Yesterday in Review – August 17, 2021

Yesterday we were busy most of the morning. I went downstairs and looked around to decide where to put the fridge. We were thinking in the basement garage since it’s air conditioned and heated but two sides are concrete and there are no electric outlets there. One side is a walk thru door and garage door; the other side has double bifold doors where the a/c unit, water heater and water softener are located. There’s also a built in workbench along that wall so . . kinda no space in there. Vince is going to get the electrician to run some outlets down pipe along the concrete wall or even put them in the ceiling.

I began looking at other places in the basement where we could put a fridge and came up with two spots. One is right off the downstairs family room, right outside the sewing room door. Remember that I wanted a fridge near the sewing room. Bingo! I think that’s going to work. It isn’t going to earn us a spot on the cover of any decorating magazines but I think it will be nice to have a fridge down there. Plus, when I change the oil in the freeze dryer, I put the used oil in the freezer. The water freezes on the bottom, I pour the oil through a filter and re-use it. I was a bit nervous coming up the carpeted stairs carring a jar of oil. Even with a lid on it, if I fell, it would probably break so it will be nice to be able to do it all downstairs and not have to come upstairs. I’ll have to make ice with ice trays – no water line and . . wait . . the water comes into the house in one of the rooms in the basement. I could probably get the plumber to put a water line if I wanted to put the fridge with the ice maker in that room. Jeremy had a freezer in there but for now, I can either make ice with ice trays or keep an ice bucket in the freezer with ice from the upstairs freezer. I’m going to be happy to have a fridge down there.

Vince did a bunch of trimming on one side of the house. That’s where the electrician has to work to run power to the shop so Vince was making it easy for him. While Vince was cutting, there’s a bush on the corner of the house that’s always in my way. When there’s ice outside, I can take one step out of the garage and get to the dirt (so I don’t have to walk on slippery concrete with Rita) . . except for that bush. I told Vince I really just wanted the whole thing gone.

When I go out with Rita at night, I always thought . . what if someone was behind that bush? Now . . well . . you know . . I have all kinds of thoughts so that bush is gone.

While Vince was doing all that, I unpacked 10 boxes in the basement! That was nice. I found a box full of boxes for jars. I love keeping my jars in the cardboard boxes they came in and couldn’t imagine why so many of those were missing. Vince had made his own boxes for packing some of the jars so these were all the original boxes. Glad to have found those so I gathered up all the jars I needed to fill those, stacked those where they were supposed to be.

Additions:

I did find new XJu Linen at The Kitten Stitcher. The color is Dark Mountain and it looks like it’s just gray enough to be quite different from other linens I have so I ordered a piece of that.

Cooking:

Yesterday we had the ribs that I had cooked Sunday. Today we’re having leftover salmon. All I have to do is make the carrots. Easy!

Pretty much the rest of this week is leftovers til Friday and then we’ll grill steaks (Vince will!) so not much cooking this week.

Videos I Watched:

The Contented Stitcher – She is such a prolific stitcher and I love seeing all her work.

Wasn’t much video watching yesterday.

Stitching:

A little off track today but not bad.

First, Sunday night while I was stitching but before I put away Thy Divine Love, I had threaded a needle, and then couldn’t find it. I threaded another one, only made a few stitches and stopped for the night. I folded it up and put it in the bag not to be worked on again til a couple of weekends from now. After I took a shower Sunday night, I saw a brown piece of thread on the floor and that was my needle and thread I couldn’t find. It must have been stuck in my clothes. I put it with the rest of that project. Yesterday morning, I thought . . I have two threaded needles . . I’m going to use that thread so I did. This is where I had planned to stop:

But, this is how much more I got done yesterday.

I’m glad I kept working on it.

Second, I’m not knocking the design but I do not like that rooster. I’m going to love it when it’s finished but I can’t get any rhythm working on him. It’s stitch 2, skip 5, stitch 3, skip 1 and that sequence never repeats. Everything is so random so I have to keep checking what I’m doing. There’s no way to know if things are in the right spot except keep checking and checking. I love it when there’s a “pattern” and I can see right off if I’ve made a mistake.

Here’s where this one was when I stopped working on it Friday night.

Here’s where it is now:

Considering how hard this piece is for me to work on, I think I made great progress.

Plans for Today:

I’m going to try to finish the rooster . . just him. I’ll come back to the letters probably Wednesday or Thursday, or maybe Friday. Once I finish the rooster, I’m going to work on A Changed World for at least a day, maybe two . . without working on anything else.

There’s probably at least as much left on the rooster to do today as what I did yesterday but I do think/hope I can get it done.

I’m giving myself a gold star for sticking with this project. There was a time when I would have thrown in the towel and been done with him.