Saturday Morning

Hello, my little chickadees! I just wanted to tell you that if you never hear from me again, please look for us--me, The EGE, the cats, our house, all the dirt and grass and leaves from the yard, the storage building, both vehicles--somewhere in Mexico. Or even farther south. The South Pacific, maybe. Or Antarctica. The good thing about this hideous wind is that it's clearing out all the fallen leaves. The bad thing? Well, pretty much everything else about it. Here's a photo. Please don't show it to small children, the infirm, or the easily depressed:

That tint down at the bottom is all the dust blowing this way from Lamesa, up in the cotton fields. Probabaly a lot of cow manure in there as well. Bleach. You remember my story about my friend and his endless sinus infection that, when they cultured it, turned out to be caused by particles of cow manure from the blowing dust.

Let's all say "ewwwwwww!"

But for the moment--unless our house is picked up and carried off to OZ--we're all warm and toasty in The Voodoo Lounge. Here's the daybed, with Fat Moe chilling.

For some reason we don't understand, he loves to shred newspaper, so after The EGE finished reading today's paper, we gave it to Moe. He doesn't eat it or chew it; he just shreds it and flings it around. This isn't a representative shot because I'd already picked up most of the little bits.

Here's where I am on the velvet dress/tunic:

and here's what I'm working on for a change up this morning. This coat, remember:

and what I'm doing to add some more color:

(You do know you can always click to enlarge these, right?)

For decades, the split stitch, with all six strands, was the only stitch I used. It's a nice, anal stitch--you can get all picky about the length and about splitting it right in the middle with three strands on each side. This is, of course, one reason I started doing other stitches: to save what's left of my sanity. But sometimes it's nice to be precise, and that's what I'm doing today. If I wanted to be more introspective, I could probably figure out what it is that's drawing me to be more anal-retentive. Eh. Not that interesting.

Well, wish us luck. I hope the fence doesn't blow over--the one on the side of the house is moving a lot, even the poles go two feet into the ground and are encased in cement. It's *that* windy today.

Keep warm & make something fabulous! XO