Happy Potato Day!

 I've been meaning to post and Potato Day is as good of a reason as any! Baked potatoes are my favorite for sure, but roasted, hashed, mashed, souped, French fried, home fried, potato chipped, latked, totted, or stuffed in a pierogi, I just can't think of a bad way to cook a potato!

image from Kevin is Cooking

DH went hiking through the Beartooth mountains and then we went to the Sierras so it's been a long aimless time for me.  I had expected to get a lot of stitching done but I fell into the Hamish Macbeth mysteries and was lost in the Highlands of Scotland for a while! But I did work on some things! The more worked on ones were...

Tiger Moth, which is done except for the backstitching. This was a freebie kit from CrossStitcher magazine:

Atlas Moth, ditto.  The two months are supposed to be turned into coasters:

Ladybug, part of a completely separate but still bug-themed coaster freebie set from CrossStitcher:

Bumblebee, ditto:

Bear Walk has more bear:

Ukrainian Sunflowers has more sunflowers:

Dinosaurs has more sky:

Underwater Kingdom has more octopus:

Flowers A to Z has an aster going:

Kuna turned 15 so her vacation was pretty much sniffing things and napping. We were both on the same page for this trip, haha.

Happy May Day!

 A nice stitching roundup for the end of April!

I've had this beautiful dream that one day all my smaller pieces will be done and then I'll go crazy with my big ones, but that dream really depended on me not finding anything else to stitch and..cough cough...ahem...

So I'm kind of recalibrating and digging into the vault to get my bigger pieces moving, and this is my biggest, the Sistine Chapel by HAED. I stitched some more of the ceiling border:

Sweet Tea Rex by Ardith Designs has all the blue dinosaurs filled in:

Sakura Pagoda by Riolis got all sky work this week:

Bear Walk by Stitchy Fish got more sunset and Big Bear got more fur:

Rouxdolph by Dirty Annies has more letters:

Ukraine Map has more of Cherkasy Oblast:

and Braver by Dimensions has more random flowers and lettering:

Spent the week beating the tariffs - got a bike rack installed on my car, air conditioner fixed, ordered Sunday School supplies for the rest of the year, looted Joanns and got my birthday/anniversary order in early at 123 stitch.  We may end up  feasting on dandelions and nettles, but at least I'll be getting my craft on!

Kuna likes to nap in her hole outside when it gets hot, but she can't really relax at night because she's scared of the neighborhood owl. Poor Kuna!

10 years?

 

It seems crazy that it's been so long, RIP Debbie. I still miss you.

My auntie has been in the emergency room almost exactly every four weeks for a year now.  I finally agreed to start hospice and it's a nightmare.  I can't believe I'm giving up on her but at this point I think the ER is going to kill her anyway.  I've just been lolling around crying for the last couple of months.  In some moments of sanity I stitch.

 This is Sunflower Field from Oh My Stitches on Etsy:

It will look like this:

I started this in memory of my dad - it reminds me of all our camping trips and has a kind of retro vibe, it's Bear Walk by Lee Fisher of StitchyFish for Just Cross Stitch magazine:

I got some more done on Birds of a Feather:

And I started this map of Ukrainian needlework.  I'm a volunteer docent at the House of Ukraine, a cultural museum, and they have a display of Ukrainian needlework, so when I saw this design it jumped out at me.  People who know what they're doing can tell you what region of Ukraine the needlework is by the design. It's from Wonderland Ukraine.

  

This is a better picture of the design:

Kuna has my vibe: