Eye and Needle

Good morning, my friends. It seems a lot of time has passed since my last post, but it was only yesterday morning. In that time, Mike had his left eye cataract surgery done. He's been amazed at how much more color he's seeing from that one eye. We were out and gone early this morning for his post-op appointment. It seems both he and the doctor are happy with the outcome of this first eye. According to the doctor, "It only gets better from here."

While they were gazing into his eye, I waited and stitched. I'm happy to have a good rechargeable portable lamp I can take with me for good light on such occasions. When we attended the Road to California quilt show a while back, the Daylight lamp vendor was selling lamps at one of the kiosks. We ended up purchasing this lamp to attach where my sewing machine is.

That was several years ago, and they had a screaming deal at the quilt show. Along with the lamp above, I was given the one below as a free gift. When I'm stitching at home on my couch, I use a headlamp, but when I'm out in public and trying to avoid having people pointing and laughing at me, I like this one:

The neck of it bends and can be positioned in nearly unlimited ways. I like both lamps, but I especially love the convenience of the portable one.

Okay, and so I stitched and stitched and stitched until I was tired of stitching. The second snowman was nearly finished. I finished the rest of it while we watched the news last night. Now, I've moved my hoop to the right, and I'll start on the Christmas tree next.

Before we needed to leave yesterday morning, I had time to quilt the final block of the Merry, Merry Snowmen.

Smitty helped me with that.

Now I've left it needle down in one of the border cornerstones. I'll stitch snowflakes in the corners, and I have another snowflake motif picked out for the rest of the border. Possibly I'll do something different there, but so far, it'll be snowflakes all around.

There are a few other things on today's agenda. With such and early start to the morning, it shouldn't feel as if I'm getting started late in the day. Nevertheless, I do feel as if I'm getting a late start, but it won't stop me from taking a nap downstairs before I do anything else. Since I was out of bed early, and since I haven't had my full ration of morning coffee, I'm feeling a little bleary-eyed.

When we got home just now, I filled all the bird feeders and checked on the flowers. There's really nothing new to report except that one of every sunflower has sprouted now. Also, all the cucumbers, all the zinnias, and one of the zucchini. So, the seeds are doing well. Also, I'm happy to report the flowers all survived Tuesday night's downpour. 

So, that's all I have for you today. I'm hoping to have the Merry, Merry Snowmen ready for binding by tomorrow. Today's energy level will have to improve before I'll be ready to do anything else. I'm heading for the couch. A nap and more slow-stitching. After that, it's anybody's guess.