Lo How a Rose, Week 1

Having joined a Lo How a Rose SAL with Staci, Vonna and Laura (oh, how I love partners in crime), I jumped right in last night and made a little bit of progress. And then, I started to notice how WDW's London Fog just fades right into my Java-whatever. Rats! So I suppose I'll be doing a little reverse stitching and hunting to see what I can find that's a tad darker (of course there's nothing in all those little plastic bags at home that will do). Since all the words are stitched in that color, something's gonna have to be done. Otherwise, we'll see the pretty little flowers, but we won't be reading the lovely words to the poem. Trouble is, I like the way London Fog goes from tan to purple-gray (is that whining?). If this is my biggest problem this week, life is too good. Ew, now that I'm looking at the picture, it looks a little blurry. When I looked at it on the camera screen, my old-lady eyes thought it looked fine. Oops ... sorry about that. This short week has seemed excrutiatingly long (could it be the nasal nuisance and Ambien hangovers?), so I'm thrilled that Friday will finally arrive, as promised. Six days off, even with the nose crap, spoiled me rotten. Time off is like really good chocolate ... it always tastes like more.

Uh oh ... New Project

Because Staci, fabulous and speedy knitter and stitcher extraordinaire, is such a bad influence (and I so love a bad influence), I'm gonna start Brightneedle's Lo How a Rose. I'm using WDW floss over one on R & R's 30-count Java-something-or-other (hopefully memory isn't the last thing to go). I desperately needed another project, right? Since I've had my face buried in ATS for a long time, it'll be good to branch out from the Garden of Eden into some roses.
Is it still true that whoever dies with the most projects wins?

Hi Ho, Hi Ho ...

It was back to work today for the first time since the big roto-rootering, and I'm a tired pup. As promised, every day is a little better (I don't look so much like Karl Malden), so there are great expectations (on my part) for Friday. Cocktails, anyone? Thanks to Nurse Nikki, my sweet daughter, I had to do very little during recuperation time. She said it was her turn to help me, which strikes me as a highly enlightened attitude for a 24-year-old. That's my girl!

As I signed off the other day, I mentioned my purple chair (or you may join me in thinking of it as a throne), which is where I spent most of Thursday through Monday. It's tucked into a corner of my bedroom and surrounded by baskets of projects on the floor and framed projects on the walls. I love to sit here and stitch!And in the admittedly awful picture of ATS below (I couldn't talk myself into detaching the camera from the computer and going back upstairs to re-photograph it), you can see what I have to show for my get-well time. I've made quite a bit of progress ... for me. What do people do without stitching? Honestly, I can't remember what I did before stitching and children. It's a blank, and it's not because I was in college in the 70's. When my kids were younger, if I tried to watch TV without stitching, I'd be asleep in minutes. (Kinda reminds me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" ... keep moving so you don't go to sleep.) Anyway, it's good to have a hobby/passion/habit that produces such beautiful things.

Finally, I (like everyone else) just have to say something about the Inauguration today. What a thrill to see such an enormous number of people attend a truly historic event! I watched at school and almost started bawling. I don't recall ever feeling so choked up during an inauguration. A truly proud day for Americans. And I haven't heard anything about bad behavior by anyone attending the ceremonies. Can that be true? I'm not gonna count on that being the case, but I love the thought of humans behaving well as a group activity. It gives me hope.

After the Party

Well, that little hospital get-together was quite a bash. I'm pretty sure they pushed a stick up my nose and then punched me, but their version differs quite a bit from mine. The doc left me with a swollen nose and pharmaceuticals. At this point I've left behind my friend Vicodin, but I'm still enjoying the nighttime hours with my buddy Ambien, which makes me forget I even have a nose. There's no way I could ever use that stuff on a school night ... the hangover is a little too long-lasting. Anyway, all went well, so thanks loads for the kind thoughts and cards.

And now for the really great consequence of enduring all that hospital crap. Stitching time! What else can you do when you're stuck at home? Here you can see my progress (all of you speedy stitchers, be kind to this slowpoke) on dear ATS. Yesterday I did all of the fence-type border under the men (Who are those men, anyway?), which is a lot for me. Today I finished the leafy border (my own OCD version) and the flowers, which I'm gonna go completely finish after this post. She's looking pretty nice, huh?

OK, it's back to the pretty purple chair for me, where my needle and thread await my return. I have only one large complaint ... it's gonna be in the 60's here on Monday, a school holiday, and I'm gonna be not quite up to playing golf. Bummer. There's nothing like a golf day in January.

