Big news at our house!

Last year on March 25 we said goodbye to our big black lab

Yesterday, a year and a day later we said hello to the new dog in our lives

This is Gypsy

She is a lab cross puppy whose mama was rescued in Galveston, TX and she was 8 weeks old on March 25

she has amazingly blue eyes

my daughter and son in law were our stork assistants, taking us across the Denver area (in the snow!) to pick her up from the foster family that had her, her mama and her 4 siblings in their care, which meant I got to hold her on the way home

 

and when we got her home, she had a very busy afternoon, helping load the dishwasher, shoveling snow on the back deck and playing with Mr Cute

yes indeed, life will be a lot more exciting with this little girl around

earlier in the week there was progress on projects

these three bracelets are made of little glass beads worked over memory wire -- a different technique than I usually do

and I have now started this bracelet which is bead embroidery around three resin cameos -- more like my usual thing

this piece is ready to be sandwiched and quilted -- YEAH!

and this piece is moving toward finished as well

the sweater I'm knitting for my daughter is moving right along too --- this picture is actually from about the middle of the week and I have actually started working the first sleeve now

on Wednesday we had about a foot of snow, it snowed some yesterday and we are supposed to get some more snow on this Wednesday ---- in between it's sunny and clear --- got to love spring time in the Rockies!

not the way I intended to spend the week

when I posted here last I had great plans to finish up several projects, move some things around in the house and maybe do some outdoor work

instead I spent many, many days in my recliner with a fever, aching, coughing and was finally told by my doctor that I had "community acquired pneumonia" and put on antibiotics

I'm just today starting to feel like "myself" again

this is the piece I had hoped to have finished this week

I did work on it a little, and I will get back there in the next couple of days

the stamps for the new giraffes are all cut and ready to mount on the backings -- real progress!

and since fiddling with a pencil on graph paper is something I can do in my recliner, the preliminary plan for how I will create the quilt top is done too

the parched ground is growing on this piece

I had to order some additional fabric so that all of the patches of dry dirt would be the same --- I had purchased the first piece a couple of years ago, so I wasn't sure if I could find any more of it, but the "old interwebs" came through and the additional piece is on its way to me

and I spent some more time fiddling with these pictures

part one of the jewelry project is complete

and after several bouts of stitch it/pick it on the second part, it is moving right along

the sweater is progressing too

and this is a restoration piece direct from the wood workshop of the DH

I remember this table from my childhood, and when we were moving stuff out of my mother's house, I asked if I could have it

I brought it home and it has been nicely restored and looks awesome!

nice to share his work too

keeping secrets

I can keep a secret

I work on Christmas projects all year long and keep a file of pictures that I write about all at once after Christmas presents are all distributed

for the past few months I've been working on a project that is not a Christmas project, but because I wasn't sure about my ability to carry off the technique or the response of the intended recipient, I decided to stay under the radar with it

that project is now to the half way point, and I've decided it's time to come out of the closet

this is the piece

for the last week or so I've been working on this every day, having decided there is no point putting it off -- it's time to get it done!

beside that, I need to get it off the design wall so I can put some other pieces up there

it's been a big week

for the past month I've been using the "pay as you go" system at the local recreation center to do water aerobics a couple times a week

on March 1 Medicare kicked in for me (love that I won't actually be 65 until the end of the month, but I can start using my benefits on the first!)

with Medicare my Kaiser insurance pays for me to have Silver Sneakers, which means my health insurance includes allowing me to go to the gym to stay healthy

for the first time in my life I'm a card carrying gym member -- talk about teaching an old dog new tricks!

along with the trips to the pool (which is supposed to help my knee), I'm still fiddling with my diet in an attempt to control the issues of keeping sugars and fats down

I admit I hate this part -- I do not like having to say "no, I can't eat that" especially when I'm still working out what "that" is

my attempt at making this less difficult is to play with the food

this was a recent "art salad"

for the first time since the 2nd of January I've begun to work on a piece of beading

frankly, I'm more than a little frustrated with doing these pieces and listing them on Etsy and never selling any of them -- since that is the main reason I make them

this month, however, one of the groups I belong to on Etsy announced a challenge that has a them that interests me, and since I had everything I need already, I'm going to try out an idea that I'm not even sure will work

it's a beginning

 

nice progress being made on the sweater I'm making for my daughter -- there are 208 stitches in each row, and I can do 4 rows in a hour, which is my self-imposed required time to work on this each evening in front of the TV -- moving right along

I'm still working on this piece too

(this is not a newer picture than the last post -- it's big so it's hard to photograph without putting it up on the design wall -- which right now has something else on it!)

it's coming along too

and while I'm working on the first water piece that deals with the dust bowl, I'm also thinking about a second piece that will involve these three images

the brain is busy -- need to work faster to make these pieces "real"