My Last Exchange For A While

I just dropped a long-overdue [nearly a month and a half] scissor keep exchange off in the mail and a slightly overdue [2 weeks] ornament exchange off, as well.  I am finding that I can't rely on my stitching mojo as much as I used to.  I come home from work worn to a frazzle and good for little more than settling down to watch a DVD.  In the morning before work, housework seems to take longer, almost completely eliminating the relaxing hour of stitching before breakfast.  The weekends are either full of errands or scenes of total collapse and vegging out.  And I am reading and gardening more, which cuts into my stitching time.   As I move along into my 60s, there seem to be several shifts taking place.  The upshot is that I am no longer a reliable trading partner and will be retiring from the field.  Lately, what stitching time I have, I want to devote to my projects.  Once, I used to do a lot of gift stitching.  No longer: now I seem to want to stitch only for my own pleasure.  I wonder if everyone goes through self-centered stages like this every so often.  I am thinking that after decades of being a wife, a mother and a teacher,  all roles focused on meeting the needs of others, I am finally demanding a little "me-appreciation" time and it has leaked into my stitching habits as well.  This doesn't exactly make me a kinder, gentler person ... but I do find I am less irritable, which can't be such a bad thing, either.  

Further Progress: Black'd Skie

Block 4

I am still very focused on this particular piece and am enjoying it thoroughly.  Here I am in the middle of Block 4.  With any luck I shall have this block finished by the end of the week and the entire piece completed by mid-July.  I have switched out a few of the colors on Block 4, using Cinnamon for the entire alphabet.  I didn't quite like the way the letters, as originally charted, mirrored and then didn't mirror the bands separating the rows of lettering.  "Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds" but in a sampler I prefer order and, yes, consistency.  So in my version, the lettering is all one color, Cinnamon, and contrasts with all the bands.  And the text below the alphabet is Cauldron, just like the text in Block 1, and as will be the text in Blocks 5 and 6.  Little-minded perhaps, but orderly and pleasing to my personal aesthetic.

I am using the called for silks for this piece, most of which are The Pure Palette Baroque Silk though there are also two Thread Gatherer Silk'n'Colors [Tuscan Olive and Wart Frog] used as well.  The Pure Palette Silks are new to me and I am finding them a joy to work with.  They cover and lay well, are not at all prone to knotting and twisting, and feel lovely and soft in the hand.  At $4.25 for a 15 yd skein, it's hardly outrageously expensive.  The silk separates into three plies, each of which in turn can be plied down to three plies, for a total of nine plies.  For the purpose of working on high count linens, that's 9 x 15 yds which equals 135 yds of silk which works out to approximately three cents a yard.  Compare that to the $7.29 for a 5 yard skein of 12 ply Belle Soie Silk [approximately ten cents a yard when using 1 ply on high count linen] and you have a real bargain.  Now granted, Pure Palette silks are not hand-dyed or over-dyed like Belle Soie and will never replace them in my stash.  But The Pure Palette line has a very nice range of colors and I can see my way to starting up a collection of these silks as well, especially for use on samplers.  I purchased mine by ordering from A Needle in a Haystack, a brick and mortar LNS in California.  They provide excellent phone order service with speedy delivery for those not in the immediate area [like me, 3000 miles on the other coast]

Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie

Black'd Skies back in May

It's been a long time since I posted about any actual stitching progress ... since mid-May, as a matter of fact. The latter part of May was a near total write-off: long hours at work, too exhausted to stitch when at home, falling asleep in front of the DVD player/TV most nights.  Early June was somewhat better: working on Black'd Skie intermittently ... sometimes for no more than 30 minutes in the course of the day as opposed to my average stitching time of two hours daily.  My pace has picked up a bit this last week though.  Here is what it looked like the last time it was photographed with just the upper band and Blocks 1 and 2 stitched.  You can see Block 2 in its entirety and only a bit of Block 1 but you get the idea.  Well, here it is what it looks like today with Blocks 1, 2 and 3 complete and the outline of the borders of Blocks 4, 6, and 6 sketched in as well as the bottom band stitched.  Either my math was wrong or the fabric count was mislabeled, because I have more blank fabric on the right and at the bottom [having started with my usual to and a half inches in and down at the top left corner.  Since I am using one strand of silk and it is covering very nicely, I suspect the fabric is really a 36 ct rather than 32ct as marked.

