And So the Rotation will be Abandoned

I want to thank you so very much for your kind words, prayers, and thoughts for my ladies generally and specifically. They're a fabulous bunch, and I don't know what I'd do without them.

Under ordinary circumstances on Friday, I would have written to tell you how nice it was to learn that you all underestimate your stitching time too, but Friday did not bring ordinary circumstances. Still, it is nice to know that I'm not the only one who thinks she can knock out a project or two in a minute and a half only to find it takes days and weeks longer than I thought.

Which brings me to my rotation and this month's ornament stitchalong. This one was brought to me by Chelle a million and one years ago (or maybe seven). Chelle's stitching group made kits for each other from the JCO issue. And she sent this one to me as a RAK via a friend of hers who brought it to me at stitching camp, before it was widely known that I blog under a pseudonym. The poor friend was looking for Anna, who had reported on her blog that she would be at camp, but there was no Anna to be found on any list. My best pal overheard her and told her she could introduce her to Anna. And I ended up with a kit that I saved just for this ornament stitchalong.

An ornament. You should be able to stitch that in three days, right? Well not this ornament (over one!) and not these three days. Friday was all teary and then I had to pull myself together to go with some friends to the Greek fair. On Saturday, I did get to stitching (see below). When dinnertime rolled around, we couldn't think of a thing to eat so we went back to the fair and had gyros. Sunday found us making chili to enter into the library's chili cook-off. And boy-howdy that was work!

We are testing a stove for a company. It has an induction cooktop, which requires special(ish) cookware. (It needs to be magnetic like cast iron, enamel, or some stainless). When they put in the oven, they gave us some cookware for it. But the biggest pot they gave us was like 5 quarts. Having been roped in to the cook-off volunteered, we both had to make two gallons of chili. I went out and got an eight quart pot, but just the one since this is probably the only time we will need two. The plan was I would make my chili using the new pot and transfer it to another pot and put it inside the oven to stay warm, and then the dude would use the new pot to make his chili.

I started cooking, and that's when I found out that none of the pots and pans they gave us are particularly large. In order to maintain quality control, I decided to triple my recipe by cooking it three times--and adding each to the new pot--rather than making one big batch, and a good thing too! I had to brown two pounds of beef then add other ingredients. None of the pans were large enough, and the "large" pot they gave us wasn't squat like a dutch oven, so it was keeping in a lot of moisture. I cook a lot by feel and changing the temperatures on this stovetop is difficult. (It's all digital. You need to make sure you and the computer are on the same page about which burner you're talking about. Why are there no knobs?!) I was, to put it mildly, growing increasingly frustrated. I finally got my chili made, shifted pots and...the oven gave me the message, "that function is not available." Are you effing kidding me? I am up to my elbows in chili, we are two hours from the cook-off, and the oven isn't going to work?!?! Fortunately, my neighbor let me borrow his stove, which is gas, and doesn't care what kind of cookware you are using.

And then we didn't even win.

But you can see why I didn't get as much stitched on this piece as I would have liked.