Oct 30/11

I finished this Dimensions kit the other day and framed it up very quickly to give to a friend of mine yesterday in celebration of her 40th birthday. The party was a complete surprise planned by her mother and it was a thrill to be part of it. Afterwards, my friend and I went out to dinner for the mother of all gab fests.
Yay for good friends!

Sept 19/11

 For the first time since I bought the property, I have managed to get out to my country property to actually see most of the apples on the trees. I even managed to pick a small bagful of them to bring home with the intention of making an apple crisp. The trees have not been tended to for many (30? 40?) years so most of the apples are up too high for me to safely pick and many apples are scabby and/or wormy. The deer do not seem as fussy as this human because there is much evidence on the ground of their gnawing at the apples.

So, this colander of apples has been partially turned into

 this apple crisp whose recipe can be found here at Betty Crocker.

I took this pan to my mom's house for Sunday Dinner and it was pretty much licked clean when I left. I was a little worried about how the apples would turn out because I have never eaten or cooked with them before, but my family assured me as they wolfed down their share that it was delicious.

My stitching has been slowed a bit because I have strained part of my hand at the base of my middle finger on my right hand. To help with the discomfort, I tape my two middle fingers together if I am going to stitch for a few hours or if I have been at work for a few days (opening vials aggravates the hand as well).

The 10th anniversary of Sept 11

With the upcoming tenth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, I find myself thinking back to that time. I was in Sweden visiting with friends while on a 2 week vacation. I had arrived on Sept 7th, a Friday, and was a little jetlagged as well as having some side effects from a recent yellow fever vaccine. Nevertheless, I set out for the pub with my friend Therese's cousin (I was staying with T. but she had a work function so poor Hakan was asked to take me out) and got a little drunk. Well, alot maybe because I forgot how to speak English, but that is not the point of this little story.

During the course of the evening, I was introduced to several of Hakan's friends at the pub. He is in the Swedish navy so I met several guys from both the military navy and the merchant navy who were based in Karlskrona. One guy in particular was not so intimidated by having to speak English with me so we ended up hanging out together. At one point, Jana looked at me and said, "You are so beautiful". That brought me up short. I did not know how to respond beyond a stunned, "Um, thank you?".

At that time in my life, I was in the grips of a depressive episode that had been finally recognized and diagnosed five years before but had been going on for years before that. Looking back now, there is no doubt in my mind that it had been going on for at least 15 years at that point. I spent many years just taking one day at a time because there were so many things going on around me that I had no control over and I was so overwhelmed that it was all I could do to see life through to the next midterm, the next class, the next court date of my parents' divorce. To compensate, I wore a brave face and carried an armour of bravado that hid (or at least I thought it did) alot of stuff. My cousin once told me that she was amazed at my ability to just ignore an issue if there was nothing I could do about it. In university, I was one of those girls who could walk through a bar and take it for granted that several heads would turn, that drinks would be bought for me and that I was not sitting to one side hoping that a guy would ask me to dance.

After university, I dove into my career as a pharmacist and volunteer activities. I was busy, busy, busy. What people did not know was that if I was not at work or wherever, I was curled up in bed with the blankets over my head. It was not until I happened to be reading a professional development article on depression and I checked "yes" on every line of a screening tool that I realized something was REALLY wrong. I was numb to feeling, I was numb to life and everything was grey to me.

So, there I was in Sweden, unsure how to react when a guy said to me that I was beautiful. I was sad that I was so numb and sad that I had lost my joie de vivre/bravado. A few days later, I sat in stunned silence like the rest of the world as the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Centre looped constantly on CNN. I participated in moments of silence in Sweden in between spending hours watching the coverage while Therese was at work. Flights to North America were not flying so my return home on Sept 21th was up in the air. Therese's family made it clear that I was welcome to stay with them as long as necessary. I loved them for their generousity but I really wanted to get home as soon as possible. Yes, I am sure that I could have found work there as a pharmacist, learned the language and settled in quite nicely as I love Sweden, but I wanted to be home with my family.

In the meantime, Jana and I hung out a few more times, including my last night in Sweden. He asked me to stay and/or return to Sweden because he had never met another woman like me and wanted to marry me. By then I had realized that I still had a lot of healing to do and told him that he needed to forget about me because I was so miserable with myself that I would make him miserable. In retrospect, I still believe that, but I am thankful to him for that emotional kick in the pants. It still took several years to fully free myself from that depressive cycle, but he made me see how numb I had become.

