Weekend Progress

How did I get here?  Sitting at my desk this Monday morning, I cannot decide if I have been away from the office for weeks, or if I never left.  That is the odd feeling that this past weekend gives me, as I sit here trying to recall where I left off in my business mode of being.

 

Finally spending a much-needed weekend at home, my husbear and I made much progress.  He worked his proverbial butt off painting the bedroom ceiling and installing the new crown molding.  Firmly rebelling against partaking in the unplanned domestic activities, I plunged head first into the arduous task of putting together the Home Tour booklet for the December tour.  Strangely, this task turned into much more drudgery than I had foreseen.  I have much sympathy towards those of you who work in publications.  Building a format and concept from scratch is a pain in the ass!  It seems like it takes forever to pull together all the needed elements, only for visible “progress” to take place in the last 5% or so of the process.  The good news is, I pulled together a lot of information and have a basic format put in place.  Yeah!  Now to just finish slogging through it all.  Ugh.

 

The rest of the weekend was dedicated to gardening, some much-needed domestic clean-up, and the farewell (STILL in denial) party to my dear apprentice, Adelheit, and her hubby Eric.  It SUCKS to know that they are leaving.  But… she’ll be back to visit.

 

Oh, on an artsy project update, I got back to the dreaded underside couching on my opus anglicanum.  The Christ-child figure on my piece is now complete.  And ya know, I gotta say, it looks pretty cool.  I dread doing the cloak on the Mary figure.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I HATE DOING UNDERSIDE COUCHING!!!!  It looks great, but it is a beeyotch for me to do.  In addition to the typical challenge that it presents, because I am couching according to a wavy pattern, where the couching needle goes is determined by the pattern on the overlay cloth.  Because I am working with a piled velvet, the underside fabric and the overlay do not rest flush.  To keep with the pattern, I need to use a needle as an awl going in through the front.  I then use the hole created to pass the couching needle through from the back before returning through the same hole after catching the gold thread.  In short, for each hole created, a needle passes through it three times.  Thus, VERY slow-going.  Give me regular ol’ embroidery any time.