Happy dance, and other stories

Jane Turner band 11, aka the Lady Band, is complete - woohoo!!  We’ve been expending most of our energy doing various snow moving things, but I was able to stitch a bit last night, completing the filling-in of Lady Jane’s face and neck and giving her eyes and a mouth.  The mouth is my addition - can you believe Jane didn’t give her lady a mouth?  Strange!

And then I spent some time checking the chart and instructions just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything (I hadn’t - yay).  Wanna see?

Now, back in early January when everyone was making their stitching plans for the year, I had hoped to have Jane finished in 2017.  Ha!  Still, it feels like the end is in sight now.  All that's remaining to stitch are three narrow bands, one wide band, and then the alphabet and Jane’s signature line, so I think an actual finish in the new year should be possible.  Here’s how she looks at this point.

So what are those other stories, and what else is going on?  Well, after the Great Christmas Snow, on Friday and Saturday we got more – we figure about 12 to 14 inches of new stuff fell overnight and through the day yesterday.  So we’ve been shoveling.

Oh, not the driveway – around here if one doesn’t have a snowblower, it’s wise to have an arrangement with a plow guy.  We’ve been shoveling the roof!

And today I was able to start knocking the snow off our arborvitae in the back yard, which turned out to be one of those easier-said-than-done things.  Just like everything else right now, there is a huge amount of snow on those trees.

Here’s a view of my snow knocker (an eight foot piece of 2 x 2) and a better look at what I was using it on.

Odd selfie.  My feet are down there somewhere!  Not sure you can tell very well from the picture, but that snow is up to the middle of my thighs (and my legs are not short).

I got all the way down the side to the corner.  Hope to do across the back tomorrow.

Today’s newspaper reported that this is already the ninth snowiest winter in Erie since they started keeping records.  Oh, our forecast for the next 36 hours?  Tonight, 1 to 3 inches; tomorrow, 3 to 5 inches; tomorrow night, 2 to 4 inches.

Stay warm and safe.  Happy new year!


>^..^<

White(out) Christmas

Under the heading of Be Careful What You Wish For, last week I was bemoaning the fact that though we had some snow, temperatures and rain forecast for 12/21 and 12/22 suggested all that would remain by Christmas Day would be the ugly gray stuff at the sides of the road.

The kids - now 29 and 31 - and I went on our annual movie-at-Christmas-break outing on the 23^rd (the new Star Wars), and were pleasantly surprised to find it was snowing when we came out of the theater.  Late in the afternoon, the front yard looked like this.

A close look will show you all the snow came from the left side – see what’s on the tree, and the odd oval of clear ground underneath.  Weird, isn't it?

And then the news and weather started talking about a storm, and around dinnertime on Christmas Eve it started snowing again.

And it snowed.

And when we got up on Christmas morning, it looked like this (notice the bushes in the second picture ... the third picture is NOT out of focus - the fuzziness is the snow pouring down).

And it snowed while we opened presents around the Christmas tree.

This is what it looked like in the afternoon (see those same bushes now?).

And it snowed during the night.

From an article in this morning’s local paper (online!):

"… a record 34 inches of snow fell on the city on Monday, according to the National Weather Service in Cleveland. …  another 8 to 16 inches of snow is expected in Erie County through Tuesday night, with 4 to 8 additional inches expected through Wednesday evening, when an issued lake effect snow warning is expected to expire.”

Not sure how much we have here, though Wonderful Husband said this morning there’s about 18 inches in the driveway, which was plowed yesterday around noon.

This morning… (bushes?  what bushes?)

I hope you all had a lovely day yesterday!  Please stay safe.

>^..^<

Christmas is coming...

Our tree won’t be put up till tomorrow – my daughter’s getting here tomorrow evening and we’ll decorate it Monday and Tuesday.  And bake.  And play Christmas carols.  I took all next week off from work!  (yeah, I’m a little excited)

If you’re interested in seeing non-tree Christmas decorations, then you’re in the right place (I'm really enjoying the things some of you have posted about your own Christmas decorating!).  Let’s start in the living room.