Black'd Skie as of 6-23

Most of the time I am a devout rotation stitcher, craving the novelty of something different everyday.  But every so often I go on jags of just wanting to stitch one thing and one thing only.   After such a long period of little or no stitching, I am finding it very restful to pick up the same piece day after day.  None of the pressures of choice, no need to re-focus on something quite different.  For example, the two other pieces in my "current" stitching bag are a Japanese Kogin Tea Cozy, using straight stitches on the despised AIDA and a very colorful band sampler from SANQ, whose next step is a band of strawberries formed with Queen stitches - I think I'll wait a bit longer before tackling that!

Alas, I shall have to start a new project this weekend.  An exchange for which I thought the mailing deadline was 7/4 actually had a deadline of 6/15 and I got one of those dreaded "just wondering how you are doing" e-mails about it.   It's a simple enough project and if I really put mu mind to it, I can have the piece stitched over the weekend and assembled [a very simple sewing finish] by Monday and sent off on Tuesday.   

Tag, You're It

Eva tagged me and asked me the 11 questions below.  I need to answer them, then write up 11 questions of my own, and tag 11 people so they can answer them.  Here goes!

1.  Where is your favorite place to stitch?  In my good old oak straight back chair in front of the TV ... unless, of course, I am on vacation and then it's in a wicker chair on a terrace/porch/lawn overlooking a lake/river/ocean!

2.  What is your favorite shop (brick and mortar or on-line) to purchase your supplies?  Stitchery Row in Endicott, NY [Brick & mortar] and 123 stitch [on-line]

3.  What is your favorite specialty stitch?  Queen's Stitch - they are so pretty and a challenge!

4.  Which specialty stitch do your least enjoy?  any ribbon embroidery stitches ... mainly because it wounds my ego that I can't come up with consistently well made stitches.

5.  French knot, colonial knot or Mill Hill knot?  French knot!

6.  How much stitching time to do get per day or week or month?   I try to stitch an average of 1-2 hours per day

7.  Do you keep a stitching journal and if so, what do you include?  I used to do so but then blogging replaced the need for a journal ... and with pictures, too.

8.  Besides counted cross stitch, what other forms of needlework do you do?  Crewel, embroidery, counted canvas, and hardanger.  I can crochet and quilt and barely knit too, but haven't done any of that that in a long time!

9.  When did you start stitching?  and why?  I started with needlepoint in my early twenties and just went crazy from then on.  I love all textile arts.  I even tried to learn to weave and still have a table-top four harness loom that I will resurrect in my retirement for a second attempt.  My first attempts tended to produce place mats that were 14" wide at one end and 6" wide at the opposite end

10.  Do you rotate your stitching projects or are you a 'one-at-a time' stitcher?  Had you asked me that a month ago, I would have said rotate.  But I am going through one of my "one-at-a-time" jags at the moment, stitching exclusively on Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie for the past two weeks.  Sometimes, a project just grabs me by the throat and won't let go.  In the past, it has almost always been a Teresa Wentzler project that has that effect.  Though, three or four years ago, I spent all of January and February stitching four Sue Hillis "charmed" Santas one after another ... it was the stitching equivalent of chain-smoking.

11.  How many UFOs, and WIPs do you have?  I am in the middle of my year of the UFO Challenge: the Class Projects.  A quick glance at my sidebar will reveal just how many class projects I have started and then abandoned as something flashier caught my eye.  The sad thing is I truly want to finish all but one of these projects and really enjoyed the classes.  Hence I shall work doggedly till I have finished them all.  This may take a year or two, since class projects tend to be BAPs.

Now for my own questions:

1.  Do you enjoy designing projects of your own?  Over the past few years, I have become something of an amateur designer.  Sometimes, it's because I am inspired by a technique or a stitch I have discovered [as was the case with my Fertile Circles Needlebook WIP] or a found object [as was the case with my Beach Find Pansies using oyster shell fragments as the center of the pansies] or just the need to make frugal use of scraps of linen and floss [as in my Riona's Bookmarks design] and sometimes, it's because what I want isn't commercially available [as with some of my Quaker ornaments for my Bride's Tree series].  And at other times, I re-design a chart to make it more my own.  This usually happens with samplers: changing borders, switching motifs, replacing the text.  While I will never be a player on the commercial scene, I do manage to amuse myself.

