Category Archives: Cross-Stitch

Day 2 – Liberty

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As like many cruising itineraries, the first full day after leaving dock is a day spent at sea. With three ports and three sea days, at least the Cruise Director doesn’t have to jam all of the sea day activities onto one day. Tonight has been designated Formal Night (not bothering), a reception around lunch time (might go – tasty snacks), and various scheduled entertainments (now why would I be interested in karaoke or a belly flop contest).

I left my cabin early and headed up to one of the lounges. Last night I scouted out both key card lounges and picked a nice location to work. Out of traffic and right next to both 110 & 220 outlets. Did I mention the presence of the coffee machine? Essential for keeping sanity while working my way through I don’t know how many pages of notes.

This particular ship carries way too many passengers for my comfort. One of the larger ships, but not the largest, she carries over 4k worth of passengers including way too many children and a lot of adults in flip-flops and beer in hand. I am sure that noise cancelling headphones are going to be a serious help.

For those who care about such things, there are 22 Pineapples (Pinnacles) on this cruise, most of whom seem to be local to the area and have earned their status by cruising around and around and around the same routes out of Galveston, Boring,….

And back to my paper, interspersed with detours into cross-stitch and pattern design on MacStitch.

Unpicking

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(in which I typed out this whole post which then refused to save….) –

As I started back at the cross-stitch this morning – this one section just didn’t look right. Specifically, the purple just didn’t look like it fit in

see that bit of dark purple next to the pink?

I finished later last night than normal; it was dark except for the light around my chair. And purple is purple? As it turns out – no – it isn’t. As it turns out, 3838 and 3835 are both in the purple family, and it in the same bin in my stitch bow roll. But 3838 tends toward the blue end of the spectrum and is several shades more saturated than 3835 which is definitely more closely aligned with reds. And this particular area has more than a few pinks.

So, I spent 15 minutes unpicking 12 stitches in a careful manner so as to not disturb the stitches around them. The only time previously I had managed to insert the wrong color, it was five stitches and it was fairly easy just to stitch over them. Not an option in this case.

So this is the new end result.

Now with the right color

Unlike in knitting where you can tink or frog (knit spelled backwards for taking out one stitch at a time or rip-it, rip-it for tearing out a whole section) I can’t find a special word in the cross-stitch community for this careful removal of a few stitches.

So it is place a few stitches here and there in between running an errand or five…

Drunken Diagonal

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Yes, I can stitch along the diagonal – see!

Being what I accomplished in my New Years start

This is a 20 stitch wide diagonal with the first two completed. The fabric is 16 ct white Aida easy-count (translated to – it comes pre-gridded in 10s) Total pattern is 341 x 225 and is a full-coverage design.

But what I was going to say is that my discipline went a bit off the rails as I ran into just a few too many places where, rather than parking the thread, I went ahead and stitched another one or two stitches so that the particular color would be finished. And my nice, even edge turned into this –

which is 5250/76,725 completed stitches

It is cheerful, the colors are bright. but neat? rather not….

Completed

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The Case of the Empty Cookie Jar

Started 12 Nov. Finished 20 Dec. 66 stitches by 369 rows. Stitched on 16 count pre-gridded Aida. I still have to wash her and block her, but am rather pleased.

Virtual Cruise Ship Lounge

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Back a few years ago now, I met the aforementioned New Zealand woman (and long term Australian resident) in the upper deck lounge on the Mariner of the Seas. The ship itself was being repositioned from Galveston to the Far East with the first leg ending in Europe, the second in Dubai and the last, I believe in ending in Singapore. Jill was working on the most amazing cross-stitch called Fish City (link here) which is an amazing Stewart Moskowitz design. Each one of those fish has character, each unique. I was in awe.

The downside was that I decided that I might just want to start cross-stitching again. It was a craft I had done when Shana was in elementary school and had really fallen by the wayside. Admittedly, I still had supplies on hand; moved from Germany to the US to Germany to the UK (with more than one stop in the Middle East) back to Germany. But it looked like something I was interested in starting up again. And, there is a real limit to how many knitted hats shawls, scarves and sweaters one needs. Especially when a relocation to the US loomed in our future. With that relocation to a much warmer area was going to take a way the need for most of my wooly lovelies.

