My Birthday Week

Hi all! First off, thank you so much for all the birthday wishes. You guys are awesome! But I have realized, belatedly it seems, that I don't get those cool email notifications when I get comments, and now I also realize I don't know how to reply to people in a reliable way. That "no reply blogger" stuff always confused me, and I just haven't sat down to figure it out yet. But thank you anyway! Hopefully I will get better at these things. =)

So my mystery birthday start (sorry for the vagueness last time) was a kit from Design Works called Blue Floral. It's part of a series of four -- there's also peach, pink and purple -- but I like blue best. I only managed three days on it, but I'm liking it so far. Also, Casablanca is one of my favorite movies, so of course it's my minder for my birthday project:

What I love about this pattern is that it's just a giant splash of color that's totally ambiguous. It doesn't become a flower until I put the backstitching in, which will all wait until the end. So I started in the middle and kind of worked my way down and left, then around and up. The colors are really beautiful together. I love the pattern, but I subbed out everything in the kit with my own DMC and some 16ct aida. The kit came with 14ct aida, but it was a looser weave than I like, so I switched. So if anyone wants the kit when I'm done (original materials are untouched) just let me know and I will pass the stash. :)

I didn't get much done on Blue Floral because Elizabeth Oliver was still screaming at me to be worked on. And I think I got a lot done. This is where she was last week:

I managed to fill in as much as I could, then moved the qsnap over and kept stitching. So here she is now:

I could still keep going on this. Every time I work on her I think, okay, now just fill in this part, now stitch this, now just this little bit here... And I never want to put my needle down! But I think I will put her away for a little while. Maybe.

Anyway, another month is over, and my Temperature charts can tell you how hot it's been:

I feel like I'm stitching a ring of fire on my ornament chart. The last week of May we had one day below 90°. Just one. In May. The average for this May was 84° (supposed to be 77°), so I've stitched the month on my chart in the corresponding orange (it was supposed to be yellow). Kansas City weather is weird, so it may actually cool down in June before heating up in July. Then again, we do get odd years where summer temps go up around 105 or higher, so it may get interesting.

Well, that's all for this week. Next week I'm pulling out my Quotes chart again since I missed it last month. Hopefully I can get it a good week of stitching before the overtime hits again. I wish you all happy stitching! :)