A Belated Happy New Year!

It's only the middle of January; that's not too late to wish everyone a happy new year, is it?  I have to say that precious little stitching has been done around here of late.  I'm still in the process of getting the house in Pittsburgh ready to put on the market ::sigh::  and I'm relieved to say that the end is in sight.  The furniture is all out except for a bedroom set that a friend of DH's is taking and I've been making arrangements for painting and carpet replacement.  I'll be glad once all is done.  I won't miss the trek up there and back.

Here's a picture of my Spring Sampler progress.  It's a nice piece to be stitching on during these January days.  I love the color combination in these samplers.

I didn't start anything new for the new year.  I have enough WIPs that I couldn't bring myself to start something else.  That said, though, I must admit that Sonne Spotte by Long Dog has been calling to me from the "to be stitched" basket.  I have it kitted up with a piece of 40-count linen and HDF silks, so I'm thinking that I'll get it out and at least look at it :-)

Finally, I have to tell you part 2 of my little auto accident saga.  I told you about spinning out and hitting a bank whilst driving home from work on Christmas eve.  Well, I was driving to work on New Year's eve morning when I began hearing a noise from underneath the car.  It was alarming, so I pulled off the highway at the next exit and drove to Sheetz, where I got out and inspected.  There was a plastic panel of some sort under the front part of the car and one side of that had let go and the panel was dragging, thus creating the noise.  I couldn't fix it at that point, so I decided that I might as well go ahead on to work and hope for the best.  My commute is 4-lane highway and I work in an office part that's right off the highway, so I thought it would probably be okay.  I won't go through all the gory details, but after I got off work, I went to a local grocery to buy duct tape; my plan was to duct tape the thing in place sufficiently to get home.  So I was down on my knees in the grocery parking lot, trying -- with marginal success -- to duct tape this panel, when a couple in an SUV stopped and asked if everything was alright.  I gave the Reader's Digest version of the story and they parked a couple of spaces down from me.  The wife came over and asked if rope would be helpful and I said that it probably would.  She pulled a hank of very nice nylon rope out of the back of their vehicle and it worked much better than the duct tape.  After I got the panel tied up and cut the rope (hated to cut it; it really was very nice rope), she said, "Why don't you just keep the rope in case you need it down the road."  Wasn't that just absolutely awesome?  There are nice people out there!  I was so tickled and I know that somewhere down the road I'll have an opportunity to pay it forward.

Well, I'm going to try to get in a little bit of stitching this evening before I settle down to watch "Downton Abbey".  I've gotten hooked rather late on that show, but I enjoy it.

Hoping that everyone has a great week -- happy stitching!