Happy February!

January seemed like the longest month in the world, but I'm still surprised it's February already! My beautiful dream of working on everything I own this year is going pretty well - I think I'll be done by September 5, but then I keep opening boxes and finding a bunch more projects. All of them are my favorite thing that I've ever stitched! I have one finish for the month, which is an old CrossStitcher magazine kit. It's the cover for a needle book, but I just stick all my needles on a magnet, so I'm not sure I can see that happening. But I really like the pinks and the geometric valentiney combination.

My goal is to get a stitch in on 5 pieces a day, you can see the whole project here. A lot of the pieces are old New Start a Day, StitchMaynia, and Ultimate Crazy January Challenge pieces, started and then forgotten, so it's been really fun seeing everything emerge from the vault. Looking at old photos is supposed to help stave off dementia, I'm hoping that looking at old stitching does the same thing! hahaha! 

Some of my closer to complete pieces, in the sense you can tell what they're supposed to be, are...

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds:

The Circus Comes to Town:

Prairie Schooler Santa Ornament:

It Is Well:

Frolic in the Foliage:

Stained Glass Peacock:

In other news we took a lovely trip to 
Gila Bend, Arizona.  It's a town you drive straight through if you're going between Phoenix and California, but it has a spaceship hotel that I've always wanted to stay in, and some metal dinosaur sculptures in front of one of the gas stations, and it's by some little mountains DH wanted to climb, so we spent a weekend there. These pictures are from the hotel website, you can see how fun it was if you like outer space stuff!

New Year's Resolution: Read more books. I didn't say more than what, haha! This was my lone read for January, and I only read it because I was getting rid of it.  

This is the most recent picture I took of Kuna, she's turning 16 this year and we're so glad she's healthy and seems pretty content, just loafing all day. Her life used to be a lot more exciting but we can't take her out like we used to because she starts limping if she walks more than about two blocks - she trots down our street and back and that's enough for her. 

I hope everyone's staying warm - it's supposed to get to 80 degrees here this week with clear blue skies, my sympathies to people who are dealing with snow and icy roads and everything else. Ukraine doesn't even have electricity because Russia bombed all their power plants, so send special prayers for them if you're the praying type.

https://u24.gov.ua/

Happy WIPocalypse!

 

This is the post to introduce yourself, your projects and goals for the year.  You can see the info and how to check in at Measi's Blog.  I'm Claudette and I've been married for 31 years now, which seems like a long time but it's like I blinked, and here we are.  I was the world's happiest pastry cook and then my aunt's husband died and she was midway through dementia so I was her caregiver until she died in 2024, almost exactly 3 months after my dad died from heart failure.  I dropped out of my life for almost 3 years to take care of her, and I expected to drop right back into everything but the motivation hasn't been there. 

Cross-stitching is one of things that got me through and I'm eternally grateful that one of my grandmothers tried so hard to make a lady out of me by teaching me things like the womanly art of cross-stitch. She failed on many, many, levels, but I did fall in love with those little x's!  

I volunteer with a Ukrainian organization and do whatever I can to help their war effort.  I also teach Christian cooking classes for our Sunday School; we learn about the saint or festival of the day and make a cake that seems appropriate (spice cakes for epiphany!)  My husband is an avid hiker and rock climber and we have a rescue dog who's almost 16 - she's definitely got some sort of doggie dementia but she's still warm and furry and she knows we're her pack so we're enjoying whatever time we have left with her.

My goal for the year is to stitch on every project I have - I've done new-start-a-day challenges 3 times and I've started plenty of other things, and every last one of them was my favorite thing I've ever stitched on, so I'm hoping to say hi to all of them and let them know they're loved, and also to see if any of them have lost some of their luster.  If I've counted right I'll get through everything this year if I stitch on five things a day, so that's what I'm going for. So far I'm really loving having some structure in my day - I've needed it! I have a page for all of it because I don't want to be posting 35 pictures a week, and if I just folded them into my blog and started posting every day I'd feel like I needed to comment on them or my day or something. These are some of the things I've stitched on this year, you can see the whole parade so far here.