Sept 11 was a wake up call that no country is immune to terrorism and violence and is the "Where were you when?" of this era as well as my own personal wake up call. There have been a couple of other depressive episodes in between and I am just coming out of another one now. So many of you have very kindly complimented me on my new thumbnail. That photo is a true reflection of how I feel these days. I am standing strong, face to the sun, hopeful and full of life. The loss and violence of the events that day are not far from my mind as we near that anniversary and so are the thoughts of a Swedish man who unknowingly changed my life in a moment.

This entry was originally posted in a social networking blog that I also belong to. Here is the photo I am referring to as my thumbnail:

 

Aug 14/11

And again, long time no posting. I have been stitching but not as much as usual. Being away so much has had a lot to do with that. There was the trip to the Dominican Republic in January, a trip to Guatemala in May and a two week stint as a chaperone for a Rotary Exchange student program in June/July. Then there was an unexpected trip this past week to southeastern British Columbia to attend the funeral for my Uncle Dave.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some photos to sum up the past six months or so. I can't seem to get them to load in order and given my current technical difficulties all around (over 2 weeks without internet access at home, I am giving up trying!). Guatemala, Canada, and me!

Feb 12/11

     Oh my! It has been a while since I last made a post. My life has been a whirlwind what with the return of one brother from Afghanistan on Dec 4 and the engagement of the other brother that same night, holiday mania and getting ready for my most recent trip to the Dominican Republic. Nope, not your typical resort vacation although we were housed at Casa de Campo near the city of La Romana.

   

    My Rotary district had partnered with the Rotary Club of La Romana Incorporado in a clean water project so 13 of us traveled there to help install water filters in the bateys. A batey is a village out in the sugar cane fields where the Haitian sugar cane cutters are housed by Central Romana, the sugar company. The filters consist of a large blue pail, two layers of gravel, a layer of sand and a layer of biologicals at the top that kill of pathogenic bacteria.

 

Here I am post-installation of a filter in one of the homes with the mother of the house, her son and Wascar, one of the young men who work with the project in La Romana. Most times, the water being used for drinking and bathing at the bateys is piped from a nearby river with no treatment whatsoever. Diarrhea and skin infections are not uncommon as a result and it has been found that these filters significantly reduce the incidence of these maladies.

 
    When not installing filters, my time was taken up with the children of the bateys. I uploaded 837 pictures upon my return and probably 600 of the pictures are of the children like these three little amigas who held my hand while we walked around when they were not making funny faces at my camera!

The weather was amazing in the DR, especially compared to the snowstorms that were battering the East Coast while I was away. Having a tan made shoveling my driveway a little more bearable when I came home, but only just a little!

Dec 28/10

These ornaments were given to the ladies who take my money at the parking garage where I work. The finish job is rather crappy as it was the night before Christmas Eve and I was tired beyond words as well as sick with a migraine. Hope you are having a lovely Holiday season!

Dec 21/10

My living room at the moment. I sit nestled in with the black cat on the back of my neck and the white cat snuggled up beside me. Not the most comfortable way to sit and stitch sometimes, but it is hard to convince a madly purring Gabby that being all hunched over is not so comfortable for me. 

 Some more ornaments that have emerged from the mess above!

 If you look closely at the "Santa Claus" ornies, you can see the "Meow" ribbon that I used! My ribbon bucket is filled with random ribbon like that because I just never know when it might come in handy.

Now I am busy adding up exactly how many I need to finish as I may be one or two short. I have not mailed any yet so I may be stitching like a mad person on Boxing Day to get my gifts ready for overseas. Yeah, yeah, most people do that BEFORE Christmas but I am not known for that.

Dec 19/10

The result of last night's efforts and a gratuitous cat picture all in one! Tree by Charlie Brown, ornaments by Vee and Gabby the cat! I forget the name of the designer, but I do remember that this design is called a postage design and is found in the 2010 JCS ornament edition.

Dec 18/10

A week before Christmas and Santa's work shop, stitching and finishing division, has exploded in my living room. These four ornaments were finished last night despite my cats' best efforts to eat ribbon and snuggle in to me in ways that they were comfortable, but I was finding it hard to cut, sew and stuff!

