August 4, 2009 - A day with Anna

I spent my time this morning working on getting my stitcher's book, A Stitcher's Companion by Enchanting Lair, ready for display at the county fair. I finally put the amethyst in the cover motif. It took a while to find an appropriate stone/charm, but I think this one is perfect.

I'm not sure what the rules are regarding having your name visible in the competition, but I have decided to cover mine. I used contrasting fabric and floss so that it's obviously not part of the actual design.

I even stitched the needles and the floss to the fabric so that they cannot be removed. I thought about taking everything out, but then the book is not doing its job.

The scissors were a bit of a challenge to get the stitches even and to tightly secure them into the pocket. I certainly don't want these falling out and stabbing someone in the foot! They have very sharp points!

I completely forgot to show you the frogging I did on Sunday. After completing Ocean Star, I frogged these UFO's. The first is Deftly Wrought by Midsummer Night Designs. I hate the colors. Just looking at the piece drains my will to stitch. What I decided to do with it was to frog everything but the four mini samplers. I guess it's another finish now, yes?

The second piece is Stitches Stars & Stripes by Blue Ribbon Designs. The more I looked at this piece, the more it grew out of favor. I should have taken a harder look at the chart because there are alot of solid-stitched boxes. I thought about stitching it and replacing some of the solid boxes with charms, but how many different ones could I possibly find? Add to that the fact I'm allergic to nickel, which means I'd have to buy gold-plated charms, and the price would be through the roof! No thanks! I didn't enjoy stitching this at all so it's no loss. The chart has already been RAK'd to Lisa in CA because she admired it.

I went to see my primary doc's nurse practitioner this afternoon for a checkup on the abdominal rash I have. The infected spot is healed and scarred, so I don't have to use the antibacterial ointment anymore, but Gail wants me to keep it handy-just in case! As far as the rash, my antibiotics have been extended to three weeks and I'm to call her if it gets worse. Hopefully the MRSA is gone, but she has instructed me to use the antimicrobial/antibacterial wash every three days for a while longer.

After my appointment I went back to the house to get Anna's car seat so that I could pick her up for our library date. We didn't get to go last week, so I wanted to make sure we went this week.

Anna prefers going to the Eastport branch of the library because they have a table of puzzles for her to play with. Her favorites are the two with different latches and locks. She always heads right for them after choosing her books. Today she picked out three books for herself and one board-book for Caleb. He has to have the board pages because he still rips regular ones.

While Anna played with the puzzles, Aunt Beth stitched on Hinzeit's America. Luckily I left this thread dangling because I forgot the bag with the chart and threads.

After leaving the library, we made stops at the pharmacy and the post office. On the way to the post office, I automatically turned into my sister's apartment complex. Anna yelled from the back seat, "Where are you going, Aunt Bep?" It wasn't until she said something that I realized what I'd done. I told her I just turned too early (the PO was two streets up) and got back on course. It's pretty bad when your 4-year-old niece is telling you where you want to go next! I swear I've completely lost my mind with all the running around I've had to do and lack of sleep from having Daisy here.

Anna wanted to go with me to get Kasey groomed and we were chatting almost all the way there. I pulled in to my parking space in front of Bark'n Bean (Muddy Paw Wash's new name), turned around to tell Belle (I was told Anna wasn't there today, she was Belle) that we'd arrived, and found a sleeping little girl in her car seat. She'd been quiet for the last mile of the trip, so she must have gone out like a light. Sarah warned me Anna hadn't had a nap, and they'd been to the pool this morning, so she must have been very tired to zonk out like that.

I dropped Kasey off at the BnB and took Anna home. It was way too hot to leave her in the truck and not practical to leave it running for an hour with the A/C on. I carried her in to Sarah's apartment and she woke up, but she did go down for a nap in her room.
Meanwhile, Kasey was being beautified. Here she is after her bath. Once again, Mike did a wonderful job! She's so pretty! I think she knows it, too! And, yes! Her leash says "One of us misbehaves." She picked it out herself.

