Spidey and that darn fairy

She's done! Woo hoo! I finally finished that "never ending" piece I was working on. Really, it didn't take THAT much time out of my life. 19 days but who's counting?? I really don't think the project would have bothered me so much if I wasn't having thread issues. Let me start from the beginning.....




I was in the shop looking for a small-medium sized fairy or angel piece to stitch for a gift. Not one of those L&L or Mirabilia monsters but something smaller and doable within a couple of weeks at the most. I did see a new release from Mirabilia that I really liked and the stitch count wasn't bad at all. It's Poppy from the Pixie Coutoure collection. Such a pretty little Pixie and I know the recipient would love her but I wondered if I'd have enough time to get her done. Someone overheard me talking and offered to let me borrow a chart she had called Fairy Stitcher from Passione Ricamo. It's a free chart but can't be copied or reproduced in any way so she lent it to me. I was really excited because the cahrt didn't look big and it was all in one color. All I'd need is a single color of thread and a cut of fabric. I headed over to the rack of Sampler Threads and picked out a skein of Briar Rose. I then picked up a second skein of it because the chart didn't say how much thread I'd need and I didn't want to come up short. That left one skein of it on the rack. I headed over to the fabric and settled on a really pretty piece of 28 ct. Vintage Cashel linen in Pink Whisper. I wasn't paying any attention when she cut the fabric. When I took it out when I got home I thought surely the piece of fabric was so big because she wanted me to have tons of room for framing. Nope. I didn't even pay attention to the stitch count when she handed me the chart. After all, the chart looked way smaller than Poppy. After I started stitching the first part of that wing I realized quickly that this wasn't the case. Oh well...I liked her fine and bought the stuff for her so plugging along we go. Oh my, look how quickly we ran out of that first skein of thread...hmmmm. Ok, on to the next skein......this one seems to be going just as fast. I'd better hurry and run back to the shop and get that last skein before somebody else does. That would stink something fierce if I ran out and had to get it somewhere else, don't ya know? Being how's the thread is hand dyed and all, the likelihood of getting the same dye lot from another shop, not good. Ok, get to the shop, grab last skein. Come back, on we go. Ya know....it's looking like this #%$&*&^&*#@ fairy is gonna need more than 3 skeins! Not good! I bought the only 3 the shop had. Hmmmm...I could drive to my fav shop in Alexandria. Nah.....gas is too much.....it would cost me at least $25 just to get there and back for some thread. Ok, I'll call and hope for the best. I asked if they had any of the stinkin Briar Rose and they come back just as sweet as pie to tell me they have a whole handful of it. Great, I need to order a couple of skeins (because we know if I only order the one I'll need 2!). Sure they said. I explained to them my dilemma with said fairy and she got quiet for a minute. She then asked me if my skeins were more purple, pink, or red. No..no, no, no, no, no! Cause she had several different shades of Briar Rose. So what do ya do??? Ya order ever darn one of them and hope for the best :(. So they come and I carefully open the envelope to discover none of them are just like the ones I had used. There were bits and pieces in some. So what do ya do now? Ya dissect the thread. Ya pull out all the little bits that will work and realize after you've finished the whole project that a smidge of it is a wee bit brighter than the rest and hope nobody can tell. So can you tell? Look at her. Lie to me if ya can. I really need you to lie to me and tell me you can't tell. Cause if you don't you might wanna throw me a life jacket so I don't drown in my tears. What lesson have I learned? Next time I do a project in one color, find a place that has 10-50 skeins and buy it all. I can't believe I thought 2 would be enough...then 3...then...well I can't tell you how many since I had to butcher the other skeins. I honestly thought I could finish it in a week and it took nearly 3. Turns out I probably could have stitched Poppy after all. Perhaps for Christmas. I need to get her framed. If the frame shop can't finish her by the 23rd I'll probably just have to do it myself. Which wouldn't be the worse thing in the world since I've had some interesting framing experiences with shops before. Alas, she's done and now I can get on with my life. Whew.



I'm pretty sleepy today. I stayed up late last night because we were under a tornado warning for about an hour. Who knew? I didn't even know they have tornadoes here. I think they followed us from Texas. It was thundering really loud all night and when I did go to bed it scared the poo outta me it was so loud. Nice lightening display too. Except for when I went potty and got a really good show while sitting under that skylight (see pic in a previous post). I didn't stay there long...lol.





So when I'm getting ready to leave to take the kids to school this morning, this was guarding the front door so instead of killing it I decided to catch it. I don't kill things once they get to be a certain size. He's so big I think he needs a name. Anyone know what kind of spider this is? He's sitting upstairs in a rubbermaid take-along waiting for Mike to get home to release him. Oh you wanna know why I'm not releasing him? Why, because he's a jumper of course and I figure if I let him go he's coming after me. I just couldn't have this little buggy walking around my house. Eww!


For all of my stitching friends, there's a really great contest here if you'd like to enter. The blog is called Stitch Pink and the contest is called the Pink Fiber Heaven contest. The hope of the site is to bring awareness of the importance of breast screening, and early detection of breast cancer. Really great site. Be sure to leave a comment so you'll be entered to win some of those pretty pink threads.

Keep your eyeballs open for my next post. I hope to take ya on a field trip in Historic Downtown Fredericksburg. Or at least start it. Cassie is participating in an ice cream eating contest at the Fudge Factory tomorrow so I should have lots of fun pics to share. What fun, I can't wait. She's really excited.