What A Great Day!

This applies to yesterday as today has not really started for me yet. I had the best of intentions of spending my usual 2 +hours on line required by the slow dial-up to browse all my favorite blogs, leave comments, update the photo on my profile and then make a blog entry. But the computer was not cooperating last night. I kept getting that awful "Page unavailable" screen. This required hitting the "Refresh" button over and over again. We have another name for this button in our house.....named for the foul expletive that is shouted when hitting that button! I'll leave it to your imaginations. I even hesitated to use the expression "great day" or "wonderful day". I feel it is like a curse of sorts....to be too happy and suddenly things will come crashing down around me. I suppose it is just superstition on my part. No one has all good times and no bad. I feel this especially when it applies to Alix. She has had a run of 7 very good days, and I hope many more will follow.

Some more hand-dying yesterday. A patriotic piece on 28 count Monaco. This is before it was rinsed out and I like the bold colors and the bit of white background left open. Unfortunately when I rinsed it the red took over and it sort of has a muted pink background now, but I still like it. I have no idea what I am going to stitch on this. It would have to be some sort of silhouette design of a single dark color. Anything else would get lost in the explosion of color.

Another beautiful day is forecast for today. Yesterday was in the low 70'sF and today is predicted to be the high 70's with lots of sun. Worked a little in the garden and finally got that new barbecue grill we've been wanting. In viewing this wide shot you will notice the grill in the background and the 6-pack of beer (on the picnic table) that it took Joe to assemble the darn thing!

I've been just crazy over a new website introduced to me by my friend Nicole in Belgium. I think the translation from Dutch is "My Aunt's Attic". It has hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of free patterns, most in the Quaker-style. Apparently these are all patterns found in the attic of this woman's elderly aunt. She is moving to a smaller place and did a clean-out of all her needlework items. The kind niece has been scanning and digitizing them and posting them on her blog since February of 2007. Each post has three or four patterns and also photos of some finished works using her patterns. It is simply amazing. I am working on a biscornu from one of the charts. Hope to have a photo up soon. By the way, how is that pronounced correctly? Is the "s" silent? Yes, a rather ignorant question on my part, but I would hate to run into anyone in-person and starting discussing "biscornu" and pronounce it wrong and look like a complete idiot. Although the opportunities here to bring up biscornu in a conversation are very limited to say the least, I would still like to pronounce it correctly. I am also troubled by the fact that my biscornu come out huge. I tend to use Aida cloth rather then linen and this my be the problem. Once again that need to get the guts to stitch over-one is haunting me. My biscornu look more like paperweights rather then ornaments!

Well, about an hour left of "me time" to browse the blogs and make some comments. Then it is outside to enjoy the sunshine.

Pet snap: Sammy on the picnic table. He was very interested in the construction of the new grill. I think he is hoping for some barbecued left-overs today.