A Month for Concerts

It’s been a really busy week work wise with only one day off, but I managed to hibernate that one day and stitch like mad. I also went to a concert last night, a fiddler by the name of Scott Woods who does East Coast and old time country music.  He builds his shows to cater to seniors but I love good fiddle music, also he’s a favourite of my parents.  He seems to come around every year at this time and tickets are inexpensive so his show makes a perfect mother’s day/father’s day gift.
So I went to two OneRepublic and Scott Woods different concerts this month, with a vast difference in scope and style I didn’t take either of these videos and the Scott Woods one is from a few years ago, but it does show the type of concert he puts on.

And what can I say about OneRepublic other than best concert ever.

I don't have a pic of Music this week, though I worked on it all through Jeopardy, unfortuantly I spent two episode ripping as I discovered a mistake I couldn't work around, so while much was done, no progress was made.
Cindy however grew wonderfully

As for what I watched, not much but I made good use of my time.

Doctor Who  S04 E10-14 Post Donna, pre Amy

Table Top

The Core - The earth’s core has stopped spinning causing a breakdown of the electro-magnetic fields so a group of scientists take a ship to the middle of the earth to use nuclear explosions to restart the core,  the usual disaster movie clichés abound, which of course makes me very happy,.

The Corpse Bride. - A young man practicing his vows accidentally marries a dead girl who is thrilled to finally be a bride. I think this is my favourite Tim Burton movie, it’s sweet  and funny and the animation is wonderful

May SFS and waterfalls

SFS May

Spent  $14.00
Finished $0

I’ve had a busy month, but not really stitching wise, but all good, and it included a return to my first love - photography.  First there was the fabulous trip to Vancouver (see last blog).  Vancouver is where I spent the money, had to add to my bead stash as there is a fantastic bead store there. Then last Friday, my family declared a waterfall day and we went off to Wells Gray park.  It was only a day trip, Mom, Dad and I, and our friend Diane, and my sister met us there as well.  We went to the big three waterfalls, Spahats,

 Dawson,

and the amazing Hemlcken.

 And then the rest of the week was spent playing with my new photo editing program, even tried HDR for the first time, I rather love it.

My April fabric of the month was very late, I assume because of Easter, and my May shipment should show up next week.  The April one is very pretty and with it’s hints of orange and purple, may end up being the fabric for the Halloween SAL I’m doing with Carla and Leonore.

Stitching has happened though and progress has been made on both pieces, I feel like I’m getting so close to finishing Cindy, even though my head is aware that I have several more months of work to do on her.

But I hope to finish Music before the end of
June.

As for what I watched

Table Top

Supernatural S10 E22-23 Carry On My Wayward Son 

Constantine - The movie - Not as good as the now unfortunately cancelled series, but other than not having Constantine be British it’s not bad at all, very much follows the narrative style of the comics.

Avengers: Commentary - This is the reason I wanted to buy the DVD that took forever to come on a sale. I have all of Buffy and Angel so I know that Josh Whedon is good at commentary, and I was right, lots of fun information to be had. Since I’m already past the A’s it now goes to the end of the list, or possibly into the “m”s for Marvel, in fact I’m thinking of taking all the Iron Man and getting all the other’s and just making a Marvel movie shelf that’s in chronological order instead of alphabetical.

Pitch Perfect - Due to plans to see the sequel, thought I would rewatch this one since it so nicely showed up on Netflix

Pitch Perfect 2 - Thoroughly enjoyable, manage to avoid some of the worst sequel clichés and had some great music, also had Pentatonix starring as Canadian competitors which made me laugh

Coraline - A lovely spooky childrens(ish) movie written by Neil Gaimen so you know it’s a good story.

Vancouver holiday

Vancouver at night

Not much stitching in this stitching blog this week.  I had a wonderful five days away in Vancouver with my best friend instead. Technically I went for the OneRepublic concert but as  luck would have it, it was also the opening weekend of Avengers, and the weekend of the Eat!Vancouver food festival.
I left on Thursday to mediocre weather, but the rest of the weekend was spectacular, met Aaron in Metrotown and did a bit of shopping and then over to Ikea for some more, and that was almost all the shopping I did. We then walked all over downtown while waiting for his friend to get off work as he was coming to the movie with us as well, Aaron had bought advance tickets in a theatre with assigned seating, which is the best thing ever. Also the movie was great.
On Friday we went wandering, first to Grandville Island as I needed

View from Cypress

to go to the bead shop , where I did find what will be the finishing touches on Magical's ornaments. And then we went wherever he felt like taking me. We went up to

