Dachshund Finished

 Hi All -

Wow, time just keeps flying by! I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted! It really feels like it's just been a week or two. Before we get started, I need to let you know about a change on the blog. The old mechanism that I was using for distributing the blog posts through email is going away. Google has decided to stop supporting it. If you are currently signed up to get email notifications of new blog posts, those emails will stop soon. So, instead, I've provided a link to the right so that, if you want, you can sign up to get emails about new blog posts from Bloglovin' (thanks, Terry, for providing the example on your blog, On Going Projects, so I didn't have to figure out what to do myself!). I've only had one example email from Bloglovin' to see how it works, so the jury is still out on whether I like this mechanism. My first impression is that I don't like it as well because instead of getting an email with the blog post inside, you instead get an email with a link to the blog post contained within the Bloglovin' interface. That's just not as clean to me. I also got an email with other blog suggestions when I first signed up so I thought it might end up being like Instagram, which I won't use because of the excessive emails, but I've only gotten the single email so far so maybe it won't be so bad. Anyway, I hope the link is useful to anyone who like email notifications like I do. And if anyone knows of a better email notification service, just let me know.

Anyway, back to more interesting topics. The biggest news is that I'm now fully vaccinated. Yea!! I got the J&J vaccine two weeks ago yesterday, so I'm now at my maximum immunity. And I had no side-effects what-so-ever, so that was nice. The only near-term changes this makes for my life is that I made the dentist and auto mechanic appointments that I'd been putting off. Both will make me feel better! It also means that I'm ready to go to Kansas City if my sister needs me. She's been having trouble with her knee and her doctor has recommended a knee replacement. She lost her husband in January, so I told her that I would come out and help her if she gets the replacement. I hate to think of her alone in the house (with her 3 large dogs) and falling down or getting stuck somewhere or whatever with nobody there to help her. She, of course, initially said that she would be fine on her own, but after thinking about it she seems to be more receptive to help. So now I'm ready to go if/when she decides to have the surgery.

Enough personal stuff -- let's get on to the crafting.....

I was excited to finish my Dachshund cross-stitch that I'm making for my (other) sister and her husband:

Dachshund

I love how it turned out! It looks so much like Annie! What an expressive face! Now I just have to get it framed. Since I'm vaccinated, I'll try to remember to take it in next week when I have my car appointment.

I've also made good progress on my Christmas banner felt applique project:

Isn't that cute? It's moving along pretty quickly. My only concern is that it might not hang well because I think I over-stuff it. My tendency is always to stuff things like you would a solid stuffed animal, but that's not appropriate for a piece like this. I do make a concerted effort to scale back on the stuffing, but it's still probably a bit much. But I still love it!

Since I finished Dachshund, I looked through my stuff and picked up a couple more cross-stitch projects that I had started in the past. The first is called Count the Stars. When I picked it up, I just had most of the moon finished:

Count the Stars -- initial progress

I've been plugging away on it and now it is mostly finished:

Count the Stars -- current progress

This is another small piece, stitched on 18-count Aida fabric, so I need to use a bright headlamp when stitching on this project so that I can see what I'm doing. And the dark fabric makes it even harder on the eyes. But it's still going fast!

My other cross-stitch project is called Mime With Cat. This is a little bit different type of cross-stitch project as an image is painted on the Aida cloth, and I cross-stitch on top of that image. That makes the pattern a suggestion rather than an exact count of stitches in any area because what you stitch depends on how the image lines up with the fabric. This is what the project looked like when I picked it up:

Mime With Cat -- initial progress

To give you an idea of how the stitching interacts with the painted image, here are some close-ups of some areas:

And here is my current progress:

Mime With Cat -- current progress

You can see that I'm currently working on the pink ribbon in the image. You can compare that with the completed blue ribbon to get an idea of how this project is done. I know that some people don't like clowns or are afraid of clowns, but I love them. I think they are so joyful and the mime clowns are so elegant! When finished, I'll get this project framed so I can display it with some small mime clowns that I made before:

These just make me smile!

Finally, I did do a little bit of knitting. I have a bunch of wonderful knitting projects waiting for me, but I've been having trouble getting motivated. Sometimes I can jump-start my mojo by making a quick and easy project. So I decided to make a River Crossing Hat designed by Amy Gunderson:

River Crossing Hat

This was a quick and easy project, knit with a soft, chunky yarn. I love how the stitch pattern looks on this hat. I just didn't like the height of the hat. It fits my head, but just barely. So I'll put this hat in my Homeless Shelter bag and, if I make another one for me, I'll repeat the stitch pattern a couple of extra times to make the hat taller.

That's about all that's going on here. We've continued to get more snow -- a total of over 2.5 feet in the last 2 weeks. I love that we are getting all of this moisture so, hopefully, we won't have such a severe fire season this year. But I'm also really ready for the snow to melt away. Lance is over 14 years old now and he is losing some neurological control of his back legs, so walking through this snow is a bit hard for him. He's doing really well and is completely healthy otherwise, but his back legs collapse sometimes when we're trying to walk through deep or unevenly packed snow. It'll be nice when we get back to bare ground so he can enjoy the walks more and do some wandering around! But we'll still take all of the moisture we can get!

Nancy