Rambling

Good morning one & all!  It's actually almost noon.  Time tends to get away from you when (A) you're me, & (B) you wake up at 3 a.m. after a fitful 3-1/2 hours of sleep.  What did I do after getting out of bed at such an ungodly hour?  Frogged & restitched.  I started a new project last night & I knew after I had gotten a few letters stitched that it was going to be too big.  The designer used 30 ct linen & stitched over 2 (I think) so that's what I did.  I wanted to make this stitching into a pinkeep but by stitching it over 2 it would've had to have been finished into a small pillow.  I knew it was going to be "too big" but I kept stitching anyway.  Perhaps I need to see a psychiatrist what with this "you start it, you finish it" approach I have even when I see something isn't quite right.  Anyway, when I got up at 3 a.m. I sat down & frogged the 4 words I had stitched & then started from scratch, this time stitching over 1.  I think it will work out much better   : )

I mentioned the other day that I would post a photo of my completed Pineberry Lane JOY stitchings soon.  Here it is.

I do a pretty lousy job of staining as you can see.  I need to get some hooch linen one of these days & just spend a few hours staining.  These pieces were stained with almost an entire bottle of Distress It.  It's kinda-sorta okay but not really.  Not the look I was going for.  I haven't had much luck with tea or coffee staining.  My coffee staining is particularly amateurish & always has an "Oh!  You spilled coffee on that!" look about it.  I've also laid a big goose egg with walnut crystals.  There aren't really any other staining avenues open to me I don't think ... thus the thought of getting some hooch linen.

Hooch, I know, is actually a noun meaning inferior liquor or liquor that is illegally made.  "Uncle Clem done sold his hooch to dem dere revenewers."  However, for some reason I have always used it as an adjective to describe something inferior or as a noun referring to anything inferior in general.  No one else in my family speaks like this nor do any of my friends.  It's not intentional.  It's just what I've always done.  Hooch linen would be inferior linen ... linen you really wouldn't want to spend your time stitching on.  I've also always used the term "don't hack it up."  When I would lend something to friends when I was a teenager I'd always hand it over with the admonition "don't hack it up" meaning, of course, don't mess it up.  Maybe what I've heard is true.  Maybe I really am not of this world   : )

If you don't mind, please take another look at my photo above.  What do you think?  Is it clear?  I received my new camera the other day & this is the first photo I took with it.  I'm not seeing any crystal clarity.  I don't think it's "bad" or glaringly blurry but please correct me if I'm missing something.  I know I can't base a camera's performance on one photograph so I will play around with it further & see if I can grace you in the future with photographs like I've seen some other bloggers posting.  

My sweet husband is quite the adventurist when it comes to buying DVDs & CDs.  He doesn't have to be familiar with the recording artists or know anything about the movie plot.  Oftentimes he will purchase them based solely on an interesting photo on the insert or even an interesting title.  One of the things he enjoys buying are "For Your Consideration" Emmy DVDs.  The way I understand it, these DVDs are sent to members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences so they will be better informed when voting for who gets an Emmy award.  Each of these DVDs usually has at least one episode of a few shows seen on TV.  There are times when they have 3 or 4 episodes of the same show.  You just never know.  John & I don't watch "real" television for several reasons.  We instead watch shows on DVD.  These Emmy DVDs have sometimes led us to purchase a season of some television show we wouldn't have considered seeing otherwise.  Neither of us are interested in reality shows or what I always refer to as modern day Ted Mack Amateur Hours (Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, etc), but the other night we were watching one of these Emmy DVDs & what to our wondering eyes did appear but a show called The Voice.  It was just one episode & I don't know if you can judge all the episodes by this one but it was quite entertaining in this small dose.  It was kind of like The Voice is to American Idol like Paris, Kentucky is to Paris, France.  So what's the purpose of my telling you all this?  It's because sometimes I watch people & I think where in the world was I when God was handing out beauty, brains, & talent?  I know where I probably was ... down at the penny candy store loading myself up with a few of these & a few of those.  Now don't you think I'm putting myself down here.  I do have some talent (I can type faster than anyone I've ever met), I'm kind of smart in some things (although I've just spent a good 15 minutes trying to think of what those things are & I've come up empty ... obviously I'm not smart at remembering things), & I know for a fact that my face wouldn't actually stop a clock.  However, I'm talking about "real" brains, beauty, & talent ... particularly those of us in the human race who have an overabundance of all three.  Sometimes you'll meet a really smart person, or a really talented person, or a really beautiful person ... but someone possessing all three of these attributes?  Was God not paying attention sometimes when He gave out these gifts or what?  Now don't think you need to write me comments telling me about beauty being on the inside & how it's not how smart or talented you are, it's how you treat others that matters.  I know all that.  Also please don't think you need to write me comments telling me that it's biblically against God's nature to not pay attention.  I know that too.  But you've got to admit that these triple-threat people can really knock you off your feet sometimes.  Let's return to The Voice.  A young teenage girl was a contestant on this particular episode.  She was, as the saying goes, "drop dead gorgeous" & "cute as a button" at the same time.  She had a singing voice that was like that of the angels.  She accompanied herself ... beautifully ... on the guitar.  She wrote her own music.  She was in all the advanced classes at school.  To top it off, she was genuinely nice.  Talk about a bunch of Grade A eggs being in one basket!  I am not posting this out of envy or jealousy or anything like that ... just making an observation.

John & I decided against going to the casino in West Virginia.  The weather here yesterday was quite "yucky" so we did some things around the house instead.  I'm sitting here as I write this looking out the window at the grass growing more & more profusely in the yard & the huge crop of wild onions mixed in with it.  I've never heard of wild onions but that's what these are.  We initially thought that perhaps onions were planted on this land once upon a time but then we saw these wild onions growing along the sides of the roads, in other peoples yards, in fields, etc.  Kentucky has a lot of "things" that are native to itself I think.  We've lived in many states & visited many more as well as countries overseas, but there are "things" here in Kentucky that you just don't see or experience anywhere else.  We always make the observation "it's a Kentucky thing" or "it must be a Kentucky thing" when we come up against these things.  I think this crazy proliferation of wild onions is "a Kentucky thing."  

I think with that I'll end my rambling   : )