For those who have been wondering, this is Daisy's war zone. The orange and turquoise fuzzy things are the fur-covered balls with tails and/or just the tails that Daisy has de-squeakified. You can also see Kasey's birthday bone (what remains), the tennis ball she killed, stuffing from several toys, and the rope/fabric toy I got from the clearance bin at BnB for her. She's already chewed through the rope. There are orange and turquoise bits all around Kasey's couch and Daisy's war zone.

Here are the remains of Kasey's birthday bone. Daisy pulled the squeaker out of him after chewing several holes in the canvas and nylon. Then she proceeded to remove the whistle from the squeaker. Thankfully she does not eat the plastic. The score in the War on Squeakers is now Daisy: 5; Squeakers: 0.

Stinky Ol' Raccoon is in hiding because Daisy discovered he had a hole in him and started pulling out his innards. Somehow Kasey has kept that thing limping along with three holes and carries him at least once a day. That's all she does, is carry him around and lay down with him. I'm not letting Daisy kill him for good!

I was really tired when I finally returned home at 5:30, so I took it easy this evening and was in bed just after midnight.

July 18, 2009 - Clever Girl!

Four hours' sleep. Why am I having so much trouble sleeping over the last few days? Since I was wide awake, I got myself out of bed before the alarm went off and headed out the door with Kasey to go back to AACC.

Lucky for me, the lady at the Records & Registration window was much more helpful than the girl yesterday. When I explained that I was stuck with the four-day class and that I was a dialysis patient, she went to work looking through the sections for another availability. I had highlighted all the sections I was interested in and told her that I asked about online classes when I was there yesterday. She asked me what I was told and I said "I got a shake of the head. She didn't say anything." I wasn't sure if the online and hybrid (one day a week at campus, everything else online) were full, or just the online.

She was able to find me an opening in a hybrid class that meets from 5:10 to 6:55pm on Thursdays. That is perfect because I'll be able to continue attending Barnes & Noble stitching group on Thursday afternoons! My entire first semester, there is only one day a week I have to be at campus. I love it!

I ran a couple errands and then picked up Anna for our library date. I wanted to take a picture, but I left my purse in the truck because I had my hands full with backpacks, books, little girl, and Kasey. Anna prefers going to the Eastport branch of the library because they have a play area for little ones. There are puzzles she plays with whenever we're there. She especially likes the two puzzles with different kinds of latches. I will be sure to take pictures next week when we go!

I popped around the corner to my other niece's house so that I could drop off the birthday card she forgot at Mom's. Aime, my ex-SIL and I chatted for a bit but I had to go because I left the truck running with Anna and Kasey inside (we were on the front porch, but still) and Aime was packing Bre's things in preparation for her week-long stay at Ian's.

We dropped Anna off at Sarah's and came home and I putzed online all day. I didn't do any stitching at all.

I did, however, do something crafty today! When we were at the college, we went into the bookstore because I was told the school nurse's office was on the other side. When I asked one of the girls in the bookstore if I was heading in the correct direction she informed me that the nurse wasn't there on weekends. The reason I wanted to see her was that my advisor suggested I talk to the nurse about my condition. They thought it was a good idea, should I have a fainting spell, for someone to know exactly what to do, especially since Kasey is usually with me. I have no problem with that, because it'd make me feel safer, anyway.

Well, once I found out the nurse wasn't there I decided to wander around the bookstore. When I read the school's website last night, one of the tips I saw was to have an at-a-glance calendar with due dates and reminders. I found an organizer that had a yearly at-a-glance page, monthly pages, and weekly pages with individual blocks for each day. I thought it was great. They just didn't have purple. They had a lavender, but it was a display copy with a large sticker on the cover which read "Do Not Remove." A search of the stock room revealed two other styles of organizers in purple, but neither had the large daily blocks of the first and only one had a page for each month. I chose the second style but they weren't bar coded yet and therefore couldn't be sold.

