hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[Lazy Gardener]

My hubby's grandfather did a lot of needlepoint. He'd take a photo of a local ship, and transfer that to plastic canvass, along with the accompanying scenery, and create a pic. Not sure, but I think he was a tatter as well.

 

[Britesea]

Just shows these activities are good for everyone. We create something useful and/or beautiful, and it's a form of moving meditation.

 

[flowerbug]

Just shows these activities are good for everyone. We create something useful and/or beautiful, and it's a form of moving meditation.

in the middle of winter something to do with the hands, like wood carving, crafting of any kind can be important for people who are more physically coordinated and able. i'm a tactile person too and like shapes/colors so my mid-winter tactile thing is sorting beans and if i run out of things to sort i may go as far as putting some of them back together and sorting them again. OCDish for sure... but i know i've got it from Mom as she really likes picking stones off the beach and i do too.

some time ago she was razzing me about having to grow so many beans, but i explained it to her in terms of how much she liked picking stones, the colors and tactile thing and she understood me. *whew*

 

[Britesea]

beans can be beautiful, that's for sure

 

[hqueen13]

Yall are awesome!
My grandfather can do needlepoint, though he usually sticks to the repetitive patterns in the background, and my grandmother would do the designs in the middle. My mom also worked as a paramedic, and there was a guy that used to cross stitch, it was his form of moving meditation to de-stress from the challenges of working the job. He carried it with him. My mother is a knitter, and almost always has several projects going at a time, usually one easy one that she can carry around with her and something more complicated. With her arthritis in her hands, though, she's taken up weaving, and bought a loom, so now she's exploring that (I think I know what all the gifts are going to be this christmas....)
I enjoy working with my hands, and I do knit, but not that often. I have a habit of deciding to do projects that are outside of my skill set, so I struggle for a while before I can manage to get them figured out. I have a pattern for a drop dead gorgeous Aran coat that I want to do, but I fear that it will be the death of me if I attempt it because it is SOOOOOOOOO freaking complicated. It's made up of vertical stripes that are made of different patterns, but none of them have the same number of rows to repeat. The longest repeat is 32 rows, and most of the others are 8 or 10. So I'm going to need to figure out a way to manage the patterns together so that I don't go crazy. There's also quite a few complicated stitches in them as well, including cables and weird slip/stitch/twisty crap. Someday.
The courthouse wedding was lovely. It was disappointing not to be able to celebrate with them, but I'm really glad that we went. We didn't have to wait long at all. It took longer for his dad to park and walk back to the courthouse than the wait for the ceremony. The ceremony took even less time LOL. Then I went to the office and struggled with computers for the next 4 hours. They didn't want to place nicey nicey and do the upgrades that we needed to put on them due to an old program that had been loaded eons ago. Finally got that straight and I headed home, even though I knew Monday morning I was going to have to deal with a lot of crap to get the rest of the setup done. I wasn't staying any later than the 4:30 that it already was though.
Saturday the BF worked, which was a good thing to help offset the vacation hours. Vacation hours don't count towards your total of 40 that meets the requirement to make overtime. Which is really freaking annoying. So the extra hours were a helpful thing. I puttered around and worked on getting the winter clothes moved into their places and the summer clothes packed up. The BF helped me with some of that when he got home, and then he mulched the leaves (I love our little tractor!). We got cleaned up and then ran by Joann's to pick up a bigger wreath for outside for the holiday, and also some winter garland to use after we take down the christmas stuff in the house. I have cute lights that I hang and change during the seasons, and I like to have garland up with some of them, but I didn't have anything for winter. So it will be nice to have something to use now. We went down to TW's for dinner, which was amazing, as always. Stayed way too late, as always. We did get to look at the furniture she had sitting in the barn, and we took 3 end tables. They are all beautiful pieces made of solid wood, so that is nice to have those. I need to get them wiped down and cleaned up, and probably oiled, and then the can go where they will live. I'm looking forward to that, but I haven't had the time to slow down long enough to get it done.
Sunday the BF was kind enough to come with me to do barn chores, which cut my time in half. I'm SO grateful when he helps me because I know he really doesn't like doing it, but he would rather see me get home faster so he helps. We finished all the work and headed back home and had another bit of breakfast, and then I got in the tub and soaked for a bit. Then we napped (see note about way too late Saturday night), and then we got up and headed to his Aunt's for thanksgiving #1. Not having to cook all weekend was nice, but then I didn't have anything for lunches either. I should have tossed together chicken salad, but I wasn't thinking that clearly about the entire situation, either. So it goes.
The BF took off this week, well, until Friday, and he managed to get the threshold replaced on the kitchen door, so that was a good thing. The door frame is a little rotten, but hopefully it will hold out a bit longer so that we can get some funds saved to buy a new door to replace it. The door needs to be replaced anyway, the window is only a single pane of glass, which means it's not really insulated at all. Now he needs to fix the weather stripping and that should be much better!
This afternoon we have to go move a load of hay at the barn. TW is magically fine with us getting 5 bales again. Imagine that. It did fit. And it fits WAY better than the 3 giant round bales that she has sitting in the front. So it's clearly not about how much space the hay takes up. Whatever. At least she's letting us get 5 more. That will last 2 months, and I'm just hoping that we will be able to get another load in there at the end of January. I'm not going to be pleased if we can't get there due to the weather. We'll see how that goes. After we finish stacking that we'll head down to Cowboy and Coyote and clean up manure again so that will be taken care of.
Tomorrow is the BF's birthday, so we're going to do fun stuff tomorrow. It should a relaxing day, which we both need. Thursday we have dinner at his mom's, which I'm kind of glad it's only going to be his immediate family and nobody else. I'm not interested in another huge meal with lots of people. Not that there won't be too much food anyway, but still. Hopefully that morning we can get some other things done. I think I might like to steam clean the carpets since I want to get that done before we decorate, since we'll move furniture around for that anyway. I'd like to build a fire when we do it so that the floor will dry faster. Speaking of that, we still need to clean the stove in the basement, that never got done. He did sweep the chimneys, but we never vacuumed out the stove or cleaned the stove pipe on the inside. Guess that needs to be done soon, too.
Friday morning I'll have my usual barn routine, and then I'm going to have to go to the office for a few hours to have a meeting with someone, and get a little work done. It's extra hours, so I'm not complaining. I should probably argue for extra time and a half for that or something. Who knows what we'll get done this weekend, it looks like there is more rain in the forecast, so we'll see how it goes. We still haven't been able to finish the driveway, hopefully the BF can move some dirt today if it dried out enough. We need to do the final leveling, then get the landscape fabric down, and then get the gravel. Hopefully soon!!!

