I pretty much went off my stash diet this past week - it all started when I saw the Blackbird Designs Mystery sampler & fell in love with it. So I now have parts 1-4 and the fabric (WDW "Straw) and threads to finish it. I wonder when they'll release the last part? As I went to pick up my needle, I noticed that the alphabet has no "I", I wonder if that's an oversight, or a common sampler thing I just don't know about. (c:

Since I was there...I might as well also get fabric & threads for the Beatrix Potter SAL that will start in January. I picked R&R Creme Brulee & WDW Lancaster Red to do that one with. I'm really looking forward to starting it.

Over the past week, I also worked on CDC, finally getting to the bottom right corner. And I did two of the JBW Advent calendar pieces, which I'm going to give away as ornies. I have a bow charm for the wreath, but can't find it right now!

I have 3 pages of Cirque des Cercles finished (plus some parts of the last 3 pages). So I just have the border circles on the bottom half to go! I have almost 2 full skeins of thread, so I'm hoping that will be enough. If not, it will be a dye lot crap shoot since my LNS is out of this color (Waterlilies "Monsoon").
In other stitching news, I got my e-copy of the Beatrix Potter Ackworth School sampler to work on with the SAL group, come January. Not sure what colors I'll use, but after all the blues, aquas in CDC, you can bet it won't be in the blue family!
Drew & I hung out at home for a few days last week while he recuperated from foot surgery. I pictured stitching the time away, but we rented Fallout 3 & I have to say, I'm kind of addicted to that game; Drew & I have been taking turns with it all weekend & it's a very intense game (creepy to play at night!). It's set in the post-nuclear wasteland of Washington DC a few hundred years after a war. You're trying to find your father after leaving your bomb shelter & run into all kinds of creepies along the way (mutants, ghouls, irradiated scorpions, etc.). If you're near water, these crab men "Mucklurks" come after you. A couple came out while Drew was playing and he yelled "Aaah! The crab cakes are chasing me!" and, after blowing them away, "I don't like it when food chases me. You should be crab rangoon."

This past weekend, I worked on CDC, making a pretty good dent into page two (the top middle). I was happy I finished some of the big circular motifs in the center while working on page one, because it's making me feel like there's already a lot done on each page. I'd like to finish the top all the way across, and then maybe start something new. I'm trying to decide between Mirabilia's Adia, and L&L's In the Arm of an Angel. Decisions, decisions!

Over the weekend I also worked on some genealogy research - yes, all my hobbies are ones septuagenarians usually do. Anyway, I found out some cool things about one branch of my family. We knew that one of my ancestors, Edward Fuller, came here with his family on the Mayflower, but I found some additional information about him. He was believed to be one of the framers of the Mayflower Compact, based on his legal training as a barrister. I just thought that was about the coolest thing!

So I finished Santa the other day...what to do next? I think I'll wrap up a couple WIPs before starting something new (famous last words).

Tonight I pulled CDC back out after not stitching on it for quite a while. Man, do I love stitching with silks. I don't know what I did when calculating the number of skeins, but somewhere I was off. Based on the number of skeins of DMC the design called for, and the number of strands in the Caron silks, I thought I had bought enough and I'm pretty sure I was off by a long shot! I've gone through almost 2 skeins in the page and a half I've done and I have about 3-4 skeins left. Hopefully they still have this same dye lot at the store!

Didn't get home from work until 7:30, and still had some work to wrap up, so I only got about an hour of stitching done. Right now I'm working on the circle that's in the lower right of the picture. Can't wait to get more done tomorrow!

Made a little progress on CDC in the past few days. I'm having fun with the colors and like how it's coming along!

Last May I graduated from my MBA program and we moved down to Chicagoland to get settled before I started work. Due to a variety of factors, we ended up in an apartment, even though we really wanted to be in a place that had a yard. We've been anticipating the end of our lease here, hoping that we could end up in a house (still renting because of all the weirdness in the housing market). So we've been looking and finally run across a house we'd both really love to be in. We put in the rental application this evening, and hopefully beat anyone else to the punch. We're trying not to get our hopes up too much, but this place is perfect for us and we really hope it comes through! Please send good wishes our way!

The colors in the picture are a bit off. (I wish I had a good spot to take pictures of things in natural sunlight!)

After seeing Juls' progress on Cirque, I really wanted to get back to it. I was kind of bummed because just after threading a new needle, I realized that I had made a mistake in the upper right circle the last time I worked on this. Not a very auspicious start! Anyway, it required some frogging before I could continue.

This project looks better to me from far away; up close it isn't all that impressive, but when I see it from across the room, I just love it! It's pretty fun to work with these beautiful silks, too. (Caron Waterlilies in "Monsoon")