YEAHHH!! Swim lessons are now over. For the last five weeks, we've been driving 20 minutes to swim lessons every night. I don't begrudge any of that time because my kids are learning to swim but they're done! For this summer at least!!!

I've tried twice this week to upload pics here but blogger isn't cooperating. I'll try again this weekend. For now I'll just tell you what I've been up to. This week saw part 3 of Frosty Knotgarden finished. So that was put away since the next part doesn't come out till September. Tonight, I've also finished the third of four parts of the Debbie Draper mystery from Sticklounge. Then I picked Zentangle 2 back up. I've finally gotten to the scissors in the middle and I've decided to stitch those in silver PTB. Everything I've got is all kitted up except for what is left from Chatelaine's MM5. Ineke sent me part of her kit last year and I'm using it here. Thanks Ineke! Can't wait to see how it looks against the blues and black.

Tomorrow we're driving to the Omaha Zoo. The boys finally talked Ed into it. They wanted to go today but there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to take off work. So we're going early tomorrow morning. Then, tomorrow night, Jakob has another pool party birthday to go to. It's going to be a long day. On that note, since it is getting pretty late, good night!

Just thought I would post a little update. Here's where Frosty Knotgarden is currently. I just sent the boys outside to play and I will be following in a couple of minutes.

In the last week or so I joined a new group at Yahoo groups. It was called Marquoir but it is now called Sticklounge. It's a very active German group that has lots of free stitch alongs. They'll send you the first part of any open SAL, but in order to get the following parts, you have to share a picture with the group. Not hard, right?

Here is a mystery SAL to celebrate the name change in the group. It is a piece by Debbie Draper. I'm stitching on a piece of 28 ct opalescent I got from Sugar Maple Fabrics tha I bought to try out not long before she went out of business. I'm stitching with HDF Zumaque in SSR. Lovely color!!

This is another piece from Sticklounge. It's called Zentangle 2. Stitched on a random piece of 28 ct blue fabric. I'm stitching with HDF Nightmare in SSP.

This is/will be Jakob's room. He helped me clean it out last weekend. I just need Ed to build the wall to cover up the brick and hang drywall and I can get busy.

Last night, I finished part 3 of the Frosty Knotgarden.

Now, since it is too hot to be outside unless I'm taking down laundry, I'm going to go stitch on part 3 for a while. DH has left for work for a couple of hours so I will have lots of stitching time this evening.

7/7/10

Wish me luck! I have an job interview tomorrow morning! It's for another property management company, but it's much larger than the one I currently work for. I think I'm ready but I can use all the luck I can get.

7/5/10

This is where I currently am with Frosty Knotgarden. The two areas on the left with the branches just need a little backstitching. The two on the right need some more PTB but they shouldn't take very long. Then a few more Rhodes stithes around the outside and some beads and I'll move to the bottom of part 2. Part 3 is already out so I better get stitching!

Here's where I left One Nation Friday. I have the first stripe done and started outlining the second. I spent a lot of time with this one over the last week. The boys have had swim lessons all week so I basically had 45 minutes of uninterrupted stitching.

Sorry this is sideways. I need to figure out how to fix that. This one just needs the lacing finished and some glass and will be ready to hang on the wall. I spent a good part of the morning pinning it. All those straight lines will give me away if I'm not careful!

Honor and Glory is framed! I picked up spacers and some more foam core Friday and it's ready to go on the wall. I have another identical frame and enough spacers for when I complete mine since this one is supposed to go to the boys' sitter. I've shown it to her. She just doesn't know it is going to live at her house for Christmas.

I think the 13 pints of beans I canned this morning are finally cooled off so I need to take those downstairs and start another load of laundry.

Later!

Today's the 4th of July and instead of my kids being able to listen to the traditional sound of fireworks going off all day, we get to watch it rain and rain and rain. We're hoping that later it will stop for a little while so they can do some poppers.

Not much to show in my stitching. I got the first stripe done on One Nation then I changed to Frosty Knotgarden. I might actually finish the top half of part 2 this weekend then move onto the bottom half.

I've signed up for a couple more Chatelaines. With the exchange rate and the 10% discount, I couldn't hardly resist. I'm converting the silks to HDF to save a little money there too. I'm also thinking of a couple of HAEDs but I have till Tuesday to make a decision to buy with the 25% discount. I really like the new Nene Thomas pieces. I'll let you know what happens there.

Now, I told the boys that if they can agree which movie they want to see, we would go since they can't do anything outside. Right now, Jakob wants to see Karate Kid and Josh wants to see Toy Story 3. If they can't decide, we won't go.