Summer's here!

Yes, I STITCHED!!!

I got very little done, but I picked up a needle and fabric and got a few stitches in.

This is Aury's Specialty Stitch Sampler SAL. I started with this one because a) I love it and b) it is the Stitch-A-Long I will be able to catch up on the easiest. I am doing parts 1 and 2 simultaneously. The first part is some double running stitch with queen and norwich stitches and I just could NOT get them placed right. So, by putting in the simple cross stitch border from part 2 I got to the right place. YIPPEE!!! It felt SOOOOO good to stitch!

I loved the sentiments on the short-lived "school's out for summer" blog background, but the colors were just too gloomy. I found a Disney background that was WAY cute but it left my links all whited out and hard to see no matter how I changed the other colors, so that was out. So, here's a nice pretty background until it is time for the beach background in July.

Yes, school is OVER. The last day was a nightmare with meetings and more meetings, most of them very depressing. I finally got home around 8:30 and collapsed. Spent Friday sleeping (until 1PM!!) or watching TV- anything else was too strenuous.

Saturday I went with Mom and Auntie to tea! The shoppe is called The New Leaf in Riverton, NJ. It was a lot of fun. The proprietor keeps a whole collection of hats available so you can look like the "ladies who lunch". So we sat in a beautiful Victorian style room and had a delightful (and way too big!) lunch with tea sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, fruit and pastries, on lovely china with all the accessories. If you're in the South Jersey area I highly recommend!

After a stop at the Amish market in Willingboro, we went to the Nimble Needle in Moorestown. It is a small shop which I'd somehow never visited before. The owner is delightful! The shop concentrates on needlepoint, and has more crewel ( and GORGEOUS!!!) than I've ever seen in a shop before, but she does have some counted cross stitch. I saw a few patterns from my friend Martina Weber of Chatelaine Designs so that really sparked conversation. The cross stitch chart selection is dominated by antique style and reproduction samplers. And, here's where I scored!!! While chatting about reproduction samplers, I mentioned that I was working the Beatrix Potter Quaker Sampler and that she, like every store known to stitching women no longer had it (It's out of print). But, NO!!! She had one copy left that was in a drawer!!! So....... I now own the actual, original chart!!! It's a silly thing, I know, but I will really enjoy marking up the stitcher's journal in the chart and keeping track of my progress that way.

All this running around meant Sunday was another day of rest. My most strenuous activity was putting the bacon burgers from the Amish market on the Foreman grill (YUMMM!!!).

I'm still incredibly tired. Now that I am no longer running on adrenaline, the exhaustion of the last several months has caught up to me big time. But today I begin the summer organizing, sorting and house re-doing. We want new windows, a lot of small jobs done around the house, maybe even get the whole place painted if I can get the other stuff caught up before the end of the summer. Today, in deference to being tired, I am going to go through the house and make lists. I'm also going to get some laundry done and stuff like that. With luck and feeling better, and sticking with Flylady, hopefully the house will look transformed by the end of the summer.

Happy Monday!!!