So – cross-stitching. I started and finished a few things over the last 3-4 years. And have a few things left to finish. Stitched a number of fractals, stitched a couple of small scenes on request for one daughter’s wall. Collected more than a few patterns and a lot of supplies which more or less sat while I spent a lot of the last couple of years with machine embroidery and grad school.

But then Jill, once again, suckered me in. She sent me a picture of a Randal Spangler pattern that she was stitching. I fell in love with with silly little dragonling who was attacking a keyboard. Yes – dragons and computers and total insanity. The patterns were produced from the original artwork by Heaven and Earth Designs. And they were having a sale. Need I say more? I bought a set of four patterns and am working on the first one.

But the virtual lounge?

Turns out that both Jill and I are on Apple products. FaceTime is a great way to connect. There are a few time zone considerations – what is 1600 on Wednesday for me is 1000 on Thursday for her. But we can stitch over FaceTime and chat with each other. I do miss the lounge, and her husband Graham who very kindly make the coffee and water runs so that we didn’t have to risk someone else moving into our chairs. But this works wonderfully. It is easy to see each other’s progress. She can see my chair and bookshelf (oh, whoop) and I get the occasional glimpse out her balcony onto a Gold Coast beach and a portion of the Pacific.

Ok, I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay, and by extension the Pacific Ocean from my living room window. But you get the idea. But it makes stitching a bit more fun, keeps me on track. It is almost obvious, I know people who use FaceTime, WhatsApp, and other modes to talk to family on a daily basis regardless of where else they are in the world. But stitching together, an obvious extension of this, just took that extra jump of imagination. The same idea would work for knitters, model train builders, just about any craft where you know someone else in another location. Seeing + talking makes communication just so much easier.

Two down, one to go

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Yes! I have turned in 2/3 papers that having been hanging over my head since last spring semester.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t do them. Rather it was more a matter of getting some unbroken blocks of time in which to sit down, concentrate, think about what I was trying to accomplish, then generating words in document that met the format of what was required.

I can’t say that it was difficult. Tedious? Unquestionably. Boring? Not really, other than the fact that I obviously have no love for precise US grammar, punctuation, US spellings, or all of that other nonsense that is required when producing documents for official grading. That–and I absolutely LOATH Word (yes, the Microsoft Program). I can deal with Paper (Mac), Open Office, and grew up on Word Perfect. But Word? Nothing intuitive about that program. And trying to permanently get rid of all the tracked changes? Gocod luck with that as they seem to magically re-appear.

I rewarded myself with cross-stitch time since the nice long walk I had planned had to be put on hold due to all of George’s conference calls. By the time he was finally off the phone, it was dark. Since we don’t have enough reflective vests to go around – walking around our area which is lacking in sufficient street lighting is not a really great idea.

19 Nov 2019. 538 today. 4924/24354

Monday update

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It would have been the usual drive into UCSF had not someone decided (planned or otherwise) to have a major accident along our route to the Bay Bridge. Traffic had been at a crawl for more than two hours when, rather than enter the freeway through the car pool entrance from University Avenue I decided to buzz along the frontage road on the bay side. It was better until the entrance at Powell street which was still a crawl.

Once actually  in the HOV access road in the maze approach, everything picked up and we sailed along till the Civic Center exit (where our ride-share passengers wanted to exit to Harrison Street). I didn’t see anything around there, but George says that it is now a good location for new tech start-ups.

The UCSF visit went well! Lab is all good. His platelets continue to creep up and his red cell count is stable (since RBC’s turn over ~ every 120 days, it means that he is making his own). We are due back on Friday, then Monday and perhaps then weekly.

I really should have gotten back at those papers, but instead spent the afternoon stitching.

Yes, I am finding it almost meditative!

18 Nov 2019 – 641 today. 4336/24354

And they won

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George has been watching. various college and pro sports over the weekend. If I hadn’t out with him, it really can’t be avoided. Some won, some lost.

I hiked down the hill to the UCBerkeley Campus, then across the campus to Haas Pavilion to watch Cal play the Riverside Highlanders. As per usual, I was there for the band, but didn’t mind seeing the Cal Women’s Basketball team win their game. It is a rebuilding year since two key players graduated last spring and one transferred.  Plus  a new coach. There were definitely rough edges.

