I just had to respond to Meari's comment on my last post saying perhaps my appliances are messing with my head. I hadn't thought of this, but it must be the explanation! You see, we couldn't get the old washer hose off the spigot to install the new one. After much effort, cursing from my son, money spent on items to remedy the situation, and general mucking about, I discovered that either the leak had magically repaired itself or it was in the hot water hose after all. So I had my son hook everything back up and after a bit more cursing and complaining I have a working washing machine again. Strange thumping noises are coming from underneath it, but I think that may have to do with being kicked. I love my kids, but sometimes I just want to strangle them.

I've lost count of the number of weeks I've been working on this. Only 85 columns to go until I get all the way across. My goal is to get there by the end of June, which I may still be able to do if I can get a bunch done today and tomorrow. That sick week really threw me off!

And the TV fixed itself. Beats me what was wrong with it.

Labels: Tower of Stony Wood

Yesterday the TV suddenly decided to produce static instead of the crappy sound it had been producing. There's still a picture and we get sound off the DVD player. I spent far to much time last night messing with cables to no avail. I finally gave up and hooked up the TV from my room. Which actually has pretty good sound, but is small and the picture is crappy instead.

We've had problems with the sound before and it was usually caused by an inadvertent push of a button on the remote which did something funky. Unfortunately, I don't know where the remote is -- although it is possible one of the cats does. So I unplugged it. I'm hoping after letting it sit for a bit it will be as easy to fix as the printer. I found a web forum and tried the easiest suggestion, which worked like a charm and I now have black print again. The fix? I changed the media type from plain paper to photo paper.

And speaking of broken things. Here's an example of the way my life tends to go. I finally acquired a new dryer after being without one for years and would you believe the next day the washing machine broke? Well, not really the machine itself, I guess. The water line sprung a leak, which is easy to fix, but it still renders the machine unusable. See, I simply can't win! But I just had to laugh when I discovered it.

I've been (very) slowly plugging away at my website and have (mostly) finished the Rotation page. Eventually I'll have links to all the projects, but for now the only page I have is for The Tower of Stony Wood.

I'm finally starting to feel better after a week or so of being sickly. Very little got done stitching wise, and I even went two whole days without checking my e-mail! I was concerned I might be suffering delayed withdrawal, but probably not since the little one seems to have contracted whatever it was. I did start taking the pills again, though. More because I was starting to feel very agitated mentally and was crying a lot. I actually choose Prentice Alvin to read because I thought it would be funny and I wouldn't want to cry. Such was not to be, I started crying while reading the acknowledgements!

Once I started stitching again, I got going like gang-busters and did over 1000 stitches yesterday. The dragon not only has a head, but also the remainder of his body. I've decided to call him "Bugs" since I spent a bit of time staring at that single blank eye before I got the second one in, and it was jumping right off the fabric. It's not so bad now that he has two, but the name is going to stick.

I almost didn't think I'd be able to continue on with this one. My printer has decided it is no longer going to print black. I made a special trip to Staples, braving the beach traffic, to get a new printer cartridge. Alas, $13.50 and multiple head cleanings later, still no black. It probably needs a new print head. Or perhaps I really did damage the printer by continuing to use it after it told me it had no ink. Or, more likely, my son did something that broke it! Fortunately, it still prints in color and I discovered I can paste the portion I want to print into my photo-editing software and change the black to something else. The working copy isn't exactly crisp, but it'll do.

My emergency shopping trip wasn't a total bust, however, since I also picked up new bathing suits for the little one and myself. I was even happy with the one I found, the only two piece they had for someone of my (ahem) stature and it doesn't look half bad. Although the top does cling to things I'd rather remain hidden, it's 1000 times better than the one I got last year, which exposed rather than clinged. I really like the design on the top as well. It looks a bit like something from a B. K. Lusk painting, what with the concentric squares and little dots. We also stopped by EB Games and I got the King's Quest Compilation and convinced Randi that she should get Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories (rather than yet another Pokemon game). The Perils of Rosella was the first computer game I ever played and I've been wanting the earlier ones ever since. Who knows when I'll get around to playing them, but for $10 I couldn't resist.

And since I had the camera out I thought I'd take a picture of the stash I received today from J&J Collectibles.

I got Rosewood Manor's And a Forest Grew and a fat half of Belfast to stitch it on. I've been pining for this one and decided to treat myself during the sale. I haven't bought charts for quite a while, but I wanted to pick up these before they disappeared. Paw Printings Knot Another Sampler, Abbey Lane A New Beginning and Mirror, Mirror, and Midsummer Night Designs Lady Prim and Proper, The Monkey Sampler, and Heaven Above. I've also decided to restart the Days of Advent Sampler and so got a fat half of 40 count ivory linen for that and also a few NPIs I wanted to check against the ones I have, since my threads seem so muted compared to the WIPs I've seen. Fortunately they all check out, except for the 921. The colors didn't scan true, but the difference between the two still shows up and it's much more marked in real life. I think I'll go through the rest of the NPIs for this project and see if there might be a problem with any of the others. The labels are quite different, so hopefully that will give me an indication if I've got any other off colors.

Labels: Days of Advent Sampler, Tower of Stony Wood

I did 50 rows of one and a half pages this week (about 5800 stitches) due to only working one day. Monday was a holiday here in the US and I stayed home with my daughter Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It turns out she has strep throat. She didn't have a fever, so I was very surprised when the doctor told me. She complained that her head, stomach, and throat hurt, but she was pretty much her normal self. Except she didn't complain about being hungry every 5 minutes and she mostly stayed in bed or on the couch reading, watching TV, and playing her Gameboy. Normally she's bouncing all over the place. She didn't even go outside to play on Sunday or Monday. I'm glad now I didn't make her go to school, although I felt bad waiting until Friday to take her to the doctor. Now I'm worried that I have it, since my throat has been bothering me off and on since Thursday. And fairly badly last night, but not so much today. When I asked about picking it up from her the doctor said it was unlikely because of my not having the receptors or at least that's what it sounded like he said.

Anyway, enough about that. Here's The Tower of Stony Wood. A bit over half way across the top.


I'm almost to the dragon's head, which I'm looking forward to stitching.

Today will be the twelfth day off my meds and things seem to be okay. Although I think my experience at work on Tuesday and a desire not to have to deal with that again contributed to my decision to allow my daughter to stay home. I am having trouble with my sleep patterns again, though. But that has ever been the case with me, so I'm not too concerned about it at this point. The good news is that I picked up my house yesterday for the second week in a row and even managed to do a bit more than the week before. Then I went to the store and the pool. I normally don't move on the weekend. I also find that I'm losing patience with my two older kids, although not losing control and screaming or anything, I just find that their whining and complaining is annoying me much more than usual. On the flip side, I've had more patience with my younger daughter, who seems to be constantly interrupting what I'm doing because she needs/wants this, that, or the other. I don't believe I've yelled at her when she does that since I stopped taking the meds. Instead, I've been getting up and helping her. I'm ridiculously proud of that, isn't that sad?

Labels: Tower of Stony Wood