2.  How often do you find yourself swapping out fibers:solid for overdyed, silk for cotton, etc.?  Very very often.

3.  Do you enjoy using "different" specialty fibers, e.g.: bamboo floss, velvets, silk ribbons, metallics and the like?  For ornaments and such I like a little glitz, so bring on the metallics, the braids and petite velvets.  And for samplers and small seasonal pieces, I really love the soft sheen of bamboo floss, that is when I am not using my favorite silks.

4.  Have you ever stitched on fabrics "outside the box"?  As a seamstress as well as a needleworker, I find I will sometimes use a "sewing" fabric  for needlework, usually gauzes or dressmaking linens or cotton broadcloths [thank God for Ott Lites with magnifiers] or even on burlap and screening. 

5.  Is there any form of needlework that, try as you might, you can't quite master?  For me, ribbon embroidery is always a hit or miss affair.  I frog more than I stitch.

6.  Are there other textile arts on the horizon that you want to explore?  Absolutely: weaving, spinning and knitting.

7.  Is it really necessary to have more than a dozen pairs of embroidery scissors?  Again, absolutely, I feel about scissors the way most women seem to feel about shoes and handbags.

8.  What is your favorite non-framing finish?  That's a tough one.  I make many small seasonal pieces into tote bags.  But I also love small pin pillow or bean bag finishes.  And then there are biscornus.  And I invested in that wonderful scrap booking tool, the Crop-a-dile, so I could make the eyelets in floss tags more neatly.  And what could be more satisfying than a beautifully centered flat finish ornament?  

9.  Do you select your vacation destinations based on the locations of needlework shops and tea shops?  Though this is my husband's deeply cherished belief about me, the truth of the matter is that I always research LNS' and tea shops in the area after he has selected the destination.  Is it my fault that I can almost always find some?

10  If you could plan the very finest of stitching cruises, what would it be like?  Mine would be aboard the American or the Mississippi Queen steamboat and stops would include the American Quilting Museum in Paducah, Kentucky as well as stops at various sites that had impressive displays of needlework throughout American history.  We might start in Kentucky and wend our way to the Mississippi River and from there on to St. Paul.  I  would have several instructors on board so that there would be something for everyone, from wet behind the ears novice to the most snooty elitist.  I would concentrate on North American forms of needlework, both historical and contemporary.    And the food would have to be superb and there would be a three or four course tea served every afternoon and the night-life would revolve around rag-time piano bars and jazz combos.  I would dispense with gambling ... after all who would want to risk losing their stash money?  I might even invite Monica Ferris to stage a stitching mystery night a la the Betsy Devonshire novels one evening.

11. How many stitching blogs do your read daily?  There are about 30 blogs on my reading list but of course, not everyone posts every day, so I would guess I read about ten a day.

BONUS QUESTION. What is your favorite needlework related website?  Mine is the Caron site.  They have such interesting articles about textile articles, beautifully archived.  I do love their projects and free charts.  It is such a dense site with so many menu options that you can easily pass an hour or two on the site before you know it.

Well, that does it for my own questions, now to find someone who hasn't already been tagged and ask them all these questions.

Returning Incrementally

I never did post any monthly goals for May, or for June, for that matter.  It was just as well that I didn't bother, since none of the May goals would have been met.  Very little stitching has been going on since the second week of May.  Indeed, the only piece I have worked on at all has been Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie and even that wasn't much.  The dark green fill [Perfect Palette's Swamp Thing] of the tombstone in Block 3 was boring in the extreme and I barely completed a row a day on those rare days that I picked up the piece.  Things are slowing down a bit at work, though, classes have ended and most of the end-of-year reports and updates have been completed.  Just a few odds and ends need to be cleared up before starting the big push for next September's classes.  So, I'll just set three goals for the remainder of June:

1. Finish up block 3 of Black'd Skie

2. Finish up the scissor keep exchange ... already past due.

3.  Start and finish a Christmas bird ornament exchange ... due in early July.

The heat and humidity have really worn me out, though.  We didn't get our air conditioner window units in till last week, so my husband and I have been suffering with heat-induced lethargy.  The garden on the other hand has been thriving with all the heat and the rain.  The zucchini plants are huge and beginning to climb the trellis.  I already see one nice large blossom.  The broccoli plants are nearly 18" tall at this point and the tomato plants are thriving.  My tomato cages will arrive by Fedex this week and not a moment too soon..  The basil, rosemary and chives are also doing quite well.  I will be planting my second sowing of lettuce this weekend as well as some miniature carrots.

