Half of Nothing is Nothing

I've got a bit of a tradition going to take stock on July 2, the halfway point of the year (2016, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2007). And here we are on the first day of the second half. I think you know how this has gone...
In December, I wrote:  For 2017, I'm going to stick with the rotation again, and sign up for the Smalls SAL. Maybe this year I can get even closer to 12 smalls for the year.

1. St Nick's Noel
2. Christian's Stocking
3. Our Souls
4. Forty Seven Hearts (new, anniversary present)
5. Love Me, Love My Dog
6. Deruta Biscornu
7. Lapland Santa
8. small
9. Ladybug, Ladybug
10. Tis the Season

I'm also going to celebrate Craft Month with the helpful input you gave me last year. 

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I have stitched no smalls, done very little on the rotation, and skipped Craft Month!

I haven't even started the dude's anniversary present! (shock, horror) (Eleven days and counting!)

So here's the new plan:
July: Forty Seven Hearts
August: Christian's Stocking
September: twins' Christmas ornaments
October: Go back to the three-day rotation (above)
November: New project every day for NaBloPoMo
December: Three-day rotation

I'm also sketching out a plan to blog twice a week. And make the rounds to you regularly as well.

I have been stamping and making jewelry. Here's a pic to hold you:

The Big Dig

Most of the houses on our street were built in 1954. Although the neighborhood has sidewalks, we don't have paths from the sidewalk to the front door. I guess you're just supposed to walk down the driveway. Add in a couple of cars--which people wouldn't necessarily have had back then--and there's really no way to get to the door. We've always wanted to put in a walkway. So we chose the hottest day to start. Actually once I called 811 ("Know What's Below") we had to start in the next ten days. Since we're going away next weekend, we were locked in.

We've nearly dug the whole path to the correct depth. At the beginning of the week, we'll get the stone and sand. Then we'll put in the pavers. Phase 2 is to take out the cement path between the door and the driveway and put in pavers there as well.

Phase 3 is digging a garden from the path to the driveway. I'm not nearly as gung-ho about that as I was just yesterday. Give me a few days to recover. {wink}

For earlier posts about the garden, see here and here. (In these two you can see the cement path a bit better.) (No comments from the peanut gallery about how overgrown the roses are. Many thanks.)

Getting it Together

Today when I was commenting on someone's blog, the verification word was "scronad." Now there's a unique morphed word! I don't know quite how to use it, but I didn't want to be the only one with that word/picture in my head.

I haven't been stitching much on Tree of Life. It's all backstitch now. I've been reading some and gardening some and sort of staring off into space a lot.

Here's a photo of that promising rhododendron from May 20:

And the front yard:

You may remember when we planted all this. I thought we had put those roses in three years ago, but it was only two. Yes, you need these, they grow themselves--no watering, no pruning, no fertilizer. (They said to prune them every three years, so I've got some work next spring. Actually, I have work as soon as that rhododendron loses its blooms.)

Maybe later today I'll get myself together to do a report on the card making/scrap utilization project. Maybe I will never be together again...

We Are Young Despite the Years

The dude and I went to the REM concert with a friend last night. After The National and Modest Mouse, these two girls behind us had this conversation:
"I hope these people stand up when the show starts."
"They won't. They're old."
"I hate going to old people's concerts."

I'd like to point out that we were all younger than Michael Stipe. The dude pointed out that they played a song about the Iran hostage crisis; "what can you girls tell me about that? I thought so." Later they were saying how hot Michael Stipe was and yelling for him to take off his shirt. Um, apparently they didn't know who the old people at the concert were.

Photo from Wikimedia.

Follow Where They Lead

I didn't get a chance to post last night because I was working on a little project for Sissy. I think she's a little blue. As she put it today, "I have been dating for 20 years, and I'm just tired of it!" I wish she could find someone. I know she wants to have kids, and she's old fashioned that way--first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Sissy with a baby carriage.

She must have been desperate because she asked me to go shopping with her today. But I was a trooper! I dragged myself through the King of Prussia Mall for five hours, no complaints. That's a lot for me. But it's nothing in the scheme of helping my sister. She's coming for dinner tomorrow (my cousin is out of town, so the next best cook is doing Sunday dinner).

The notebook (it's one of those b/w composition notebooks) didn't come out quite how I planned, but it's not a bad first go. The quote by Louisa May Alcott says "Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead." The center strip has been covered with glitter. I'm thinking of making stationery sets for my sisters-in-law for Christmas--including a matching notebook, but only using things I have on hand. I have to get the craft spending under control. Our visit to the financial planner has shown me that!

Mental Health

Yesterday I took a mental health day, but I didn't stitch. I brought stuff that's been sitting for months to Goodwill; went grocery shopping; had a mammogram; and made more cards. I had some odd cut paper from when Sissy and I used the envelope template. So I decided to make cards with it rather than have it continue to fall off the top of the filing cabinet every time I opened it. You can see some of the results here.

I also worked on those presents I started ages ago for my friends with August birthdays. You'd have thought starting at the beginning of July would have guaranteed they'd be done by now, but no...It took some time, but I have found both projects (they walked off) and the fabric cuts I made for the backs. Sheesh. The house only has three bedrooms, and only one of them is a pig-sty (the "craft room"), how can I lose stuff so easily? I really, really, really have to make the craft room a priority.

Busy Weekend

I didn't have time to stitch this weekend because I was

• making cards, mostly ones I CASE'd from my new favorite website
• visiting PAFA
• reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• weeding the garden
• painting the shutters

That's two items off my 101 Things list in two days! But what should I do with those "bloom" cards? Get well cards? Thank you notes? "Bloom where you're planted?" Actually, I hate that quote. What's it supposed to mean? Stay where you are? Never try to better your situation?

