Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!  I woke up yesterday morning to find that my sweet baboo had organized an Easter Egg hunt for me with Cadbury Eggs.  (Note: All chocolate was hidden safely out of reach of Liesl.  Dog Safety first!)  It was a great surprise and made me smile!  Then we were off to church for a wonderful Easter service.  Our festivities culminated in my sweet baboo treating me to a pretty swanky brunch overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  It was very relaxing and the ocean was so beautiful.

We decided to get a little yardwork done after we got home from brunch.  The yard was such a mess.  The rain that we finally got in California this year also made the weeds THRIVE!  Unfortunately, this lushness creates hiding places for critters.  The yard has been like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.  Just a couple of weeks ago Bill found a couple of young raccoon brother back there, supposedly hunting grubs.  They are so dangerous to dogs, so we needed to eliminate the hiding spots.  I trimmed the bushes and pulled the large weeds in the flower beds.  Today I am doing the ol' day-after-weeding-Frankenstein-walk. 

I am excited because I got the raised bed cleared.  It still had remnants of tomato and pepper plants, so I was thrilled to clear it.  We are headed into a warming trend so I am ready to start the seeds I purchased last month.  Vegetables we grow ourselves taste amazing.  We had to go to Home Depot on Saturday.  They had beautiful blueberry plants on sale so we picked one up.  Fortunately, the nice lady at the checkout told us that we need a second one for pollination purposes.  We would have wondered what we were doing wrong.  I would greatly welcome any blueberry growing tips.  I love them!

Finally, in the evening, I got to stitch.  I am so close to finishing this block.  It is all confetti stitching so it takes forever.  I do love how it is coming along.  It is interesting how the photo looks slightly different from the stitched piece.  I think I am so close to the stitching that I do not see how it all comes together with so much color and dimension as it does in the photo.  While I do love Teresa Wentzler's work, I am not sure I have what it takes to ever stitch another one of her pieces.

Well, it has been a busy day.  I have to put some kissies on a beautiful little schnauzer's sweet head...

 

 

 

Stitchy Sunday!

It seems that everyone around me is falling victim to a really nasty flu that has people down for a week to two weeks. It is pretty mean and has been going around my office.  It has been trying to catch me for the past couple of weeks, so I have been going to sleep early in the evenings and trying to not over extend. I woke up this morning feeling achy and with a sore throat so I promptly decided it was a day to stitch in pajamas, and watch Real Housewives of pretty much anywhere.  I believe I made the right choice, although nothing on my list for today got done. 

 

Life was a whirlwind for the past couple of months.  In addition to working long days, I have been traveling a lot.  Last week, I was in Dallas on business. In February, Liesl and my sweet baboo whisked me away for my birthday for a long weekend to one of our favorite spots.  My bag o' fun was the first thing I packed, weeks in advance.  My fun bag contains a couple of stitchy projects, gardening magazines, my Kindle, my coloring books and pens/pencils, a cross word puzzle book, and seed catalog. 

 

I was working on Teresa Wentzler's Fruit Bellpull on the trip and something just kept bothering me about the grape square.  There were large blocks of an aqua blue-green floss.  These large blocks were the first blocks of colors I had stitched (a couple of years ago.)  It just did not look right.  TW is really technical with her colors.  I worked in the wine business for a number of years and have spent a lot of time in the vineyards.  I had never seen that color occur in a vineyard.  So I reached out to the nice people on the 123stitch message board to see if the color was right.  Stitchers are very helpful people and checked their charts. It turned out I had a very early version of the pattern and that blue green was so, so wrong.  Luckily, the pattern is available for download at patternsonline.com for $7 so I could correct the error of my ways. 

 

I was pretty bummed about the color being wrong so I put the piece away again.  I took it out today and frogged while watching the ladies of RH and their lack of effective conflict resolution.  I removed the blue green, and stitched quite a bit today.  I feel like I am finding my stitching mojo again.  It has been gone for several months. 

 

So I am hoping to be a bit better about my posting.  The first quarter of the year for accountants is pretty intense, so I am hoping it will slow down a bit and I can get back to the hobbies I enjoy - walks with Liesl, time with family and friends, stitching, cooking, gardening, reading, etc.  I hope you are finding time for your happy, too!