So Very Close . . .

If I'm not on the home stretch, I don't know where I am. 

Fingers are crossed that today is the day!

Getting There

I've finished Mary Ann's left side and have started on the right. 

I'd really hoped to get more done, but adult-ing got in the way. And then Dearly Beloved really wanted lasagna for dinner. Making sauce from scratch requires a lot of chopping and dicing and sautéing--but I take a short-cut once everything is prepped and dump it in the crock pot to simmer. Assembly takes a few minutes, too, so I spent more time in the kitchen than I had planned.

I think we're both getting ready for fall and more substantial meals--we've lived on corn on the cob, peaches, tomatoes, and watermelon this summer, and soups and stews and casseroles are beginning to be very appetizing. There may also be a combination of dealing with the heat and wishing for cooler temps.

But I digress.

I figure I have a minimum of 8 - 10 hours of stitching to get this done. But if I do half of that today and half tomorrow, Miss Mary Ann will see a finish by the time the weekend is over!

Can't See the Forest . . .

 Yesterday, I started planting trees.

I may be overly optimistic, but if I plop myself into the wing chair and focus, it is just barely possible that I can finish Mary Ann this weekend. 

So that's what I'm gonna try to do.

A Tisket, A Tasket

When you're attempting to write a daily stitching blog, you need to stitch.

This is all I managed to do yesterday:

I decided to look for something online, and then I fell into Instagram and Pinterest and a number of different blogs and stitching sites, and then suddenly it was time to do something about dinner and then it was bedtime. Basically, my brain got sucked out by the innerwebs--but I was reminded of a number of things in. my stash that I really should pull out and work on.

Dearly Beloved said if I pulled everything out that I wanted to do right away, I would fill up the living room. He may be right.

 

Off the Rails

 I am making no plans for the rest of this week.

As we speak, I should be at my EGA chapter's weekly stitch-in. I am not.

I had set the clock for 7:30, which would give me plenty of time to shower, dress, have breakfast, and decide what to take to work on. I woke up before the clock went off, glanced at it, noticed it said 6:26, thought, "Yay, another hour to sleep", rolled over, and dropped off again.

Somewhat later, I woke up for the second time, looked at the clock again, noticed it said 6:26--again--sat up in bed and looked at Dearly Beloved's clock, which said 10:33, and realized that the batteries in my clock had died. At 6:26.

By the time I showered and dressed and figured out what to take, I would have arrived just about in time to unpack everything and then repack it and drive home.

Next week, I'm setting two clocks. After replacing the batteries in my alarm clock.

Meanwhile, I went off in a different direction on Mary Ann yesterday.

I had started to fill in one of the spot motifs and was thinking about either finishing all the motifs on one side before going to the other, or going back and forth between the two sides of the sampler.  I was also thinking about how much fun those little motifs would be to stitch and how boring the final border would be.

Well, duh.

If you go ahead and finish the rest of the border, then all you have to do are the fun little motifs.

So that's what I did.

Thank God it's not Monday

 I know that when you retire, every day is Saturday, but I still had a Monday yesterday.

I had the semi-annual trip to the dentist, which, while not my favorite way to spend a chunk of my afternoon, isn't the worst thing that can happen. Unless, of course, you get very little sleep the night before (to be as delicate as possible, I had plenty of time to consider possible changes to the master bathroom  from 3:47 a.m. to 6:18 a.m.). Unless you discover that you had forgotten to write the time and date of the dentist appointment on the master calendar.  Unless you realize that only about an hour before the appointment. And that's only because you decide to check your email before going back to bed for awhile.

It all worked out--I did get there in time and my mouth is healthy, so that's a win. But between dentist-appointment-related-stress (that should be a recognized syndrome, if it isn't already) and overall fatigue, Mary Ann only got about an hour of attention yesterday.

This is where she stands:

With any luck, I'll finish the basket with what Dearly Beloved described as floating orbs, and get these motifs repeated on the other side today.

That is, of course, after I check the master calendar and my email to see if I'm missing anything scheduled for today.

Filling in the Spaces

I didn't have much time to stitch yesterday, but I did get a little done on Mary Ann. The side borders have been extended--why do borders seem to take more time than they should?--and I started the first of the small motifs that will fill the space around the Big Pot of Flowers.

 There will be flowers and fruit bowls at the top, trees at the bottom, and more critters amongst the trees. All is very symmetrical and balanced, all very Georgian. So, on with the day!