Qingming facts

I was looking to see if I could find this cross stitch kit again on the website that I purchased it from. The only one I was able to find was crazy expensive, but the seller had some more information on the actual painting that this cross stitch kit is based on.
Depicted in this kit are over 550 different people, more than 50 heads of livestock (cattle, horses, mules, donkeys), more than 20 vehicles, and more than 20 ships. That's just insane! And I haven't even gotten beyond the side of the mountain., yet.

I will be very happy if I can manage to finish page 3 of Qingming before resorting to another project. I'm getting the itch to start a new one from the list I had posted a while ago. I think I just may start my beer project! I can then review and critique (and drink, of course!) all the different types of beers. Plus the Mousie is starting to call to me to be worked on.
Hmm, now that I have started talking about it, I reeeaaalllly want to start on the beer project. I have a feeling that I will be stitching on the shelves this week. (Sigh, so much for finishing page 3 first).

Anyway, here is where I left off last week:

Here is where I am now. I got a lot of the yellow (boring) area stitched.

An old friend

After my last post, I started looking through my previous posts, and I came across my old favorite, Qingming! I really got an itch to start working on it, so I pulled it out and got to stitching! I just realized that it has been a year since I last worked on it!
It felt good to stitch on it again, like catching up with an old friend I haven't seen in a while. I'm hoping to keep stitching on this one at least until I finish page 3 (which will finish that whole area on the left side). 


Here is where it was when I left off last:

Here is where I am now:

With this project, it doesn't look like much progress, but it is! So, finishing 3 pages, may seem like a lot, but when there are 279 pages in all, well, it tends to put things in perspective. It also doesn't help that all I'm stitching right now is the side of a mountain. It does help to go faster, though, since there are large blocks of one color. On page 4, I get to start on some buildings. Yay!

Stupid games keep pulling me away from my crafts!

I have been stitching a little bit. Unfortunately, though, I downloaded a game to my tablet, and it sucks up my time. Next thing I know, an hour has passed. I was hoping to have stitched more, but the game made that impossible.

Here is where I was last with Candy Cane Christmas:

Here is where I am now:

I just noticed how fuzzy the picture is. I did it in a hurry. I have also updated my progress on the left!

Video games and training

My suspicion for this week was confirmed. There was so much information in this training class, that I had to pay close attention 100% of the time. I got tiny amounts of progress done during lunch breaks, but even then, that wasn't every day.
If you combine this with the fact that the new Lego Avengers video game came out this week, I didn't get much work in. My husband and I really enjoy playing those Lego games together (yes, we are kids at heart). We even made plans for the evening:
We had a Gamestop gift card from one of our credit cards, so after work we went straight to the game store and picked up the game. As soon as we got home, we got comfy, and started up the game. Shortly after that, the pizza (that we had ordered ahead of time, earlier in the day) was delivered. We had a great evening of pizza and video games. I love my husband. :)

Even with all this going on, I at least managed to obtain my minimum goal of getting both strips attached to the main body of the purse. I'm not sure exactly how high I'm going to make this, but so far I have 10 stripes on it.

Then, on top of that, I got sick with some crud the past few days.  I'm finally getting over it, thank goodness.

Some work

I got a little bit of work done this past week.  Let me first show my progress on my Candy Cane Christmas project. Here is where I last left off:

Here is where I am now,I got some more done in the corner.

 

I also got some more work done on something that I am making for myself.  With all the chainmail stuff I have been making, I decided to experiment and make myself a purse out of aluminum and rubber chainmail. I love how it is coming along so far, but I have already determined that these purses are not something I would be able to make and sell. There is just too much material and work that goes into this. 

Here is what I have done so far:

 You can see that strip and a half that I haven't yet attached to the main body. The 2 outer edges will eventually attach to each other, making the main body of the purse. I still need to make quite a few more strips to attach until I get it to a nice size, but I love it so far! 

Here is a closer picture of it (you can click on the picture to make it larger, too):

This coming week, I am going to be in training all week at work. That usually means I will either be so super busy that I won't have time or feel like working on anything (most likely) or I will have plenty of time and energy to work on something when I get home (hopefully).  

At the very least, I am hoping to finish attaching these strips to the purse body.