Coming Up Roses!

 This was my weekend to help decorate the float for Rose Parade.  We stayed in Los Angeles and I got a lot of sky in on my dinosaurs. We haven't had cable in years so it was nice to be able to spend a Sunday watching football and stitching:

I spent Saturday sorting corn. The dried kernels needed to be separated into small, medium, large, chipped, and "yucky":  

This is the seed trailer where the corn comes from; all these barrels are full of seeds from every plant you can think of, and there's a guy in the trailer whose whole job is making sure everyone has the right colors and textures for their floats:

This is where the float is so far.  The corn is going on the yellow parts of the fish to look like scales. The theme of the float is Children's Day, which is a holiday in Japan that apparently involves flying koi kites:

I cracked the lens on my phone so the light is getting streaked out.  I'm far too cheap to get a new phone for something like that so you'll just have to enjoy the feeling of flying through the cosmos.  I don't know whose float this is but I love a pterodactyl!

This is the float for Louisiana, my spiritual home.  My family settled in Gretna, by New Orleans ,when they fled Cuba:

We had a new location this year, right across from the Rose Bowl, it was my first time in the canyon. I'm so glad it's still the Rose Bowl and not the Paramount Plus Frito Lay Bowl or something. I don't know why it makes me happy, but it does:

The float is sponsored by Donate Life, which coordinates organ donations. If you aren't a registered donor, you can sign up here:

On Veteran's Day we went on a hike and got a great view of Los Angeles:

Kuna is 14 now, which is definitely the sleep all day era. We got her up the hill but this is all she really wanted to do. I know the feeling haha.

No matter what's happening here....

3 Finishes and a Float!

 I did a big recataloging and recalculating of my stitching.  I had previously figured that I needed a finish every 11 days in order to finish all my stash before I was dead. So 26 finishes later, I somehow need a finish every 6 days....I'll have to start running and be a vegetarian again because I just need to live longer...it's my only hope, don't tell me to stop getting stash lol. 

I did get 3 summery finishes to round off 2023! First off is a kit from CrossStitcher, it was supposed to be a stuffed hanger with some stuffed strawberries dangling from it, but they lost me at "catch stitch the edges" - I gave up and did a running stitch because that's as fancy as I get, but I'm deeply in love with how it came out:

My next finish is Tending the Hollyhocks by Calico Confectionary:

And then my last one is a Mill Hill kit called Lizard. On our honeymoon, we stayed in Mexico in this wonderful, gorgeous former Spanish monastery with peacocks wandering around and a gecko that kept crawling across our roof, and I've had a soft spot for geckoes ever since.

I took Lizard on our trip to Pasadena, we came up for a long weekend while I helped decorate a float for the Rose Parade again.  My job was taking a tray of cut up statice and pulling out anything brown with a pair of tweezers:

The float this year has a Hopi Indian theme, and the pictures on the baskets are all organ donors:

My shift was cut off early because the florists arrived, and volunteers aren't allowed on the floats until the florists are done.  It was amazing to watch cart after cart of flowers get rolled in, and some volunteers are on mister duty to walk around half the night spraying the flowers to keep them fresh for the parade.  Someone else had the job of filling about a million vials with water for all the roses.  

 I had a chance to walk past a graveyard of past floats - they try not to throw anything away. These scrap heaps are scattered around the parking lot.  The dumpsters have big signs that they're for compost only - none of the plants go to a landfill. The dumpsters are provided by Miracle- Gro, so maybe you're buying ground up float if you buy a bag of compost?

This is the closest to the parade I've ever decorated, so I got to see the big tent city set up at the front for people from all the floats to check in.  I took a picture of the Louisiana tent because my family lived in Gretna until Katrina.  They moved to Miami, which in my opinion is a stupid place to move if hurricanes are your problem, but they won't come to California because of the earthquakes, lol. Aside from a nod to my kin, I also appreciated that while every other float had a generic white tent and food in foil pans, Lousiana had a full building with an awning and a patio and a menu of proper southern food and some beauty queens circulating.  Classic Southern!

Since my shift ended early I went back to the hotel and picked up the pack and we went for a little nature hike. We saw our first bobcat:

And Kuna took a nice early bedtime.  She spends most of her life like this now, this is what retirement is like for dogs lol.

A Cookie and a float!

THE COOKIE: 

A finish a finish! I was shocked that I didn't have any finishes for the WIPocalypse; I've got a tall stack of WIPs so I want to keep on crackin'! I was still in a cookie mindset and this was small and half done. This is the second of the "biscuit" coasters that I started during the Queen's funeral.  

I called it a thumbprint cookie on it's progress picture, because that was the closest name I could come up with, but Jo from Serendipitous Stitching kindly let me know that it's an English cookie called a Jammie Dodger.  

This photo is from Mr Paul's Pantry, which has the recipe I may be trying soon....cookies...mmm.  There are molds you can get to make the ridges, so maybe Santa will indulge me.  By "Santa" I mean DH, and by "indulge me"I mean want me to make him some new cookies, lol!

These are thumbprint cookies, which is when you get a lump of dough and mash your thumb in it to make a hollow for some jam. I had thought that the cracks were sort of what the pattern designer was going for.  (picture from Love and Lemons).  

WIP UPDATE:

I've made progress on "Waiting for Santa" from The Stitcherhood. The pattern is from last year's JCS ornament issue:

THE FLOAT

I went up to Los Angeles and helped decorate a float for the Rose Parade! 

This is the model of the float I helped with: 

The decorating is all volunteer; they're counting on the community to show up to help, and they do.  Our coordinator said they've had volunteers from as far as London and Amsterdam this year.  I won the distance prize for the day because my drive was two hours.  Yay me! 

This is where the float was when I got there.  

My job for the day was cutting up yellow flower petals to get glued on the lanterns.  If the petals are too big they won't stick, so they had a whole table of us human choppers cutting up strawflower petals.  

This is the underside of the dragon - the floats are required to have their entire surface covered with flowers, seeds, stems, or bark. The yellow stripes are done and they're letting them dry before they go in with purple.  They paint the surfaces with regular Elmer's school glue and then moosh the seeds or petals on:

This lovely lady is doing the big stones for the base of the float.  She's got a cardboard tray full of seeds to paint on as grout.  The judges mark down if there are any exposed spots, so the "painters" have to be very thorough:

This is another float that looks way behind schedule to me.  It's been sprayed and marked off but no one was working on it and only the head and legs were done.  I don't know whose float it is.  The plastic wrap is to protect those delicious seeds from the birds. The decorating happens in huge semi-open barns and they have a  problem with birds flying in and going crazy eating the seeds off the floats:

They said they won't put any actual flowers on until after Christmas because they just wilt, and the weekend before the parade they have a small army of misters running around spraying all the live flowers so they stay fresh for the parade.  I thought the whole thing was super interesting and I'll be really proud to see "my" float rolling down the street next month!