A Noodle-y Finish!

 The noodles are cooked! This is by Crafty Faux on Etsy, I made the bowl white and royal blue instead of the aqua called for in the pattern, and I made the sushi roll green instead of pink because the pink looked like seafood and I hate seafood.

I got two more swans started on Birds of a Feather:

I started Glory to God, it's "due" by the 18th....

and I worked on the sky in Era of the Dinosaurs:

Sweet, tiny, mild-mannered ray of sunshine Auntie threw a resident of her memory care into the wall hard enough to give her a head injury, bit a staffer through the skin, kicked another one in the face and a third one in the stomach, and ended up in the emergency room as a "danger to others".  The doctors there offered hospice, which was the last thing I was expecting to hear.  The ER lost Auntie's shoes, which are the only ones she'll wear and they don't make anymore, so she's rampaging around barefoot and that's it's own aggravation. And my doctor ordered a biopsy for me, which is the new real last thing I was expecting to hear.  And of course it's a month before they have an appointment so I get to just fret the whole time. I've heard a lot of stories about biopsies that came back as nothing so I'm trying to stay positive.  All in all a rough week, fingers crossed the whole year isn't like this!

This is Kuna on her first ferry ride when we went to Canada - it's about how I feel right now!

At least it's 60 degrees and clear here - it looks like half the world is in a blizzard! Stay warm, my frosty friends!

First Finish of the Year!

 This was a little Mill Hill kit; I had almost these exact skates growing up.  I had a pair of jeans with rainbows sewed on the back pockets and a rainbow tie for my hair and I was the disco queen of the roller rink!  "I do not envy youth, I only envy it's confidence" - I don't know who said it but holy smokes was I conceited in some truly ridiculous outfits!

The swans are kissing in Birds of a Feather.  This is a Dinky Dyes chart and it's supposed to be red on white, but I just love the way white on red looks so here we are:

Aliens by XcrossstitchpatternsX has the band across the bottom and more of the ship's panels are done:

And Noodle Bowl by Crafty Faux is almost cooked:

Happy Epiphany  - may you have a year full of gifts for the spirit!  Epiphany celebrates when the Magi arrived at the manger with gifts for Jesus; when you sing about a partridge in a pear tree, those 12 days of Christmas are the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany.  It's also traditionally the day that Jesus was baptized, so orthodox churches often have some sort of swimming event.  Polar Bear Plunges on New Years are the secular version of this.

Epiphany Celebrations Around the World

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.

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:

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:

Bookmark Finish!

This is some perfect spring color to balance all the rainstorms we're having.  I'm in heaven with this weather, I shouldn't say anything with all the flooding we're having but I wish it would never stop!

Here's "Blackwork Bookmark" by Susan Penny in from Cross Stitcher Magazine, April 2019.  Stitched with leftover threads from a kit.

DH had a very reasonable question about why this was called blackwork, haha.  It's funny that the    technique is named for the color, I guess backstitched bookmark would be a better title.  

In other stitching news, I'm glad I take pictures because otherwise some of these I wouldn't know that I had gotten anywhere at all!

Dinosaurs has more sky:

Zinnias has more leaves and flowers and it almost says Zinnias now instead of Zinntas:

Aliens has more of the stuff around the blast zone:

Triskele is almost done:

Celtic Angel has more wings growing - this is being stitched with the charted threads but it's on ivory aida instead of the blue in the picture.  It's amazing how much more purple the model looks!

And Octopus's Garden joined the rotation, there's a little more seaweed and border done:

Auntie thinks people are sneaking into her house and smoking her cigarettes and turning her lights on and off - she's definitely getting more suspicious in general, I think just because she can't remember anything at all now.  Sigh.  I'm meeting with a lawyer to get the conservatorship going and she may be ending up with a stranger coming into her house to take care of her.  She hates the idea but we're getting right up to the edge of what I'm willing to undertake in the caregiving line.  Double sigh.  I love her like crazy but I am so looking forward to going back to my proper job!!!