Unexpected Semi-Long Weekend

Thank you again for all your kind comments - sorry for creeping anybody out with the spider picture. I haven't checked to see if she survived the storm, but I did see a few fairy blankets in the yard a bit ago, so if the little ones survived, maybe she did too. After finding Grandfather's Sleigh in the bill pile, maybe I should start looking through a few of these other piles to see what else I "put in a safe place"!

Looking out the den window, you'd never guess that we've had something like 8" to 10" of rain the last few days, it's sunny with puffy clouds in a clear blue sky - just beautiful.  The afore mentioned rain caused a few issues - namely the flooding and washing out of the bedding for the train's tracks.  As they can't safely run trains across the tracks until CSX has inspected and repaired them and CSX can't inspect or repair until the water goes down, VRE (Virginia Railway Express) cancelled service for today. Unfortunately, I didn't find this out until I was in the almost empty parking lot almost empty except for the folks who either don't subscribe to the email update list or who didn't read their emails before leaving the house - I'm in the latter group. I quickly decided that although I didn't have a huge amount of work with me, I could work from home for at least a portion of the day the alternatives to the train are not doable for me without a few hours notice.  The worst part, isn't the getting up at 4:00 AM although I hate that, or the 60+ mile round-trip from home to the train station and back, or confirming that I'm sometimes a doofus, it is the fact that I have to drive back to town to go to the grocery store it doesn't open until 6:00!  Oh well, the plus side is that I finished a couple of projects that had been languishing on my desk, have all my on-line training completed for this year, reviewed a couple of very strange proposals that would have taken forever in the office just too many interruptions and am done for the day!

Well that certainly made a short story long!!

Stitching-wise, I had a fairly productive week. Okay, I had a productive weekend - I was too exhausted by the time I got home each night to even think about stitching.

I finally finished part 1 of Birds of a Feather mystery!! Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it, but it looks like everyone else who used the called for colors and fabric... I did move on to part 2 and have A through E done. I'll probably work on it a bit more later this afternoon.

I do; however, have a picture of my Hawaiian Garden Mandala progress:

Before:

And after:

As I stitch top-down/left-right I have to flip my pieces occasionally for ease of stitching. I'll work on this some more tomorrow.