I'm still here

Ya, I'm still here. I have been busy playing an online game called World of Warcraft. It's an RPG game that I have found very addicting. But it has helped me work through some things in my life. Unfortunately I haven't been doing very much stitching or any other crafting. But true to my nature the craving to play the game has died down and I have started working on a couple of projects again. I went through my WIP boxes and put aside the projects I want to work on. I have started a kind of cute little project by Janlynn that says "Chocolate makes my day." It is a project that I would normally be too cutsie for me, but for some reason I like it.





I started it today and got a chocolate chip and part of the heart done. I am stitching it on 28 count linen that I had dyed myself. I just hope that the pink in the project doesn't get lost in the pink fabric.



I have also started knitting a pair of socks, but you can see my progress on that in my knitting blog.

I have also been loosing weight. My doctor put me on some diet pills because he was worried about me getting diabetes. Here are some pictures of what I look like. . .

This is me at 350 lbs when I started....

And again at 318.....it's starting to show...mostly in my face.

And this was taken about a week ago. I haven't been weighed in a while, so I couldn't tell you. In addition to the pills, I have been watching what I eat, and doing more cleaning around my house and yard than what I am use to. I still have a long way to go, but I am hoping to get down to a healthier weight before the end of the summer.

I hope to start updating my blogs again so I hope I have more progress to show next week...

I started a new project this week from HAED. It's a the letter I by Selina Fenech. I plan to give it to my son for his birthday. If not his birthday, then Yule Tide. I had started it on Monday night, but I had to start over on Tuesday because I left out a whole row! But I still managed to put in 1757 stitches. I am hoping to put in 2000 more stitches by next Monday.

I have also been doing some scrapbooking this week. I have so many pictures and I need to get everything documented before I forget everything. I tried scrapbooking a few years ago, but only had been able to get a few pages done. My last apartment was too small for a kitchen table, so I had to do it on the floor and that wasn't any fun. You can see pictures of them on my Multiply account... http://jessneal.multiply.com/photos/album/29/Elizabeths_baby_book

I wish I had more to blog about this week. Maybe next week...

2000 stitches

Another week has gone by and I have managed to put in 2000 more stitches into Lavender Moon. That brings it to a total of 5504 stitches total that I put into this piece. That leaves me with 160,396 left to stitch! LOL I can't wait to start seeing the fairy in my stitches. But that will happen in page 2. I still hope that page 1 will be done by the end of the month. But I am thinking that if I work really hard, I could have it done by next week's blog entry.

I have also started a Yahoo group for cross stitching fantasy lovers. It's a branch from the original CrossStitchAddiction group that I co-own with my friend Mary. The new group is called CSAFantasyLovers. I want to focus on HAED patterns along with other fantasy designers like Mystic Stitch, Dragon Dreams, and so on. I would love to see more people join, so if you are interested, you can find a link to the fantasy group along with the original CSA under the groups and blogs section to the right of this post.

I am also almost done with my stash diet. I have 2 more finishes to complete before I can start stash shopping again. You can see all of my finishes that aren't HAED related on my Multiply page at http://www.jessneal.multiply.com/ And now to close this weeks blog entry with a cute pic of my little girl.

Lavender Moon

OK, this is my first ever blog entry. I wanted a place were I could shoe off my Heaven And Earth Design cross stitch progress. And actually my the purple fairy in the heading banner is the first and current project I am working on from HAED. It's called Lavender Moon by Jessica Galbraith. My friend Mary gave me this pattern for my 29th birthday. I started it the summer of 2007 and haven't made much progress. I want to give griding and parking threads a try...we will see what happens! I will post pics of my progress during my next entry.