It's Friday... here's my Five

1. What color ink pen do you like best?
Blue.  Definitely.
 
2. Do you prefer plain paper or paper with lines (notebook paper)?
For taking notes, writing lists, etc, definitely lined.  My writing is bad enough on lined paper, without adding the whole 'downhill' thing I get going.
 
3. What's better: books from the library, or reading online?
Well, I read totally different things from the library than what I read online.  Online is people's blogs, message boards, gaming communities, looking up information and so on.  That's more 'browsing' in my mind, than reading for enjoyment.
 
Books from the library or my shelves or the local bookseller are more what I consider 'reading' material.  I like reading, but between stitching and websurfing and playing online games, I just don't do nearly as much of it as I used to.
 
4. Which would you rather get, e-mail or snail mail?
I like getting snail-mail, but truthfully I'm terrible about returning it, or being the first to send.  I am not a big fan of e-mail, after ten years online, either.  It's nice to hear from my friends and what they are doing, but that makes up maybe 1% of the emails I get, lost in the flood of spam, advertisements from companies I've bought stuff from, mailing lists I'm on, et cetera.
 
5. Do you have a paper weight on your desk?
Nope, but I have lots of paper stuff... subway sandwich sticker cards, receipts, movie stubs and a VTA ticket from Sunday, a Just Cross Stitch magazine and a freebie pattern from Stitchy Kitty.  I guess you could count my Taster's Choice ort jar as a paperweight, sort of.
 

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Hmm, maybe this is why I don't do the 5 usually... I don't actually answer most of the questions.

Stuck

Here's how far I got with Dragon Dreams' "Blackwork Dragon" before I ran out of the Silk Bella:


I stuck the empty spool in my purse, so hopefully I can get some more before too long. It should only take me a few more hours to finish up... the pattern in the spines goes kind of slow.

After wrapping that up last night, I went through the magazine files in my stitching cabinet and sorted through all my patterns, trying to decide if anything jumped out at me more than wanting to work on the Dutch Treat table topper. It was close... if the lavender fabby I had would have been big enough, I might have started "Wish Upon A Star" from Dragon Dreams, or if I could have found the green Marlitt (and the rest of the floss bag from the project), I might have picked up "Why Hoard Gold?" Hmm, think I'm on a Dragon Dreams kick here?

In the end, I did pull out the "Home Sweet Home" table topper and started in on the greek key border, but more because I would like it done and on my stitching table than because the design really called to me that much. I only got a couple squares' worth of border done, but I stitched while I watched Lion King 1.5, and then watched some Simpsons on DVD, when DF was still wide awake and watching his stuff when I checked in on him at 11pm.

Update on the monitor... it's fine. I used its degauss option, and the green spot went away. It hasn't been back, so I wonder if I accidentally got the little magnet set from my stitching too close to the screen and messed it up somehow.

And in other news, I've lost my second Star De-Tailor. Argh. I may have dropped it at a friend's, so going to post a pic of it for her in my LJ and see if she or her cats have found it. Hopefully her, and not the cats. *wince*

Oops, the Happy Dance will have to wait. :(

Looked like I was getting close to finishing Blackwork Dragon... then I started running out of the Silk Bella. I thought I recalled buying a second spool, but it turns out that I bought another spool of a different color, to use on another project.

On the good side, I went through my stitching cabinet looking for the other spool of green, and ended up tidying up quite a bit. It may have looked organized, but it really wasn't, very. It's better now... most of the WIPs in one basket, and miscellaneous stuff (flosses, specialty stuff for certain project, stitch band, etc, in the other, and I tidied up the drawer of specialty floss.

Got to the point where I had a bunch of different skeins of rayons, metallics, and flower threads spread out on the floor and laid in order to bag, when Munchie decided to come see what I was doing. Much to my surprise, she went for the little twist of ribbon stapled to the top of one of my freebie patterns on the pile I'd made, and totally ignored all the flosses laying out. She used to be terrible about grabbing a floss and running!

I do have a bit more floss I can put into BD, but I'm not going to get another chance to get to a shop and restock until... sheesh... maybe not till the 31st. Travelling down to So. Cal both next weekend and the following one. So unless there's a shop right near the convention center in San Diego, BD will just have to wait.

In other news, TW announced all the non-stitching forums on the TWBB will be shut down at the end of July. Sad about that, there are many great people there and I love lurking in the Just Plain Chat forum. Hopefully most will migrate to one or several of the other boards, and still keep chatting. I can understand her reasons for wanting it this way, but like others, I am saddened that it has happened.