Random stitching update

I am still here and doing a little stitching.  Here is my progress on Grand Old Duke, I have the black about 3/4 done:


My baby sampler, both trees done, and i started the leaves:


And finally I need your opinion on this fabric I picked up as a single fat quarter at Anglewing Needlearts on my last vacation.  I was thinking of making it into something for my husband -It makes him giggle (me too) but i don't know what ...I want to keep it as intact as possible.  A bag? a box pouch? a pillow? The picture is showing about a 1/8 of the piece, the print is big.

Crazy time

It is just one of those times in life where there is always something else to do than sit and stitch.  I also have a huge backup on my DVR of shows, I have almost the entire season of Heroes,  Burn Notice, even some Olympics I was saving.  just no time.  So stitching has suffered, and all I have been able to do is some projects for the EGA (because they had a due date of tomorrow).  First up is a Quaker Needle book that will be finished and added to a basket of other littles for a raffle at the Stitching on the Ridge Retreat.


The second is a Seventeenth sampler that we are all doing as a mystery sampler designed and stitched monthly by Louise Henderson of Cherished Stitches.

The photo is small and fuzzy on purpose, Louise is planning on releasing this pattern for sale after we finish it, so I got special permission to blog about it, I had to show you I was stitching!

Why did those two things take me an entire month you ask?  well besides the lack of sit time, the alphabet is "reversible" cross stitch...which takes twice as long to stitch. I thought Louise was just having us do it for this band, then I discovered...no, she is going to continue the reversible stitch throughout the sampler but I cannot or I will never finish it.

In which the internet reveals its awesomeness

Do you guys get how cool living in the future is?  Wil says this all the time and yesterday proved it to me. (warning: this is a non stitching story).  I follow Dooce  (Heather Armstrong) on her blog and twitter,  have been since 2005, she is like the cool girl I have always wanted to be.  I am alot like her in some ways (same name, age, political views, sense of humor, awesome dog,  mother) and very different in others (she is rail thin, an ex-mormon, design style, and is quickly becoming famous). I adore and worship her writing style, she almost always makes me laugh, her blog posts about Leta got me thru some of the tougher times being a new mom, and I have new respect for people struggling with depression because of her story.

The other day she got a call from the White House to go participate in the flexible workplace forum.  She mentioned it would be streamed live and you could watch online.  After my classes were done yesterday around 3:30 I hopped online and spotted her in the one of the breakout sessions.  She was looking a bit out of place and bored (as one in a big conference type meeting is wont to be).  I watched and listened for a while and then I randomly tweeted:

watching @dooce trying not to pick her nose in the White House via live web cam.

OK before I go further, I know that most big names on twitter do not read every @ referenced to them(she has over 1 million followers), and I know that Heather would have had her phone turned off in the White House like a good citizen should right? I mean what if the president is meeting you and *RING* how embarrassing.  So I thought of the above reasoning (because I'm conscientious like that), tweet, and go back to the live web cam.  and Heather is pulling out her phone and looking at it. NO WAY, I'm thinking, she is so not reading my tweet, she must be checking something else.  THEN she pulls the old finger scratch the side of the nose bit, the one to the far side of the web cam., and not a little one either...she was being obvious. HEATHER ARMSTRONG SAID HI TO ME FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.  I  totally lose it in my office at work. OF course it could totally be a coincidence, but do not tell me if it was. It was better than a personal response to a blog comment.
So I quickly said hi back:

I saw that @dooce, stop checking your tweets and pay attention to the discussion.

and we went back to our separate worlds.

PS. she wasn't the only one in that room subtly checking their iPhone under the table.  How can I yell at my students about doing that in my classes if Corporate America is doing it at the White House?