65 Roses and stuff

This is evidence of my first go at embroidery. One might also say I dipped my toe into some quilting. More like my toenail, really. I decided to join Whip.up's 65 Roses Quilt for Charity to aid Cystic Fibrosis (More info here). I'm not ecstatic about the final product but the deadline, as they have a habit of doing, snuck up on me and it had to be sent yesterday. I was on time with the deadline but then I had a crafting disaster: the embroidered square is supposed to be on the top left of your block but in my excitement of separating floss (got very tangled up when trying that until my friend Monica told me about the whole *put the other end in your mouth while you separate* trick which works a treat) and getting it all on the embroidery hoop, I forgot to check which way up and embroidered my flower stems on sideways. The deep red floss stained the cream square so unpicking wasn't really an option so I put it aside until I could reposition the charm squares with the sewing machine. Then school holidays got the better of me and suddenly it was the last day and I had to reposition and then do the last bit, the big flower, in a bang. So the big flower is definitely wonky and in desperation I put a button on to try and distract but I don't think it's quite worked. But maybe in a sea of other nice blocks it won't be too bad. Or they could ditch mine, I wouldn't blame them. But I thought I ought to finish what I said I'd do, and I enjoyed myself doing it except when I mucked it up, and may even have another crack at the embroidering stuff.

In other news I have been madly trying to get on top of all the administration for my tap school, which has meant rejigging the website. My upgraded version of web editor software, Dreamweaver, is forcing me to work with CSS (cascading style sheets for those of you not html savvy) which completely kicks my arse. I am used to just changing my font colour by clicking on the colour I want in the font colour box, now every time I change the colour (and my site is very colourful) I have to set up a freaking CSS and I don't know what I'm doing and it's killing me. I've also had to send out a mass of emails saying class starts back first week of February, which means making sure class lists and the address book are up to date (they mostly were). Plus there were management decisions to make, like splitting the middle-sized kids into beginner and intermediate, and putting up prices on the adult classes (it's been 3 years since I did it, but I still felt terrible about it.)

All in all I am VERY READY for some R&R, which is good because Cherub, Climber and I are off to Queenscliff for a couple of nights to stay with a friend. Poor Fixit is not allowed any time off in January (swear to God, the management at his work should be ashamed of themselves) and I just realised that we didn't even get the chance to say good-bye in person because he starts work at the crack of dawn and we were all still snoring away.