Chugging Along

DH went rock climbing for Thanksgiving and Auntie's in her new place so I spent the weekend watching "Murder She Wrote" and stitching.  Angela Lansbury was such a wonderful talented lady - they don't make them like her anymore!

I almost finished "Tending the Hollyhocks":

"Bigfoot in Winter" has most of the characters, he should be ready to visit for Christmas:

and Paddington has most of his hat:

Hello November!

Yikes and a half! Since my last post Auntie went back to the ER, moved into memory care, beat up everyone there, got kicked out back to the emergency room for 6 days (??!!), and is in a new memory care where I don't want to say anything to jinx it but so far she is doing well. Knock wood.  

 

I stitched almost all of this except the beading while hanging out in the emergency room, it's Mill Hill's "Jellyfish".  I am so grateful I cross stitch - I love jellyfish and it was very soothing to be stitching all that blue and focusing on the tentacles instead of how cuckoo Auntie's gotten.

Even though it's an artist's design, I think it's based on the pelagia noctiluca.  These little guys are about the size of your hand and they're bioluminescent. 

photo of a young one from the Wildlife Trust

photo of adults from Scripps Institute of Oceanography

My Mer-dog Kuna:

2 Finishes for Debbie!

 RIP Debbie - your beautiful spirit and love of cross stitch is never forgotten 

This is Nunavut Santa from Mill Hill.  I grabhed it because Auntie needed to go to the emergency room and I needed something compact to work on.  I ended up taking it on vacation and finishing it in a lovely mountain inn. It was my first attempt at "turkey work " and my second try at beading:

The other finish was also from a kit, this came with Cross Stitcher magazine. I don't know which issue because they've stopped putting dates on magazine pages.  The designer is Susan Penny.  It's supposed to end up as a needlebook, we'll see if it ever gets that far, haha:

I also got some progress on Era of the Dinosaurs:

And in honor of Debbie I started Candy Feliz Navidad by Ursula Michael.  I saw this piece on Debbie's blog and fell in love so I thought it would be a nice way to remember her. The design:

I start in the top left so I started the border and the top candy:

118 days until Christmas!

I'll finish with a picture of Kuna on vacation.  I couldn't believe there was still snow on the mountains at the end of August:

Just Made It!

 I had my last post on June 1 and this is July 31 so I guess that counts as posting once a month, ha ha.  

Auntie has started low level hallucinating and she set her yard on fire, so we've moved to professional caregivers and no smoking and she just has to deal with it.  The silver lining is we don't have to go to her house every day and I feel like I can plan more than 5 minutes of my life at a time.

On the stitchy front I finished a bookmark kit from Just Cross Stitch, of a lovely giraffe. It came with a card stock thing to put it in to make a proper bookmark out of it:

I got a couple of more leaves on Zinnias.  I've completely lost it since I took this picture; it isn't anywhere in my house or Auntie's or my car. I've never even heard of someone losing their stitching - maybe I need one of Auntie's caregivers too!

Autumn Mandala has more of the corner:

and that's all folks! I'm off to see if I can find my lost stitching and possibly my mind is laying around somewhere I'll find that too, haha.

 Kuna is pretending she's asleep and not at all trying to eat my giraffe bookmark:

Happy June!

I've been nibbling away at everything through all the madness with Auntie.  She's refusing to allow caregivers in her home and she's too stubborn and forgetful to admit that she needs them so that's been taking up my life.  I keep reminding myself that I was a stubborn fool when I was young, and then I grew out of it, and it's a gift to get old enough to grow back into it and I'm glad I can be there for her.  It makes me feel better but I'm still worn out all the time.  Thank goodness for cross stitch!

I got the top of the arm on my octopus:

One wee flower on Autumn Meditation:

More petals on my Zinnias:

All kinds of stuff on the dinosaurs - the wings are started on the pteranodon and the leaves on the trees are blooming (I know it's flowers that bloom but I don't know what to call it when leaves do it).

My spaceship is taking off!

Oh wow I'm working on another octopus - I guess I'm more of a fan than I knew, haha!

There's a Japanese garden not too far from us where I go to watch the fish and forget my problems:

I didn't notice this guy for a long time! I'd never make it as fish, lol, I'd be the one that aimlessly swam right under his beak.  

 Kuna says let her sleep!

Easter Treasure Hunt!

 This is hosted by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching - start there and then follw the blogs...each blogger is hosting a letter, and if you hop around in order you'll spell out an Easter phrase.  My letter is:

(a royalty free image from Dreamstime)

My Easter Stitching is:

by CuteFoxyShop on Etsy.

And the next blog you're hopping to is Guava Gems...

Happy Fig Tuesday!

 For those who follow the Easter story, Holy Tuesday is also called Fig Tuesday because it's the day the Disciples saw a cursed fig tree.  I plan to eat a fig newton and think deep pre-Easter thoughts!  

In stitchy news, no finishes - I'm technically 2 behind for my timeline but since I made the timeline up in the first place I'm not feeling too bad about it.  I'll just have to live that much longer to get all my WIPs done, lol!

I almost finished the gridding on my checkerboard, or at least half-stitching it.  I didn't dare stitch inside the squares because I needed to know which way was up!

I took out my old friend tiger and got some of his face done:

I got another tentacle started on my octopus:

More sky in Dinosaurs - I'm almost ready to get a Pterodactyl wing started:

and some more action at the bottom of the spaceship:

Almost exactly three years ago we were spending Spring Break in a COVID lockdown - so glad that's over! This is a throwback picture of Kuna making the best of a parking lot!