Cross stitch at a game doesn’t work – but knitting does. I hauled along the “Hitchhiking beyond” that I started while George was in the hospital. I didn’t like the way it was shaping up, so frogged it from 3/4 down back to about 1/3 and happily enjoyed my garter stitch while watching.

Cross stitch? –

Just stitching

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I spent a good portion of the day tramping up and down stairs as I alway seemed to be needing a thread that wasn’t in front of me.

But I made good progress during the day on my Dragonling; knocking off about 1830 to do a rush clean up of the house prior to some friends coming over for dinner.

Even better, they brought dinner! So we had squash & Tofu stew over brown rice with asparagus as a side. The last of Shana’s Zupfkuechen was served as desert.

16 Nov 2019

And better

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We left home right before 0700, stopped at Peet’s for coffee, at NB Bart for a passenger and hit the road for UCSF. We were there, parked, checked in before 0800. Which meant we were out of there (lab draw, visit and all), on the road, and home via Acme Bakery by 1000.

What should be obvious is that everything is going extremely well. Blood count is stable, platelets continue to slowly climb, and George is gradually feeling more energetic.

Otherwise, I am rapidly becoming addicted to cross-stitch once again. Or rather, Ranald Spangler’s Dragonlings. After all, who could resist “The Mystery of the Empty Cookie Jar” by Dragatha Christie? It is only 65 stitches wide – but 373 long so it might take a while (90 colors and few blocks color).

New toys

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For years, I was an unabashed DOS supporter and dealt with the early versions of Windows before I became so frustrated that I shifted to Linnux for a number of years. After starting the kids (well the three younger in anywise) off with MAC products in the first place, I shifted over while stationed in the UK. Wow – that was 2008-2010. Seems like either yesterday or a different lifetime. There have been more than the occasional challenge with some particular software needs, since not all developers produce for both operating systems. Noah wound up needing a windoze machine since his CAD-CAM engineering software just doesn’t run properly in emulation.

I purchased one of the original iPads. I still have the heavy sucker. It works, it doesn’t leave the house. In fact, some of my favorite bubble popper games run on it just fine. The software no longer updates, and neither do many of the programs. But as a basic tablet on which to read, play solitaire, or watch programs – it is just fine. I mention this because I wound up wasting the morning dealing with my iPhone. As we were late getting out of the house, arriving at Apple 20 minutes after they open meant about an hour wait for a tech. Nice young woman, managed to do a magic reset and recommended yet another software update (seems like the last update fixed a number of problems, but then added a new one that bit me.

From there, since my local JoAnns failed to have about nine colors that I need for my new cross stitch project, we detoured to Michael’s in Emeryville. Five minutes to find what I needed (four of the colors- the other five – nope) and 20 minutes standing in line to check out.

Then home to find my new toys had arrived. Embroidery Floss storage toys might not interest you. For that matter, cross stitch may not interest you at all. If it does, you already know the following (and if not, you are welcome to stop reading). Designs usually come on charts which can be PDF files or hard copy printed. Most of us, when using hard copy, print an extra so that we can write all over it while preserving the original. The design itself can be full coverage (the whole fabric is covered – duh) or be elements with portions of the fabric showing. In either case, counted cross-stitch depends on the correct placement of the correct colors. Old school is printed paper, and colored pencils or markers in order to check off every square that has been stitched.

(Bored yet? I warned you)

Obviously, this is problem in search of an electronic solution. Enter Pattern Keeper. which unfortunately is only available in Android at the present. The program imports – can get rid of overlap sections and can be marked off square by square. It also will highlight all the instances of a particular symbol. The stitch area can be expanded or shrunk as needed.

a screen shot

 

which leads to accurate placing of stitches

And yes, this is pregridded fabric. It so much fun!

Finishing things

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I made a commitment to myself that I would limit my start of new projects subject to the completion of projects underway. I am also rewarding myself with needlework time as I complete sections of THOSE papers. You know which papers I mean; those papers which will finish out the incompletes of last spring. The “I”s that will turn into admin “F”s if I am not careful. Never having received an F in my life, this is not an additional accomplishment that I feel warrants achieving.

Never mind – finishing things.