On the personal front, my husband and I have been kitten sitting for my daughter.  As some of my readers may already know, my daughter and my sister-in-law are the co-founders of a Trap-Neuter-Return feral cat management group called Four Paws Good.  Whenever they can catch a litter of kittens early enough, they foster the kittens and find good adoptive homes for them after neutering the little dears.  Well, my daughter had been fostering four very sweet kittens just about the time she was getting ready to move.  She had nursed the runt of the litter through a near fatal bout of pneumonia and the other three through the trauma of having been removed from their mother before weaning [by a well-meaning little boy who thought he was rescuing abandoned kittens] and needed a safe place to keep them throughout her move.  So we have had them for a week and a half ... she'll be taking them home to the new apartment tomorrow.  What have I learned from the experience?  First, that kittens are fearless and more energetic that I could possibly imagine.  I confined them in my dining room using temporary "gates" constructed of window screens and leftover lengths of laminate flooring.  My dining room looks like something out of a 1930's film about hobo camps.  The kittens sleep in a large cage [about 5x3x3] and I do keep them caged while I am at work, for their own safety.  But once I am home, the cage is open and they turn my dining room into a feline gymnasium.  The furniture I thought was flush with the wall is not apparently since these little guys can get behind it, under it, and over it.  The rungs of chairs, the screen "gates" and even the mesh of the cage are just so many Everests to these feline Sir Hilarys.  They have even managed to get up on the dining room table by jumping from stackable baskets to chair seats to table top.  They also play a very rough and tumble form of soccer or rugby with little balls containing jingle bells.  Or maybe I should call it Australian football ... as I said, these little guys are fearless.  The second thing I have learned is that I am not cut out to live with cats.  Even though I have cuddled them only briefly, I have developed rashes and welts and itches.  And cleaning litter boxes has really taxed my already sensitive gag reflex.  My husband says he hasn't heard such extraordinary sounds since the bad old days of morning sickness some 30 years ago.  Lest you think my husband insensitive, I hasten to add that he has taken on the chore of feeding the kittens their "wet" food which I find even more disgusting than the contents of the litter box, if that is possible!  Rowdy, Tumbleweed, Bennie & June are adorable and amusing and very sweet and I wish them well but I will be glad when they go home to my daughter.

Yes, I am alive

I will get back to posting on a regular basis by the weekend.  Truth be told, I have remarkably little to post about given the length of my absence.  Confirmations, First Communions, May Crowning, Registration and the myriad details of finals and progress reports and last days for five sessions have pretty much consumed my time.  I have done very little stitching and am way behind in work on an exchange project ... so you know exactly how I will be spending my Memorial Day Weekend four day holiday.   What little stitching I have managed has been the simplest of simple: the borders of the four remaining squares of Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie.  Simple rows of xxx's in unvarying black have been oddly relaxing these past few very busy weeks.  In any case, anything more complex would likely have led to hours of frogging given my attention span and stamina.

Giving Up

I finally gave up waiting for the Tokens and Trifles cards and have started stitching a scissor keep for my exchange on 32 ct linen.  No doubt, the cards will be waiting for me after work, having arrived in today's mail.  That is always my luck.  I have decided on a alternating scheme of Queen stitches and floral rows, I am stitching Spring flowers as required by the exchange rules [notwithstanding my partner's request for sunflowers --- not to be mean, but only because none of my sunflower charts would fit on a scissor case, even if stitched over one].  I am trying to keep to the requested yellow colorway though and am stitching daffodils and pansies.

Obviously, no photo is forthcoming since this is an exchange and I have only just begun, anyway.

The two Confirmation practices went off rather well ... all things considered.  My 8th graders are so done with everything.  They are exhausted from two solid weeks of state testing in Language Arts and Math, prepping for finals, and now I put them through the torture of ninety minutes of rehearsing for Confirmation after a full school day.  The strain of having to be quiet and well-behaved in church for that long was really beginning to tell.  But they bore up reasonably well, being the good kids they are.  This class has a really nice group dynamic: 64 kids who are social and funny but smart and sensible, as well.  Heck, the Tuesday group even sang the hymns loudly enough to be heard over the cantor ... and that's an almost heroic effort coming from adolescents at the end of a long day!  I am going to miss this group: especially since the group coming up in September has a totally different group dynamic.

