WIPocalypse Report for March

I've been stitching only on my HAED Jolly Old Fellow again in the past  month, and I am quite pleased with my pogress.  I am currently working on pages 23 and 24, and when they are finished the fourth row of chart pages will be done, leaving me only two rows of pages (12 chart pages in all) to complete the design.

Here's where I stopped stitchuing tonight:

Another page finished ...

I'm still having computer issues.  I have the periodic use of my sister's portable, but my computer is still in sick bay - over a month now, and I am REALLY missing it. I am also very stressed by the fact that the computer shop isn't returning my calls, and I have no idea what is happening - I so hope my computer will be back home soon, with the data it contains safe.

I've been working on my HAED Jolly Old Fellow over the past month.  Here's a current pic:

I have now finished page 22 (over 70% stitched now!), and have made a tiny start on page 23.  I have passed my target for this year, and this has motivated me to continue stitching on JOF with a view to finishing it this year, even if that means little else gets stitched in 2012. 

My little Madalyn had a birthday this week - she turned 13.  We marked her birthday with a little family celebration (BBQ chicken for all - it's Maddie's favourite food).  This is how Maddie finished the day - flat out asleep on the lounge chair.

At last ...

I finally finished page 21.  It seems to have taken ages, but at least I know why.  In the last two weeks I've not had as much stitching time as I would have liked.  My house-mate has been dealt another health blow.  She's still recovering from the chemo and radiation therapy, and has now been diagnosed with glaucoma.  She's had laser treatment on both her eyes in the past week.  And just so I don't feel out of it, my Pagets Disease (affecting mainly my skull), which has been in remission for the past few years, had become active again, so I'm back on the daily tablets to knock it back down.  Not happy, Jan!

Sometimes life just doesn't seem to be playing fair.  This is one of those times in my house!

WIPocalypse February Report

I'm late with this report - because of my computer troubles.

I am so very pleased with my progress on my HAED Jolly Old Fellow.  It's the only project I have worked on this year.  I have now finished page 20, which was my target for 2012.  I am quite astounded at reaching this target so early - I expected (based on how long it took me to stitch each page of this design  in previous years) that it would take me till May or June to stitch pages 14-20. 

So, here's where I am now:

I'll continue stitching on Jolly old Fellow through till the end of March.  If I manage to stitch pages 21-24 in that time (and I now expect that I will) I will probably keep working on it, with a view to actually finishing it this year.

Dust - 1, Computer - 0

Reluctant as I am to admit it, my computer hard drive has died - because the fan got too dusty, causing the capacitator to fail and the hard drive to get into strife. Who would have thought it? Certainly not me! My dear sister has saved my sanity by lending me her laptop, which I am currently using. I've been computerless for the past 9 days, and I must admit it has distressed me way more than I would have anticipated! It's much like the time my microwave died. For years I had believed that I rarely used the microwave, so when it died I thought it wouldn't make much difference. I soon discovered that part of just about every meal I prepared was cooked in the microwave. I was off to the shops pronto to replace the microwave. It's much the saame with the computer - I'm in the habit of accessing info on it frequently each day.

My computer is at the computer repairman's workshop waiting for a new capacitator (apparantly the one my computer uses is different to the usual one available) which is somewhere on the high seas in a container en route to Melbourne. It's expected to arrive sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. Then the computer angels are going to do their magic with stitching the capacitator into a new hard drive, and transferring all my data across. Hopefully I'll have an upgraded computer (dust free) returned to me in early March. I'll be SO pleased to see it home!
Having no computer has allowed me extra stitching time, so I guess that's the silver lining in my computer cloud! I've made great progress on Jolly old Fellow! I'll be back with pics of JOF just as soon as I work out how to load pics onto this laptop.

Happiness is ...

seeing my Santa grow!  I have just put the final stitches into pages 17 & 18.  That fnishes the third row of chart pages.  The pic looks a bit wonky, but that's because of the way I had it thrown over the sofa back when I took the pic.  It really does have straight edges in real life.  Now that Santa has a face, I am feeling the compulsion to keep on stitching on this project, with a view to fnishing it this year,  I had originally planned to stitch pages 14-20 this year, but I certainly didn't expect to finish 5 pages in January.  In previous years, I was lucky to get one page finished each three to four weeks.  My current plan is to keep stitching for February and March, with the aim of finishing Row 4 (pages 19 to 24) in that time.  If I manage to do that, I will then probably keep stitching on Santa to try to get him finished and framed for Christmas this year.

On a more serious note, happiness is really being finished with chemotherapy and brachytherapy (radiation therapy), and having a clear result (no cancer cells) on the PET scan.   I wasn't having the treatments myself, but when one member of the household is fighting cancer, it really does seem as if everyone in the household  is fighting cancer.  It is a major relief to have moved on from that phase of our lives.

Half-way there!

Page 16 of Jolly Old Fellow is now finished. So now just over half of the design is stitched - yay!!

I am really happy with my progress.  Santa now has personality showing through.  I now want to finish this row before the end of January.  That's just two more pages to go.   Page 17 is a full page (7315 stitches) but page 18 has only 1140 stitches.