Porteau Cove

the viewpoint on Cypress mountain, over to the Porteau Cove on the sunshine coast and then down to White Rock to walk the beach, before going to supper at My Shanti, an Indian restaurant we’ve been talking about going to for a year, it’s listed as one of the best in Vancouver, not toooooo expensive and the food and service were fantastic.  After supper Aaron said lets go to Kitsilano to see the sunset, so we did, it was so kind of him to order a sunset for

Sunset at the Spanish Banks beach

me.
Saturday was concert and food show day.  Anna Olson was the big name Celebrity chef for me this year, I have her cookbooks and adore her shows so meeting her was a thrill, I even took along my book to get it signed.  The concert was incredible, amazing, phenomenal and I could go on and on, best one I’ve ever been to,  We walked around downtown for around an hour before the adrenaline wore off.

Myself and Anna Olson,
 my baking hero

I had planned to go home Sunday, but the other chef we wanted to see (the owner of the restaurant we went to) was the last one on stage on Sunday, so I stayed. And we went on another long meandering walk after the food show was over.
I did manage to sneak some stitching in after I got home, not much on music so I’ll up date that next week, but Cindy has had a little bit of work.

The white rock at White Rock and some random child

Table Top
Supernatural S10 E21 WHAT NO!!!!!!!!!

Doctor Who S04 E07-09 Including the first one with River Song, interesting to watch again knowing what’s to come.

Convoy - At the time just a comedy about truckers and corrupt police, unfortunately now shows how little has changed in over 30 years

Avengers: Age of Ultron - So much fun must go see it again, and maybe watch the first one again since I finally found it on sale.

April SFS

My SFS this month is very easy,
April
Spent $0
Earned $0
Probably will not be that simple next month

It’s been a good week for me, work it back to how it should be, add in a couple short days and stitching and watching happened,. I’ve accomplished a lot this week, finished my parents taxes to start , I also finished the blue on Cindy’s dress, and there’s no more of it to come, I’m feeling very accomplished about it.

 Also finished a page of  Music only one more to go.

 I won’t be blogging on Friday next week as I will be in Vancouver, my friend Aaron and I have tickets to see  OneRepublic and opening night of Avengers and plan to go to the food show as well. One of the Celebrity chefs is Anna Olson, I have one of her cook books and can’t wait to see her. Also hope to go to a bead store and destroy possibly destroy my budget, or just drool a little.
A man that works for my brother, also works stage and lighting for our local theatre, and he invited our family to the dress rehersal for the new play - A Pack of Lies, it was wonderful and I forgot how good our shows were, I’ll have to remember to go more often



As for what I watched

Table Top

Doctor Who S04 E05-E6

Supernatural S10 E19  Only a few episodes to go in this season, it’s been a great one so far

Game of Thrones  S05 E01-02 I can’t believe it’s already Season 5

Clear and Present Danger - I’m not watching this series in order since they didn’t bother to film them in order, I am a fan of the Jack Ryan books but will admit that as much as I like Harrison Ford, I've never been fond of his portrayal of Jack, it’s a little toooooo action hero, and that’s not what Jack was. Still it’s a decent action movie and I am a completionist when it comes to series 

Clockstoppers - This shows the reason I’m doing this alphabetical rewatch, I forgot I owned this movie, it’s just a cute young teen aimed sci-fi about a boy who finds a watch that can stop time, and of course uses it to get a girl and save his father from an evil scientist 

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - 1 and 2 - Making it rain food is such a strange concept for a movie, but it works somehow, I bought the second sight unseen because it was $5 at Walmart so why not, and that one has food animals some of which really remind me of Ursula Vernon’s art. Wonder if the creators were fans of hers.

Coach Carter - A movie about the high school basketball coach who benched all his players until they improved their grades. It has a great coaches speech at the end that always gets me a little teary eyed. I never cry at movies like Titanic, but give me an inspirational sports speech or a “we can band together and save the world” disaster movie speech (e.g. Independence Day) and I’m gone. Also fun to see how low down Channing Tatum is in the credits in this, his first movie.

Spring?

With the exception of a possible sinus infection, this has actually been a lovely week, work has calmed down , and they are actively looking for someone to replace the girl who quit.  And I got to stitch . The sinus thing is annoying and occasionally painful, but something I’m used to, spring can be a literal pain, but  it seems to be very slowly getting better and drugs are my friends. So I got a lot done on Cindy

 and moving right alone on Music as well.