On the other upside of my handiwork, I found the scissors that I lost a week ago while talking on the phone. I had searched all over the house because I had been wandering around with them in my hand. In the end, I found them in the couch when I was looking for a needle that I had dropped in there last night. I also painfully found 4 more needles that had been dropped in there long enough that they had a non-scrape-able layer of gunk on them so they went into the trash.

Next up is my darling Cooper the other day, desperate to get inside because her paws were cold. We have been having crazy weather here with lots of swings in the weather. One day it can be well above zero with several (150 or so) mm of rain and other days we get snow. It was not really cold out this day that the photo was taken. I think she was mad at me because I was laughing so hard at her that it was taking forever to take the photo before I let her in. Penelope is behind her and unfortunately I did not capture the bemused expression on her face as she watched Cooper at the door. The expression definitely said, "Lightweight!".



Dec 14/10

Proof that I have not fallen off the planet or stopped stitching:

The Dimension ornament series is complete, in duplicate. My photos of the entire series are not great so here is a little peek. Instead of making my owning cording because that is another thing I dislike doing, I chose to use a holiday themed ribbon that I found at Michael's one of the many times I have been there checking out their bargain bins. I had toyed with attaching snowflake embellishments and bells, but in the end thought that the ornaments were complete on their own.

I usually do not bother with a Christmas tree because I am usually lacking in the Christmas spirit after working amongst Christmas stuff since Hallowe'en and with 3 cats, a tree is a dicey activity. Well, during my vacation, I wandered into an Urban Outfitters in Boston. I was browsing away when I came across a display of Charlie Brown trees. The fact that I burst into laughter told me that I just HAD to buy one.

 So far it has survived, but I have dared to put it on the table that the cats use to access the window sill as you can see by the crazily hanging blinds. I have moved the tree back into the centre of the table a few times already.

Penelope can not bear to be left out of any activity in the house. Here is my house insurance policy that she thought required a little kitty creativity:

I no longer have idea what my policy number might be and I hope that if needed, my broker will be more than understanding when presented with this masterpiece.

Well, back to getting stuff done before heading into retail hell for the evening......

Nov 22/10

Wow! It has been a few weeks since I last posted and weeks before that since I posted anything stitchy. My apologies as I have been stitching away during my 3 week vacation that took me to Boston (see the firefighter photo) for a few days.

My stitching has been focused on the Dimensions bird and postage series that I bought earlier this year. The cross stitching is complete on all 6 of the designs of which I bought two of each. Now I am doing the backstitching and finishing stitches on all them before doing the final finish work. These photos are of the stitched ones so far:

I did make a couple of changes. For instance, in the "Goodwill" one, the ribbon is supposed to have yellow overstitching to add depth, but I disliked the colour combination so I used the main pink colour to make the ribbon look more velvety. The lettering is supposed to be done with the couching stitch and I did do one ornament that way, but the needles and threads get tangled and I get frustrated so the rest are being done in a running stitch instead. The effect of the running stitch is not as pretty, but the stitcher is calmer.

Nov 2/10

There was a false alarm last night at the inn where I am staying in Boston. The firefighters were so nice about getting their photo taken with me especially after I told them that my brother is a firefighter back home. Hopefully this is the craziest thing that will have happened to me on my vacation!

Oct 27/10

Postcard from Afghanistan! What a fantastic item to find in my mailbox today after work! Then I turned on the computer to see that my brother will be home in December and posted to CFB Gagetown. CFB Gagetown is about an hour away from where the rest of the family lives so we are very excited considering some of the alternatives like Edmonton.

Oct 21/10

There has been some stitching going on here, I promise! Nothing is finished enough to photograph just yet so instead I present my carrot muffins that I made last night. My best friend has a huge vegetable garden and she gave me a big bag of carrots last week to have for Thanksgiving. Several of my co-workers took home some of the carrots while these ones:

 became these last night:

I used a basic muffin recipe from my trusty Fanny Farmer cookbook but added a little more sugar and oil because of the shredded carrots that I added to the recipe. Straight out of the oven with a little butter made a little piece of heaven here last night!

Oct 17/10

I have finally been doing some thinking about the house I would like to build on the 10 acre property I have in the country. At the moment, this one is the front runner:

It is a pre-fab cottage built by a local company. There is one bedroom and bathroom at the back with an open kitchen, living room and dining room at the front which you are looking at right now. The view from my lot is a stunning view of the Kennebecasis River. When I was touring this cottage, I could so see myself sitting on the couch on the left side of the house with a fire in the fireplace, taking in the beauty of the sun setting behind the hills that form the valley. My bedroom would be the loft on the second level (you can see the windows of the loft through the upper triangular windows). How lovely it will be to lay in bed and to be able to look out across the valley.

