Touched

The alarm goes off. Three snoozes later, I finally crawl out of bed. Brrrr, it's cold. I'm such a creature of habit. After my usual trip to the bathroom, I manage to work my way down the stairs without tumbling to the bottom. After all, I AM still half asleep. I put the leash on Celeste... who, by the way, is WAY too happy to see me this early in the day! I open the door and what do I see? My car and the ground is covered in snow!! Wait a minute... the forecasters said “possible light flurries”. Old man winter has touched the Midwest with more than just light flurries! No wonder it was so cold when I got out of bed. Celeste, of course, is oblivious to the snow on the ground – she LOVES snow! I am not ready... not ready yet for this snow... for the cold. I don’t even have the electric blanket on my bed yet! The good news is: It’s supposed to warm up by the weekend. 51 degrees is warm? LOL, I guess it’s better than 20 below.

Had I known it was going to snow, snow I would’ve put my car in the garage last night. Since I didn’t, I have to brush the snow off and scrape the ice off the windows. *grumble* *grumble*

Good News

During the week while I'm waiting for class to start, I've been working on a Bucilla brass bookmark with a hummingbird design on it. I actually started it months ago, so it seems like it's taking forever to get done.

I am still plugging away at the backstitching on the flag and eagle of Freedom. Shouldn’t be long before I can start on the poem and the soldier’s info.

A while back I bought a set of 8” qsnaps that were on sale for less then $5. Up until now I hadn’t tried them. I’ve been using them to do the backstitching on Freedom. To be quite honest, I’m not sure what all the fuss is over using them. Pros: easy to use, easy to adjust the tension of the fabric. Cons: bulky, and you have to spend time putting them together/taking them apart. I've heard several stitchers recommend them because they don't leave "hoop marks". Well, no. That's because they're not hoops. However! They do leave what I'll call qsnap marks... lines where the snaps touch the fabric. I wasn’t overly impressed. Will I use them again? Sure. Just another tool in my arsenal to conquer those BAPs and WIPs. Now for the good news...

If you recall, I found out that the mother of the soldier I am stitching for died last month. Due to some legwork by a stitcher on one of the memorial groups, I now have the email address and telephone number of the soldier’s father. Yay! Unfortunately, she misunderstood my post to the group and thought I had the project done and told the stepmother... so now I feel pressured to get it done and soon!

I LOVE Surprises!

When I went to the post office today, I had three... yes THREE packages waiting for me. The first one was from a dear lady in TN named Dee. She had sent me a RAK with threads in fall colors. Aren't they pretty?

The second package was a big white envelope. I knew I was on a stash diet... Yes, remember the 50 Project Challenge?? Whatever could be in that package? When I got home, I opened the big white envelope to find a tiny little note saying: "Enjoy your October package" signed "Your Secret Sister" Awww... Did I ever feel special. Each item in the package was wrapped in tissue paper and sparkly ribbon. What a nice touch! My secret sister has been paying attention to my wishlist, that's for sure. In the package was a chart for Planted Hearts Needle Roll & Scissor Fob by Lavender Wings, 3 skeins of Six Strand Sweets floss that I didn't have (Pumpkin Pie, Guava, Rummed Raisin), a little bookmark kit, a pretty spiral bound notebook (hmmm... good for stash lists?), a package of the most unique 3D handcrafted notecards (These are sooooo cute), and a big box of Skittles. Yum...Skittles!! Thank you secret sister, Thank you!

Lastly, the rest of my order from ABC Stitch Therapy arrived with the supplies I need to do up some of my projects for the challenge. Don't worry.... all this stuff was ordered BEFORE I committed to the challenge.

This girl is doing some happy dancing today. Woo Hoo! I got a stash fix!

As I was uploading pics for this blog entry, I realized I hadn't shared my SSS windfall from last month. The pics are dated 9/19, so I'm guessing I got them shortly before that. You know what they say: Mind is the first to go! (Thank goodness for date stamps.) Anyway, I got 115 skeins of Six Strand Sweets for 32cents a piece. That's almost the whole entire set for less than half of what they normally cost! I was tickled pink, and blue, and orange, and green, and... LOL These too were purchased before "THE" challenge. I really have been a good girl as far as the challenge is concerned.

