sooner or later

The vent cover was laying on the driveway this morning when I left for work. I placed a bucket in front of the rat-sized doorway to my house. We'll see if it's moved when I get home tonight.

Update: The grill king re-attached the vent cover and declared that no rats could possibly have entered or left by this tunnel. Obviously the cover just leapt off the brick wall unassisted. No sign of the rat in the house. Ginger snaps remain untouched. Must try homemade cookies next time.

Hold the eye of newt. I take my frogs straight up, please.
A favorite I purchased at an art festival a long time ago. I miss the Westheimer Art Festival as it used to be. It's a zoo, now. Used to be family fun. I really am showing my age.

Nasty nose cold is wearing me down. I just realized I haven't taken my vitamins in ... well, a long time. No wonder. I'm trying to get things done so I can start on some gifts but it's doing slow. I hate slow.

Rat is not fond of ginger snaps, I guess. The trap is empty.

A rat ran through the bedroom this morning. The grill king reached for a towel to catch it with. As if....

It's cold outside. Time for all rodents to go find a hollow tree. We will be evicting this little guy this evening. Hopefully. I was just telling a co-worker the story of the last rat invasion while commiserating with her over a raccoon-in-the-attic problem. Nothing is so bad it couldn't get worse.

Four day weekends are grand. I could use one of these every month. I worked so hard yesterday, I am sore from head to toe today. I tried to work smart - lots of things going at once: the printer, the laundry - while I carried the holiday decorations downstairs with each run down to check the laundry or up to check on the printer. I have just about all the album pages printed for the Art Camp gang.

I found a new paper called ViaStone. I am not affiliated. But it looks pretty good and is not made from trees. Maybe it's recycled? I dunno, the labeling is kind of secretive. I also bought ink of the new Vivera Plus variety. Looks better than usual. But the old one was completely out of yellow so I couldn't do a side by side comparison.

I also worked on my homework for a virtual class in art quilts that I signed up for last week. It is a two way learning opportunity. We are learning while the teacher learns about how her virtual class software works with input from us. Fun!

Cleaned up selected areas around the house and in my workroom, too. But something always bursts out of place when I do that. Like fabric when you're looking for just the right scrap of color. And dishes seem to pile up when the grill king takes control of the shopping and cooking but not the cleaning. Never mind, he does a really nice steak and we had pumpkin pie with pumpkin sauce on top and pumpkin sauce on ice cream and cheesecake and pumpkin sauce as dip for ginger snaps as well. We are heavy into desserts right about now and seem to have a self perpetuating container of pumpkin sauce.

The granddaughter is painting pictures (and sniffing) while I type. She has a cold but the Boogie boy was better last night. Not so cranky and needy and he ate a better dinner than he did the last couple of times at bat. Usually there is more around the bull pen than in the strike zone.

This is the Boogie Zone of the tree.

She and I decorated the tree last night. She caught on quick that some things can't be hung down low since we'll have a toddler in and out of the house over the next month or so. So with each ornament, she asked, "Can this go in the Boogie Zone?"or "This one will be fine in the Boogie Zone!" Some things are too fragile, some things are too tiny, some things are too precious, some things have special memories. She loved pulling things out of the boxes, some she remembered from last year. She liked hearing about the things that her mom had made a long time ago and reading the years written on them as though it were so long ago...1986???? Wow!

One of the reason my muscles are sore is that I tried to come with a way to wind a warp that wouldn't strain my shoulders. Instead the muscles on the top of my theighs are aching! I put the warping board on the trunk and tied it leaning against the weaving bench for support. Then I sat on the sofa and wound the top part while standing and then sat down to wind the bottom half and so I was constantly sitting down and standing up. Quite an aerobic method. My shoulders are okay, but man, going up and down the stairs today is killing me. It's always something, isn't it, Rosannadanna?

One of the round robin collages came to me on Friday. I'm the last stop on this one. I was gonna think about it but they really are like a monkey on my back. Once I see them I can't seem to stop thinking about them till I add something. This one needed some buttons and some Shiva paintstiks to carry the colors around the whole piece. I think it looks super. I wish I could post it a scan of it but since it's a collaborative piece I'm not sure of the protocol on this. I should ask that group what they think.



I missed a frog last Friday so here's one to satisfy your need for green.

I only have to make one covered dish and then spend the day at my daughter's being thankful I don't have to cook for a crowd.

Before I put the binding on it, I looked at the July journal quilt and decided my daughter was right. It wasn't really me and so I cut the darn thing up. So now I have finished a completely different project and one with a deadline. With a little tweaking, this will become my postcards for the Romance swap. They're mostly red, with hearts on each one of the three. I printed out a card stock back and fused and stitched it on. They are ready to be mailed. I should probably hit them with a bit of spray sealer since it is inkjet printing and it's raining here again. More photos later after the tweaking.



On Sharon B's CQ blog (see link in my right sidebar), she is looking for comments to help her decide on her 2008 challenge. She has a large readership and motivates a lot of people to stitch more. I put in my vote for a finishing-up-projects kind of a challenge but mostly the votes are going in the pocket of a design thing. I want to see the hanging chad on this ballot. Oh, well, I suppose I must struggle on alone in my quest to find the bottom of the stack of the stuff I want to finish.

Thick fog blanketed our neighborhood this morning as I followed the little truck to our favorite mechanic's shop. My mini-van this time. Electrical problems. Old age, hardening of the circuitry, no doubt.
We rented a car over the weekend to drive up north to see the grill king's mom in her new digs. Nice place, a little smaller than the last one, feels more like a care facility. There's a person at the front desk and aides come in to refill her water glass and dole out her medicine. But she is doing well by all indications. We visited a long time on Saturday and almost took her out for brunch yesterday, but she decided it would not be a wise choice for her.
I worked on my July journal quilt, stitching on squares and rectangles of fabric I had selected before our cruise. All red, white and blue. I was planning to place a red sparkly net over the top and FMQ it but the net makes the white parts go pinkish - not what I was going for at all. I may try for a gold net now that I'm at home. Anyway the squares are all down, raw edged and handstitched in bold embroidery thread. I want to put some foiling on it, too.
While we were driving, we listened to a sci-fi fantasy book on CD and took a back way into the big city. Pleasant drive. A stop for kolaches in West, Texas on the way north and a stop at Dairy Queen for a shake on the way home. Road trip traditions.
I crocheted a goddess figure. I have to finish her arms - tiny little arms and then stuff her and decide what else she needs. So I started two new projects!

Another find from Rachel. My granddaughter wants to take him home.

I was ready. I had my printouts. I was wearing both my coin purses from the article on Handwoven's website. I even had some Meow cards to pass out. But when DeeDee pointed at me I was still a little surprised. I thought I would have to raise my hand for my 10 seconds of fame.

Then Amber says, pointing to the back of the card, is that your blog? Umm, yeah, I forgot I put that on the cards. So now I'm going to be checking my stats hoursly.