A Break in the Action

I meant to have a little pic to post showing my progress on ATS, but it's too dark to get a good one. Maybe in a couple of days there'll be a progress post to view. I worked quite a bit on it the last several days (which doesn't mean I've made stunning progress) to make up for the little break that's starting tomorrow. I'm gonna go have my nose fixed and my sinuses roto-rootered early tomorrow morning. Sounds so attractive, doesn't it? My nose won't look any better from the outside, it'll just work better on the inside. It's sort of like having the gutters on your house replaced when you'd really rather redo the kitchen. From what people have told me, I'm gonna feel great after a couple of crappy days. Then, when things are a little better but not great ... time to sit around and stitch!! Imposed stitching time ... what more could I want?

Just a few positive thoughts before the fun begins.

Nuclear Blast from the Past

In what feels like my former life, I was the working-but-stay-at-home mother of three children who, in early 1995, were 13, 10 and 3. I had given up my teaching job and started charting for designers, working at Ewe & Eye & Friends and doing data entry at home (I pulled lots of all-nighters). I was a busy girl and was all about stitching. I was an EGA member for several years, and I loved to take classes from designers and EGA teachers.

Way back in those olden days there was a needlework design company called Samplers of Sylke. Marianne and Lillian designed beautiful and complex works of art, as well as some smaller, simpler works. If you don't know about them, you can see some of their work here and here. Anyway, Marianne Rohrer designed a sampler (maybe a commissioned piece) for Dr. Eleanor Sinton, the Sinton Sampler. Dr. Sinton, who died in 2004, then gave months-long seminars on the sampler, complete with a 44-page instruction booklet, for what was a lot of money at the time. So here's a poor picture of a picture of the completed project and my notebook.Now this sampler seminar wasn't like any other I've ever heard of. We met once or twice a month (it's been so long that I can't remember) and received only parts of the instructions and close-up pictures of sections. I think I'm kinda cranky about the whole thing because I felt so manipulated at the time. I remember having to rework my schedule and arrange for kids to be watched to show up for a hastily rescheduled meeting, just to stand at the door and ring the bell for 20 minutes (Dr S did call later to tell me that no one heard me ringing the bell). It was after that incident that I snippily quit the group and stopped working on the sampler. I know! I was silly, huh? But I was feeling controlled, and that's not a happy situation for me. I also remember that Marianne was unhappy about the way things had turned out between her and Dr S, and I felt that maybe Dr S had taken advantage of her and treated her badly.

The point of this rambling account is that, because of all the WIP talk that goes on around here, I've remembered all of the things I started and never went back to. All of a sudden, I remembered this beautiful sampler and how I had wanted to stitch it from the first time I saw it. I think I'm gonna concentrate on it as being a sampler Marianne designed rather than its given name. That feels better.

Below you'll see my progress which, considering all that was happening at the time, isn't too bad. There's no telling when I'll actually work on it ... maybe after I finish ATS. But now I've brought it out of its cute little rabbit box, along with all the memories that accompany it, and I like the idea of working on it again.

End of an Era

A most wonderful milestone was reached this evening at our annual HOA meeting (if you think I'm a dope for attending, you must keep reading). As a new officer was elected to the board, I officially ended my three-year term as pres (see ... I'm more of a dope than you'd imagined). Let's see ... how do I feel about this? WOO HOO!!! I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the operation of our HOA during the last three years, and I have the satisfaction of having taken my turn, but it hasn't been my most satisfying endeavor. Unfortunately, I've learned that some of the ugly things I thought I knew about people are sadly true. This is a good point to stop typing on this subject, because unless you've been living alone in a cave or up a tree (in which case, I wonder how you keep your laptop charged), you know exactly what kind of people I'm talking about. Ahhhh, now I have more stitching time.

It was back-to-school today and this is what I learned or relearned:

1. When you whisper to first-graders, they whisper back.

2. When you whisper to third-graders, they don't whisper back, but three-eighths of them do ask why you're talking funny.

3. If you croak out "hello", the great majority of adults will inevitably ask, "Is something wrong with your voice?"

4. After two weeks of vacation, 10 out of 12 struggling first-grade readers can still read most of the words they could read before vacation.

5. After two weeks of vacation, some of the struggling first-grade readers will give you hugs that make you remember why you thought you had to go back to school with laryngitis.

6. None of the above can/will be quantified by mandatory state assessments.

I love my job.