Happy Holidays.

We went to the in-laws and had roast beast. Opened presents and then drove back to Ovilla. The dogs spent the night with Kim and J.C. and were delighted to see us when we picked them up. Hanna almost jumped into the car without having to be forced.

I got a lovely gift from my Relayer's Secret Santa. Besides books, I think she sent me some of everything I listed on my favorites list.

Thank you very much Secret Santa!

I've almost finished one of the Loopy socks, haven't worked on them at all the past couple of days. Too busy reading or playing Guild Wars. I'll post a picture when I've got one done, there's nothing less interesting than half a sock.

I put the last few backstitches in Fruitful this morning. I didn't like the window backstitching on the model, it was done in a lighter shade, so I did the whole thing in the dark color. I like the way the grass makes the motifs stitched in that area pop out, well, except for the rabbit on the lower right. You can hardly tell what he is supposed to be, but I don't feel like picking out over one and redoing it in a different color, so it stays.

I can't believe that I finished stitching this in just about 11 days.



Maus asked about Opal Petticoat. I believe that's the color name, I bought a bunch of yarns directly from Germany and I think it is one of the Opals that wasn't sold to the US distributors because there wasn't enough. Fortunately Martina the shop owner is bi-lingual, because I sadly am not. She has a yahoogroup, called something like addbuyandsell which I had to quit, because of the temptation.

Well, that was embarrassing! I signed on this morning to post an update on my stitching progress on Fruitful 1, and discovered that my website was suspended and my account was in arrears with my hosting company. All due to a misunderstanding on my part, I thought I had completed the process of updating my account information and giving them my new email address. Apparently, there was another place where I needed to input that information, and that was the place that counted. All is now well, fortunately I discovered the problem before they deleted my files!

Anyway, I've been stitching like a madwoman on Fruitful, and here is a photo of my progress since my last post:

I still have to stitch a motif in the upper left corner, and finish filling the bottom area with green.

Next up I'm going to knit a pair of Loopy Socks using the free pattern from Knitpicks in Opal Petticoat yarn.

It was around 17 degrees last night, supposedly they were expecting a record low for the area. Our pond partially froze:

It's still pretty cold out there, but I'm avoiding the news, because I just don't want to know.

I have been pretty slothful the past week. Although, thinking about it in comparision to when I was working the house is much neater. I've found that I can't just sit around and knit or cross stitch all day, I get bored. Now a good video game can keep me occupied for hours, but ultimately I have to get up and do something else. So far something else has consisted of housework. I wish Dave would get done with the bookcases he's building, putting away all my books could take days, weeks even.

Dave is using my car, while his motorcycle is out of commission, since my Saturn gets much better gas mileage than his Mustang. So, unfortunately I'm housebound. There's not anything I really want to do, or anywhere I want to go, but just knowing I can't really go anywhere makes it really sink in that I'm retired.

I finished the color block afghan, now I'm working on a small cross stitch piece Fruitful 1 by Maureen Appleton. When I say small, I mean dimensionally only. Finished it will be about 3" square. But Maureen is famous for designing everything for over 1 stitching, and this piece is no exception. Even though it looks like I've done a whole bunch, I still have another stylized floral motif and tree on the left side, and animals, flowers and grass covering the bottom.