Another Whoops

What happened to Tuesday? It probably snowed. I do know that I had my hair cut. The walk to the salon was awful. Crazy nutty things have been happening at the homeless shelter that I volunteer at. I've been doing extra shifts during the different storms when people can get in. Two times we had to call in Para-medics to treat a serious problem. That takes a bit of recovery time on my part, because I find it stressful.

So I buried myself in stitching. I pulled out the sewing machine and finally worked on a shirt for Steve.

Today's goal is to get the button holes and hem finished.

I also have been working on this little piece. It is an abstraction of a wandering garden with a central pond.

water and daylillies, sort of

I like the upper pink swirl of 'coral bells' and the bottom clump of 'veronicas'

The paper size is about 6" wide and 16" long. The paper surface is made of torn tissue pieces glued together with rice starch paste. I have been using bits of embroidery floss left over from other projects and am now dipping into my regular stash of threads to complete it.

This morning Steve (mostly) and I were outside getting snow off the lower roof. The gutters have dammed up with ice and any melting is leaking back into the roof and down inside the office window. It dripped on both sides of the window. In the course of doing that, we realized the oil tank was buried under snow. We checked to see how full the tank was and it isn't. It is empty. We then tried to clear a path from the sidewalk to the tank, but the snow banks at the road are huge and solid ice. Hopefully the delivery men will be willing to climb over them. In the meantime, no showers for us because the water is heated by the non-existent oil. I've turned the heat down to 59 degrees. Brrr.

I've included a few photos of a piece I have shown before. I worked on it two summers ago, but with Karen's classes, I decided the front veil needed more holes and embellishments.

The circles still interest me alot. I see some connections in the stitching on the this piece and the newer paper piece. I like the textile surface in my hands better, but the paper is stiffer, allowing for less mucking about with a hoop to keep a circle a circle or a straight line straight.

I have had second thoughts on the read aloud book "The 100 year old man who climbed out of a window and disappeared" We are reading another Scandinavian book aloud and I was starting to get bored again. While sliding my way home from somewhere, I was thinking about why these two books didn't work for me, because there is certainly nothing wrong with the writing style or descriptions of either author. It occurred to me that perhaps the plot line is more in the style of a Northern Saga, encountering travails, conflicts, odd ball people and perhaps gods (in the form of world leaders). Perhaps there isn't meant to be a single conflict or a single arc? Perhaps the stories are linked more for their style and main characters than their effort to reach a resolution? Steve read out another chapter in our current book, "The Year of the Hare" by Arto Paasilinna and I thought of this as I listened. I liked it much better. In that case, the 100 year Old Man might not be the disaster I said it was. Just don't read it aloud.