Wow, have I been slacking, or what? I think my last update was July? Lots of things going on since then, though most of it has been work. We got the house painted, which was kind of an odyssey while we waited for it to stop raining for a week. But it finally stopped, and it took 1 guy a whole week, but he did a GREAT job, with the woodwork that needed done before the paint. And then we had even more fun getting ready for new carpet; our 23-yo contractor-grade stuff was 30 seconds from complete disintegration, so it was time. So – we had to move the entire first floor, except the kitchen. THAT was a huge pain in the ass, but my craft room is getting put back together and cleaned up, and hopefully much more organized. I had about 1000 pounds of books that had to go down steps – they haven’t come back up, just the 200 pounds that are the To Be Read pile. Next year, hopefully the kitchen gets redone.
Also of note since my last post, we had an eclipse AND a hurricane in the same week – because we shop in bulk, I guess. We had Hurricane Harvey blow through after it devastated the Houston area, then we had a solar eclipse, and then Hurricane Irma come straight up through Florida to the north Georgia mountains, where we had 65-70 mile winds – which this area isn’t used to having. The woods behind the house had some damage, we had one tree come down through the fence, ,and trees were down everywhere, with the power outages to go with. Fortunately, we were only down a couple of hours, but since all of our power poles were replaced during the last ice-pocolypse, the only thing we really had to worry about was trees. At one point, the wind blew so hard, it took our biggest tree out back and twisted it – where it twisted, it shattered, and a huge 30′ is still hanging, while another huge section slammed into the ground, so loudly the folks across the street called to see if we were okay, since it shook the whole neighborhood:
In stitching news, I got sucked into a Tempting Tangles stitch along, The Great Cheshire Pumpkin, which ended up taking a lot more time than I thought it would. 8 parts, released every 2 weeks, pretty much consumed all of my time for the last couple of months. But it’s done, and with a couple of weeks to spare. On 28ct Wood Violet linen, using DMC:
I did take a break from Pumpkin long enough to do the third Chatelaine Mini Mystery Castle that I had kitted up. MM K took me 3 weeks, for some reason; the other two only took 2 weeks. Now I need time to get the three made into bellpulls – the hardware is sitting on the table, yelling at me every time I walk into the craft room.:
And since it is October, my favorite decorating season, I finished up the rest of the ornaments I stitched last year, so I could put up my new Halloween tree:
We also had our fall exchange, for which I did one of the small Prairie Schooler ornaments, and finished it into an actual ornament this time. I don’t have a picture of the Halloween Owl I received from Diane – I will try to take a picture of it for next time.
The only other thing I managed to touch was a bit more on my canvas piece, Field of Sunflowers – now on the outer border:
The newest addition to the house, Opie Cunningham, is growing like a weed. I have the most ridiculous assortment of cat scratches from him, including one that is a bout a foot long all down my forearm – he does a mean spider cat impression. And then he sleeps:
My San Diego kid is now stationed in Florida, and his fiance will be in Virginia in a few weeks. The Virginia kid is currently deployed, with a unit on the USS Franklin D Roosevelt, going god knows where. It’s radio silence from him, so it’s going to be hard to not know where he is or what he’s doing 🙁 It’s a different world out there than when I was in the game…
Until next time, happy stitching!