Something Fishy

I've been stitching steadily but haven't got much to show for it, since I've jumped around from Aesop's Fables to Autumn Sampler to HoHRH, not settling for long on any of them, so I'll wait for a day or two for photos. The cure for lack of focus? New stash! When I went to my LNS on Saturday, I intended simply to buy fibers: blue silk for Aesop's Fables, and the floss for Valerie Pfeiffer's Chick Berry , since I thought that I needed a smaller lighthearted project. The summer is so hot, and a lot of my projects are stitched in lots of greens and golds and browns. I wanted something cooler looking, so I pulled out the Chick Berry chart, which I'd bought some time ago.

While I was at the LNS, I bought some additional stash:

I got a new cranberry sampler from the Sweetheart Tree, a small house sampler (I'm seeing lots of houses everywhere, aren't you, and after all the HoHRH houses, do I even want to stitch any more houses?) from The Village Sampler, a company I'm not familiar with, and Scooba Dooba from Raise the Roof ("because it's fun to say "Scooba Dooba"). I love the design, although it's not my usual thing. My fish love it too, and say that when it's done they'd like it to hang on the wall opposite the fish tank so they have something to look at for a change. Those streaks up the wall of the tank are actually bubbles from the "wall of bubbles" that I've halfway installed. I have been renovating the tank to perk it up, and have been planting live plants which are a bit tricky to deal with. The plants with little leaves are grazed and uprooted by the fish, and the denuded stems tend to rot and foul the water. The grasses work better; for some reason the fish leave them alone. When I get through landscaping and moving stuff around, I'm going to add some more fish. In the meantime, on a hot afternoon, there are worse things than standing up to your armpit, planting grass in the water while the bubbles whoosh by.