I asked if I could buy the lavender display copy anyway and said I'd find something to cover the eyesore sticker. So they sold it to me!

After running errands and taking Anna to the library, I came home and devised a way to hide the offending sticker.

I started with this:

















And ended with this:
















It took some finagling, but I covered the organizer in a piece of fabric from my stash. I used Fray Check on the edges of the fabric after the glue dried and tied a length of ribbon to the top of the spiral to be used to mark my place in the calendar. Since the ribbon is tied at the top, it will always stick out of the bottom and thus show me which side is the front/top of the book. I only used glue to adhere the fabric to the covers so the spiral is loosely covered and the book easily opens.

How clever and crafty is that? No one will have one like it!

June 25, 2009

Last night was Borders' stitching group and this afternoon was Barnes & Noble! I love stitching with a group of needleworkers! Not only do they motivate me to stitch, but it also gets me out of the house.

I couldn't resist! I started stitching the background on the purple suede bag Myrl sent me. I know I'm probably supposed to do this entirely in tent/basketweave stitch, but that's just so boring to me! I thought an alternating Scotch stitch would add some texture to the background. I think I made a mistake, however, because I couldn't get the curve of the flower petals to look correct.

All you needlepointers who read this, what would you do? I have never even contemplated doing a painted canvas before and there's no stitch guide for this. What stitches are typically used for flower leaves and petals? How can I show the curve of the leaves and flower petals? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

So I frogged everything I'd done. I hate negative progress!

I didn't get anywhere on re-stitching because Anna and I had our weekly Library date this afternoon, too.

We went to the main branch instead of the Eastport/Annapolis Neck branch today. Big mistake! Anna wanted to do puzzles and there aren't any at West Street. Bad Aunt Beth!

She finally chose three books to take home and I signed her up for the Summer Reading Club. We have to write in a little SRC journal all the books Anna reads this summer and she will receive a stamp each week. She will also get a prize at the end of the summer. All she wanted, though, was the sticker!

When I told Sarah about the journal said said, " But that's like 20 a week!"

I told her, "Write small!"

As I promised, Anna finished watching Lady and the Tramp. She chose to see Cinderella again, too. After the movies were over we walked down to the end of the driveway and back so that Kasey could go outside. Of course, the mosquitoes swarmed us!

When we got back, Anna started playing with her stickers. These were actually the stickers that Amy sent me in the Valentine's Day package, but I knew Anna would love them. I found a little pink spiral notebook for her to put them in. There are also three on my laptop (they were originally on my forehead, arm, and leg, respectively).

Uncle Wes found a little step stool he made in high school when he was cleaning part of the carport. He cleaned it up and gave it to Anna as her new "table." It's been sticker-fied, too!

Sarah and Ty arrived around 8:00pm to pick up Anna. Tyler also helped Uncle Wes take the old A/C unit out of the livingroom window and replace it with Sarah's newer unit that was in her house in Elkton. It's amazing how much light can actually come through that window now that the behemoth A/C unit isn't there, even though it's inside the carport!

Anna got very playful (she wouldn't take a nap for either Sarah or me today)and started using her Uncle as a play-gym. She thought it was hilarious to put her hand over Wes's mouth while he was talking.

While Anna was playing with her stickers, I started browsing the 100+ emails in my Yahoo inbox. Once again, I was stunned by the generosity of my fellow stitchers. Lisa has graciously offered to send some movies that her boys have outgrown, including Anna's favorite, The Little Mermaid. Or, as she says "Ar'el."

Your timing couldn't have been better, Lisa! Anna brought me the insert from Lady and the Tramp, opened to a page in the middle. She pointed at the picture of TLM and said "You need buy DAT ONE, Aunt Beppy!"

Later, she walked up to Uncle Wes, poked him in the belly, and said "You need to buy Ar'el movie!"

When I told her that a very nice lady will be sending movies for her to keep and watch here, she smiled and her eyes lit up. I'm going to TRY not to open the box myself and let her do it. I will also attempt to get some pictures. Anna and I are very thankful to you!