The Gamut

Happy Saturday! Hope you're all doing fine. This post will be about emotions that run the full range: happy, sad, horrifying, scary, amazed, and glad with a good dose of setting things in motion. So let's go!

Housework first..

Linda and Jackie have hopefully been sent their prizes for winning the contest a couple of weeks ago. Ladies, let me know if you haven't.

Apologies are due Carol and Lee. I went to the place on blogger to fix a few things and discovered that your comments were not being published with Carol's considered spam! Argh! I think I have fixed the issue. Sorry, ladies.

Guess what? I have another huge finish and that is Song of the Seasons by LHN, a mystery sampler released in 2013. So happy this is finished!! It is filled with mistakes, lol. I also seem to have added to the height of this by 2 stitches! I also lost the patterns a couple separate times, not to mention 'borrowing' floss from the kit for something else. At any rate, here it is and it's very pretty!

I love it! Remember I considered leaving the bottom portion off? Well I'm glad I kept it. Now I've seen this stitched in many different fabrics or the houses stitched in blue overdye floss. It was beautiful! I love red houses so I'm quite happy with my houses. 

So I've kind of kept to my stitching plans. Instead of a Christmas ornament from the 2013 JCS ornament issue, I instead stitched another for the camp on Instagram, from the 2004 issue. From BBD, this is their 2004 ornament...

The linen is called Molly, 32ct and is from a dyer I'd never heard of. It might be something Notes, I tried to find the bag it was in. As for camp, I'm not sure I'll join in for the next 2 challenges but we'll see.

Along the way I had a hankering for a new start so I pulled out Noel Sampler by WTN&T..

That is all I've stitched. I'm not sure of the fabric but it's 36ct. 

And here's progress on the Mighty Acorn...

I've reached the house so I'm more than halfway done. By Blackbird Designs. 

So I've kept to my plans with the big finish and Mighty Acorn. I stopped posting on the SALs I was with when I was in Facebook jail and that continues. I didn't have a summer start on solstice day because I was determined to finish Song of the Seasons.

Alright, here comes non-stitchy news!

Yes, a bear, a black bear! And not far from where I live. In fact, he/she was caught wandering around a neighborhood not far from this shopping center, my neighborhood. That was a little scary! My head is on a swivel everytime I leave in the morning for work. He crossed a highway and sauntered back into a creek and back into the mountains. The only wild animals I've ever seen around my house were javelinas, skunks, roadrunners, coyotes, and raccoons.

However, about a week later from the above sighting, a man was mauled south of us in the pines by a large black bear. He lost his life. The bear was killed by a neighbor who had a gun. I'll spare you the grisly details. The man was building a home and was sitting down drinking his coffee when the bear walked up behind him and grabbed him. Just horrifying. I'm now spooked to go hiking.

On the sad spectrum which still stings and is very emotional, I lost one of my cats..

My big orange cat Bubba. I came home from work last week of May to find him dead. He'd had some health issues, diabetes being one of them and he was on medication so it was a shock. I cried that whole evening. I couldn't find a box big enough to put him in. I had him cremated and he now resides on the fireplace mantel. It's never easy and I still have Mama who is 15 and Momo is 14. It's still hard to talk about Bubba.

Let's go on to happier stuff. I finally got in to see a lawyer about the family home. When my dad died, I was supposed to put the his assets (the house) in probate. I didn't. Instead my daughter and I moved in, and I paid off the mortgage and started paying property tax. Needless to say, we have to go through probate before we can sell the house. I'm going to have the lawyer do all this because I can do probate on my own but I don't want to mess things up. It'll be 6-9 months I'm hoping, to settle things. I feel better now because I've put the whole thing in motion. It had been taking up a lot of space in my head. Since my brothers and I have a good relationship, it should go well.

And what was I amazed about?!

Ringo Starr!! The Beatle! 

He's on tour with a lot of other well-known musicians and they made a stop here in my town of 48,000 people. I asked my daughter to come with. Wow! A lot of great music from the 70s, 80s. I sang aloud with all of it and my daughter couldn't help but tap her foot to the music. Mind you, she's 28! I walked around humming Yellow Submarine for days on end, haha! It was great, the tickets were not bad. Here's a pic with Ringo in the middle, click on the picture to see better...

He's right below the pianist on top. Ringo has dark clothing on. One of the best times of my life. I'm so glad I got to see a Beatle. That might be a good tombstone epitaph..I Got To See A Beatle! Haha.

Here's my daughter on the left and myself on the right

So much fun!!

And that's all she wrote.

It's been an odd June. Our temps have been in the 80s and not the high 90s as it usually gets. We're hoping we get our monsoon season but the weather people think it might be pretty mild. I'm hoping for a very boring July with no surprises but maybe happy surprises!

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans!! Happy stitching to everyone! 

See you soon!