I made progress on the legislative draft. Not finished but should be complete by the end of tomorrow. And I finished two cross-stitches. I am not posting either for the moment since they are both presents. One due this week, the other not till March. But having finished something somehow set my mind at east and let me figure out how to approach the last section of the middle paper.

Lou update

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I didn’t take any complicated handcraft to Madagascar. I wasn’t sure that cross-stitch or knitting a bus was an objective possibility. Then there is the issue of dust, stains and sudden stops which could involve a colored food or beverage item. It just seemed safe to focus on something with an extremely limited number of colors.

All of which explains why I hadn’t made a lot of progress on Lou in the last month. I pulled it back out after we returned home then couldn’t find the floss which I had carefully stored. A trip to JoAnn’s solved that problem which meant, of course, that a day later I was organizing in the bedroom and “noticed” the box sitting square in the middle of the dresser. The obvious box into which I had carefully placed floss, needles, scissors and chart. Go figure, right? But I can always use extra thread.

Any way, as of this evening, between stints of stitching and audiobook – I have come this far.

25 June 2018

Who knew?

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And before you think I am totally and completely out of it, please remember that I spent most of the years between 1981-2015 living outside the US. Outside of occasional brief stints, I have had no contact with US based primary/secondary school eduction with my children. In fact, other than my own experience as a student aged 17 and under, DoDDs schools provide my only window into US based schools. I have no experience with Parent/Teacher Associations or whatever the current nomenclature for what I remember as the PTA. Certainly I know nothing about them or their fundraising outside of what I have read in fiction.

For those reading this and living outside the US (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK for English speaking plus the salting of French and German speakers) I effectively am as naive about such organizations as you.

How was I to know that PTAs have added “evenings out at a family restaurant” to their fundraising repertoire? Carmen knew about such things and explained it to me, but I hadn’t a clue. It did explain why our chosen location for dinner – The Silver Diner was packed with children and their families. Kindergarten through Second as it seemed to be. According to our poor waitress, the group had made a reservation for “about 25” which turned out to be a gross underestimation.

How does this work? The group makes an arrangement for a time when the restaurant normally is not that busy and in return gets an amount per head or % of sales from the group. It obviously made the kids happy, there were cheerful youngsters everywhere excited about seeing their friends. Kids coloring, parents and grandparents looking poleaxed and the waitstaff dodging the waist high crew as they attempted to take orders and deliver meals.

The young lady in line behind us as we entered explained that she could see kids from her class and was ever so excited. When one of the kids informed her that her teacher was having diner, I thought she would wiggle out of her skin. With rare exception, the kids were actually well behaved. As a group, it was almost as diverse as the Bay Area without the breakdown along ethnic lines that is all too often seen in San Francisco.

The menu was great, featuring burgers and other US people friendly food in varieties from buffalo through salmon to vegetarian (I didn’t want to ask if they had a separate grill) with a pick list for adding additional condiments. Veggies were offered in lieu of fries. The water was cold and served with lemon. In other words, nice comfort food, it the place wasn’t so filled with cheer, kids and noise that you couldn’t carry on a normal conversation.

The location faintly reminded me of the 5 & Diner that Noah and I ate at once in Scottsdale. With a major exception – the Silver Diner chain does as much as they can to be part of the “farm to table” movement and locally source their comestibles whenever possible.

Lou is progressing – and other than that – it is raining. Again.

16 May 2018

Lou

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I have been working on a new project for the last several days and finally inserted a page for it under the project Menu.

This was Lou

Lou was a good dog.

If you know dogs, there are some that are loved by their owners, but no one else would ever say that they were good.

Not so with Lou. He was a good dog. Sociable, traveled well, polite, friendly but not overwhelmingly so and lived for his job. His job being working all day with David. It is a hard job for a dog, keeping a contractor under proper supervision. The whole day may be traveling around in the truck and visiting job sites (we will not mention the occasional treat) and keeping one’s person properly supervised.

This was Lou’s role in life and he filled it admirably. But in April, not so young a dog anymore, he became ill. Multiple vet visits and treatments, it was obvious he wasn’t ever going to get better and was absolutely miserable.

Since there is snowballs chance in hell of David ever reading this, I feel safe in posting that I am making decent progress on a present for him. I don’t know that he wants a picture of Lou on his wall, but I think he just might need one.

