Wipocalypse - The Crafty Princess

Hi Stunners!

I wanted to show you alot more progress than this as I was hoping that since I'm on leave I would have more time. But it would seem that Murphy's law has kicked in and the more time you have away from work it seems that other things fill it up. But progress is progress and I've done the best I could despite driving over 5000 kms to South Australia and Victoria, battling flood zones, a moody mother, wine time, and other interesting distractions.

So for this months Wipocalypse only 3 goals out of 6 were adhered to (kinda sorta anways):

Goal 1

Completed not quite 340 stitches per day more like 700 per month on Faery 2 (d'oh)

Before

After

Goal 2: No progress

Goal 3: No progress

Goal 4:

Progress but not as much as I intended. Trying to stick to 100 stitches per day but came in at about 1600 or so stitches shy of this goal.

Before

After

Goal 5: Progress but forgot to take a photo before my last shift at work.

Goal 6:

Progress on the rotation wip

Before

After - You'll notice I had to do a bit of frogging on the pink background. Decided it wasn't blingy enough so I am using the sparkly DMC 819
(sorry about clarity of pic it was taken at twilight).

I thought I would include some holiday pics so you could understand why goals were not met for this Wipocalpyse.

What every household needs! An underground cellar to store your bulk wine!!
That's Poochie and Penguin (yet to be named) who were my awesome companions during the trip.

This is the underground cellar at Seven Hills Winery which is the oldest winery in the Clare Valley (Sth Aust). It was established in 1851 by the Jesuits to produce sacramental wine. Which they still do till this day. I bought 3 bottles of the Chardonnay though. Hey you can go to church and get their wine for free so why buy it???

Sunset as Semaphore SA near Port Adelaide. Aww pretty!

These are pics of scary driving through floods. I was desperate to get home, as the locals said that if I stayed one more night I would be stuck in Narrandera or Wagga Wagga for a week. No offence to the locals but get me out of here!!!!! So I drove through scary lakes where there once was a road trying to get back home. I ended up having to cross the state line for 3 states 5 times during the day in a bid to navigate my way home.

This is actually a road. To the right of the car is farmland, not a lake or river that overflowed, to the left is houses. My heart went out to them those poor people that were still repairing from the last floods and they got hit again. But I will say that even though the residents were facing total destruction of all their property they still waited at the end of this lake road with their 4wd vehicles and winches in case any of the stupid tourists (yes like me) came unstuck and (shudder) stalled in the middle. And they gave an almighty cheer when I made it safely through. People can be so awesome!

Well strangers can be awesome but not my parents!! LOL! I was absolutely crapping myself driving through this and almost in hysterical tears, I could feel my beautiful 1 year old Mazda of DMC 995 colour absolutely struggling against the water. It was almost over the bonnet. In hindsight it was pretty stupid to attempt it but I was soooo soooo desperate to get home.

My father in the front passenger seat was happily taking snappy photos and going "Oh man" and "Whoa look at how high the water is!" whilst my mother in the back seat was knitting a scarf and just kept saying "It's ok darling just keep going" without once lifting her eyes from her knitting. Ah you gotta love crafters! Nothing deters them from creating and getting those UFO's completed. Not even natural disasters, which is probably why Measi's Wipocalypse is so popular. We are all like End of the World??? I don't think so biatch I've got stitching to finish!!!!

I would like to make a special mention to "The Lovely Boys" from Sew it all (Australia). Mrs Dibble, Aunty Nene, Mummy, Jen and I went to the Craft show at Rosehill Racecourse on Friday. I love catching up with Peter and Wayne they are the coolest and loveliest boys. They specialise in all kinds of cross stitch fabrics and accessories including their own range of hand dyed fabbies. All of my wips posted on this post are being worked on fabrics I purchased from them (Mind you my photos don't show up how fantastic these fabrics look in reality).

The boys have also designed and patented Grip N Stitch frames which are great for small to medium projects as unlike Qsnaps they never ever lose their firmness. And I found out they now do framing at a third of the cost and their frames can be painted, papered and whatever you like to make your project truly unique. Plus they are really cool and so helpful. Their website is http://www.sewitall.com.au/. They also ship worldwide for the non Aussies! So check them out if you get a chance. Ok there's my shameless plug but I adore them.

 

I hope everyone enjoyed this months Wipocalypse - I'm about to head to all your blogs to snoop, stalk and support your efforts!

The only place where housework comes before needlework is in the dictionary.  ~Mary Kurtz

Good one Mary!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed this months Wipocalypse

Take care stunning followers and guests!

Alicia

xoxo

And now for this post's quote:

~WIPocalypse and a Happy Princess~

Hey there stunners!

Welcome to my lovely new followers Shazzump, the two Christine's, Rachel, Summer and Borduur! Thanx for taking the time and I hope you enjoy the journey! Destination to be advised though hee hee!

Well it's the second coming of the WIPocalypse and I haven't achieved as much as I would have liked but I did come to a realisation. My WIPocalypse goals were a tad too adventurous. There was no way that I could stitch 680 stitches on Faery 2 plus keep up with the HAED Freebie SAL, work on the Wips in my rotation and eat, sleep, go to work, the gym, play any video games or see any of my friends! Something had to give!

So I have halved the Faery 2 stitches per day to a more manageable 340 and the Freebie SAL to 100 per day. This way I still had at least 6 hours or so in a day to work on the projects in the rotation or do other fun stuff.

