Really, Universe? Really?

That cold I had after the holidays stuck around and turned into bronchitis. I've been coughing all week because apparently I warranted antibiotics and oral steroids, but not an inhaler or cough suppressant.

Ellie is supposed to have her spay and at least 2, maybe 3, biopsies tomorrow.. along with getting microchipped and her rabies shot. However. Let's play "what's wrong with my kitty's face?" again!

Her left upper lip is swollen and hard and there appears to be an abscess on the left side of her lower jaw, right up against the teeth. So that's going to be a "fun" reveal to the vet in the morning. She was totally fine Thursday. I saw a bit of swelling Friday, but figured she'd gotten tagged in a disagreement with Pixel. And now it's atrocious. I'm hoping we go forward with the spay anyway. Her hormones are just going to keep getting her into trouble otherwise. Might have to hold off on the biopsies though. Dangit.

At least being sedentary this week has been good for critter snuggles and stitching.

See you next weekend, hopefully with good news.

Titles Are Hard Today

I've currently got a massive head that is making it difficult to think. In a few minutes I'm going to go sit in a dark room for a while, but I wanted to get this posted before I forgot.

The little snowman is finished. No sure if he's going to get framed or turned into an ornament.

I"m still irritated with the mistake on the black bear piece, so I started something new that's been in the stash for a while. This wolf is the companion piece to a grizzly bear I did for FuzzyHusband years ago. So far so good with this one.

My sister loves antique shops and recently found some mini pieces. She repainted the rocking chair and table herself and cleaned up the brass pieces. Her hobby is refinishing and repainting life-sized furniture, so little leftover amounts of paint are perfect for minis that she finds. I've got some special plans for these.

And Miss Ellie's lip is doing much, much better. The hair is slowly coming back now. Soon it will be like nothing happened. Now if we can just keep her from landing on her face when she jumps. Silly wee thing.

Back to Black Bear

I dug out the Black Bear cross stitch that I hadn't touched in apparently four years. Whoops. Anyways, this is what it looked like the last time I played with it.

And this is what it looks like today.

I went from being very pleased to firmly irritated very quickly. Those trees on the right hand side should be over two stitches to the right. Somehow I lost count whilst putting in the sky and that threw everything off in the tree tops. And of course I didn't figure it out until trying to flesh out the last large tree before the faint tree line across the bears back. *sigh*

So what has to happen now it I finish all but the last large tree and then sort of fill in the spaces for the last tree, omitting a column of stitching that's 2 stitches by maybe 20 stitches. After that, I'll have to alter the stitched frame around the whole scene.

If the kit had clear DMC labels on the floss, I'd probably rip out that upper corner and restitch it, but it doesn't. So now it's either throw it away in frustration, which I'm not a fan of, or work around the problem. Thus stitching becomes a metaphor for life.

FuzzyHusband suggested that I pull out a small kit and work it up just so I could do a small thing to be happier with. I took his advice and started this snowman.

Just a few more cross stitches to fill him in and then the back stitching and French knots. I will also say that Ellie makes it very difficult to do hand work. This is her current, and favorite, position these days.

That's all for now. I need to get back to catching up with laundry and get the leftovers from dinner put away. See you next weekend!

Happy New Year!

I'm just now starting to feel human again. Apparently the cold running around our area right now likes to hang on for almost 2 weeks.

Speaking of cold, -6 degrees F as a "high" is for the birds. Specifically penguins. This was my view for days.

Staying in bed was pretty much the rule last week.

Here's hoping this coming week is better than the last.