The Right Things

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This is the new pattern by Erica Fortgens I just started stitching for some new Sticky Notes. I never work on white circles, it seems, so in stitching one yesterday I thought it needed a little something. So I combined a green variegated thread with a blue variegated thread and it turned out really cool! It will look even better assembled with embellishments but I love the subtle color changes of this. Fun!

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An alert to my fellow crafters: Stamp & Go has a sale today where shipping is 13 cents if you spend over $13. They have a lot of cool stuff! I bought 2 huge circle punches.

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Work has been very stressful this week. We have an auditor with us all week, not the usual type we have quarterly but along those lines. He's looking at a full year instead of a quarter and he's asking for a wider variety of information. None of it is rocket science, but it's tedious. And really, really boring. I was on vacation last week and may be on jury duty some or all of next week so I'm trying to cram a lot into this week.

I never work through lunch though lots of people at work do. I really enjoy taking that hour to eat lunch whilst surfing the net, then stitching the last 30-40 minutes. But yesterday, I did consider working straight through. I ate while working, felt my shorts twisting, thinking, "Who are you kidding?? You know yourself better than this. You need that time to recharge for the afternoon. You're gonna be c-r-a-n-k-y!" (Gonna be??)

So I decided to stitch for my last 30 minutes. I decided a change of scenery would do me good as well, and since it's cooled off today (low 70s) I sat outside at one of the picnic tables. Sitting in the sun, listening to Craft Sanity interviews on my iPod Shuffle while stitching a new pattern - was exactly the right thing to do. I highly recommend the Craft Sanity podcasts to any crafters, by the way. Since I usually stitch at my desk, it's cool, because I can look stuff up on the Internet as they talk about it. Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood is a good interviewer and she interviews very interesting artists.

For instance, the interview I'm listening to now inspired me to find the Craft in America DVD on Netflix. I moved it to the top of my queue; I can't wait to watch it. (Steve & I recently increased our Netflix membership. We each have a queue with 1 DVD available at a time for those things the other doesn't want to watch. And we have a joint queue for stuff we both like. It's worked out fairly well actually.)

Which reminds me to tell you about Modern Masters on the Fine Living channel. Having Tivo, I don't know where channels are anymore so I don't know if Fine Living is readily available or only on digital cable. I don't know when the show is on but you can find it at that link. Now that we have our two Tivos connected to our home network I can watch stuff in my studio that I've recorded on the family room Tivo. In fact Tivo suggested this show. I'm going to get a season pass now that I've watched a couple of episodes. These artists are indeed masters. (Dad, both episodes happened to feature very impressive woodworkers. One does low-relief carving and the other turned slices of trees into flooring.) Fantastic stuff.

The other thing I did right yesterday was I had a massage - bliss. A couple of weeks ago I scheduled it for this week, thinking it might be stressful. You may recall I was getting a massage every week for most of 2006 because work was so stressful that year. Then it became less stressful so I tapered off to every few weeks. They were nice but not the "required maintenance" they once were. Yesterday was like the old days. I was totally in the moment and it washed away every drop of stress.

Now today is Friday and who can't do a Friday?? It's my turn to bring in breakfast so I'm bringing in a sheet breakfast pizza. Not to over focus on food, but there's that.

It won't be much of a Stefani weekend - we have a couple of activities planned with Steve's family - his sister arrives from Colorado on Saturday. But at least after 5:30 tonight I'll know if I have jury duty next week. I've had jury duty before and find the process interesting so I don't actually mind it - it's just not knowing until the last minute part that doesn't sit well with a planner like me. I've been acting as if I have to go so if I don't, it will be a big bonus. And after the massage I decided it's physically impossible to get all my work caught up by the end of today so if I do have jury duty next week, I'll go in Sunday to file the 7 sales tax returns that are due next week. (It's just more efficient for me to do it than have someone else fill in. They'd have to think too much.) Having a back-up plan is much better than stressing myself out.

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