The only problem is as I see it is that there are a few things that I would like that I need to ask the builder about because where it is pre-fab, I do not know how much lee-way I have in getting things like in-floor radiant heat instead of electric baseboard heaters and a on-demand water heater instead of the traditional tank. Oh well, if one does not ask, one will not know!

Oct 9/10

So, the other day I decided to do a little exploring in my own back yard because I am so so so guilty of having travelled far and wide, but not close by. All of my friends and family were at work on Wednesday so I hopped in the car and drove to Alma, NB which is on the edge of Fundy National Park. Here are some photos from my stroll on the beach:

 I was watching my footing because the mud flat/beach varied between muddy and rocky bits as the tide had gone out but the sand was not dry. As I was tripping and squelching along, I spied this little rock. If I had approached it from any other angle, I may never have seen the little face in it.

 This picture was taken from the little boardwalk across the street from where I parked my car. The tide was pretty much at its lowest point. It took me close to 15 minutes to walk from this point to as close as I could get to the water's edge without sinking in the mud.

 The harbour in Alma:

 The view from the restaurant where I had an awesome if somewhat expensive lobster roll:

 Me, thinking "Good Gravy! How far am I from the car?". That is Fundy National Park in the background.



Part 2 Oct 3/10

I was out to my property in the country this afternoon to do some work in and around the apple orchard since it was such a beautiful day here. Most of my time was spent cutting back raspberry canes that were growing around some of the trees. I had just collected up all my bits and pieces when I noticed this little guy scurrying up and down a couple of trees. He stopped to take a long nibble of this apple so I had lots of time to observe and then photograph him while he filled his little belly.

Oct 3/10

My ort jar is about to over flow so I captured its image for posterity before I wander over to the garbage can to empty it out. The reds that you can see are the result of the many Christmas ornaments that I have been working on! Orts have long been a fascination for me. I like to collect them and used to keep them in a large once-was-a-fish-bowl jar that took years to fill. Then, the decluttering inspiration hit so now I use a smaller jar and take photos before chucking out the contents. I mean really, what was the point of keeping all of those clippings except as a reminder of how much stitching I had been doing?

Oct 2/10

Some of my co-workers are entered in the Walk for The Cure this weekend so I did this up for them to raffle off:

The pattern comes from the Oct 2009 The Cross Stitcher and I found the frame at Michaels for a sweet 40% off! No mystery threads this time; I actually used the published floss list to stitch this one. I am tempted to go back and pick up a few more frames because I really like the look of this one even if the fancy matte is actually plastic. For $17.99 less 40%, it more than did the trick!

Sept 28/10

Well, what else to do on a wet and rainy morning besides pay bills and finish several little projects (submitting continuing education tests and fixing my bird feeder)? Oh yes! Update my blog. My needle has been going fast and furious in the evenings these past few weeks:

These first three ornaments are the almost finished versions of the bird stamp Dimension series that I purchased earlier this year. I am doing two at a time because I bought two of each, but have only taken a picture of one of each pair as an example of what I have been up to. The back stitching still needs to be done on all of them so they are far from complete although it is a nice feeling to at least have the main body completed.

 I am fascinated with cardinals these days after seeing a couple of them two years ago. They are making an appearance in our region of the country and I was lucky enough to have some of them in my yard. Birds are such amazing creatures and I am also very surprised that any survive in my yard because, yes, I am one of those cat owners who lets her cats out without bells. Before anyone yells at me, no one in my immediate neighbourhood has problems with mice so there are trade-offs. I used to put bells on my cats until the little beggars figured out how to adjust their collars on their necks so the bells did not ring.

 And who can resist Lizzie Kate? Not me! I have also been playing around with floss and fabric colours, using whatever I have on hand to stitch up these ornaments. I always keep the pattern photos close by while selecting the floss and stitching so that I remain true to the designer's original ideas in terms of colour and constantly refer back to the photos. These ornaments come from L*K's Tiny Tidings VII and XV.

 Last but certainly not least came this beautiful post card from my brother. At first I thought that it was a photo and then I looked at the caption on the back. This picture is titled "A Long Halt" and was painted by Silvia Pecota. You know that our soldiers have been there more than long enough when there are postcards of their missions.......