A thousand apologies for not updating for so long. How long has it been? It feels like about a month. My life has been absolutely hectic lately, I spent a week doing clinical at pre-school (so much fun, the children were so adorable!), and I've had two major assignments due in the last week, so I've been working hard on those. And exams are just around the corner, plus working hard on top of all of that... I've been exhausted!

So it's for that reason that I've been so slack with my SALs, as well as all my other stitching in the last few weeks. I have to confess that I didn't get a single stitch in Japanese Octagon Box for the past two weeks, until today. I worked on it for 8 hours today, and got the outline for the seventh panel finished. Only one more to go!

Actually, that photo shows the fabbie colour very well, but the stitching looks a bit dark. *Sigh* one day I will learn to take photos properly! Anyway, next up is a very overdue photo of last weeks contribution to Toccata II. This is Area 17 - Cross and Upright Cross Filling, and Area 18 - Interlaced Diagonal Cross, which is small and simple but very pretty indeed! I'm really happy to be working on this one again, I love it so much!

Next up is Tranquility Mystery, and of course I'm waaay behind. I'm still on part 4, and part 7 came out last friday. I know I won't possible catch up, but I'm still having great fun with this one, especially with picking out the colours!
Hmmm, looking at that photo, I just noticed a mistake I made at the bottom of that purple one. Oh well, easily fixed!

So, even though I've been busy, I still managed a Happy Dance at work on Friday night (yay!). This little cutie is Popcorn. He was for the other Round Robin I'm in. Actually, I'd nearly forgotten about that robin, it's so disorganized, I haven't had a rotation from that one for about four months. But now I seem to be back in the loop! Teddy bears aren't really my kind of thing, but he is very sweet, and he only took 10 hours of stitching!

It was Mother's Day yesterday, and I had great fun buying Mum' presents. I usually buy her fabric for quilting. But she used to cross stitch all the time, and I really miss that, so I decided that if I bought her something that I know she'd like she might be forced to have to stitch again. I got her two kits, Fruitful 1 and Splendor from The Heart's Content, because I know she's been eyeing them for a long time. And of course, since I was buying online, I thought I'd better make the most of the postage, so I bought myself a silk gauze kit: Gaze Awhile. When I got it in the mail, I was going to start it right away, but my WIPs are really getting out of control as it is, so I'm saving it for a bit later ;)

Well, Mum was very pleased with her Mothers day present, so she bought me a present to say thankyou (I told her that's not how it works, but I didn't argue with her too hard.) A gorgeous overdyed silk (Grape by Caron Waterlilies) and a beautiful pair of scissors I can wear around my neck whilst stitching, and a pincushion kit, with my very favourite (NOT) stitch all over it. Mum said she forgot that I hate Queen stitch, but I know that she was giggling the whole time, sneaky Mummy. So, I haven't been around, but life is still moving on. I do have some good news which I've been bursting to tell, and that is that I quit my sleep over job, and I couldn't be happier about it. I was really unhappy there, and I was doing 4 nights a week, which was just too much for me to handle with full time uni and the other two jobs. I've just had a horrible few months there. Plus I wasn't getting paid enough... $100 for 12 hours work is criminal! However, now that I have quit I will be absolutely broke! I think after I pay the mortgage and bills I will have $100 a fortnight for everything else. So there will be another job in the near future, but I'm definitely going to enjoy a few weeks of having more stitching time.

Labels: Blogging, Eyecandy, HAPPYDANCE, S.E.X., Small talk, Stitchiness, Toccata II-sday, Tranquility, Uni, Worky-purkey