LEARNING CURVE

I decided to try a bargello background instead of simple tent stitch.  I'm not sure if it will be too busy when the rest of the piece is complete, but I'm pretty much making this up as I go along.  

The good news is that I'm using a readily available perle cotton for that white-ish background, so if I end up having to replace it a short trip to the Michaels will solve the problem of running out of thread.

Stewey and Bosco are snoozing in the sun and I'm off to the laundry room and then the library.  We're trying to get into routine here at Chez Spinster, so it's back to lists and schedules.

(At least for today anyway.)

(Tomorrow will be a total crap shoot and all of my best laid plans will go right out the window.)

I am determined to re-live the summers of my youth one of these days.  Mom made sure we were up and out early...at the pool, on our bikes, out on the porch swings, or doing something fun.  Given my rotundity (even as a child), I was usually the one on the porch swing with a big fat summer book in my hand.  I went from Nancy Drew to Danielle Steele to Jackie Collins with a few classics thrown in there for good measure.  I think there was even a summer of bodice-ripping romances, and for some reason the name Kathleen E. Woodiwiss comes to mind.

I was lucky...my mom and dad never really censored what I picked up.  If the book was at all "controversial" like Judy Bloom's Forever, I could count on a kitchen table conversation about being a proper young lady and what the expectation was for me going forward as an adult-ish person, and how my mom would know what I was doing 24/7, no matter when I was doing it or where I was doing it.  So any ideas I had about becoming a "hotsy totsy" were pretty much squashed right then and there.  

But reading those big fat summer books...no matter how high brow or low brow was the highlight of my day, just like stitching is now.  One of these days I'll get really smart and combine the two by listening to audio books while I stitch, but for now methinks I'll just have to set aside time for both in between puppy wrangling and loads of underpants sploshing about in the laundry machine.

So here's to big fat summer books and porch swings and clean laundry and stitching!   The weekend is upon us, the sun is shining, and we're hurtling headlong right into it all.  Happy Friday, kids!