This is randomly my calendar image for November.

( priority setting fail... )
So, what should the priorities be? Embroidery? Cleaning? Laundry? New Shoes? I need to tend to them all, but the embroidery is the most enjoyable and lazy-like on the list.

I've consumed 64 oz of water today, with only one potty break. Throat is dry.

I spent most of Saturday carving pumpkins, tidying the front room, and napping. Sadly I was lazy with the costume- wearing a white tunic, white veil and pale make-up to be a ghost. attack_laurel was much cuter in her pink eyelet dress and black lace jacket. Enjoyed the company for answering the door for the trickle of Trick-or-Treaters.


I dressed Ladybug as a Marine for the evening. Or rather, I put the dog back in her Lil' Devil shirt for a few hours. Devildog? Get it? Ladybug was surprisingly well-behaved with the ToTrs. After the first few, she sat still and was content for someone to pet her to keep her from rushing the door. Good Bug!

Sunday was more cleaning, lounging and embroidering. And napping. I finished my latest little embroidery nibble. Glad I drew it out for a test, because I'm certain after just the drawing that I didn't want to do 4 of these. But the one was fun.


Didn't sleep well on Sunday night. I'll blame too much candy/sugar. Actually it turned out my back was bugging me. I spent Monday night on the heating pad, lacing up my next embroidery project to the fabulous Spanish Peacock slate frame.

Also, our guest rooms will be full now through the holidays. We've got Orlando in the green room for the next 5 months, and an old friend from high school will be in the blue room from 11/14 until he finds an apartment on this coast. I need to warn Blue about that since it is kinda her room.

Elizabeth shows knitting tips

I only took a few pictures at Mousehole on Saturday (as I work very hard to keep the camera as hidden as possible) but did capture a few moments such as knitting instruction, Jimmy teaching the newest recruit, and all the ducks in a row.

It was a lovely event, despite the inclement weather. Since it was at least warm whilst it was rainy, we soldiered on and some of the gentlemen even fought some training bouts in the lighter showers. The company was lovely as we took shelter under the two big shades, giving time for nice civilian pursuits such as embroidery, knitting, wood carving, and hand sewing. The food as always was extremely yummy, and I even have some of the left-over tarts in the fridge. Alas there was no left-over duck, because it was tasty and devoured.

We were late to the clean-up on Sunday luxuriating in sleeping in and pancakes and bacon from brunch back at Mike and Kirsten's. The tents were still drying when we belatedly arrived so it wasn't too late, but I did have to carefully pack two pieces of canvas to allow for air flow for final drying in the trucks. Alan then went directly home, and I zipped over to Richmond for Catherine Grace and Ansel's house warming/anniversary party before heading home to rescue the Ladybug from boarding. The party was small but fun, with more amazingly tasty food. The house is gorgeous! I totally want Isaac's room, and have serious envy of CG's sewing room. Loved the GST shrine. I've been carrying mine with me too much to make a nice display of it.

Anyway, great weekend, amazing friends, and yummy food.

So today I wore the closest thing to orange in my closet to welcome Baby Stryker to the world. Yay Team Stryker! 10/22, 6:14am, 8lbs 12 oz, 22 inches long...


And Ladybug has a message for the Stryker pets:

"Welcome to Aunt and Uncle-hood cats and dogs. Remember that the little human boy is part of the pack now too, so be vigilant on his behalf. And keep your toys away from him."

Oh, and by the way Baby Stryker, sorry about the mess. Hopefully we'll have this planet a bit more cleaned up when you're old enough to notice.

So back in January there was this craft swap meme on LJ. I foolishly agreed to participate, and I'm glad I did, but I missed the two month date by quite a bit. oops. Oh well. Sorry.

Anyway, these are the results:

salviati  got the lily, narniarose  received the rose, the butterfly was made for isenglass , and the honeysuckle went to caemfind 


and finally the spider was for allasondrea 

Now, hmm.. what's next?

was fun, a bit warm and muggy, but lots of fun, with good friends.

Pictures

This weekend I:

Enjoyed sitting under the awning experiencing the edge of a passing thunderstorm on Friday night. Then I watched the end of Hancock and Kung Fu Panda while I played on the computer.

( Saturday... )

( Sunday... ) ouch.

Finished Patio! Hooray!


To complement the picture of Alan operating the BRUTE jackhammer, here he is on the Wacker.
snert tee hee giggle- yes, sometimes I feel like a 10yo boy


Kirsten on the saw making pink dust


Kirsten and Susan made amazing progress on the patio this week. They spread the underlay of granite dust and pulled up and cleaned most of the bricks from the old patio to use on the new patio. The ultimate in green renovation, we cleaned off and re-used all of the pavers we could, and only had to purchase ~30 more pavers to finish off the back corner.

I spent Saturday sitting in the sand pulling up the remaining bricks and cleaning the concrete off those that needed it. (It looks like one previous owner tried to use dry concrete mix instead of sand so there were at least two buckets full of chipped off concrete chunks.) My right hand and shoulder were very sore at the end of the day, but it seemed to be a task I was reasonably good at, and kept me out of the way of Kirsten and Alan tamping, screeding, and laying the rest of the patio. Today I spent many many hours behind a broom slowly sweeping sand into the cracks and crevices prior to final tamping, etc. Kirsten spent her time making cuts for the final bricks, while Alan was marking and setting them. I'm a little sore, especially my right arm, as to be expected of a desk jockey pulling the weekend warrior tasks.