This crèche is the one that was in my family’s living room when I was a kid.  It was banished to a box when my mom got a larger, nicer one when I was in high school but this is the one I’ve always loved.  The stable is heavy cardboard that’s either printed with a wood grain or has a paper coating on both sides and the background is a separate piece that fits onto tabs on the back.  All the figures are securely glued in place (except one can remove the baby Jesus from the manger).  It has a cardboard, glitter covered star that will fit into a slit on the top of the stable, but I use one I made from a wad of silver tinsel stitched into a ball and hung from the ceiling with nylon thread – you can see the bottom of it at the top edge of the picture.

I have quite a few angels that we put out at Christmas – my mother collected them and I display my favorites.

One of Homespun Elegance’s annual ornaments – I bought the chart at the Spirit of Cross Stitch Festival merchant mall in 1995 and stitched it up a couple of  years later.

On the mantle are a few more of my mom’s angels, and our stockings hang below.  Mine is on the left – my mom made it when I was about a year old.  On the right is the one I made for my husband for our first Christmas together … but he insisted our son use it (and shame on me, I never made Wonderful Husband a replacement).  My daughter’s is in the center – that one was so much fun to design and stitch.  I entered it at the Woodlawn Needlework Show the following year and got a second place ribbon for it!

Everyone with kids has at least one school Christmas project they display year after year, right?  My son made this wreath in … kindergarten, I believe.  I love it because he wanted his to be different from everybody else’s and made the wreath from RED handprints with GREEN thumbprint berries!

One summer when I was 10 or 11, my mom decided to make a project she saw in an ad at the back of her McCall’s Needlework magazine.  This was back in the ‘60s when those were large format magazines – the size that Life magazine was originally.  The inside back cover was an ad for lots of Christmas needlework kits, but Mom just worked from the picture (which was about an inch and a half tall) and made her own.  The wise men have bits of old earrings and necklaces as their jewels.  Watching her do this, of course I wanted to make something too!  The same ad included a set of ornaments – little animals in stockings – so I made one with a cat.

Oh my, more felt.  I made this from a kit in 1979 or 1980.  I remember enjoying the felt appliqué, but I got really tired of sewing on all the sequins and beads!

Another (felt) kit with lots of beads and sequins.  I made four of these for gifts and then made one for myself from the leftover bits.  The one on the left is from the kit (this one was my mom’s), the right side guy is Mr Scraps.

My buffet in the dining room.  After Christmas I may get the other side of the red runner hemmed!

In the family room, more of my mom’s angels hanging around on the bookcase.

And a set she gifted me with when I was 13.

And lastly, at my back door, holiday penguins.  Saw these little guys in CVS one year and couldn’t resist.

It’s been snowing since early this morning and I’m such a child when it comes to this weather – it always delights me.

If you're still here, I want to thank you for indulging me!  Happy holidays!

>^..^< 

omg, snow! snow, snow, snow!!

We've had two snows this week - wheeeee! Yes, I know that'll make some of you just *yawn* but we often don't get two decent snows in an entire winter. Everything looked so beautiful on Wednesday morning, it was a magical feeling, and so I grabbed a bunch of pictures before running off to work - I figured the monster storm predicted for the weekend would end up being nothing, the way they so often do around here.

Big, wonderful weeping cherry (I *love* this tree) in my front yard.

Looking up into the branches of the cherry tree.

Red maple that overhangs the driveway. This is looking to the left out my front door.

Back fence neighbor's hemlock - you'll see this again.

And now for what has been dubbed Snowmageddon. I was shocked that any number of places decided on Thursday afternoon that they'd shut down for Friday. It started snowing yesterday morning, a little before 10, and didn't stop until shortly after 5 this evening.

Chain link fence between our yard and next door - I think it's really neat that all the links are filled with snow!

This is the back section I worked on so much this past summer, with the flagstone path between the tree and the plants and bushes in the corner.

Remember that hemlock? It had dropped Wednesday's coat before this storm started.

Center of the back yard. The lump to the right of the tree is my monster zebra grass, the things on the left are butterfly bushes that stood about eight feet high. I knocked snow off them last night, but they seem quite resilient so they stayed bent over today.

My car's under that!

More back yard. I wanted to take pictures in the front, but there was nothing to give them any scale (and no, I wasn't about to pose beside my snowbank).

Detail from previous picture. The arch above the arrow is only about half an inch wide - snow piled on one raspberry cane until it met the cane above it.

That's a standard garbage can but the lid is inverted.

And just how much snow is out there?

>^..^<