Weekend Progress Report: May 6, 2012

With the exception of a very brief window of sunshine on Sunday afternoon, the weekend was quite overcast.  There is something about overcast weekends that makes me lazy.  My only real commitment was to serve as lector at the 5:30pm anticipated Mass on Saturday.  This meant that Sunday morning could be as leisurely as I liked.  And I liked quite a lot.  After making a lovely pot of Assam tea and a light breakfast of one slice each of French toast garnished with sliced banana and fresh blueberries for my husband and myself, I lazed about: reading, stitching and watching a DVD or two.  Lunch was reheated home-made potato-cheddar soup leftover from Saturday and dinner was eggplant parm and a salad delivered by our favorite Italian take-out place.  It was a very minimalist sort of Sunday.  Indeed, I spent the whole day in a nightgown and my favorite, cozy chenille robe.  Aside from cooking, I did only those chores that couldn't be avoided like making the bed and emptying the dishwasher.  Anyway, there was no trip to the nursery and no puttering in the garden.  That will have to be deferred to the next weekend or, more precisely, next Sunday, since most of Saturday will be consumed by two Confirmations.  I expect I'll squeeze in a bit of time after visiting my Mother.

As to the stitching, it's been mostly off-goal projects this past weekend:

* the sewing finish of Riona's Book Nook Book mark

* the cross stitching finish of Prairie Grove Peddler's Lighthouse Candle Mat
Photos will have to wait till another day though since I haven't the time today.

There was a very little bit of on-goal stitching: 

* I got started on the border of the third square of The Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie.  Quite a dull affair of black cross-stitches in a neat rectangle, nothing particularly camera worthy as yet.


And, alas, the Summer issue of SANQ arrived with Part II of the English Band Sampler before I have quite finished with Part I, so there is a bit of catching up to do there.

Free-associating on Friday

The only time I have had for stitching this past week has been the hour between breakfast and getting ready for work.  It's a pleasant hour with a mug of tea, the local radio's morning drive time program and a project from my current stitching bag.  I've gone a little off goal while waiting for my Tokens and Trifles cards to arrive ... I fear the shop I ordered them from did not have them in stock, as I was told, and that they had to order them.  In the meantime, I have been working my way through some small and nearly finished projects in the stitching bag.  I figure if I can't work on goal, at least I can work on projects that will swell the list of 2012 finishes.  That's how Riona's Book Nook saw a cross-stitch finish earlier in the week, though the final sewing finish will likely come today. And Wednesday & Thursday mornings, I picked up the Prairie Grove Peddler Lighthouse Candle Mat again.  I figure just four more hours of steady stitching ought to see that project ready for a sewing finish.  I am hoping to get that accomplished today, as well ... another opportunity to play with my new sewing machine.  It is a miserable and overcast day, and I really have very little to do besides catching up on housework, one or two errands, and sitting around this afternoon waiting for a delivery. So another cross-stitch finish will be most welcome.  I am feeling a bit disappointed in myself this year with my rather paltry 8 finishes thus far.  I console myself with the notion that most of the class projects and 2010-11 WIPs that I have made it my goal to complete this year, are BAPs of the first order.  And after all, they will take longer and be fewer in number but no less satisfying for all that! But I foresee going off-goal every so often to do a quick little small or medium sized piece just to keep from feeling like I am on an endless treadmill.  I do seem to crave variety and tangible progress in my stitching, being fairly equal parts process stitcher and project stitcher.

At work, Thursday was a busy day preparing for the two Confirmations coming up on May 12 and working on the registration mailing.  I want that in the mail by Monday morning, Tuesday morning at the latest.  There seem to be a thousand details to manage and juggle as I move through the usual May chaos of final exam schedules, progress reports, sacraments and registration at this time of year.  And, though I am more comfortable in the routines after having been on the job 18 years now; conversely, I have less energy and seem to be worn done more at the end of the day.  It's getting harder and harder to find the will to stitch of an evening ... not good since, I seriously need to do some exchange stitching.  Well, I will have some solid blocks of time this weekend that I can devote to stitching on the exchanges.