The rest of the time this weekend was spent playing with setting up my palm contacts etc. into a syncronizible format for use with my new iPhone. I did finally get it working late Saturday night, but we ran into problems trying to activate it as my phone, so that is a task for tomorrow. I'm already enjoying the portability, facebookiness, camera, and such. Suggestions for useful non-game related apps are cheerfully accepted.

Now, I must go to bed.

Session 6 (for me) Pic-Spam!
We're in half of the pictures posted to the blog at the end of the session from this weekend past. Whoohoo!


Just to show you that no one can escape the lure of the Jacket Project, anselmatthews  spent far more time with his cathgrace  during the visit than I think he had imagined. Dubbed Captain Oe by the ladies, he joined the small group of only 10 other gentlemen (or XY chromosomes) who have worked on the Jacket.


Even Carli's parents spent some of the time celebrating their 36th Wedding Anniversary adding oes to a sleeve panel.


attack_laurel  and I pose with our frames at the end of the second day of embroidery.


An extremely fuzzy picture of me and my Mother-in-Law posing with the panel I made for her.


Team Oe with the completed sleeve, just prior to heading back to the airport to return home.

Yes, I stomped my feet and said I wasn't listening as my teammates attempted to force me to stop attaching oes to the jacket and head back home. They really didn't want to miss the plane home.

Sapphire was fun.

We drove down early Saturday morning to avoid the traffic, because Memorial Day traffic sux. We set up the tent, celebrated Susan's 16th birthday with cake and singing, hung out, caught Dominyck's surprise white-scarfing with the camera, went to order meetings, braided pretty Princess hair, and made Turkish dish of meat in an Eadric pot over the Eadric brazier. Spent the evening hanging out with friends- down at the deRath camp, up with Theo and Roland, and then over at the Caer Mear bardic.

Slept like a log on Saturday night, and woke leisurely on Sunday morning. Hung out, braided hair, braided hair, and braided hair, had a lovely chat with Emma, did a bit of Heir errands, and then hit the ground running for the Rose Tourney -fund raising for Arielle, bringing the signing book around some, chatting with wonderful generous folks, getting caught in the merchants for the main deluge, hit up others for sentiments and cash, and did some counting with outside verification on the funds raised. We micro-packed, went out to dinner at Mario's with Thjora, Antonio and Brian, and then came back to pack the then mostly dry canvas and get on the road home. We made it home by 10pm, partially unpacked, showered and crashed in bed.

Monday was sleeping late (while Alan unpacked the rest of the truck), playing with the new Sunsetter awning and pre-installation futzing, picked up the happy Ladybug pup from the All Dogs Club, and worked on installing the awning with help from Roland during a deluge. We got the awning up, spent some time hanging out under the shade listening to the rain, before heading over to the Morgenstern's for dinner, fine company and soaking in the hot tub.

Thus was our weekend- sunshine, ticks, road trip, friends, rain, good deeds, visiting, music, chocolate cake, hair-braiding, picture taking, cooking, and all... including the lack of coherence and eloquence.

We had a wonderful weekend down in Gastonia visiting with Chris and Tracie.
( pup play and pictures )

We don't get to visit and get quality time with far-away friends nearly often enough. It was wonderful to have fun pack-play and people chat time, even if we had to drive far to get it. Missing them all already.

One of the non-rabbit related activities I accomplished this weekend was to attack the juniper and vines on the back hill in our yard. After a long walk with the pack of pups, we were hanging out in the backyard in the sunshine, and I confess I finally snapped. I had hoped that Corby's attempts to transplant the junipers would have had more success and he would take the rest. Alas that was not to be. I've been irritated at the dead and dying portions of the junipers, and well frankly at the junipers themselves.

( yard work accomplishments )

Little videos of the baby bunnies journey today:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Squee!

Let them Eat Cake!
(yummy yummy icing...)(perhaps that is why the tubs of icing remain in the fridge...)

Bob's party was yet again a costumed spectacle. And I was only an hour late getting into my costume. Keilyn was the only one to show sans-costume, but lucky for her I hadn't gotten around to making Ewok hoods. I might need to make one for Freddy for skipping the party this year. Almost 30 friends; two fighting Padme's, a few other Padme's and Leia's and even two Ventresses, not to mention a couple of Storm Troopers and Solos, Count Dooku, a minature Darth Vader, and the best Obi-Wan and cutest Ewok on the planet!

'Twas awesome, and I am intensely sorry to those who missed it. I'm also grateful to TJ, CG, and Bob for helping with my hat so I didn't have to go around bare-headed...

The feather boa was a big hit (feather boa at a Star Wars party? tough to explain...) and this is one of my favorite pics of the party, of our lovely hostess:

Still feeling gloppy and ucky. Went to Dr for pains in my ears, and took a day at home to rest with the cute pup.  Could use a week of sleep I think. sigh.
------------------------

I think I've mostly tagged all my pictures from the Met, even if I haven't fleshed out all the detail descriptions. So while I obviously didn't see everything, if you are interested in the Spanish items I saw, the Byzantine items, all 16th-century items, or the Textiles, or even the leather items, they are more easily accessed and you don't have to skim through all the photos.


Some of my most favorite items are below:
( pictures behind cut... )

You can haz pictures!

I'm not terribly thrilled with the hemming job, but part of that is due to uneven drawing, and part is dealing with the slippery silk.
I hope to put something together for a display at KA&SFest before somehow delivering the panel to my Mother-in-Law.

whew!