SFS June

SFS June

Spent $13.61
Finished $0

It’s hot out, I hate heat and would like to spend all of summer hibernating in the cool basement stitching, unfortunately I need to work to pay for stuff and I work in a hot bakery.  Heat make my sleepy achy and cranky, and at the moment cranky is winning.  I had reached an equilibrium at work with my boss, he annoys me greatly but after a year with him I have learned to deal by maintaining calm or ignoring him when possible.  The heat has been making this very hard for me. Hopefully he takes lots of holidays this summer.


I still have some reorganizing to do in my NCC but I did get the cabinet the way I wanted it, Printer on top, fabric on the open shelf, the boxes contain scraps, and notions and partially made ornaments
The enclosed bottom contains all my books, magazines and kits, the Mines of Moria box contains unbobbinated floss and I will soon have a lovely nautical box that will be perfect for the hoops, I think there is room for it under there.

It’s the final SFS for this edition,
I spent $77.86
I earned $12
Which meant I had $84.18 remaining of my $150 budget. Yay me.
There is a lovely LNS in Williams Lake that actually carries some different fabrics, didn’t need much, but I found a nice length of cream 25ct so I will finally get to try that size and I also got myself another couple sheet of perforated paper, can’t wait to try it.

Now onto the next 6 months, where I will do nowhere near as well, as there are patterns I promised to buy (cause they are gorgeous) and I will in the next six months need to get some 18ct black big enough for the fractal pattern I will be starting after I finish Cindy. In this SFS six month period I have had all of 2 finishes, that will not be the case for the next 6 months as I will be doing all of Magical’s ornaments.
And will finish Music

And Cindy.

As for what I watched

Doctor Who - S05 E01- 04  Hello Matt Smith

Glee S02 E20-22 S04 E01-03  Have now reached where I stopped watching originally, it seems to be sticking as a binge watch this time

V: The Final Battle - The second miniseries form 1984 and the finale of the
story. I choose to ignore the not bad but not great TV series that followed and the boring remake from a couple years ago,  Despite the age this show holds up, my only complaint is the fast growing alien child story line, something I’ve always hated

Victor/Victoria - I adore Julie Andrew and this one is hilarious as well as having fantastic music,  It’s about a women, pretending to be a man, pretending to be a women. What could go wrong.

Varsity Blues - I am a huge fan of Dawson’s Creek and sports movies, so
even though this is a football movie it is still a must watch and own for me.  It’s funny, at the time, James Vamderbeek and John Voight, where the big(ish) name stars with a bunch of the standard  unknowns playing pretty/handsome highschoolers, those unknows (at the time) where Paul Walker, Scott Caan from Hawaii 5-0, Amy Smart from Justified and Shameless, and Ali Larter from Heroes. The backup cast for this movie did well for themselves.

Jurassic World - In a word: Fun, just what you would expect from a Jurassic movie including the mind blowing score, I admit to tearing up a little at the main theme, it’s so gorgeous.

Varekai - Cirque Du Soleil - I’ve seen 7 Cirque shows live, Varekai is the only
one I’ve seen twice though, so it’s always nice to pull out the DVD and enjoy it again.

Holidays

This last week I have been on holidays and one of my grand plans for it was to organize my stash better, that hasn’t quite worked out as planned.
Last weekend my parents and I went up to William’s Lake to visit my sister and watch my nephew

Nerd nephew and his dayt

graduate, he’s the one that usually comes up to pick fruit in the summer and we get along great, he won’t be up this year as he needs a steadier job as he goes to college in the fall, so I’ll miss him this summer, on the other hand, his school is in Kelowna, which isn’t that far away, so I’ll get to visit him. We ended up staying an extra day as my sister had Monday off as well, so we all went off for a long back roads drive and found a couple waterfalls and a gorgeous lake.

Crooked Lake

Since I got back I’ve been cleaning out the cabinet I want to store my fabric in, but it has all my CD’s in it, which first have to be transferred to my computer, hope to finish that project tonight. I did manage to snaffle a small book case that had 8track tapes on it and put it to a more properly booky use.  Has nothing to do with stitching, but it freed up much needed space.



I took Music to William’s Lake with me and got plenty done on it while chatting with my sister.

And the last couple days have worked pretty steady on Cindy.

As for what I watched

Table Top - All caught up on the rewatch now I have to impatiently wait for new ones 

Titansgrave - The Ashes of Valkana - Another Youtube show from Wil Wheaton, similar set up to table top but instead it’s an ongoing RPG

Glee Somewhere in season 2 - I’m back to this for a while, until I get tired of it again.

Doctor Who - S04 E15-18 - Goodbye David Tennet 

The Fluffy Movie - A film of a live stage performance from the comedian Fluffy, he’s pretty funny

V - The original 80’s mini series one of my all time favourite sci-fi shows. The visitors are our friends (not)

June (and May) WIPocalypse

Oops I missed WIPocalypse last month, so I shall combine the two months
May question: I would like to know if you look for LNS’s when you travel.  What is the favourite shop you’ve ever found?

For me it depends on the trip, if I’m going to be alone I’ll usually look stores up, but with friends I seldom do. Though if I spot one, I will drag them in. The best I’ve found was in Williams Lake, but a all around fabric craft store but actually had some different fabrics and patterns, and I will be hitting it again this weekend\

June question : Do you find yourself more productive with stitching in summer or winter?

Winter usually, I generally have less hours at work in winter allowing myself more stitching time,  also July has the Tour de France which is impossible to stitch during due to all the beautiful scenery they show.

The blog is a day early this week as I’m once again going away for the weekend, this time to William’s Lake for my nephew’s grad, might try a waterfall stop at some point as well, but I’ll definitely be taking pics of pretty dresses.

Cindy is still going really well and it seems like a good time for a full shot of her.
And I’m back on track with Music, which will be coming with me.








As for what I watched

Game of Thrones S05 E04-08 Caught up again

Table Top

American Ninja Warrior - I can’t help myself

San Andreas - Yay!! New big screen disaster movie, there really isn’t enough of these.  This was a good one, has all the normal clichés, but avoided the one where people are idiots. The people that didn’t know what they were doing, listened to the ones that did. Good special effect and the mandatory things that must be destroyed

were destroyed in fine fashion.

Cowboys and Aliens - I want to like this one more than I do, but I think it will end up with Mom, in I like some westerns but mainly the more lighthearted ones, This isn’t one of them, it’s  a serious western where the bad guys happen to be aliens, interesting premise, but doesn’t quite work for me.

Tomorrowland -  On the other hand this one I really enjoyed, I had to go see it as some of it was filmed around 20km from here and it was fun seeing the local scenery, but it was also a good and original story line as well. Also it never hurts my feeling to watch George Clooney 

Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course - This was made due to the popularity of Steve Irwin and it’s hilarious. Three story lines collide at the end, one is a group of American Spy trying to retrieve some valuable space debris (that get swallowed by a crocodile, two is a farmer trying to protect her cows, and the third it Steve Irwin but done just as his show was,

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.