A friend of mine recently had this comment posted in response to a post she published on Facebook.

“Im sorry, I use facebook for healthy social interaction with friends and family. I didnt realize it was a complaint forum. Vent elsewhere please dear.”

What kind of gall does one have in order to tell someone else how to use Facebook?  And if we start dissecting the comment, the first thing that strikes me is “healthy social interaction with friends and family.”  How is posting a mean comment like this a “healthy social interaction?”  And if this is a “healthy social interaction,” how dysfunctional is your family? 
Next let’s look at the grammar. I have a new tablet which is still learning my typing and word style, yet I can still use punctuation; although it wants to put random ms in my sentences.
Third, let’s  talk about the forum.  This was posted in response to a public post on Facebook. If you don’t want to see something, in the right corner of each post is an option to hide it.

Wait, it just hit me: was the poster apologizing for using Facebook the way she does? If so, why include the other two sentences?

I don’t really know why I can’t let this go.  After all, it has nothing to do with me, really.  It was just a comment on someone’s Facebook post which appeared on my feed. Originally I was offended by the sheer rudeness.  And I’m still offended.  Hopefully, posting this will get it out of my head.

Looking at my blog it seems that all I do is stitch.  However, I do enjoy reading as well and this year Annette posted a reading challenge which sounded good.  I added two additional books to it and you can see my progress on it on the reading challenge page.  I also like friends on Goodreads.com – I’m easy to find, there aren’t  many Stashas out there.
One of the challenges is to read a book by an author with your same initials.  I found M. Susan Burns – her book is Preventing Reading disorders in young children.  Considering there are dyslexics in this household, that would have been useful years ago but it’s never to late to learn where I messed up and prevent it with future generations.
The new year is already 1/24th over.  How have you improved?
My excuse is I’ve been sick. What’s yours?

So here is where I am after two days of stitching and all I can say is “When did DMC floss become such garbage?”

When the 1996 color change happened I dumped most of my DMC floss and switched to Anchor or when I could afford it I used silk.  This means that most of my WIPs are Anchor or silk.  However, I was feeling lazy and didn’t feel like doing the conversion for a single band of a Teresa Wentzler border so I pulled out some of the new DMC I’ve been picking up on sale and went out and bought 3 skeins for colors I didn’t have.

So in just 4 hours of stitching this stuff has tangled, untwisted, separated and just been plain nasty to work with.  All I can think is has the quality slipped or was it always this nasty?  If this is the norm for DMC then I’ll be staying with Anchor and anyone interested in buying a full set of DMC floss from me can leave a message.

Seems odd to be writing an introduction when I’ve been blogging for over a decade (okay so the tblog stuff is gone so the first 3 years are missing in the archive).  But what the hey, some of you haven’t been around that long and although there is an about Stasha page on here, I haven’t looked at it in years and it probably needs to be updated.

Just so you know, I’m Stasha.  It’s a nickname I picked up in college while playing D&D and it stuck.  More people know me as Stasha than by the name my mother gave me. I’ve been stitching since I was 8 and I’ve been active online since 2000.  I’ve been active on the TWBB until Facebook came around.  I still visit some of the Yuku boards but the communities are smaller and not so close.

I have a lot of stitching projects and some quilting projects in progress.  The goal for the last few years is to pare down the WIP list from 36 to around 10 or fewer.  I managed to cut 4 from it last year.  I would be happy to pare a few more off it this year.  Some of my older WIPs are designs by Teresa Wentzler and Carla over at Scéal Teach is doing a year of TW stitching and it sounded like a great idea so my rotation this year is planned around my TW pieces with a break from confetti stitching with interruptions by either Mirabilia’s, Needlepoint pieces, or things that aren’t confetti and will be a break from the detail;

The initial plan is to start with Wendy’s TWRR that has been sitting around my house for 6 months.  Then back to Tide Pools and on to Fruit Bell Pull which will be rotated with Mirabilia’s Autumn Queen.  After Fruit Bell Pull, it’s back to the Carousel with Summer, then Fall and Spring, following that is Dragon Ride and Fortunate Traveller.  The pieces to rotate around those are Blackwork Dragon, any of my Quilting WIPs, and anything else that is out on the WIP list.  I may even start a few new things like some of my other seasonal queens or the carousel’s which I have kitted up.  But the rule is at least 2 finishes for every start.

This year hasn’t started very well though.  It’s the 12th and I haven’t even set my first stitches for the year. Part of it is being sick, it’s easy to miscount a TW when you’re not well. But it will come, the medication ends tomorrow and then it’s back to the real world.

Just so you know, it’s been a rough start to the new year.  I’ve been sick enough to actually use my medical insurance and go to the doctor.  It’s also really odd to be in a job where they tell you to go home when you’re sick.  For 30 years it was, “I don’t care how you’re feeling, being sick is a state of mind, get in here and do this report for me.”

One thing I’ve learned though is I make a poor patient.  I don’t like being in bed with nothing to do.  I finished my library books in the first few days.  I probably should have started looking at the 2015 reading challenge and found something on the bookshelves around the house or on the Nook or Kindle which would fit the challenge.  However, I don’t feel like reading.  I would stitch but needles are not allowed in the bedroom. This leaves me with electronic devices.  I have spent too much time on facebook, playing games on the Android tablet, earned up to 300+ stars on Microsoft solitaire and leveled up on 2 hidden picture games. This is totally wasted time.  There is nothing productive about it. Who cares that I’m on level 616 on Pet Rescue Saga or 110 in Candy Crush Soda? I quit playing Candy Crush at level 519 because it just became stupid and it wouldn’t sync when I got the new tablet.  I had a great grandfather who said that playing cards were a waste of a young man’s time because they didn’t lead to anything productive and I can’t help but wonder what he would say about the amount of time I’ve spent online playing games.

Today though, I’m feeling well enough to go downstairs and curl up in my stitching chair and do something productive.  I may even stitch.  But maybe after I max out the points I have right now on Secret Society.