A Cardinal Finish!

 My first finish of the year, Mr. Cardinal:

This pattern came from Cross Stitch Crazy, it was part of a series of birds.  I don't know the year, the issue, or the designer because at some point magazines stopped putting all that on the pages. I love all reds and the bird was backstitched in white, a first for me!  

In the meantime I've been loving all the rain we've been getting in California, it's great stitchy weather! I cued up Inspector Morse and got some more sky done on Age of Dinosuars:

  

More of the black outlining on Aliens:

Some of the corner on Autumn Meditation:

more of the top of Harvest Blessings:

and I got to the bottom of Zinnias:

First week down!

I've been kicking 2023's a#%  so far!  New Year's Eve we took our traditional sunset photo, we celebrate at sunset so we can go to bed haha.

We knew it was sunset because of the time, but some rain was rolling in.  

Kuna looks like she's not looking forward to this year - I thinks she could tell it was going to rain and she wanted us to get inside.  I love love love the rain and she has suffered through some wet walks with me!

My final TUSAL result for 2022:

This beautiful creature won the "Sweepstakes Award" for the most beautiful float! This is the float I worked on for the Rose Parade, in all her glory! Some of that yellow was made from flower petals cut by me, and I couldn't have been more proud that we'd won if I'd designed and built the whole float myself!

My stitching has been diligent! I got to the bottom of "Zinnias" from Leisure Arts Magazine, year unknown but I'm guessing the 90s.

Got a flower started in "Autumn Meditation":

Started the letters in "Harvest Blessings":

"Winter Cardinal" has a chest:

 

"Sistine Chapel" has some of the border - there are four colors in this space, believe it or not:

I have a picture of "Reversed Sampler" so I did something but I don't know what:

And I finally took a picture of Aliens:

I'm trying to stick with a finish every 11 days, so I'll probably be stitching Cardinal like crazy to finish him by the 11th - fingers crossed!

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!

RIP Debbie

Still missed.....

For the WIPocalypse this month I don't have a single finish! I was ready to say, with complete sincerity, that I've only been stitching on Happy Easter all month, and then my camera roll showed up......

"Happy Easter" by CuteFoxyShop has most of the leaves and flowers and all the lettering done; it's mostly the background yellow left:

"Baking Hello Kitty" from Vervaco has more cupcakes and background pink:

"Reversed Sampler" from the Stitcherhood has a picture so I must have done something but I don't know what:

"Bam! It's Christmas!" by Emma Congdon has more red:

and "Grave Fellows" from Lindy Stitches has the big bird and headstone finished, two small birds and headstones to go:

 I must be cross-stitching while I sleepwalk or something because I had no memory at all about stitching on three of these until I saw the pictures!  Maybe I have an excuse I can use when I get more stash, haha.

The WIPocalypse question for the month is about Zoom meetings and have we been to them.  The answer is yes and they're a nightmare for me because I can't stay awake; I've fallen asleep during zoom church, zoom webinars, and zoom meetings for a volunteer group I'm with.  I keep my camera off for this exact reason.  I'm not even tired, I just hate Zoom so much that the agony makes me sleepy. 

It's finally started to cool down here and then the weather report says a monsoon is in the south so it will be hot and muggy again by the end of the week, grrr. 

Halloweeny Finish!

 DH has COVID so I've been staying at Auntie's house until he tests negative.  I stitched this from the JCS Halloween issue.  I used the same colors as from "Arranging Microbes" because that's what I have here. I really like this palette, but I took a picture of the original and mine so you can see the designer was a little less gaudy:

"Broom Hair" by Pickle Barrel Designs

from JCS Halloween 2022
stitched on 18ct oatmeal aida with DMC  14, 310, 703, 726, 898, 3340, 3836, and 3837

I'm supposed to be heading to Reno, Nevada for the Cake Expo - a few days of cake show and decorating classes and demos.  Pray for my health (or I'll take good thoughts if that what works for you)!  There's a huge wildfire that's creating hazardous air conditions for a chunk of the drive, and the smoke is supposed to be hitting Reno about the same time I do, so it may be a pretty short expo for me, haha.  

Woo woo!

 Another finish! It's three days late, but for me that's like two years early, haha.  

 "End of the World" from Hancock's House of Happy 
Stitched on 18ct lavender mist Aida with recommended DMC
I took out some rude language and added a mini meteor.  
I may add one more mini to give it a more destructive feeling, but I don't think I left enough room anywhere.  I'll let it percolate....

It's been crazy hot so we took Kuna to the beach:

Happy Flag Day! This is the day the USA celebrates the Stars and Stripes being adopted as our national flag.

While I'm at it, Happy Birthday Army!

and Happy Strawberry Shortcake Day!

No news on the job front - DH got a pretty huge raise and someone needs to help his aunt, so I may be taking a break from my normal work as a pastry cook, because it makes more financial sense than me working and then us paying someone else to stay with her. Since it's tourist season, everyone is looking for cooks who want to work 50 -70 hours a week, and that's not going to work; I'm hoping in the fall there will be more part time work available. The cost of a carer is just breathtaking!   If Auntie starts wandering or falling we'll have to think of something else, but for now so far so good! 

What a Month!

On the stitching front I have another finish.  It seems appropriate for Memorial Day, which in Ukraine was May 8.  My local Daiso had 11 ct aida that I bought a bunch of because it was $1, and I really enjoy the hugeness of the holes! The cat has darker blue and yellow stripes but they don't really show up:  

"Glory to Ukraine" by CuteFoxyShop (Etsy)

In news about the rest of my life,

DH's uncle died and it's been a whirlwind for the last month.  Uncle had 3 phones and chargers because he was the kind of guy who liked to keep old technology around even if he wasn't using it.  All the phones were dead and only one of them had service, and Auntie couldn't figure out which phone was active and which phone went to which charger, so she was just sitting there with Uncle's body for a few days before a neighbor found them.  The Sheriff sent her to the hospital because she was incoherent and dehydrated, and then we went to war with the hospital to get her back home - they wanted her in a nursing facility but she wanted to be on the homestead, and we were on her side all the way.  So she's back home and the we've been staying with her and it's been wild.  She's having a lot of memory problems and it turns out her liver is failing. 

Sooo...it's been a process to figure out what she could do and if she really could stay in her home, and then deciding yes, and then getting everything cleaned up and cleared out and more safe for someone her age. The great news is that day to day she's fine - she's very mobile and can clean the house and putter in the garden and watch her game shows without any help from us, which is exactly what we thought and why we fought the hospital.  She just can't pay her bills or cook or get groceries, which is kind of a lot, but it's also stuff the family can do.  We've settled into a routine a little bit and are starting to kind of catch our breath, but yowza! We've been too busy to really even care that Uncle died - it seems awful, but the mindset is we'll be sad later, we just have too much to do. 

A howdy from Kuna from her first Memorial Day with us - her first trip to the park after being in the shelter:  

She's gotten a few gray hairs but she's still a great lady!