 

[Britesea]

Whew! I'm exhausted now, lol

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I seriously don't know how you keep up with everything you do! Happy B'day to the boyfriend! Hope ya'll have a wonderful Thanksgiving(s)!

 

[hqueen13]

I'm not really sure either, sometimes.
Well, things didn't quite go as we planned... the BF came down with a cold last week, so he was not feeling very well at all for his birthday. We still did the floats and went out to dinner (he couldn't taste it though... which SUCKS because it was EXPENSIVE). He ended up staying home for thanksgiving though. I went to his mom's and had dinner and then brought home lots of leftovers. He had to work on Friday, as did I, though mine was a lot more laid back than his. If he didn't go to work then he would have lost the vacation pay for Thursday, so even though he still didn't feel good, he had to be there. The weekend was mostly a bust, too, due to him not feeling great and the rain we got. So he barely got some dirt moved around, and that was the only thing he really accomplished the whole week. That was a bummer for sure.
Other than that, things are just humming along. We could both use some extra hours in the next little while, but we'll see what happens. His next check will be tight since he took the vacation days plus thanksgiving, which means he'll have no overtime for that week at all. And me, I just need more money! My coworker is going out of town, so I should be able to pick up some extra hours for her, and there's some other stuff happening in the office that I need to be there for, so that will help as well. I really don't want to add any debt to what I've already got at this point! I'm trying very hard to keep it down this year and stop adding to it. That's not an easy task when the incoming is hardly more than what needs to go out the door.
I am going to meet a client who I have worked with for several years tomorrow. She moved up to the area, and her cat is not doing well, so I'm going to go down and meet her, then meet another friend for lunch after that. It will be nice to hang out with them, even if it's a bit far of a drive.
Really, that's about all that's happening around here. Hopefully we'll start decorating this weekend, or maybe this week if I decide to go into the attic and drag stuff out. Of course, it would help if we could get the stuff put away that's sitting everywhere because the winter clothes still aren't totally put away and the summer clothes back in the trunks yet. There's clothes and trunks all over the spare bedroom, and I can't really do anything else until that's put away. Fun stuff... Maybe I can work on that in the evenings after I get home.

 

[hqueen13]

We finally managed to get more done on the driveway this weekend!! I'm SO happy to have this moving along again. Of course, now we have crazy rain again, but at least we made some big steps forward. We got the first row of the fabric laid out, and then got the retaining wall built in. After that was started, we put in the second row of fabric, and got it all stapled down. The BF graded out the last of the pile of dirt, so there is NO MORE PILE!!!! The last phase will be grading off the sides and getting rid of the old silt fence that is shredded and looks like crap. We still need to back fill the retaining wall, but the BF wants to get top soil for that, of course I have no idea how much that's going to cost, but we'll see what we can find. We actually could use about half a load more of dirt, but I think we can stretch without it. We'll see how it goes. I'm just SO happy to have this continuing to move along. I'm ready to park by the back door and NOT track gobs of dirt into the house constantly!
We did manage to get a tree this weekend, too, which was fun. It's not perfect, but it was only $30, so that's a good thing. We got it put up, but didn't get anything more than the lights on it since we were busy working outside. The weather was clear, and I knew it was going to turn bad today, so I figured we needed to focus on the outside stuff and the inside stuff can be done when the weather is bad. I'm working a bunch in the office to cover for a coworker who is away, which is great for the budget, but not so great for getting things done... Hopefully things will go smoothly and I can manage because I've got too many things that I want to get done!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I'm working a bunch in the office to cover for a coworker who is away, which is great for the budget, but not so great for getting things done...

Isn't that they way it always goes.... When you have the time the money is short - when you have the money - time is short. Sigh....

But congrats on the progress on the driveway!