happy new year!

Happy new year! Whew, these 3-day holidays are draining. My friend J and her brother spent Rosh Hashanah with my family, which was perfect because I get bored of seeing just my family for 3 whole days ;) But that means entertaining for three whole days... I can sort of see why my mom doesn't want to have the entire family for sukkot this year, but we have them every year, so it'd be really depressing to not have everyone around for the holiday.

Speaking of sukkot, we built the sukkah today. We've had it forever so everyone's pretty used to the routine of putting it together. We usually have a 5-man crew, more than enough help, but my brother went back to college in the morning, so it was down to 4... and then we lost one to a Giants game. Luckily Sky stepped into the fourth spot, but she was more interested in running off and running laps around the front yard and the neighbor's house than actually assisting. And someone who wasn't much help decided to teach her how to punch the gate open, so she kinda knows how to escape the backyard now if you don't close the gate 100%... I can't wait until tonight, because there's nothing more fun than chasing a huge black dog down the street in the dark. Luckily we don't get many cars on our street or we'd really kill my brother for this one.

So today's a pretty sad Sunday, because aside from building the sukkah and doing some stitching I have to work today. I have to take 6 vacation days for the holidays this year, and I really don't want to lose 1/3 of my vacation time when I'm not even going on vacation, so my boss lets me work Sundays to make up the time off. But I still hate working Sundays, it means I have a very busy week!

I did manage to get a lot of stitching done yesterday and today... I'm practically finished with Fat Cat, just need to finish up the backstitching and find one last color for the nose. I started LK's February blocks flip it, and probably finished 40% already. I'm not in love with all the LK monthly flip it blocks, but the colors are so much fun that I'm stitching them anyway, and hopefully I can find someone to give them to when I've finished.

I also started one of my biggest projects to date, the Bent Creek snappers of all 12 months on one piece of fabric. Some random Friday in June I was googling for a LNS to go pick up some overdyed flosses since I had the afternoon off, and I was sooo pleasantly surprised to find that a new shop had opened up on Long Island! Finally, something within a reasonable driving distance - previously I was driving up to Connecticut if you could believe that! So it was a happy, happy day when I found the Lazy Daisy Stitchery in Rockville Center. Even though it's a half-hour away for me that's not so bad!

Anyways, the BC snapper months are all stitched up nice & pretty on one looong piece of fabric behind the counter at the Lazy Daisy, and I really liked it. I'd previously stitched a bunch of them as solo pieces but didn't love them as individuals... all together though they look stunning, so I (somewhat foolishly) decided to stitch them all as one big piece. Of course this was back in June or July but I didn't start until this morning, right? But I'm going to a Sit & Stitch at the shop on Thursday, so my goal is to at least finish July before then so I'll have 1 month done.

I've got plenty of stitching to do, so I'm off. Stitch on!

Kim