Pinch Me!

I must be dreaming!

http://www.cathkidstonusa.com/

Cath Kidston! USA!

I'm positively giddy!

Quick Question

I'm starting an ornament on 36-count linen, stitching over two threads, and was wondering if I should be using two strands of floss or only one? Any suggestions?

Worth A Thousand Words

Is this not the most cheerful looking group of children you've ever seen? We found this photo in one of the walls when we did our bathroom demolition. I intended to run over to the library with it to see if I couldn't find out more about when and where it may have been taken but it got shoved in a drawer and forgotten. I wish it was in better shape as I'd love to have it framed so I could display it as part of the house's history. Of course, if I did that I'd find out later that the photo had absolutely nothing to do with the house.

(Like my roommate in college who had the framed poster of New York City hanging above her bed because she looooved NYC. And she looooved her poster of NYC. Then I pointed out that the Space Needle was in the picture. The Seattle Space Needle. Yeah.)

Anyhoosie, still no stitching here, although we're this >< close to having the living room back together. Or as back together as it can get when 99% of your furniture is in storage.

Never fear! Come hell or high water, next month is Moving Month! Or my name isn't Nathan Arizona!

Safety First

Let's see...
Gloves? Check!
Goggles? Check!
Face shield? Check!
Mask? Check!
Apron? Check!

This is on the back of a sheet of sandpaper! I'm risking certain injury because all I ever do is wear gloves, and that's only because I don't want to ruin my nails!

Better make sure we have 9-1-1 in the speed dial!

I Proudly Present...

My dining room floor!
Newly refinished, and once I get the closet door and the window trim painted, the trim installed around the light fixture, and a new grate for the cold air return, this room will be FINISHED! Or at least almost finished. The window will eventually need to be replaced and the inside of the closet needs a lot of attention but, hey, close enough!

In the meantime, look at this floor!


You might notice (or probably not, haha!) it's not your typical tongue and groove floor. These are locally milled slats nailed down to the plank subfloor below. Having nail heads every four inches ain't too purdy but I've been told it's "period specific to the home". Which is just a nice way of saying "yeah, it looks like crap but that's the way they did it back then."

You'll be happy to learn we did not have to sleep in the kitchen while the polyurethane was drying! We discovered if you held onto the top of the front door, you could swing yourself over to the steps to go upstairs. We had to have a step ladder set up at the backdoor so we could get into the kitchen and bathroom because we tore down the back steps several months ago. (The steps were extremely unsafe and an accident waiting to happen, and as an added bonus there was something dead under them. It was a bit 'Barnum & Bailey' with all the swinging and climbing but it sure beat camping on a cold tile floor. (We do have fun, don't we?)


In stitchy news, I picked up a copy of the JCS Christmas ornament issue last week while we were doing our best not to be home. My first reaction was sorta 'meh' but each time I go through it I find more I'd like to stitch. My favorite is probably the Christmas Robin from The Victoria Sampler. I do have a thing for birds. (And bunnies, but I don't think there are any in this issue.)

Sadly, there hasn't been much stitching done here in the last week. We're still working in the living room, trying to get it finished, so alas, my stitchy spot is no longer. I've set up my lamp and a chair in my bedroom but it just isn't the same. The chair is too hard and the lamp is on the wrong side and whine! whine! whine! I can't stitch here! Anyone else have that problem? You get used to a certain spot and nothing else seems to work? More incentive to finish the living room, I guess.

That's it for me! Thanks for stopping by, and have a Terrific Tuesday!

Avast!

Buckle your swashes, ye scurvy dogs! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Boo Bunny Finish

Boo Bunny
by The Victoria Sampler
from the 2010 JCS Halloween Ornament Issue
This one was quick and cute! I finished it up Saturday night but couldn't get a decent picture of it to post yesterday due to all the dust in the air. (Heaven knows I don't need anything mucking up my mad photog skillz.)

And the dust! It's incredible! There's a layer of it on every possible surface, even upstairs! No sense in trying to clean it up yet because they're coming back today for the final sanding. Then it's on to the polyurethane and camping in the kitchen because we won't be able to walk on the floors to go upstairs. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to sleeping between the stove and refrigerator. On the bright side, I won't even have to get out of bed for a midnight snack!

So what's next on my stitchy agenda? Most likely another Halloween ornament. I'm leaning towards the one from Blue Ribbon Designs called Perched On a Pumpkin. Boo Bunny needs some company!

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start!

Me So Happy!

The Rangers swept the Yankees and......


The hardwoods have been sanded!

(I'm so easy to please!)

Too Pooped to Pucker

We're having carpet installed in the morning (hooray!) so today was spent cleaning up all the messes that we've let fall by the wayside. I didn't realize what a slob I was with the drywall mud until I had to clean all the dried on drips and globs off the floor. There was also a lot of overspray from when we textured the walls. The attitude at that time was hey, who cares if some gets on the floor? We'll be covering all that up! I should have known I'd get all AR and have to make sure every single speck was cleaned off.

I'm way too tired to pick up a needle tonight but I thought I'd pop in and show you my progress on Boo Bunny. It's not much but here ya go:


(Is it just me, or does that shade of orange make you want to run out and buy stuff like plywood and duct tape?)