As for what I watched

Doctor Who S03 E12 - S04 E4  While as stated before Martha is my least favourite companion there were sure a lot of great episodes in her season, now onto season 4 and Donna, her I really like, she’s the one companion of the new series that seems to really understand how scary the doctor can be, and there is no hint of unrequited love. She’s just there for the adventure.                   

Table Top

Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair - The last of this well done BBC series from the ‘80s

A Chorus Line - I started to watch this on VHS last months, but it had deteriorated so bad I decided I needed a new copy. So now I got to watch this amazing musical on my brand new DVD.  

A Cinderella Story - Modern day high school version of the fairy tale, it’s cute. And yes I own a Hilary Duff movie, in fact I own at least two. Everyone has to have a guilty pleasure, teen rom/coms are one of mine. 

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones - Not a bad movie, but they could have followed the book a lot better.

April WIPocalypse

The WIPocalypse  question of the month is;  Which Specialty stitches do you love doing on projects? Which do you dread?

I don’t really dread any, I’m not fond of lazy daisy stitches, but that’s because I haven’t done enough of them yet, I actually enjoy French knots now that I've done them so often, but my favourite has to be back stitching, I love it, I love how it makes a piece come alive, and as I always do it last it’s like a bonus before finishing a piece, I know that if I’m doing back stitching that I’m close to done. It makes me feel very accomplished.

I feel like this was my week to breathe, work was quiet, I got two days off in a row and nobody broke any bones to cancel them. I suppose I should have done more, but I needed that break. That been said, I have been learning the new computer and programs, I did my taxes and started on my Dad’s, did laundry, and I stitched, so I am now a happy relaxed person. Of course with curling over, work slowed down on the Music Sampler,

 but that means I managed to get more done on Cindy.

Also my friend Pinky has adapted some great art into patterns, check them out.
 I want to start Merida immediately but they aren't quite available yet, she’s still taking preorders, and they are  big, which suits me fine, but what shall I have to bump to get to her quicker?




As for what I watched

Doctor Who S03 E09- E11    Including my favourite episode of TV ever, BLINK

Men’s finals in World Curling Championships, that’s it for me and sports until the Tour De France in July

Table Top

 

Chronicles of Narnia, BBC :

The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, the special effects are kind of horrible, but the story is so well done it’s easily forgivable, I will be watching the newer full movie versions when I get to the “N’s”

                 Prince Caspian, it’s a short one and Caspian is a little younger than he should be, but still well done\

Voyage of the Dawntreader: My favourite of the books and the movies I tend to think of Narnia they way most fantasy lovers think of  Tolkein, this was my series, the one that really captured my imagination, it wasn’t my first foray into Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Mom was reading Andre Norton to me long before I picked these up, but they were the first books I really begged Mom for and I still have my original set, I think it’s soon time to read them again                                

Page 3

So it’s been an interesting couple weeks so I last reported in, I haven’t had a chance to organize all that wonderful stash that I received,  due to many work hours and sports I like watching. This is the last week of curling though and figure skating is over for the season so nothing now for me until the Tour de France in July. The teenager at work quit, I can’t blame her. But doesn’t anyone give notice anymore, it seems to be just “I quit” and they walk out. Anyway my one of my two days off got cancelled which means, you guessed it, overtime, and during a stat week too. Also I’m getting tired of complaining about work,
But as figured, the bonus of all these extra hours is a nice pay check and I finally got my new desktop computer. But going from XP to Windows 8,1 is a pretty steep learning curve, but I’m figuring it out.  Also I bought the newest version of Paint Shop, my favourite photo editor, which I haven’t changed since 1998.  I have no idea what I’m doing, but it looks really cool, must take time to do the online tutorials.
I have managed to get some stitching done amongst all this, I am loving the Music Sampler, \









And *drum roll please* I have finished page 6 of Cindy, only page 3 left and then the one over one, and backstitching, and beading, and yes I still have a lot of work to do on her,

As for what I've watched

World Figure Skating Championships - My obsession

World Men’s Curling Championships - I love curling for stitching to, and if I miss a good shot, they always reshow it.

Doctor Who S03 E8

Tabletop - the rewatch continues and thanks to this show I got Ticket to Ride for my phone, another thing that’s been taking my time this week

Taming of The Shrew - Another of the Shakespeare at the Globe movie series, I had never read this one, and the only thing close to a version I’ve seen of it is Kiss Me Kate, it was fun and crude and  a little disturbing.  Also there was this wonderfully catchy very  crude song in it, Check it out

Insurgent, - It’s been a year since I read the books so I’m far enough removed from them to just enjoy this and not pick it apart, I really do love this series, even more than The Hunger Games actually.

Easter Parade, - For obvious reasons