WIP Progress Pics

I haven’t posted a progress picture of Alpine Seasons for over a month.  (click to be taken to last progress pic)  Here’s the latest:

I’ve just started to work on the mountain scenery in the upper left hand corner. The blues and purples in the outermost octagon border seem a little off with colors in the rest of the design, but I think there’s going to be so much green above this that it’ll blend in. 🙂

Next is M Designs Alphabet letter “H:”

As you can see, not much progress! I’m using “Mulberry” Waterlilies silk on 32 count cream linen.  This is my vacation take-along piece and I didn’t do much stitching on my last vacation. I’ll take on my next vacation to Portland, OR in September. It’s a good one to work on if I feel like stitching but don’t feel like getting out a larger project.

A few nights ago I had a dream about Little House Needleworks’ Thread Gathering…. I might start that one up soon.  I want to do the House of a Needlworker one more, but don’t have the crescent colors I need yet. Sounds like a good excuse to visit House of Stitches once I’m able to.  I may check Needle Nest (no web page) to see if they carry Crescent Colors, as it’s significantly closer.  They have an incredible variety of fibers there.

I’m recovering from my surgery. Tomorrow is the two week anniversary and I expect to be cleared to go back to work sometime later in the week. It feels like a lot longer than two weeks…  All of the swelling has gone away and I’ve actually managed to lose 10 pounds.  I guess you use up a lot of calories healing…  Whatever the reason, I’ll take it, especially after inexplicably gaining 3 pounds after my action filled vacation earlier in the month.

Thanks!

I’m feeling a lot better about things today.  Thanks to all of you for your kind words.  I’m just used to being more active and its hard to be laid up when the sun is shining outside.

I received a lovely gift today from a dear friend who has astounded me with her generosity and friendship.  You know who you are… thank you from the bottom of my heart… I adore it!  Now….when to start?

Rough Week

I had surgery on Tuesday.  I’d rather not put it out what the issue was, but it was a planned surgery, involved a 5″ incision, full anesthesia, and an overnight hospital stay.  DBF was with me the whole time and was great.  The hospital experience itself was great… I ended up in a single room in the OBGYN ward that is actually intended as a “birthing room.”  It was nicely decorated, warm, friendly, with nice furniture and I could order my meals off of a menu.  The staff was great and really helpful.  So, I’ve been out of things since then and recovering.  I’m feeling better than I thought I would at this point, but will probably be out of work for another couple of days trying to get my strength back up.

I was pretty depressed about all of this today as I have a lot of swelling that prevents my work clothes from fitting right, and I’m hoping the swelling will go down more in the next couple of days.  I am also upset because I was supposed to be keeping up with work, but although I can get into my work e-mail and other systems at work, the VPN installed on my work laptop is not connecting to any of my network drives, severely limiting what I can actually do and IT has no idea what the problem is.  I’m putting a lot of pressure upon myself to be wonder woman and keep up but right now it’s really beyond my control.  I had DBF help me clean up a bit and hope that maybe IT can come to my house tomorrow and look at my ‘puter.

Anyway, the stress of it all, and some of the pressing stuff I have going on at work (that I cannot get to) caused me to call my mother sobbing with stress – which wasn’t really the best way to tell her that I’d had surgery, which she didn’t know about.  I really wanted to do this on my own and was doing pretty well before I realized that if I were to go to work this week, I ‘d have to wear sweatpants or something.  I’ve pretty much been in pajamas all week.  I knew I had some swelling and have been feeling very fat all week as a result, but didn’t expect that my work pants would be barely wearable.  I think that kind of pushed me over the edge this afternoon

Sigh.

I had hoped to have time over the last week to get a little stitching done, but between recovering, lots of sleep due to pain medication, and trying to keep up with work as best I could from home and hoping I made sense to customers and people at work while under the influence of meds.

The bright side of all of this is that I’m feeling pretty good.  I’m still pretty sore in some spots, but for the most part, can go without the meds and can take care of myself getting in and out of bed, showering, cooking for myself, etc.  I hoping another couple of days at home will result in me being out of work only a little over a week and not too far behind when I get back.

I do have some progress on Alpine Seasons since my last WIP pic (over a month ago) and hopefully I’ll have time to post that later on in the week.

Victim of Blog and GTG Enabling

Hmmmm in the last week, I’ve received a Little House Needleworks chart from friend (see post below), and ordered “Thread Gathering,” “Snowflakes,” and “Season of Plenty” and all crescent colors required for the above. I’m normally not a big stash hoarder, so even though this is not a problem financially, I’m putting myself on a shopping hiatus… at least until I finish something…  I’ve been the victim of blog and GTG enabling!

I am back in the thick of it at work. Isn’t it funny how when you get back to work after a vacation and catch up on your e-mail, you feel like you never left? In my case, I had boundless energy while on vacation, but now that I’m back to work, I come home tired and exhausted every night after 10 hour work day and have goals like:

• Cook real food instead of heating up frozen stuff
• Do not fall asleep on the couch after dinner
• Wash and dry hair before going to bed so I can sleep later in the morning
• Try to get outside for at least an hour after work

I haven’t even wanted to stitch since I’ve been home!  DBF says he starts worrying about me when I don’t do much stitching!  (He’s so cool… he even likes to go to House of Stitches with me!)  I’ll probably make some decent progress this weekend (we are expecting rain) and hopefully next week.

I found out that a RAK was received this week and made someone’s day – which is great as that’s the point to begin with. 😀

 

 

I Have The Nicest Friends!

