IHSW (late) and dogsitting

     I'm a little bit late with my IHSW post, but at least I remembered it.  Whoo hoo for me.  Doubly so, cause I also got a lot done.  Yay me.  I took a progress piccy of Frost Moon before I put it away.  I think it looks gorgeous.  I've never seen so many different shades of blue and gray all in one place before.  I had to rearrange my living room though.  And I'll tell you why and show you a piccy...

     I was talking to Julie M on Monday night (not yesterday, a week ago yesterday), and working on Frost Moon.  I had finished up the first color, and was working on the grays.  I had two dark grays, and I couldn't tell the darned things apart.  So I was whining about it.  And Julie said how it was too bad I don't have an Ott lamp.  (Epiphaniacle moment here.  I DO have an Ott light.  I just haven't needed it.)  So I moved the table over, so I could move the chair over, so I could move the table that used to be next to the couch into the spot next to the chair for the Ott light.  And of course, with the Ott light, I could tell the colors apart.  Makes it a lot easier, ya know?  Here's the after shot.  

It's a nice little nest for me.  Yes Dear likes it too, because now I'm not always putting things on her perch, lol.  She's jealous of that area, and if I put my chart on there (I tend to pull the page I'm working on my HAEDs and put the rest of the chart on the lowest perch) she knocks it off.  I haven't determined yet if she does it on purpose or not.  She's silly though.  She will actually sit on the arm of my chair and cry till I move it so she can get up there.  Then she sits there with a superior look, like, "Hah, I'm here now, and you can't put all your stuff here," lol.  Bad little thing!!  Anyways, I like having the Ott lamp near, and it helps me immensely, so it's all good.

     And here is my (gorgeous) progress on Frost Moon.  

My goal was to get it all gridded and do the first two rows of ten by tens, and I met it.  Whoo hoo!!!  (I love it when I meet a goal, and I haven't in a while.  So I'm doubly excited.)

     I got a lot of it done at the EGA meeting on Monday last.  I probably put in two hundred and fifty stitches or so during that two hours.  And the first three ten by tens in the first column and the first two ten by tens in the second column were all the same color.  So that made it really easy at first.  Of course, the stars are confetti city, but they look good.  I can't wait to get this one back out again.  (Of course, I always feel that way, sooooo...  Nothing new, lol.)  

     And my last rotation piece is in play now.  I'm working on Country Bloomers.  It has a story behind it, and a couple of ornery friends.  Kay, one of my UK buddies, wanted to show me her new knickers.  (Knickers is the Brit word for panties, in case you didn't know.)  I was like, "Um, no thanks.  Don't want to see your underwear."  So then, when we'd webcam, she'd pull her panties up above her pants and show me them.  Once, she even had Claire (her daughter) pull up her skirt and show me hers!!!!  Of course, this somehow spilled over onto my Multiply site.  Kay and I were going back and forth over it.  And my friend Chris, from Indiana, got wind of it.  So she sent me a card with women in old fashioned swimsuits, and this chart.   The finished product looks like this:  

Each pair of Bloomers has the day above it and what happens on that day.  Right now, I'm working on Wednesday Go To Market.  I've been wanting to start the project for as long as I can remember having it, but I was trying so hard to not start anything...  Anyways, when I decided to do a rotation, I added it in because, well, because I could, lol.  It's such an easy stitch.  After Frost Moon, I had some trouble with it at first, lol.  I kept thinking I was working my xs over three threads instead of two.  They looked HUGE!!!!  (Frost Moon is over one on twenty eight count, and Country Bloomers is over two on twenty eight count.  It makes an absolutely huge difference, lol.)  It's been pretty easy though.  Not large blocks of color, but the pattern makes a grid.  

I had to look at the chart a lot to put in the center stitches (the center stitches are the stitches where the grid intersects.  They are slightly darker than the grid lines), but now that I'm putting the grid lines down between them, I only have to check every once in a while.  My goal on this was originally to get the first pair of bloomers done.  I should have them done today.  So I'm thinking I'll change my goal to getting two pairs done.  I got so much done at David's house dogsitting that I needed to make my goal more challenging.

     And speaking of dogsitting, the dog scared the ever loving crap out of me on Friday night.  It was a combination of things, but he had a seizure after his walk.  He has a heart problem.  And he gets these sort of dizzy spells when it acts up.  So we go out for a walk and it's like seventy degrees.  (He doesn't do well in heat, and neither do I, but I figured seventy would be okay.  Boy was I wrong!!)  We didn't go far.  We basically went halfway around the block.  (I know, that sounds strange.  But my brother's street is in the center of the block.  Imagine a square.  Halfway down the left side is a line that goes halfway to the other side, then curves to the south.  He's right on the curve, and so his house is backed up by another house.  We went up his street, up the northwest side of the square, across the top, and halfway down the east side.  Then we cut through the neighbor's yard (I did ask them if they cared.  They didn't, lol) and came through the backyard of David's house.  We went inside, and I took his harness off.  I put the leash on the table, and he started to wobble drunkenly towards the stairs.  I grabbed him, and carried him away from the staircase (sixty pounds of drunken dog, ugh!!!) so he didn't compound the problem by falling down them.  He was fine after about thirty seconds.  So I called David to let him know, and he said he had found a couple of Vin's heart pills on the plate that morning.  So he didn't have two of them at some point, and we figured that combined with the heat and exertion, caused the seizure.  Poor dog.  He shook it off like a trooper though.  He was fine for the rest of the weekend.  I did let him out in the side yard the next day (cause he just lays around out there), and he enjoyed that.  And I played with him for a bit, then distracted him with a greenie and then a bone.  He was happy after that.  So he had a restful weekend, and I cancelled any more walks except in the dead of winter, when it's cold.  He handles those fine.  And it's good for both of us to walk, so that helps.  

     Finally, the plumber has been and gone.  He came in to fix the bathtub today.  It was so messed up.  It leaked (constantly streaming) and that was as much as would come out.  I could turn it up to full, and nothing more would come out.  It was awful.  So I had to take potsfull of water to put in it to keep it from being too hot, and hang a bucket from the spigot to keep the water from cooling off to fast.  I hate that darned bucket now, lol.  I kept having to empty it and empty it and the water got cooler faster cause it was cold even through the bucket...  Ugh!!  But it's fixed now.  I have to let it dry till tomorrow morning, then I can use it.  Yay!!

     That's all the news from my neck of the woods today.  Back to stitching now.  I only have a few stitches to do to finish up my first pair of bloomers!  Hope you're all having a good day!!