Homebody

Good morning, my friends. I'm happy to say we got all our errands run yesterday, and so we're staying home today. It doesn't mean there aren't things standing between me and my sewing. At least I'm home, and I can do battle with the obstacles. Obstacles include pulling another bucket o' weeds, and then I have one housekeeping chore to do. Also, it's a lesson day for my new Photoshop Elements version. I'm hoping I'll learn something useful in this second lesson. Lesson one was devoted to poking around at the various tabs to see what would happen. What I need is to get to the editing and other special/new features.

Despite having to head out to run errands yesterday morning, I had time to take the first stitches on the "Silent Night" stitchery.

I'll work on that again this morning.

As long as we've had our Sadie, there's been something of a war going on in the sewing room. You might have noticed the accordion doors in the background of many of my pictures. The sewing room is also our utility room. Behind those doors, you can find our water heater, our furnace, and some equipment related to water softening and the chemical make-up of our well water. The kitties like to climb up into the rafters there where the basement meets the main floor. We let them too because mice get into that space. We can hear them running around when we're watching TV in the evenings. Mike used to set a trap; but then, the kitties took over the job of "exverminators." (Did you see what I did there?) Now, they control the mouse population. This is the area we refer to as their "clubhouse."

Here's where the war begins: We don't want them up there virtually *all* the time, which is what Sadie would do if she could. She's a cat's version of an introvert. She loves to cuddle, but she also needs a lot of alone time. We've tried various ways of keeping her from opening those doors. We've tried multiple door stops, and we've barred the doors with chairs. No matter what we do, she manages to get the doors open, and then she disappears for hours at a time. There is no way to retrieve her when she gets into that space. Want to see what a bad cat looks like?

So, recently we got this idea to do a search for child-proofing these kinds of doors. There must be a way, right? Good old Amazon. I found just what we were looking for. These fit at the "fold" of these doors. If you want to open the door, you simply slide them one way or the other. When I want the door to stay closed, I move it to where the fold is. And let me just tell you...those puppies are not coming open.

Well...some people in our household find this very furrustrating. This is Sadie's equivalent of a big hmmph. She'll just sit here on her napping quilt and look mad. She's hoping the guilt factor will rule the day, but it won't.

With all the running around we did, there wasn't much time left for sewing yesterday. However, I made quite a bit of progress on my "Vintage" art quilt. Here's your peek.

It's about 3/4 finished now. I doubt I'll finish it today, but this weekend wouldn't be out of the question. Of course, I'm only working on the collage portion. I'll still need to figure out a background, top-stitching, quilting, and binding. There's still plenty to do before I can mark it as a finish.

So next on my agenda is to read through the second lesson of my class. After that, I'll get to my slow-stitching. After that...weed pulling. We have nice weather today, but rain is in the forecast for tomorrow. I'm hoping I can finish it off today, but that might be a tall order. My back will let me know if I've overstepped my limit.

If you've enjoyed reading this post, you can thank my editor, Smitty. He's been watching me from his perch in the sunny window of my office.

He's working on his tan for the summer swimsuit issues. He has a new Speedo, and he wants to look his best for his photo shoots. And who can blame him for that? I've warned him to put on sunscreen, but he won't do it. Kids. What are you gonna do?