Sadness and Computer Issues

Happy Easter!

This weekend has been rather annoying as I had to do a complete wipe of my hard drive and my dh's hard drive, then reinstall windows xp and all the programs I use such as Quicken, MS Office, messengers and more. Not much fun. This kept me from doing much stitching the last couple of days which has really annoyed me as I have some projects that are on deadlines. I have a quilt square for love quilts and the little rosebud ornaments (the same design as the sachet bag Curtis and I did just with different colors) for a friend of mine. I am behind and I don't like it. Oh well, I will just have to make sure I stitch tomorrow as much as I can.

I am saddened today as well. About a year ago I found the website Love Quilts and tried to sign up to do a square for a little boy named Christian. I couldn't do the square as his quilt was already full but I did read the history for Christian. He was so very cute, and fought so very hard against the cancer he had. I had not read his blog in a little while so I read it tonight to catch up and when I got to the entry written today I started to cry. Christian passed away at 3:30 this afternoon. I can only imagine the pain his family must be feeling. I am a little bit surprised at my response as I do not know Christian and his family in real life, but from reading his blog I feel that I know them a little bit. I said many prayers for Christian in the past year and reading the news of his passing hurts. I know the pain and sadness I feel is nothing compared to what his family and loved ones must be feeling. I do hope that Christian is now healthy and happy in heaven and that he is resting in peace.

There is another child, Dae Hon, who is not doing very well. His mother has posted on his page that he loves Panda Bears and has requested "Anything at all with a Panda on them. He is really going to need something to bring a smile to his face." So I went to patterns online and bought two panda bear patterns one from EMS and one from Ruth Morehead. I will stitch one of them and make a pillow out of it to send to him. It will be something he can cuddle, squish, and hug. I do hope that he likes it and it puts a smile on his face. I will probably do "The Panda" by Ruth Morehead as it will be a quicker stitch than the EMS Baby Panda. If the Baby Panda is anything like the Raccoon Baby that I did, it is more complicated than it appears at first glance and I want to finish this quickly so I can get it in the mail, thus I will do the easier chart.

Well that is it for now. I will write again soon!

More Stitching and Sewing

My friend Curtis has decided that he really likes cross stitching, which I think is wonderful because he needed a hobby, something to keep him busy and give him something to do. Anyway, after the success of the santa ornament I helped him stitch, he wanted to stitch something for his mother that was not a seasonal only item. He selected a rose bud and asked if I could turn it into a sachet for her and I told him that yes I could. He stitched the entire rose bud by himself! He followed the chart, started and ended the threads, counted the stitches etc. His stitches came out real neat and straight. I did the backstitching because by then his shoulder was really hurting and he wanted it done, so I did the backstitching for him. It took me 2 days to turn it into a little bag and stuff it with potpourri. We couldn't find any red lace for the top edge so I crocheted a little trim for the top edge and used a red velvet ribbon to tie the bag so it can be re-opened and new potpourri added when needed. We gave it to his mom and she really liked it! She was quite impressed with his stitches as well. She pointed out how neat his stitches were and that gave me the opportunity to tell him "See? I wan't making it up..you did do a good job!" and he smiled one of those proud of himself type of smiles. It was really nice to see a smile like that on his face as he does not smile like that very often. Anyway, here are two pictures. One is a closeup that makes it easier to see the stitching. I'm not real impressed with the job I did on the sewing it into a bag. I could have done much better if I had planned it out before hand. But Leveda liked it so that is good.

And now the closeup:

I had to lean the bag against the phone to get a good picture of it.

As for my stitching, I have put in a few hours on TW Stroke Of Midnight and am almost done with the King Tut cow for WOCS. I will try to get some pics of them tomorrow.