Sneezing and stitching

Well, obviously I will not be posting every day in November.  I am not going to whine about my cold, other than the fact that I have all but lost my voice. This is entertaining Dearly Beloved to no end.

Despite having to stitch with one hand while I blow my nose with a tissue in the other, I have managed to stitch another section of In the Mood.

The end is nigh . . .not mine (I hope) but I'm soon to see the end of this project. The temptation is great to make a giant pot of vegetable soup for the week-end and toil on this until it is complete. There are two more motifs and a bunch of borders, then the beading.

And then I get to decide what project to bring downstairs next. I am leaning towards Christmas ornaments. As I have already had my Thanksgiving, I'm getting in the Fa-la-la mood early.

Monday and Achoo!

If it weren't November, and if I hadn't committed to a fellow blogger that I, too, would blog every day in November, there would be no entry tonight.  I believe John succeeded in sharing his respiratory malady since I now have a scratchy throat and runny nose. I'm sneezing. A lot. To the point it feels like my eyeballs are rolling around in my head with the force of the sneezes.

His has metamorphosed into laryngitis--or he talked too much this week-end. It could be either or both.

Meanwhile, I'm going to chug some orange juice and go to bed.

Needless to say, there is no stitching tonight.

Thanksgiving!

We have had our very, very, very early Thanksgiving, and it was lovely.

The turkey was absolute perfection if I do say so myself. And almost everything else was devoured down to the flowers on the plates.

I'm not sure if I'm happy about that or not, as I was hoping for leftovers to take care of meals for the next few days. However, I do have enough turkey for several sandwiches and possibly a pot pie.

The Flash absolutely charmed his great-grandmother. This is no surprise. She was prepared to be charmed.

And now,everyone has cleared out, the kitchen is clean, the turkey roaster is soaking, and my feet are up.

I've even managed to stitch for about an hour.

I have three sections left to stitch, then the borders to fill in, then the beads to add at the very end. This section does have stones attached, but they needed to be added before the area behind them was filled in.

And, thanks to a friend who came up with a spool of the border thread I had run out of, I can see that finish in the very near future.

I have to say, that extra hour came in very handy this morning! But now, I think I may be heading to bed. The last three days have been packed to the brim and I think I'm ready to fall back into a routine for awhile. Who knew that going to work could seem restful?

SO glad there's an extra hour tonight!

I went to the workshop this morning, leaving Dearly Beloved to launder towels and sheets and to run the dishwasher.

The Big Kid, Wife, and The Flash went to the Renaissance Festival, where the Big Kid came in second in the archery contest.  Those Welsh genes came in handy!

Dearly Beloved discovered that the dishwasher was pouring water all over the floor. He called for aid and assistance.

We need a new dishwasher.

I arrived home a little early from the workshop. That helped since the stuff that was in the dishwasher didn't get clean before the dishwasher pooped out on us. I washed dishes.

Baby Girl arrived and was swept into this latest Domestic Disaster.

She observed that this should be it for awhile. First the water heater flooded the hall, then the next door neighbors flooded the living room, and now the dishwasher flooded the kitchen. If things come in threes, we should have had our water problems resolved.

The kitchen floor is cleaner than I think it has ever been before. Apparently dishwasher detergent and extremely hot water is the secret. I have been scrubbing a grape juice stain for years with everything known to mankind including straight bleach. It's gone now.

The Big Kid family arrived triumphant and were fed dinner.

We have chopped and mixed and baked and chilled. All we have to do tomorrow is take care of the turkey.

And wash dishes.

Busy, busy day . . .

The Flash is in town and in bed, much to the great relief of his parental units.

Their trip down was punctuated by heavy traffic and heavy rains. It is nothing that a good night's sleep won't cure, so they have been sent off to rest and recuperate.

While they were traveling, I was attending a workshop with Betsy Morgan.  And I came home with something totally stitched and assembled.

 This is the thimble holder that goes with The Toy Chest Etui. It's a stitched version of one of those ball and cup games. I need to redo the hedebo loop that holds it closed. The first time I made it, it was too small. The second time it was too big. Hopefully the third time it will be just right. If not, then Goldilocks has some explaining to do.

Tomorrow I have another day at the workshop, and the Big Kid is taking his family to the Renaissance Faire.  Baby Girl is arriving sometime tomorrow afternoon. We are having dinner together, then we're going to start putting together our very early Thanksgiving feast, scheduled for Sunday.

Given all this activity, I do believe I'm going to settle down for some rest and recuperation myself.

Stressed? STRESSED?????

I'm a wee bit stressed out at the moment.

Months ago, I signed up for a workshop with Betsy Morgan, which is scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

Then, the Big Kid announced that he would like to bring the family for a visit this same week-end so he could compete in an archery contest at the Renaissance Faire. This is not a problem, since he will, of course, bring The Flash with him. They wouldn't arrive until late Friday afternoon and would be attending the Ren Faire all day Saturday, so I could go to my workshop guilt-free, mostly.

And then we were discussing the holidays, and, as usual, everyone except me has to work either on them or the day after them. It occurred to me that we could have an early Thanksgiving and have The Saint bring Mother up and we'd feast on Sunday, so we could finally have all four generations in the same place at the same time.

This was all before I had to deal with having water damage repaired and mold and mildew preventers showing up and half the living room uninhabitable, at least at the moment. It also occurred to me that The Flash is most definitely going to bring his crossbow that shoots marshmallows and his giant plush shark (which, admittedly, we bought for him). He will most definitely be warned by his parents not to discharge the crossbow or swing the shark in the house. He will most definitely "accidentally" do one or both of those things because he is a five-year-old boy and these things happen.  Therefore, I most definitely need to do a whole lot more kidproofing than I started out to do.

At the same time, Dearly Beloved came down with a cold/viral/sinus thing. He is much better but I have been mainlining orange juice to avoid getting it.

And I have to go to work every day.

Normally I stitch for stress relief but this is all I've been able to accomplish this week on In the Mood.

Just that wee corner that wraps around the square. That's it, and it wasn't entirely without stress. It's another section where the chart and the stitched model don't quite match, so I had to make some decisions and do some reverse stitching to make the motifs fit the space.

And it just occurred to me that Friday is November 1 and there is blogging to be done every day in November.

I think I'm going to bed. After some more orange juice, of course.

Domestic Disaster

We are in the midst of dealing with some water damage, unfortunately in the corner where I have my nest. Since yesterday, I've been dragging out everything, spraying with lysol, wiping down, throwing away, photocopying directions in a couple of notebooks that are past saving, laying things out in the sun, putting other things in the freezer--this is not a lot of fun and all because the neighbors who share a wall in this townhouse community didn't get a problem with a shower repaired. They are taking care of the expenses of restoration, but it has certainly thrown my original week-end plans into turmoil.

There is always a silver lining. While emptying out the wicker trunk that was housing some of my  (ahem) long term projects-in-waiting, I found a number of treasures that have reinspired me and jump started the mojo. Interestingly enough, most of them are canvas. I think I'm going to wander through them for awhile. The first one I'll work on, though, will be In the Mood Blue--I'm over halfway through with it.

While my nest is torn up, I'm going to have to work on one project at a time until the repairs are done.  There won't be room to have more than that until the living room is back to its original state. This ought to be interesting for someone with intense stitcher's ADD. I'll let you know how that goes. And this may be the impetus I need to really work on having a useable stitching room where I can keep all my goodies around me.

Of course, when I was talking about this last night, Dearly Beloved wanted to know if there would be a chair for him, since he doesn't want to hang out by himself downstairs while I'm upstairs stitching away.