Side order of cross-stitch

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I am more than capable of entertaining myself. In fact, I am probably old and cranky enough that I prefer my own company to that of strangers who don’t know when to stop talking.

And some of them talk, and talk and talk….

I neither arranged any needlework group or went to find if there was one. I have found that sitting quietly in the Concierge Lounge in the morning gives me access to as many Lattes as I am stupid enough to drink, a seat with decent light near one of the windows and the added benefit of having a 220v power point directly accessible.

Today I had the pleasure of a lovely and extremely funny Irish-Canadian lady. Patty lives near Toronto. Her journey from Ireland to attend Uni in Canada turned out to be pretty much a one way trip. (Not counting visits to relatives in Belfast on a regular basis). The kids are now grown, there are grandchildren and she has been dragging around a cross stitch of a Celtic Cross for a while needing only part of a border and a lot of backstitching.

We have agreed to encourage each other for the next few sea days and see what happens. I don’t mind that she is a tea drinker (kind of like my daughters) and she will ignore my coffee…….

Over the plate

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and not at the batter. The As batter hit by a pitch hopefully won’t have a serious hand injury. The Giants batter was hit in the butt. He was fine and later scored what turned out to be the winning run.

End score: 6:5 in favor of the SF Giants.

Otherwise, ran a few errands. Finished another small cross-stitch

 

And headed back to the East Bay tomortow

Tenerife

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Another one of those places where I have been several times. It is a frequent stop on Trans-Atlantic Cruises of which I have been on several (well, more than several to tell you the truth). Depending on the cruise line and the ship – this route to south Florida is usually known as the Southern Route (as apposed to heading across from the Baltics and going via Iceland). Stops are normally in either the Canaries (as this ship) or the Azores – usually Ponte Del Gado.

Anyway. The last couple of times I have been here I just did the wander around or take the tram over to the other side of the island and away from most of the tourists. Unlike some of the other ports, right now we are the only ship docked. That makes the numbers of tourists not such a big impact on the town (unlike an Aida & Fred Olson ships also in port). I don’t think it is going to make any difference on the ships ability to get people back on board which has been drastically lacking in the last couple of ports.

(BTW – Stu reports that 17 in Roman Numerals can be anagrammed into something, which in Latin, comes out to be the equivalent of “my life is done/over/I am dead” etc. I think it means that someone, somewhere had way too much time on their hands and was into superstition rather than working for a living. So if you are Italian, you don’t want room 17, Deck 17 or probably train 17 or Flight 17. Me? I need to go and see if there is some number in Kabbalah which holds the same place in insanity)

My major stop today was El Corte Inglais where I bought a tape measure for Carmen and a seam ripper for me. It is not that I don’t have several at home. But they are at home, I am on ship and have a few stitches to un-pick in the current cross stitch. This is 22 count canvas and I really don’t want to either damage it with scissors.

Three sheets to the

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canvas. See! You were looking for the word “wind” even tho you know with absolute certainty that I don’t drink alcohol. I was going to say “drink” but that would be a stupid declaration since everyone drinks something – whether it is coffee, tea, soda, milk, water or one of the thousands of other choices found across this globe.

Rather, I was referring to the 12 pages of cross stitch (hey, I might yet do a filk off the traditional “12 Days of Christmas” if those Christians among you could avoid being insulted… If you do have a sense of humor – I would advise going to BandCamp and looking up PDX Broadsides who have authored and recorded an alternate and thought provoking Christmas Carol annually for the last several. “Santa has a Tardis” is just plain fun while “Sorry, Wrong Star” is quite pointed.

Where was I? On finishing up a third sheet of cross stitch. This particular project has, as I mentioned above – 12 total pages. Of those sheets – 3 cover a full page and the other 9 are partial pages, some much fuller than others. This is occurring because this particular design has an irregular edge rather than the normal squared off corners. A full page is 5 x 7.5 squares, each square is 10×10 stitches. The odd pages range from the smallest of 2×3 to the largest of 5×4. The overall design is four pages wide and three tall. The cross stitch itself is going to be a present which is why you haven’t seen any photos of it (which I will post after the relevant birthday.

Did I mention that I forgot two of the critical floss colors resulting in one of the pages appearing as if it has a bad case of the measles given all the empty spaces?

We are at sea today in case you hadn’t guessed.