Fake Work; Cross-stitch Online

Today I spent some time at work stitching on the coolest site. Go here, if you know, you have a good high-speed connection, because this is complicated flash. You put a little tag on your needle, and you can stitch a piece way faster than normal. With other stitchers you create a landscape of the rainforest. The point, and there is one, is to raise awareness about the Brazilian environment. The flash looks really good, but I do have a quibble--the needle comes up in the center of the box. Still it does move pretty realistically after that.

I'm off to pick up some floss. Another night of not much stitching. I have to prep for Vegas and for the meeting with the financial advisor when I return.

Another Weekend in the Garden

I didn't get much stitching done this weekend. On Saturday, we went to the Elfreth's Alley Fete Days so we could see inside other people's houses. (You can read more about it here.) After lunch in Chinatown--it was perhaps too hot to have walked so far, but at least we weren't working in the garden--we sat in traffic on the way home. It took twice as long to get home as it took to get there! Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a stitching project for the ride.

On Sunday, which was overcast and much cooler, we finished up the garden. First, we removed the lawn. With a shovel and a serrated trowel. Fourteen kitchen garbage bags worth. (Why not lawncare bags? Because we have a weight limit on what the garbagemen will pick up.) We broke for lunch so the dude could watch the highlights of the French Open and I could make dinner--indeed, we had invited the family over for dinner and to see the new garden. I put together two meat loaves and peeled and boiled 2.5 lbs of potatoes. The dude went off to rent the rototiller, and I finished bagging the sod and brought the plant material from the back of the house. By 4:30, I was heading for the shower and the dude brought back the rental. This meant, of course, that we didn't do a lick of work around the house--we didn't even manage to vacuum up the dirt we had tracked in. The kitchen floor looked like we had mulched with grass clippings. So of course, when my ultraclean sister and cousin arrived, they did the dishes and vacuumed the floor while I finished the potato salad and made dilly beans (Moosewood). Anyway, the results:

Click to see "before."

Garden Thyme

This weekend the dude and I took a trip out to Lancaster to buy some plants for the new landscape. We bought a lilac, two rose bushes, a buddleia bush, two PJM rhododendrons, a cherry laurel, 3 sedum, 3 phlox, 2 day lilies, and 2 salvia. We spent $50 to fill up my cousin's minivan (you couldn't get all that in a Honda Civic!) and $200.44 for the vegetation. On Sunday, we got some of it in the ground.

Before, March 2007

We had to till the soil, and cut down two 50 year old yews. (The ones on the left.) The dude went out and rented a rototiller (in the Honda Civic) and a chain saw for the yew. The only way to get the rototiller home was to take it apart and put it in the front seat. When he opened the door, he turned to me and said, "Say hello to my little friend." And you wonder why I love him! Only the tiller became my little friend, and I have the sore triceps and back to prove it.

We got the rhododendrons, butterfly bush, and cherry laurel in, but the rest of the stuff will have to wait until we remove the grass from the bed. I know we're probably doing this all ass backwards, but that's just how we work. If we waited for everything to be done properly, this post would be dated June 4, 2008.

During, June 2007

The War of the Dent-de-Lion

Taraxacum officinale is plaguing my lawn...the one I have vowed to care for this year. (Last year we focused on the inside of the house.) Last night, I took out about four (4) pounds of dandelion and dirt out of the lawn. This morning, on my way to work, I counted at least twenty more. They think they can break me.

The dude thinks this endeavor will drive me insane. And so, to be funny, I say crazy things about the dandelions. "Dude, I hear the dandelions growing out there. Shhhh! Can't you hear it?" The scary thing is if they drive me completely insane, how will he tell? I'll tell you one thing for sure, the neighbors are going to be sick of driving by the house and seeing my fat ass in the air while I dig out the weeds.

This morning we--the dude, the two older women at the busstop, and I--were discussing dandelions. The topic of consuming dandelions came up. It started me thinking. Maybe I can derive my power from them. If I start eating the leaves (our lawn was fertilized with corn gluten meal, a natural preemergent, which is nontoxic), will I prevail? Should I be making wine from the flowers? Do I know how to make wine from dandelion flowers? You got that right.

Anyway, too much dirt under the nails for stitching.

Fifties Bush

Tonight I am going to my first class at the Haverford Township Adult School. I am taking landscape design. For the good of the landscape. Our tiny brick cape is being inundated with yew that was planted when the house was built over 50 years ago. In addition to the four great yew, there are two sort of sad, but relatively tall, rhodedendron; they are sad because the old owner used to crop them into cube shapes. There are a few mountain laurel, which I hope to transplant to the backyard because, well, all this stuff is crammed together and no one's happy, least of all me. On the other side of the entrance there is an evergreen bush that blooms with white bell-shaped flowers in late summer--I can never remember the proper name of that one, but I have let it grow wild and it's blocking one of the windows. But truly, this poor plant was so unhappy in its former life as a block of bush. Around the corner, where no one can enjoy it, is a forsythia. That one left behind its legacy of poor haircuts last spring. Now if I could only train it to grow where I wanted it, instead of having it wrap itself around the drainpipe from the gutter...We also have an evergreen azalea accenting the path to the door. It's been pruned so badly parts of it are nothing but wood. (Sense a theme here?) Then there's the Japanese maple that is dying. I think it just needs to be fertilized, but who knows? I hope the teacher does!

So I won't be stitching tonight. I am happy to report, however, this morning on my commute, I finished the alphabet on Tall Flowers. Now to make the flowers grow wild.