SLEEPING ON IT

Progress continues on "Beyond My Heart". I'm always interested in how fast or slow a project stitches up....(not that it's a race or anything, and God knows I wouldn't know a deadline if it bit me), but isn't it funny how some things seems to finish themselves in minutes and yet others take years?

I did something I almost never do last night. I actually decided NOT to impulsively rip out entire sections of this piece and just let them ferment overnight. As I was stitching the pink and yellow parts I got it in my big fat head that the colors were just too bright and that they had to go. The chart calls for Gentle Art Jasmine and Daisy, and since I didn't have either, I used GA Tea Rose and Willow. Now a perfectly acceptable answer to this "not having the right thread" dilemma would have been to shop over at Aunt Chrissy's, but the truth is that I didn't feel like driving the 7/10th of a mile over there. Lazy lazy lazy.

So I put the piece away and have looked at it with fresh eyes this morning and I'm happy to report that I can live with the pink and yellow. At least for now. Ask me again in ten minutes.

Stewey has the "snipples" today. He woke up with his little nose runny and he sneezed all over me a few times just to see if I was paying attention. When he was a baby (OK, I know. He's a dog. Dogs don't come in babies.), I taught him how to blow his nose. I would hold a Kleenex and he would "blow" just like a little kid. I'm going to see if he remembers it later today. At the moment, he is sporting his sleeping mask and silk pajamas in the hopes of feeling a little better. I've promised him tea and toast if he'll go outside to potty, particularly since I've just re-hung the drapes after taking them out of the dryer. Damn dog.

Seeing how it's Ash Wednesday, I suppose that I had better start thinking about the whole Lent thing. Every year I chant the mantra "40 pounds in 40 days", but then I realize that fitting into smaller jeans probably isn't in keeping with the spirit of the thing, so I don't go that route. My all time favorite idea came from a young/hip priest two years ago. He said that he was moving from one dorm room to another (they do that over at ND), and he was pulling stuff out of his closets and thinking about what a pack rat he was. Stuff all over the place. So he decided to do some major housecleaning when the idea struck him that Lent is supposed to be a spiritual house cleaning and we should really think about our messy drawers. (Hmmmm. That just didn't sound right, but I'm sure you get the idea.) So methinks that's what I'll do....take a little inventory, do a little straightening, and then see what's left in the proverbial Tupperware of my soul.

(Oh, who am I kidding? You know as well as I do that the only inventorying, straightening, and playing is going to be up there in that studio with my stash. Can you blame me? It's a hell of a lot easier to separate skeins of DMC than it is to examine transgressions, people!)

I'm off like a herd of turtles...