Happy Festivus

Or something like that. George Castanza used to say that on the Jerry Seinfeld Show. At least that's what I "heard" him say.
Well, it's been a month. Hmmm...what's been going on? Not much for stitching. I try. I put Earth Goddess away for a while. Rather; my DAUGHTER put it away. She very nicely surprized me, by cleaning the frontroom, which means she put my stuff away and it took me a little bit of sleuthing to find where she put it. And now, since she uprooted my little stitching corner, I have barely touched a piece of material. I did start a little ornament, because I subscribed to The Gift of Stitiching and there was a darling little mouse ornament to stitch. It's like about 30 x 35 stitches big and I haven't even gotten half way done. Can you say A.D.D.???
There is a sale at JoAnn's Fabrics going on and I went up on the first day of the sale to get some organization stuff. (They didn't have what I went for) I did manage to spend $58. I bought 30 skeins of DMC...blind, I only repeated about 8 colors and 4 of those were white and ecru, done purposely. I got some skeins of yarn on sale, simply because the color grabbed me. I have no clue what I will do with it. Maybe put it with the other 100 or so skeins of yarn I own and move it around cause it's in my way. I know someday I will thank myself for having such aforethought to buy all this stuff. Or I will be thanking myself when I decide to clear out my head and house and be amazed at how much money I made at a garage sale!
My neice and her new son are doing fine. My grand nephew did have to have surgery on his heart. He is grumpy, (that is to be expected) but he will be just fine. I have only gotten to see him once. He has to stay away from germs, and since he was born, one or the other of my daughters has been sick and I didn't want to carry anything to him. There's time for snuggling with him when I know I won't share anything bad with him. I just want him to stay healthy!
I bought a new to me truck. I bought it from my other neice. She gave me a good deal. I desparately needed a new vehicle. My poor old Toyota is just about to die. My youngest daughter is using it until she gets her little truck a new clutch. She only has to drive a couple of miles to work, so it will suffice til then.
Well, I should get to bed. Tomorrow's another day. I work Wednesday through Sunday, so I am on the downhill slide of my week. I have been revamping the art department at the hardware store where I work. This week I have done a physical inventory and inputting all the products that don't scan and am now re-inventorying those. I am slightly brain dead over the numbers and hours on the computer. Happy New Year to you all! See you in 2007!

AAARRRGGGHHH!

I have been s-l-o-w-l-y working on Goddess. Haven't been there every night, but most nights. The progress is slow, because I had made a small boo-boo. I knew I had made it, but it would have taken a lot of frogging to fix. (you see, I didn't notice the boo-boo until I had made a lot of progress) I figured it would be easy to fill in and fudge here and there to fix it when I got to this point, but it is really taking a lot of thought to make it look right! I now have a greater appreciation for those that go before us to make a design and chart it.

I work for a hardware store that has a great, but small art department. The woman who was taking care of the department, is out for knee surgery. (four months) The art dept. has been a thorn in the owner's side since he bought the store. The woman who was taking care of it was either not interested enough, in too much pain, overwhelmed or all of the above, because that dept. is an absolute mess! They have asked me to clean up the dept. I went into work yesterday for a half a day (my day off) to meet with the salesman. Apparently, he was just given permission to just order and ship by the previous dept. person. We get "surprize" boxes of product. Some of which is not in our system, so he is sneaking stuff in just to make sales, and there was no one to contest the shipment. She had stuff stashed in corners and under shelving...OMG! I told him, he was not to ship anything that we don't approve of. He didn't like it. I then explained that once I get the dept. to the point where I am comfortable, then I will tell him what new (if any) products we will accept. The the owner came over and told him the same thing...so I got good backup. I got some catalogs and pricing sheets, so the next month or so, I will be really getting into deep cleaning and purging...this could be fun! Plus, it will be like doing the buying that I normally would do for myself at home. I'll get it out of my system and save a bunch of my own money!

My youngest daughter is very sick. She had a nasty temperature the day before yesterday. Unfortunately, she got my work ethic and feeling of poverty, so she wouldn't stay home from either of her jobs. I finally talked her into giving up the night time job until she is better. We are going to see the doctor today, but she still insisted on going to the morning job. (working at a ranch cleaning stalls, that is after all her first love...HORSES!) Hopefully the doctor will scare her into staying home for a couple of days. She has holes in her heart and any real bad illnesses could affect that.

My neice went to the hospital the day before yesterday to give birth to my first grand nephew. I have three grand neices. We are waiting semi-patiently for news...he also has holes in his heart, so we are praying that everything goes well. Me especially, because I know what it feels like to have an infant with the holes! We won't be able to go and see him until we are sure that all the germs my daughter has is not on any of us. Sniff!

Okay, I have ranted enough. Thanks for "listening".

I finally got the picture uploaded! And now I have more of her hair done. I have been working on the Earth Goddess a little every night since I promised I would pick her up again. Thanks for being there for me to make a promise I would not break. I find if I only work a little every night I don't get the headaches. At least this way I am making some progress, if not a lot.
I have most of her hair done now, then I will be working on her face, then on to more flowers around her neck. YAY! She's getting there! I am saving the backstitching of the branches for the last thing I do on the top third. When I get this done, I will unroll the whole thing and take a picture of what I have finished so far. The bottom third will be a lengthy process.

As Promised.....

Well, I DID pick up my stitching, and I DID make some progress. I know now why I wasn't picking it up. My eyesight is getting just a tad worse a little at a time. I don't have benefits just yet, so I will have to wait to get my eyes checked and get new glasses. But since I picked up the stitching, I have had a headache. I have those drugstore magnifying glasses, but I think I am beyond those now. I did use my magnifying glass today. OH! I bought myself one of those OTT lights! I found a table model for $35.00. Not bad. That helped with the vision a little, but not a whole heck of a lot. At least I know why I stopped working on Earth Goddess. It's funny how your mind tells you stuff without you really knowing that it is telling you. Anyway...here she is. I got the Earth, the leaves around her head and some of her hair done. I have to back stitch the branches throughout the leaves. That will make it look a lot better. I don't have much left to do on the top third, then it is on to the bottom half. I'd say I was almost 2/3's done, but the top is so sparse. Maybe more like half done... Well, okay, now blogger is giving me problems uploading my image! I will try again tomorrow night. Sorry!