Hopefully next time I post a progress picture it'll show some actual progress! I've already announced that I'm taking Saturday off and I plan to work on a nice case of Stitchass. I hear Michigan is playing Notre Dame so I think I'll do a little 'when in Rome'-ing and watch the game. I've been needing an excuse to make my jalapeno popper dip!

Fingers crossed that the install goes well tomorrow! And toes crossed that we start sanding the hardwoods on Sunday!

A Sorta Finish

I have A Wish For You finished except for the personalization. Our family doesn't have a single birthday or anniversary in March. There's been no significant events unless you count my gall bladder surgery in 1986 and I don't think that's very sampler worthy. I'll set this one on the back burner for now until I have a Eureka! moment.

You may notice I made a couple of changes. I decided to make the bunny white(ish) instead of brown because our little bunster, Alice, is white(ish). I also left the letter off the door because a) I didn't like it or b) I had the darn thing stitched before I noticed I'd made a mistake and didn't want to re-do it. Take your pick!

My son pointed out to me that I forgot to give the bunny an eye. I can't tell you how many times I've done that with eyes. You'd think I'd learn!

Last night I started one of the Halloween ornaments from Just Cross Stitch. There were several I wanted to stitch so I did a 'random drawing' and here's our winner:This is Boo Bunny from The Victoria Sampler. I do love me some bunnies! I don't think I'll be stitching many bats this Halloween after our recent close encounter with the beasties! (Although, the next time I'm being chased around the house by a bat I hope to have enough sense to just run outside.)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend! I'm a summer person so I hate to say goodbye to long, warm days. Of course, we have fall stitching to look forward to so I can take comfort in that.

Thanks for stopping by!

We can't stop here! This is Bat Country!

Or: Why I Only Got 35 Minutes of Sleep

Late last night I was sitting in my living room, engrossed in Pillars of the Earth, when out of the corner of my eye I catch the fluttering of some winged thing above one of the windows. As it disappears behind the crown moulding I'm thinking, "that's one hell of a big moth!"

So I call my son into the room and ask him to get rid of it. His vision being quite a bit better than mine, he informs me "that's not a moth, Mom!"

As my 8-bit brain begins to process this information, Not-a-Moth comes lunging out from behind the moulding and swoops down directly at me. I hit the deck shrieking "How did a bird get in the house???" as the thing starts flying in circles above me. Around and around and around it goes, and as it dips down in front of me I realize Not-A-Moth is Not-A-Bird either! It's a BAT!

My son and I commando crawl out of the living room and into the kitchen where we try to decide on a plan of action to get the bat out of the house. The best approach we can come up with is also the simplest: open the front door and hope it'll fly out. In the meantime, the fluttering from the living room has stopped and we learn a Valuable Lesson: don't lose sight of the bat. They can crawl into small spaces and hide. Duh.

Luckily, we spot it dangling from above the doorway. The very doorway we'll have to pass under to get to the front door. Great.

To keep things fair, we do rocks, paper, scissors to see who gets the honor of trying to ninja past a critter with an extremely sensitive sense of hearing. I knew I shouldn't have gone with paper.

With a bath towel over my head (I do not want this thing flying into my hair!), and armed with a dust pan and spatula, I slowly edge my way through the dining room towards the front door. Talk about your longest walk! Inch by inch I make my way to the front door and the only thing that's going through my pea-brain is how badly I will hurt my son if he does anything to startle the bat. Said son is maintaining a safe distance behind me with the broom and a pot lid, his job being to flush the bat towards the door once I have it open.

I manage to make it to the door without disturbing the bat, and slooooowly open it. The bat immediately feels a change in air flow, drops from it's perch and begins making loop-de-loops over my head again. I duck and cover while my son waves the broom around and, lo and behold, the bat flies out! We did it! We are bat removal geniuses!

After things have settled down, I decide to learn more about these critters. I do a little Wiki Wandering and learn that... uh oh... bats are social creatures. Where there's one there's more than likely others.

They like to roost in attics and I know we have some missing soffits on the house. How they could enter the house from the attic is also a no-brainer. We cut a big access hole in the ceiling of one bedroom so we could crawl into the attic while installing things such as light fixtures and heating ducts/vents (none of which this house had when I bought it) and we left it open because I still need to get up there to add some insulation. So right. This means we need to don our protective gear once again and head upstairs to check for more bats.

We go through the rooms one by one and sure enough, there's another bat dangling from the wall above the window in my room. Peachy. It's almost 2 AM at that point and probably 90 degrees in the house so we decide we'll just close the door and wait until morning to deal with it.

So I slept in the living room last night with all the lights on, waking up at every little noise. Even after two cups of coffee this morning I'm still feeling a bit grumpy cakes. My son called Animal Control to see if they could be of assistance but had to leave a message on their voice mail. Like every other public services department in this city, Animal Control must only work the second Thursday after the full moon from 7:45 to 10:15 AM. (But just try to burn a shovel full of disgustingly smelly leaves and twigs that you dug up after removing and burying the decaying carcass of a woodchuck and you'll have a cop on your front step within five minutes of lighting the match. It's true.)

I would dearly love to get some sleep tonight, so unfortunately this means we're going to have to take care of the bat (or bats) ourselves. I've put it off as long as I could, but I think it's time to suit up and head upstairs. Hopefully the bat is as exhausted as I am.

Wish me luck!