Snow issues and stitching on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - well we are surviving the snowmaggedon... well as humans we are ... as garden chickens maybe not so much...LOL... 

We got about 10 inches....Dan and his crew came Monday afternoon and cleared my driveway and the sidewalks... I didn't leave the house till Tuesday ... my day to pick up Elliott from school and hang out with him ... his school district closed for only one day... lots of other districts were closed for 3 or more days... my son only got one day off of work but he and Elliott thoroughly enjoyed the time off.

I had big plans for piles of productivity... they did not materialize... there is something about the presence of snow that makes me sleepy ... and crave carbs... so I did a prodigious amount of napping broken only by the need to seek out brownies and cheese danishes...sigh

There were plumbing issues on Tues/Wed... my kitchen faucet is on an outside wall and as I've mentioned before there is no insulation in the walls of my 1953 home... just brick over cinder block... had I realized the implications of this when I was renovating the house 11 years ago I would have had the contractor install insulation in the kitchen walls... but that ship has sailed... so I've been keeping the water dripping and that has kept the water running... BUT... the water in the drain froze and the sink would not drain... arghh... called my favorite plumber but they were swamped with work so they referred me to another local plumber... the plumber who had cleared this same drain of gunk 2 years ago... (and this is one of the reasons I talk about everyday stuff on this blog... I was able to go back and figure out that it was 2 years ago I had a problem with this same drain)... anyway by the time the plumber got here on Wednesday the drain had thawed... he told me to run more than a drip and to keep the water hot... (my water heater is turned up on high so that's not an issue)... so far everything is running and draining... so along with the astronomical gas bill I'll be getting next month,  my water bill will be hefty too... but I figure that is better than dealing with frozen pipes. 

oh sorry I wandered off there... as for crafty productivity I concentrated on cross stitching as it is easier to doze off with a needle in one's hand versus falling asleep at one's sewing machine... I contemplated starting something new but that would have required me to extract my butt from my comfy stitching chair and find some linen and flosses... instead I picked back up a couple of patriotic pieces I started last year... and I FINISHED one!!!

This is American Sampler House by Annie Beez....

now I made the house yellow instead of the white it was charted in ... and I left off the border on the right hand side as I wasn't going to have enough fabric on that side .... an error in counting made at the very beginning... I have a frame coming from Amazon tomorrow that I think will be perfect for this piece.

After completing that project I turned my attention to American Sampler by Primrose Cottage... 

that house took a while to fill in... I'll do the windows in a bit but I really want to move down and start some of the alphabet... 

I circled back to the 2026 Blessing sampler... Alpha-bits by Wild-Heart Designs and settled on doing the hearts below the O in simple cross stitch... the heart shaped buttons I had were too big, as were the heart shaped beads I ordered....I'm good with this ... now to get my butt in gear and get this to the framer... 

Here's how I decorated the little telephone nook in the hallway... some stitchery from WTN&T Snowball booklet... knickknacks from Johanna Parker ... and the Snowy String from Lizzie Kate.

On one hand it seems like January has been 1000 days long ...on the other hand it has blown by and February is here... I want to get out my Valentine's day stuff ... there isn't a lot but it looks pretty on the TV cabinet.. a task for today... I'll get Nick to bring up what I need. 

Forecast for the next 10 days only has one day getting above freezing... brrrrr... not a lot on my calendar which is fine with me... I was going to get another of the PRP, plasma rich/stem cell shots in my left knee... but, and here's where my dithering about life on this blog helped me out again, I read what I wrote when I got the shot before... they had a devil of a time even getting my blood (I'm a hard stick) and for over a week after the shot my knee hurt worse than before and you can't use NSAIDs  for 6 weeks afterwards... Tylenol doesn't cut it for me... I need ibuprofen or naproxen...and right now I've got the pain under control with them...I'll just tough it out this way until I can get my knee replaced which right now I'm planning on doing in July.

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... I hope that wherever you are the weather is to your liking... I have had my fill of snow and freezing temperatures but I doubt my feelings have any effect on Mother Nature... 

happy stitching-

carol fun