Love the One You're With

A few of you asked what my favorite new/old projects were and what I intended to stitch first. My answer would have to be "it depends..." I've never been a fan of a rotation; when I'm ready to stitch, I like to poke around through my treasures and select what appeals to me on any given day. I tend to lose interest in a project temporarily after about three weeks of concentrated stitching, and because I have so many WIPs (many more than I showed you during the challenge), it might be a long time before I return to a project that I've set aside. Also, some of you hooted at my classification of the last two snow projects as "small." To me, jumbo, large, medium, small and tiny relate not only to the stitch count or dimensions of the finished work, but how dense the stitching is, how many color changes there are, and how complex the stitches are (more and more designers are adding speciality stitches--have you noticed?). It's relative--I've got about 30 WIPs going--so I do my mental scale related to my other projects.

Here are the three I'm concentrating on right now, with before and after photos. My very favorite "large" project is Ann Rayner. Here's the before, where I left off on Friday.


And Ann Rayner today.


My current "medium/large"--Sous le Soleil as I left off Friday:


Sous le Soleil today:


The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat (small/medium) Friday:


And the Gingham Dog today:


Sunday salad. We've been doing well with our salads. My goal is for us to eat more good salads and also consume all the stuff we buy so that we're not wasting food by having it turn into jelly in the crisper. Last night was the end of most of it, so I combined what was left--romaine, some radishes, sunflower seeds, a few Kalamata olives and slivers of red onion--and then made homemade blue cheese dressing with the leftover blue cheese from the salad earlier in the week. This is not low-fat blue cheese dressing, but a little goes a long way and if you eat it, you will never buy that bottled stuff, with its preservatives, uniform, stamped-out "chunks" of blue cheese and pourability again. This is the real deal: stuff that has to be spooned onto your salad. (1/2 c. of mayo, 1/4 c. of buttermilk, 2 tbsp. of sour cream, 3 tbsp of olive oil, 3 tbsp of red wine vinegar, 2 tsp of sugar, pepper to taste. Wisk those until smooth, then gently fold in 4 oz of crumbled blue cheese. Allow to chill for several hours to let the flavors develop, but you can eat it right away also.)


Elvis loves to snuggle,and here Pink seems to be using Elvis as a Pillow Pet.
It's a sleepy Sunday here--cold and sunny out. I think I'll stitch a little more!


Oh, to answer a couple questions I've been asked: the banner photo is the upper left-hand corner of "Christinia Cathcart." And the cats and the bunnies get along fine--mostly they ignore each other's existence. At night when I let them out of their room to run around while I clean their cages and floor, they're on the loose with the cats. Occasionally Peaches and Chester will engage in a game of chase and a nose bump or two, but mostly they pay no attention to each other. I've seen Elvis lying calmly next to Yazziebear under the bed nearly touching.

See you later in the week--perhaps with a new start!?