I reworked the goals only a week ago so not much to see on Faery but I've made a good start on QS Lovers by Nene Thomas. I have kept up with the required 100 per day. So one goal achieved - awwesommmme!!!



Progress as of 1st February



My rotation piece for this week is Selina Fenech's "L" Sampler letter. This is where I am at the start of the week. Yeah I know it's Thursday but I start my rotation's on Friday to coincide with HAED weekly SAL. That way if the piece in my rotation fits that weeks theme I can join in on that too.  For some reason SAL's always make me stitch more. I really like the thought that we are all working away on our individual projects yet come together from all over the globe to joy ride on the same luxurious cruise liner ( hey I am a Princess, to use the word boat seems so peasant like LOL!!)

It will eventually spell LOVE! Cos that's all that matters in life.  I want to wake up to a reminder every morning (or night depending on what shift I'm on) seeing this cross stitch to remind me that nothing is as important in my life as love. Not just in the receiving but more in the giving. I see it everywhere in my life and it's so cool!

Rotation piece for this week - L



I have a work project as well which I have added to my goals. This is a project that I only stitch whilst at work. Mrs. Dibble, Aunty Nene and I have an awesome job where we do 12 hour shifts approx 3-4 shifts per week on a 24 hour rotational roster. As we work in an emergency service radio room we have down time especially between 2am and home time at 7am. So if we can manage to keep our eyes open we are allowed to work on our cross stitches.

So I will be working on the Jungle Babies Birth sampler for my work colleague Blair who had a baby recently (Well 4 months ago so I had better get some kind of firework under my bottom). I think it was a girl, good lord I had better find that out. Here is where I am up to so far with that one....hmm not good Princess not good.

Jungle babies

The reason I am a happy Princess as the title indicates is that I have been consistent in one thing which was one of my NYE resolutions. That being to go to the gym on a regular basis. With the help of my personal trainer Tim I have managed to lose 10 kilos since the start of the year. YAY!!!!

Still can't believe I pay a 19 year old boy to stand there for half an hour and tell me to climb invisible mountains, row across invisible seas and lift heavy balls above my head. But it's all worth it in the end. I feel great and when I'm sitting and cross stitching for hours I don't feel any guilt. Plus guilt is a waste of energy. I'd rather put that energy into feeling awesome and blissfully happy. So I ensure that I am always on that feeling frequency of happiness, no matter what I am doing. It's life changing!

That's all for this week. I will post again in a week with my progress.

Quote for the week

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.  ~Danny Kaye

I wish you all every happiness this week and I hope that at least one thing happens in your life that makes you awestruck. Let me know!

Go for it stunners and have fun!

Love Alicia

xoxo

L for LOVE!



"L" - Selina Fenech



 


Well it's been a week and this is how much I have completed in the L sampler letter by Selina Fenech. I have decided to continue the Letters as a work project. The big blocks of colour make it easier to work at when you are required to frequently stop and start. Plus I want to get these finished ASAP and I can't wait the 13 weeks it will take to come back into my rotation. Although, I have used a sparkly Aida fabric I don't think it pops as much as it should. So I have bought the sparkly version of DMC 819 and will do a bit of the dreaded frogging on the pink background. I tried just using the sparkly on the top cross only to avoid frogging but it looks weird. But I will do this on the black letter and put another round of crosses on the border in some sparkly thread. The colours aren't very vibrant so had to add my Bling Princess touch.

Now for this weeks rotation it's Faces of Faery 88 by one of my fav artists - Jasmine Becket-Griffith. Below is the before pic. I have the next 4 days that will be devoted to craft and just a bit of cleaning when I need a little break so I'm hoping to get page 1 and 2 completed. As you can see I'm doing them simultaneously as there are big chunks of skin colour and parking was not required with this project. Makes it faster to stitch the 2 pages together. I'm loving the green in her eyes it really sets off all the purple in the background and the purple dragon that will be coming along soon.

Have an awesome weekend everyone. Good luck with your stitching or whatever will be filling your time. Just remember to always find time to do something you love no matter what!







D'OH!!!

I have completed the weeks rotation for Golden Wood, and as it went last week I didn't get as much done as I anticipated. I'm either really slow or not spending enough time on them, or I'm just over ambitious with my quotas. Time will tell...



Golden Wood







    

Now for the confession. I purchased 4 new cross stitch charts from the HAED thanksgiving sale. But in my defence I have a very good reason and I am not sliding back into my old ways. I am reading "The Power" by Rhonda Byrnes and it's all about Love and the power of Love. In order to have an amazing life one must harness the power of Love.  Anywhoo as I was browsing only BROWSING mind you the HAED website I came across the Selina Fenech Sampler Letters charts and the thought hit me like lightning - how cool would it be to have a cross stitch depicting the word LOVE to remind me of its power and to use it throughout my day. As the Law of Attraction advises one to act upon every positive impulse it was completely out of my control so I bought the charts and will be starting on the "L" today.

You see my friends I have to do this because I don't want to screw with the Universe. It guided me to this website as I promised myself I wouldn't even go there for temptation sakes but something told me to do so that day and lo and behold there was a sale on!!! It's beyond my control. This is my explanation - please don't judge or organise an intervention. I'm okay. It's all good! Happy stitching stunners!