An Independence Day (Night) Update

(yes, that is a praying mantis and a flag. If you had a praying mantis hanging out by your front door all afternoon, wouldn't you take a couple of pics, too? :) )

We've had fireworks going night after night after night - and I've had a cowering dog living at the end of the hall like it's a bomb shelter. Dummy, of course, could care less - I'm sure if a bottle rocket or Roman candle came near him, he'd do his best to catch it. Dummy - he's such a bonehead...

(if you go HERE and flip through the pictures quickly using the Next button, you can see his ears move - and/or a thought forming)

In this week's stitching, I had a new start on Monday, which I finished on Friday, and actually also have the stuff to finish-finish it, too :) Out of that JE Southwest leaflet that Sue V. sent to me, I was compelled to kit up several of those on ice blue Monaco, and well, you know me, since I had them ready to go, well, I caved and started the Dream Catcher. BUT - it wasn't the only thing I worked on, so I didn't entirely throw out my plans for the week, just modified them slightly :)


I added the silver feather charms and added a few little nuggets of turquoise that I had in the old bead drawer :) I do wish that I had done the backstitch in 3371 instead of 310 - that black is too harsh, IMO. I'll take myself under consideration when I do the next one :)

Now, getting back to what I had PLANNED to do last week - I did finally finish Part 1 of the WTN&T Birds of a Feather Mystery SAL - and got a few stitches in on Part 2 (since, you know, Part 3 is due to be released the end of this week). I just have to say that the red used in the border flowers still just blows me away - it's so rich! And somewhere in Part 3 is a similar red, WDW Brick - can't wait to see what that gets used for...


And lastly, I DID get Knotgarden back out finally on Saturday. Sunday saw no stitching at all, but I did continue on it today, and turned that corner to begin Repeat # 3. All of Saturday, I worked on the yellow border (I really don't like that color, BTW), the eyelets inside it, and then the Rhodes in the inner border down to the halfway mark, and got the 3 topiary pots done. Today, when I was finally able to sit down to stitch, I got the 3 topiaries almost done. I'll keep this out this week and see if I can get a good chunk of the 3rd gate done, though I may have to stop and go do that bottom corner first - I don't think I used the inner stitching for placement of the outer bits much, so I might be able to get the gate in without stopping to do that 4th sea of green...?

(yes, it's wrinkly - if you were a WIP as long as this has been a WIP, you'd be wrinkly, too)

Other than that, I have no definite plans for stitching this week. Since tomorrow is my last day of vacation, I am planning to head to the Stitch Store sometime in the afternoon for the Tuesday stitch in, then back to the grind on Wednesday. We have a big project starting next week - replacing the interface between our two operating systems; but before we can do that, we have to fix a SHITLOAD of data errors that occurred because of the current interface - 7 years worth of errors :( Fortunately, we're getting a couple of warm bodies in to help - data entry is not really my forte, my brain has more repetitive motion injuries than any other part of me - and Oracle is one unforgiving PoS system. So, looking forward to the next couple of months, expect to be freaking SLAMMED, so I'll be wearing my IT hat AND my engineering hat AND my gov't deliverable hat all at the same time! Can you hear my hair going ALL grey??? Of course, I may be pulling it all out in a week or two, so the color may be irrelevant :) :(

(another great post-storm sunset. It's colors like these that remind me of New Mexico - if only there wasn't so much green...)

That's the news that may or may not be fit to print - happy stitching this week to everyone!