More Snow Pics and a Finish!

Our snow stopped around noon yesterday, then the sun came out. I read in the paper this morning that the official measurement at the airport was just shy of 22 inches. Here are a couple more photos of my deck; some of the snow on the deck has fallen off the house so it's probably deeper than in the yard, although when I ventured out to clear off the lilac bush I found myself wading uphill through butt-deep snow. Timothy was laying in front of the slider yesterday afternoon when a clump of snow fell of the house and hit the deck. It startled him just a little!

Bad weather seems to bring out the best in people. I shoveled a path down my driveway yesterday morning and thought briefly about trying to clear the whole thing, but soon realized that I wasn't quite equal to that task. Later, I was puttering around in the kitchen when I heard what sounded like the scrape of snow shovels, so I looked out thekitchen window to see the guy next door and another man who I don't know clearing my driveway. They also did the front steps and stoop. Thank God for good neighbors!

-

It was a good day for stitching. I picked up my elephant around 1 or 2 o'clock and worked on him for most of the afternoon and evening. I finally put in the last stitches around 10pm or a little after.

He was a kit so I'm not sure exactly what the fabric is, except that it's some sort of evenweave in a mottled yellowish color. I think it's painted rather than dyed because the color is only on one side of the fabric. The threads are DMC. The kit is from Lanarte and I don't know who the designer is; I looked but didn't find a name. I'm not sure what I'll do with him. I think he's a little small to frame, but he might work in a pillow.

-

Church was cancelled this morning because of the weather so I've got another stay-in-and-stitch day! I'm probably going to pull out another smaller WIP and maybe start another ornament; I've got one kitted up. And of course, watch the Super Bowl tonight! I don't particularly care who wins, although I think I have to root for the Saints a little bit, just because they've been so bad for so long it would be nice to see them win the big one.

-

Enjoy the day!

Snow, Snow, Beautiful Snow

Our snow started around noon yesterday and it's still snowing this morning. The flakes are smaller but there are still a lot of them coming down! The sky is brightening, though, and the weather gurus are saying that the snow should be moving out sometime around lunchtime today. I'm guessing we have about a foot. I'll probably go out later this morning or this afternoon and shovel a pathway off the drive in case I absolutely have to go out.

This is the hill behind my house. The snow-laden bush in the lower right corner is a lilac. I'm going to try to knock some of the snow off of it when I go out.

This is behind the house also.

This is a plum tree in my side yard. I'm concerned that it's going to break but I don't think I can do much about the snow on this one.

That's a built-in bench that runs along the deck under all that snow!

A good day to stay in and stitch; I hear an elephant calling me!

Ears!

Ears: What my elephant now has two of! I usually reserve Sunday afternoon for working on a BAP, but the elephant is so close to being finished that I decided to work on him today. I finished his left ear -- well, I guess it's really his right ear but either way, it's done -- and now I just have to fill in the trunk, give him another tusk and add a little more grass and he'll be finis! It's only been since 2000 that I've been working on him :-)

We were spared the snow here, but it's been colder than blue blazes! The temps are supposed to start inching up this week, so that'll make it nice. Nicer.

Have a great week!

Friday Finish!

And my first finish of 2010! It's just an ornament, but hey, a finish is a finish. This is Silver Stitches from Charlotte's Web by way of one of the JCS ornament issues. It's stitched on 32 count Jobelan, using DMC floss and silver Light Effects.

Thursday Thoughts

I get a kick out of reading vanity license plates and trying to figure out what they mean. Some of them are easy; you can tell at a glance that the letters on the plate represent someone’s initials or what they do for a living. But yesterday I was driving to work and saw one that kind of startled me: CML WL DY. Somebody – or something – will die? That’s just a little weird. Creepy even. Or maybe they meant "will dye". Still a little strange. Of course, it was probably just family initials or some sort of acronym. I’d have taken a picture of it but it was still kind of dark and I was tootling along on the interstate doing 65 miles per hour, so I figured digging out the cell phone for some early morning photography probably wasn’t such a great idea.

***

The other evening I wanted to do some stitching but I didn’t feel like dealing with anything large, so I pulled out my WIP of JBW Designs’ Country French Pear.

I don’t have a whole lot done on it and I had left off at the top to the left of the stem, so I finished up a couple of stitches there and moved down toward the body of the pear…only to discover that I had miscounted somewhere along the line and even missed a couple of stitches, which was going to throw the whole thing out of whack. It was eight o’clock at night and I just wasn’t equal to dealing with it, so I decided to put it away and think about it, and got out Celtic Birds and put in a few stitches on that one.

After some consideration, I’m going to just re-start the pear on another piece of fabric. It’s not worth it to me to 1) try to figure out where the heck I went wrong and 2) frog on 40 count. I love the fibers I'm using on both of these. The green on the pear is from Olde Willow and I think it's actually called Weeping Willow. The fiber for Celtic Birds is a skein of Needle Necessities that I had in my stash. I don't know what it's called but the colors in it remind me of water and the sea. I thought it had a kind of Celtic look to it.

***

I was reading the book Dewey, so if you haven’t read it and don’t care to know what I think about it, or if you haven’t read it and don’t want to know what I think about it because you don’t want my opinion to color yours, then this would be a good place for you to stop because I’m going to tell you what I think.

I was very disappointed in this book. Dewey’s story would have made a great magazine article and it might have even made a good book in the hands of a better writer. But this book had too little Dewey and too much story about Spencer, Iowa, and the trials and tribulations of the librarian. That sounds like I’m belittling her and I’m really not, I just don’t care to read her life story. It seemed at times that the book was more about her than about the cat. I gave it 2 stars on GoodReads. When it comes to cat stories, I thought Homer's Odyssey was way better.

*

Good reading and happy stitching!

Ahhh, Sunday

The rain started during church this morning and it pretty much poured all day, so it made for a good afternoon to stay inside with stitching and football!

I put in a couple of hours or so on Heligan. If you try really, really hard, you can maybe picture the green blob at the top as a palm frond, which is what it will eventually be.


After I laid Heligan aside, I worked on Silver Stitches for just a little bit. The row I'm working on is done with ray stitches. I have another row just like this at the bottom, then two rows of fly stitches or some sort of fly stitch variation, then three short rows of silver at the very top that will represent the top of the ornament. I really like this one.

"Sometimes it's just better this way."

Saturday Stitching

I got the new SANQ in the mail today and it has a couple of gorgeous reproduction projects -- Margaret Havelock, stitched in 1836, and Elizabeth Hobson, stitched in 1800. I really like both of them, especially Margaret, and they're both all cross stitch, so they should be quick stitches. There is a reproduction of a German sampler as well, but it didn't take my fancy as much as the other two did. SANQ and Piecework are the only two needlework magazines that I still subscribe to. At one point I subscribed to about 6, including one or two British ones, but the cost and the increasing challenge of storage became too much to deal with. I've been culling my magazines over the past year or so; I'm keeping all my SANQs, but others I'm only hanging on to the ones with projects or articles that I really like or am interested in.

I got some work done on my elephant tonight. I put in about an hour and a half, maybe a little more. His other ear is starting to take shape!

I may pull him out for my Sunday afternoon stitching, at least for a little while. I'd like to put a few more stitches in Heligan tomorrow. I'd like to get started on some of the greenery. I think I'm going to try working on it [Heligan] in Q-Snaps rather than in-hand. It's a large piece of fabric and the Qs may make it easier to handle.

Finally....I hated to disturb this today but I really did have to make the bed!