On the gardening front, I am hoping that the weather will warm and stay warm, that we will have seen the last of the frost warnings and that I can spend at least part of Sunday working on my second large planter box.  Recently, I turned the dead leaves with which I half filled it several weeks ago and exposed the rich leaf mold forming beneath the surface.  I am amazed at how quickly it is composting down into honest-to-goodness soil.  It's breaking down beautifully.  I am getting such pleasure from the process.  I may even celebrate by buying myself an genuine composting fork with which to work.  Currently, I am making do with an ice breaker that I use rather like a giant mixing spoon.  Oh, to think that rotting leaves could make me so happy!  Taking the kitchen waste out to the composting bin has become a morning routine.  I save all the vegetable and fruit waste, all the tea leaves and coffee grounds, all the egg shells, etc. in a mesh strainer set in the corner of my sink.  But I think I have hit a new low, or high, in my enthusiasm for composting.  Yesterday at work, I tucked the banana peels from my fruit serving back into a Tupperware in my VB cloth lunch bag to take home for the compost pile.  I may not be completely normal but at least I am never bored.  Bor-ing to others, perhaps, but never bored myself.

Random Wednesday

Riona's Book Nook Bookmark, My own design

I have been taking it easy these past few evenings.  May is a pretty high pressure month at work and I have been unwinding with a bit of TV watching.  I do manage to stitch a bit as I watch my DVDs and today's photo is of my progress on Riona's Book Nook bookmark which is now ready for a sewing finish.  I apologize for the unpressed look but I didn't feel like dragging out the ironing board and iron for such a tiny piece.  I'll press it this weekend when I have time to work on some sewing finishes.

As I said, lately, I have been spending my evenings watching TV: most recently, my DVD collection of Rumpole of the Bailey episodes.  I admit I am a bit of an Anglophile when it comes to television series ... with the exception of science fiction, which I think we Yanks do a great deal better.  My husband claims I identify with the long-suffering Hilda.  Some of the verbal byplay between Hilda and Rumpole does sound a bit like my husband and I ... mainly those conversations when Hilda is being a bit repressive of Rumpole's inappropriate flights of fancy or forays into questionable humor.  Except, where Rumpole quotes from the Oxford Book of English Verse, my husband tends to quote from the U.S. Constitution and other political and historical documents.  I must say I prefer the last Hilda over the first ... can't recall the names of the actresses involved at the moment ... but the later Hilda has so much more presence.  Though perhaps, I should say gravitas as that is a word that keeps cropping up in the series.  And I definitely like the interplay between Rumpole and Featherstone [or Leo Kern and Peter Bowles, if you will].  But then I have enjoyed Peter Bowles in The Irish R.M. and in To The Manor Born, as well.  With the possible exception of The Odd Couple, I can't think of an American sitcom that can equal the quality of the dialogue in British TV ... at least the British TV that travels across the Atlantic via PBS.  No doubt, there is just as much trashy Brit TV that never makes the cut as there is trashy American TV.  As to the Rumpole series, I love the well-defined character/caricatures [one has to admit that, at times, the characters are drawn very broadly though most have more realistic scenes as well].  And the satirization of the British class structure does, I confess, appeal to my sense of humor.  And, then again, the Brits do over-the-top eccentricity so much better than we do.  And they seem to have a lighter hand with comedy that pricks the social conscience, as well.  There is so much clever humor to enjoy in the Rumpole series that it stands up very well to repeated viewings.  The odd thing is that I was raised by my Irish-American mother to think that the British have no sense of humor ... one of those unpleasant little biases bred into her by my grandmother and great-grandmother who remembered the bad old days before 1918. Mom just doesn't know what she is missing!  My husband and I are alternating [or as the kids would say: taking turns] watching DVD's.  His selection is Sanctuary, a fantasy show put together by Amanda Tapping from the old Stargate franchise.  I am equally happy with either.  But I also have the yen to add Victor! Victoria! to my Netflix queue after reading on one of my favorite blogs, Blacksheep's Bit of the Web,  about a TV reality show called Drag Queen Races.  Now, I ceased subscribing to cable nearly two decades ago, so I haven't watched any commercial TV in a very long time ... but his post had me remembering some of the wonderful "stage act" turns that Julie Andrews did in that movie.  I'd very much like to see that again.

My garden seems to have survived the various freeze and frost warnings we have had the past few nights.  I am looking forward to another weekend trip to the nursery for some bamboo stakes and trellises, some more soil and peat for my second planter box, and some eggplant and pepper plants.  I held off on the last two plants because they are more tender than the others for which I risked an early planting.  I have gotten my heirloom seeds and am anxious to sow some lima beans, green beans, lettuce and carrots in the second planter box.  Bill's wicker patio chair will be delivered on Friday.  The back garden is really coming together.  I look forward to a really pleasant summer, enjoying my outdoor living space.

Well, that seems to be all