December News

My, how time flies.

First, going back a month or two... I pillowified Plum Street Samplers' "Rotted" ornament design.  Because I used a 28-ct. fabric instead of the 40-ct. used in the model, mine was a little too large for an ornament.  It was displayed (briefly!) in my basket of seasonal finishes.

For Halloween, my Wee One was a ninja pirate princess (entirely her idea!).  I threw on some of my faire garb and walked around campus as the Gypsy Librarian - since our library is being renovated and we've been moved around campus twice, one of my favorite faculty members referred to us as "the roving band of gypsy librarians."  Here we are together, in a pic snapped by one of her daycare teachers after the costume parade there.

And the first weekend in November was a momentous occasion - I spent it in Utica, stitching with friends!  Some ladies I met at Celebrations live in the area, and a couple others joined us for a rather low-key stitch-in.  We made a trip to A Stitcher's Garden in Syracuse, and had a lovely time.

I don't have any pictures from Thanksgiving, but let's just say it was a HUGE success...my parents came out, and I prepared most of the dinner.  I made a spinach-and-herb stuffed turkey breast, pretzel topped sweet potatoes, a cranberry salad, and a pumpkin cheesecake with a gingersnap crust.  My mom brought an apple-bean casserole.  I think my folks were a little worried about my cooking skills, as they've never had a Thanksgiving meal prepared by me before!  Well, my father - who prefers his turkey be dark meat - had seconds of my turkey, and insisted that my mom get my recipe!!  Winning!!  (*my secret: the stuffing goes between the skin and the meat, not inside the turkey.)

There was some sad news between all the fun stuff, though....the week before Thanksgiving, I had to have my sweet Mina-kitty put to sleep.

That picture is from about 5 years ago, but she was only about 10 years old when she died.  However, over the course of a few weeks, she went from looking like that - at about 11 lbs - to being a fragile, sickly 6.5 lbs.  During that time, we put our house on the market and she was hiding more, which I assumed was due to the random strangers tromping through our house at odd times during showings.  But then one evening she hopped into lap, and felt like nothing but fur and bones.  :(  We took her to the vet, and while all of her tests came back normal, it was obvious something was NOT right.  A week later I could see that she wasn't eating, and we were back at the vet's office.  A (very expensive) x-ray showed that one of her lungs was congested, and her heart looked abnormal.  The vet couldn't say if that was the cause of the problem, or if it might have been caused by something else, like a thyroid condition, but either way, she was too far gone and too fragile for any kind of aggressive treatment.  So while it broke my heart, I chose to have her put down.  I miss you, Mina.  Maura still asks about you, too....  *sniff*

So I'll end things on a happy note with a new start.

This is "Here Comes Santa Claus" by Country Garden Stitchery.  I haven't seen this piece stitched anywhere but on the designer's site.  In fact, I haven't seen many of her pieces in the blogging world at all....which surprises me, because I think her style is really charming!  And if you order from her Artfire page, the option for .pdf delivery means almost instant gratification... *nudgenudge  (not affiliated, blah blah blah....just enabling!)