Today I got home from work and found an envelope from my friend Susan. Through e-mails with her earlier in the day, I’d found out that she sent me something that she knew was on my list of designs to purchase. So, it wasn’t a total surprise… the big surprise was the generosity and kindness.  She sent Little House Needleworks’ “Home of a Needleworker (Too).”

I just love the little house in the bottom part of the H!  Honestly I think I love the original version of this design just as much as this one!  I’ve recently become a fan of Little House Needlework designs (I have a couple more on order!) and this was such a perfect pick-me-up to help me shake my post-vacation-depression.  Plus, it was perfectly timed to show up on my first day back to work.  😀

What nice friends I have!  Thank you Susan!

Tonight I printed out the upper left quadrant of Alpine Seasons and will be set to start on that soon.  I’m hoping to entice a friend to do a stitch-along with me on this piece to keep our progress moving forward.

Wonderful Vacation

We got back from our fabulous vacation to upstate NY today.  We were very busy and active, plus spent a lot of time visiting with my parents, who are fun, and the rest of my extended family.  We arrived late in the afternoon on Saturday during a torrential downpour, did some grocery shopping, and settled in at the camp.  I guess I should explain that any cabin or structure in the Adirondack mountains, that is not a primary residence is referred to as “The Camp.”  In our case, “The Camp” refers to a house that we were staying in located on Lake George.

We arrived late on Saturday afternoon in a torrential downpour, did some grocery shopping, and generally settled in at the camp.

SUNDAY

Me, DBF, and my father attempted to summit Roger’s Rock following a path that started behind the camp and using advice from my uncle, who lives next to the camp.  We had a lovely hike, but never quite found the top of the mountain.  After showering and having lunch, DBF and I headed off to Burlington, VT to have a look around.  We visited Church Street, which is a cute little street with lots of shops…

My favorite shop of all (that’s not me in the pic):

Somehow, I managed to get out of this store with exactly three white chocolate truffles.   Following our look around, I followed the recommendation of a friend to have dinner at American Flatbread– the yummiest flatbread pizza that I’ve ever had.

We walked around the Lake Champlain waterfront and looked around….  We were both really impressed with Burlington – seemed to be a clean, progressive city and also home to the University of Vermont.  I’ve included a picture of the only thing I did not like about Burlington….  some people think gargoyles are cool, I think they are creepy….

MONDAY

We attempted the Rogers Rock path a second time and finally made it to the top!  Amazing views of Lake George!  Totally worth it!

We spent the rest of this day visiting my grandparents.

TUESDAY

We got up early and headed back to Vermont, this time to Stowe to do a canoe trip.  UMAIK did a great job organizing and it was a nice trip.  After we were out of the water, we had lunch in Stowe, then went on a pretty nifty glider trip from the Stowe Airport.  The pilot did a couple of banked turns and I seriously thought I would get sick, but managed to keep lunch down.  It provided some pretty amazing views of the Green Mountains in Vermont and the Adirondacks in NY, plus the town of Stowe itself.

While in Stowe, we also rented some bikes and rode the Stowe “Rec Path.”  A nice trail also recommended by above mentioned friend.

WEDNESDAY

We decided to go back to Burlington and bike the path that we scoped out earlier in the week.  I have to say that this is the most wonderful bike path I’ve ever experienced… the Island Line Trail.  We had a good bike rental experience from Local Motion (totally non-profit) where we were outfitted with some nice three speed bikes and helmets.  The absolute best part of this path was along a narrow strip of land that consisted only of the bike trail itself.   Beautiful views, awesome trail….  we biked around 21 miles.  We were so hungry when we were finished that we cleaned up and went and had more flatbread pizza….  Highly recommended!

The trail:

Mountain and lake views from the trail:

The end of the trail:

THURSDAY

Thursday morning DBF and I got up and hiked to the top of Cook Mountain.  What a tough hike!  There was a sign at the beginning of the trail that said “0.9 miles – 825 feet elevation gain.”  Wow.. short but very very steep with a rocky, rough trail.  The view from the top was another amazing view of Lake George.  Unfortunately it was a hazy day and the pics didn’t turn out very well.  The rest of the day was rainy, so we hung around at the camp and played cards through most of the afternoon with my family.  We play a game called “Pitch” – lots of fun.

FRIDAY

Fourth of July!  We started the morning with yet another hike… this time to Lost Pond.  We picked an easy hike to recover from the long bike ride and tough hike.  It was a short and easy, but very nice hike to a beautiful, pristine pond.

The view:

Check out the water clarity:

We went to the annual parade in Ticonderoga (near Lake George, and my home town), which was quite disappointing and not quite as good as the parades of years past. We went for a boat ride on Lake George with my aunt and had a cookout with my mother’s side of the family.  Dad, DBF and I walked downtown to watch the fireworks. The display was surprisingly good for such a small town and just when it seemed to be building up to the finale, there was an explosion where they were setting off the fireworks! One main explosion sent more explosives into the crowd, where it went off and injured somewhere from 3-5 people. Most injures were minor, but one of the people who was setting off the fireworks was cut and burned and airlifted to a Burlington hospital. Needless to say… at that point, the fireworks were over and no big finale. I’m just glad that more people weren’t hurt. Here’s the news story for anyone interested: WPTZ.com

One of the best things about the vacation was the wonderful view from the camp of Lake George…  we got up every morning and had coffee and breakfast on the porch and watched the lake.  We had lunch and dinners on the porch and entertained visitors there also:

As far as stitching goes… I got very little done. I brought M Designs Letter H and maybe put in about 25 stitches total… I’ll post a progress pic once I have more to show.