loans enough to make a dent.  I have to buy another car first though since this job is about 45 minutes away.  I'm planning on joining a gym as well and hubby wants to join me but I wanted to go before work so I have stitchy time and he'd rather go after so we'll see how it works out.

But you're here for stitching and I have some fun stuff to show!

First up is Paradise.  I finished the sun!  I don't have a page finish yet but I'm close.  I'll probably have it tomorrow.  I also started the third line of text.  So progress is being made.

Here it was last time:

And here I am now:

The sun shows up a little better in person.  It's crazy how it blends in though just like the real sun.  I'm really hoping I can get the lines out of the piece but I'm about 99% sure I will.  In this case they're caused because the fabric is really thin.  So once I fill in the space behind it it should be fine.  I would test it but I have to do it in hand.  

The other stitching I have to show is...A New Start!  Yep I haven't had an official new start since I started Paradise.  What did I choose?  

Annya Kai's Rapunzel by HAED!  The bright pink is such a welcome change.  Haed is running a challenge on their Facebook page to do 400 stitches on any of their pieces and we get an exclusive chart.  Hey it was a good excuse for me!  So I decided I wanted to try cross country stitching and I also wanted to try 1 over 1 evenweave with pin stitch.  It turned out really well if I do say so myself.  I hadn't seen a tutorial on an evenweave over 1 pin stitch so I used the same instructions as aida and split the threads.the method I'm using also means I can do it all from the front so I don't have to turn it over at all.  So that's all of 718 done as there were 454 total stitches in it.  It's the sleeve and bodice of the dress as well as part of the skirt.  I'm really wanting to go back to her but I will fight the urge and continue on with Paradise.  I have a little more black done on Halloween Banner Green but not enough to show.  

I also got a ton of new fabric.  The lns near me is closing and is selling everything for 80% off.  They didn't have much white left but I got around 10 yards of fabric for $65 including some cashel and Belfast linen.

The top one is 32ct as well.  They're each around 2 yards and I'm going to use it for dyeing hopefully to sell.  I may try to leach the color first using rit color remover but I'm still deciding.  I was so thrilled with the price and there's another lns not far but they don't have a great fabric selection.

I don't start my job until the 20th and I'm not sure if we get off the whole week of thanksgiving or only a few days but I hope I find out soon because I may have to change my flights.  But I'm pretty sure my uniform consists of jeans and a company polo so I'm happy since I live in my jeans :). So now that I have the job I can spend my days til then stitching instead of searching!  I'm just waiting for them to send me my background check info so I can be official.  Thanks for stopping by I'll see you all with another page finish (more likely two).  I'm off to create my progress bar for Rapunzel!

Another Post=Another Page Finish!

My needle has been flying as I spent my Halloween finishing up my page on Paradise while watching Halloween movies.  

Last post I was here:

Now I'm here:

I'm going to start with the sun so I can see how it fits in the U.  Well after I do the letters because I have to stitch those first.

I took a picture after each color unless there was only one stitch in that color.  I'm posting them below if you're interested :). If not thanks for stopping by I'll see you next time!