Stormy day

Wow!  That pretty much sums up the beginning of my yesterday starting at 4 AM, when I woke up to the loudest clap of thunder I've ever heard!  I honestly thought there had been an explosion in the house, it was that loud! Followed by another hour or more of lightening and thunder with intermittent downpours of rain.  I'm not sure how much rain we got from that storm but it had to have been 3 or 4 inches. Flash flood warnings later in the day in an area about 20 miles north of us, but no problem here.

Well, since I was awakened at 4 AM, and hadn't returned to sleep by 5 AM, I decided I might as well get out of bed and get on with the day.  I accomplished all the jobs I'd set out for myself--finished cleaning, grocery shopping, baked a cake, and got ready for the Handwork Group who arrived at 6:30 (PM, that is).

I had such a good time with them.  Six members of the Guild came over with binding to sew, cross stitch to count, and embroidery to stitch. We took over the entire basement--I'd banished Don to the upstairs of the house and he didn't mind too much!--and talked about our cats and dogs and the crazy things they do, our very intelligent and oh, so cute grandkids, a little bit about quilting and sewing, and most surprising to me, we had a little discussion about poop!  Cecil told the story about a little boy visiting a sheep farm.  He held up one of the sheep pellets and solemnly informed his grandmother, "This is not a blueberry!"  We all laughed so hard we nearly fell off our chairs! For those who've never seen sheep poo, here are a few pellets! Looks a lot like rabbit and deer poo. And blueberries!

This was my project for last night:    

I'll make up the embroidered runner and put it for sale in my Etsy shop in time for Christmas, I hope. I usually do embroidery with 2 strands of floss but this pattern recommends using #8 perle cotton. What the heck, I thought, I'll try something new. And I love it!  It's bringing a much nicer texture to the embroidery, and I don't have to struggle with pulling one strand at a time out of the 6 strand floss. This is what I accomplished last night, both at the group and for a couple of hours afterward while watching several episodes of BBC's "London Hospital."  I'll be doing more work on Santa today as well.  

Not much else going on here today, since all the housekeeping chores are finished.  I want to spend some time with my on-line Craftsy class on quilting feathers before I begin working on the AAUW quilt.

For sure the quilting will be started sometime this weekend!

So, it looks like a bit of a leisurely day for me. Maybe we'll even order pizza for dinner!  That's my kind of cooking!  I hope you have a good day as well, and a better weekend coming up.