October.

 Yay! An update! I keep meaning to do this and meaning to do this but it never seems to happen. Grrr! I lost a bit of time there in September due to a vacation week and - even more importantly - a BRAND NEW COMPUTER. I am no longer computing like it's 2006, people! 

My old computer actually wasn't in terrible shape, aside from being nervous of a hardware meltdown happening at any time because, you know, that stuff wasn't built to last forever and 7-8 years is asking a bit much of it. *ahem* The bigger issue was that more and more things weren't working with Windows Vista now that it's no longer supported so, rather than upgrade an old computer, we just got a new one! (A Windows 7 machine though because, MAN!, have I heard horrible no good things about Windows 8.) I was dreading moving everything over but apparently things have changed a LOT since I last bought one of these dang machines and it was actually pretty easy. *blink*

ANYWAY. I'm in a good mood today (mostly) because tomorrow is the Stitches East show and I looooooooooooooooooovveeeeeeeeeeeee the Stitches East show. And now it's here and I'm excited, even though I haven't been knitting much lately. I did so much knitting over the summer that I decided to take a break from it for a little while and get more stitching done. 

Turns out when you work on stitching a little bit each day (or most days) you actually FINISH THINGS UP. I know, right? It's miraculous.

These finishes here are the L*K Song of Spring kit , the rabbity 'small' that comes with that and the 2nd part of the BBD Honeybee Hill. (I haven't had occasion to use that sparkly green linen before and I quite like it here with Mr. Rabbit. )

I finished another piece as well but that may/may not be a gift so I don't want to post it and I have a big Plum Street piece 'in progress' that I am plugging along on. I can't go to the SE show without something on the needles though so stitching progress might be halted for a bit while I get my sock knitting on. :)

Relatedly, that new iPhone x-stitch app making the rounds is quite brilliant. An online/device accessible detailed accounting of everything in your stash?  YOU KNOW I had to snap that up immediately because I *LOVE* a good spreadsheeting, organizing, finger snapping, alphabetizing project. 

I went through pretty much everything I have pattern wise, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap and.......

Honestly, it's not AS BAD as I thought it was going to be! Of the 315 patterns I own, about 75-80 have already been stitched. Now, that is still more than I can probably REALISTICALLY finish in the years I have left to me (or have left in my eyesight/hand dexterity). And it doesn't take into account that I own 14 years of the JCS ornament issues which, well, have a lot of stuff in them. But. It's STILL not as bad as I thought. I would have guessed I had no less than 500 patterns to get to, so, yay? Buy more? ;)

(Also not counted: the patterns I have given away over the years. I gave away a GIANT stack of used Shepherd's Bush/misc. patterns at some point, a fact I am a little bitter about, to be honest, because REASONS. Things did not turn out well on that one. *sigh*)

After the patterns were done, I did my hand dyed threads but not my DMC. (Because I own ALL OF IT so I don't need a stinking list for that. ) All of the info is in that mysterious Cloud thingy now  and I can open it up on my phone or Mini so I have NO EXCUSES not to keep up on it. The app is really great and I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone with Apple devices and a wish to have an easily searchable database of their stash.

OH well. I probably had a million other things to say but this will do for now, right? :)

BTW - those little guys at the top are the new Mummy beads I posted on Etsy/my site this week. Cuties! :)

At last.

 An update! Well, this month has clearly gotten the best of me, as far as keeping up with stuff. Yeeesh. 

Part of that is that October is inherently busy for me. Fall is my favorite season and I like to take advantage of every nice fall day I can, hitting up the various festivals going on or just making time to sit on the deck when the weather is nice enough. (Anything in the 60's is fine. No lower than that though for Deck Time for me. At least not for sitting.) The other part is that I just stayed away for a bit because I was so sad to hear about Cathey. Reading through everyone's posts remembering her was like a kick in the guts. I don't know that I have anything eloquent to say about that (it's all been said so much better than I can fumble my way through it) but she will be missed and remembered.

I happily signed up for the newest L*K mystery sampler AND even managed to bang the first part out rather quickly this month. It's anyone's guess when I will get back to the rest but I'm quite proud to have finished the first part at least. lol

As charted, so far, except I left off some single 'snow flakes' near the pine trees in case I want to do them in beads (thinking a YES to that) and I think I have to change the parchment colored snowflakes on the bottom too. It doesn't stand out on the green at ALL. Boo. :(

I'll have to wait until more of that parchment floss comes up in the other two patterns though to see what would be a good sub for it. I don't want to have to change it twice, right? 

Seeing all the fall stuff going on though had me a little itchy for bright halloween colors so I did up a couple of quick small pieces from the latest JCS halloween issue.

(More pumpkins for Cathey? :))

Just short and sweet little ornament sized stitchies. I changed the linen on the block one from an ivory to this nice purple. It's not every day you can work a purple linen into a finish, you know? I started a bigger piece from that same issue too but I wasn't ambitious enough to drag it out and snap a pic of it. Heh. I'm about 2/3rds of the way done with it though so it might makes it debut some time soon. Maybe. (I put it away last week to concentrate on some knitting and have yet to get back to it. *sigh*)

My 'babies' are getting soooooOooooooOOo big! Almost five months old and Fitz is weighing in at over 5lbs now. Livvy is a full pound smaller - she can't compete with those boy genes! I let them out on my 'fenced in' deck and he likes to jump to the rail, dig a hole in one of the window boxes and take a nap. Dirty, dirty, kitty! lol

They still do everything together as a pair. Or almost everything. I haven't noticed any 'hormone' type activity going on with them......yet. Thankfully. My vet won't do the ole SNIP SNIP before they are solidly 5 months old so they have to wait a couple more weeks still before we are in the clear and I don't have to worry about THAT any more. Heh. :)

(And yes, poor Livvy got no pictures this time around but she's ALWAYS IN MOTION. ALWAYS. So I have the worst time ever taking pictures of her. Fitz is a fancy pretty boy lazy bum who sits and sits and is more camera ready.)