Deep Breath!

I know, me posting two weeks in a row, is breath taking, but please, take a deep breath in, hhhooolllldddd iiitttt, slowly breath out I don't want to be the cause of any injuries if you pass out from shock.

November has decided to turn into mid-January!  Our highs are in the 40s F and next week there are a couple of days that we're supposed to be in the 30's F.   We'll welcome those temperatures in the office.  When I walked in yesterday, it was 84 F, we left the door open and opened the window, but finally had to turn on the window air conditioner unit and got the temperature down to a more comfortable 70 F by the time I left.  I'm afraid to call maintenance because they'll fix it so well that we won't have any heat - the joys of working in an almost 100-year old building with a heating system to match.

I actually have good work news to report.  I received a job offer and accepted it.  It's all contingent on a successful security check, but I think I'm okay there.  I applied for the job back in August and figured it had been filled, but I got the call on Tuesday!  I'll be with the same agency I am now, but will be in a writer/editor position rather than a loan specialist.  The new duties have been part of my last two jobs but only as a collateral duty.  I'll be doing technical writing on regulations, white papers and other things necessary to the operation of the programs in my agency, as well as ferrying things through the clearance and publication process. I'm a little nervous, but also excited to try something a bit different.

So my great plans to spend the majority of last weekend stitching, fell through.  I'm not sure what happened but I suddenly decided that I needed to inventory my stash.  That's not true, I am pretty sure of the reasons.  After reading the stories of the people that had to evacuate their homes due to the fires in California, it got me thinking that if something happened to my house, I don't have a good record of my "stuff".  I had also bought some storage bags and tags to replace the Ziploc bags I was using to store things so took care of two things at once.

Newly bagged and tagged charts.  I was able to put the charts, floss and fabric for three of the letters in this one.

 I upgraded my XStitch Plus app and started pulling things out.  It's nice to have the record, but it is time consuming to pull things out, type in the information, take the picture and then put it all away.  If all I did was the inventory part, it would have been faster, but I started trading out fabrics and finding missing threads and generally playing.  Of course I now want to start EVERYTHING!  I'm about half a third done with the inputting, but have plans to finish it up at a slightly slower rate.  I ran out of bags and tags, but what I have finished looks really nice and I can see what's what by looking at the tag.

When I finally quit organizing, I sat down with Forever and Ever by Cottage Garden Samplings.  When I started it was here:

and when I quit stitching Sunday night, I had a finished flower.

I think this is a stylized Hellebore flower

The fabric color in the top picture is closer to actual.  I'm stitching this on 40-count Tin Roof from Weeks Dye Works 1-over-2. I have a three-day weekend this weekend and have my crafting all planned out and this plays a central role.

I received an email saying my fabric for Magic Dreams. Boy shipped today.  I'm looking forward to getting it and planning that start.