Oh, if anyone knows of some pretty charts that I can use SSS on... Let me know!

Hump Day Update

Oops! It's not hump day, is it? It's actually Thursday. Silly me, I'm still on yesterday's time.

How much fun do you think it would be to take a field trip into the woods and be the target of unhappy squirrels? Yes, for Ecology class we took a trip to the wooded area on the campus. We saw squirrels jump from limb to limb high up in the canopy of trees. Apparently, they didn’t like us there because for over ½ hour they sat above us and chucked hickory nuts down upon our heads! OK, so the nuts didn’t really hit us but some came pretty darn close. While this was going on, the instructor was lecturing on how forests came to be and different species that can be found in our area. This was AFTER he pointed out a huge patch of poison ivy. Oblivious to the fact it was getting dark, he lectured on and on and on. Granted, I love the woods and I like being outdoors when it’s nice... but to stand there for over an hour listening to lecture almost killed me. Toward the end, I couldn’t even see the lines on my notebook in order to take notes because it was so dark! I was ready to cop a squat on the ground because I was uncomfortable standing for that long of a period without moving.

I handed in our group’s lab report. It really does irk me that one of my group members really didn’t do any work since I had to re-do the charts/graphs because she didn’t follow instructions. Yet she will benefit from whatever grade we’ll get. Grr! On the flipside, she really is a nice lady. Next Mon is Columbus Day, so no school. Woo Hoo!

I have joined the student Ecological Awareness Group, and we received our first email today. It seems our group has a section of Adopt-A-Highway and they want our first “event” to be cleaning up our section of the highway.

I got news today! I went in for my dental cleaning and exam. My dentist has informed me that if I continue to keep up my dental regime, I won’t ever need dentures. LOL... All right!!

Is It Monday Yet?

Appetizers...Maybe not
Never, ever use a microwave to make mozzerella sticks. LOL I thought I'd try it and let me tell ya, it doesn't work so well. :( Unless of course, you like scraping cheese off the plate and enjoy flattened pieces of breading. Breaded mushrooms, no problem. Jalapeno poppers, no problem. Cheese sticks just won't work.


Weekend Thrillers
What a busy weekend it has been! On Saturday, I tried my hand at canning salsa made of green tomatoes. It was the first time I'd ever canned anything. I'm proud to say that 10 out of 10 pints sealed. Woo Hoo. I also cleaned out the garage and re-potted my mums that I bought 3 weeks ago. In one of my pots, a maple tree sprouted so I've been letting it grow all summer. It's about 2 feet tall now and just starting to lose it's leaves. I re-potted it, too.


School
Remember my Ecology test? I found out my score last Wed. I got an 88 - second highest in the class. Soooo close to an A. Here I thought I'd be lucky that I'd get a C. Whew, one test down and three more to go. Today, I spent over three hours writing a lab report on the plankton diversity study we did. It involved taking samples of the scum-filled... err, I mean algae covered ponds and creek on campus as well as samples from the marsh in the classroom. There are three other people in my lab group. Two of them wrote an outline for the report. One of them did the charts and graphs. It was up to me to do a bit of research, fill in the blanks and write up the report. Getting it started was the hard part... so I thought. That is until I took a good look at the charts/graphs a team member did. It was not at all what the instructor told us to do in the handout he gave us to use for writing the lab report. So guess what? I had to re-do the tables and graphs. The four of us are going to go over it tomorrow night. If there are any revisions, I'll make them Tues since it's due on Wed night. We all share whatever grade the instructor gives us.


Freedom Update


Finally... finally... finally!! I have a good portion of the backstitching done on Freedom. I'm up to 174.25 hours. After it's finished, all that needs to be done is the poem, the soldier's information, and the buttons. I can't wait! My apologies, the photo isn't the greatest.