Incoherent Scribblings

It’s time for this week’s SBQ!

How do you secure your thread when you begin a new one? Specifically, do you or have you ever used a waste knot?

This question came to me this afternoon as I was working on The Victoria Sampler’s “Baby’s 1st Christmas” ornament for my nephew. Thea always seems to include the suggestion to use a waste knot in her pattern instructions, but when I read through the instructions I didn’t really understand why you would want to use one. For those that do use waste knots, I will be interested to read your reasoning for them (if there is one.)

So, in order to answer the first part of the question then… When I work with two strands of floss I use the loop method to secure my thread and when I work with one strand of floss (or perle cotton in this case) I always just weave it under and have never had a problem.

I can’t believe it is almost December already! Where did this year go?! Anyway, given that the first of the month is quickly approaching that can only mean one thing… it’s goal time!

As a reminder my November goals were to:

1. DONE! Start, finish, and mail my Stocking Stuffer Exchange Piece. (Post date December 1) – Will be “Yes” as soon as I pop it in the mail.
2. Start the final round of the Group 4 RR. (Post date December 15) – Yep! Finished it and mailed it back to Christine too!
3. Start my Winter Quaker Exchange Piece. (Post date January 10) – Nope, but I have the pattern picked out.
4. Start the “Baby’s 1st Christmas Ornament” from The Victoria Sampler for my nephew. – Yep!
5. Participate in the Robin’s Nest November Stitch-A-Thon. – Yep!
6. Stitch for an hour a day. No, but the goal got my butt in gear and I stitched a lot more than I had been.

For December I plan to:

1. Have the “Baby’s 1st Christmas Ornament” from The Victoria Sampler for my nephew stitched and finished by December 15.
2. Start and finish(?) my Winter Quaker Exchange Piece. (Post date January 10)
3. Participate in the Robin’s Nest December Stitch-A-Thon.
4. Continue with the Robin’s Nest Ornie SAL
5. Start a new round of my rotation.
6. Finish “Home of a Needleworker” by the end of the year.
7. Stitch for an hour a day.

I have considered myself single since my plane left Munich nearly three months ago. In some ways I feel like I should be sadder about the fact that I don’t miss A., but because I haven’t found myself regretting the decision I made, I know I made the right choice.

And I don’t know if I should or not, but I recently realized that I am beginning to think about seeing someone new and I don’t feel guilty about it. I don’t have a particular person in mind, rather that if-that-cute-guy-up-the-block-just-so-happened-to-ask-me-out-I-would-
think-about-it kind of thinking.

Unfortunately, this type of thinking also has me thinking about other consequences possibilities and I just don’t know whether or I want to think of them.

It is sort of weird to write this, but I have never really been one to “date.” Somehow I always seem to see the people that I “date” for an extended period of time. While this in and of itself doesn’t bother me, what does bother me is this fact plus my current geographical location.

Despite the fact that I actually haven’t minded staying in my hometown temporarily, I have no desire whatsoever to stay here any longer than necessary. I am not sure which I would hate more; to just get involved with someone and then leave or to be offered a great job somewhere and then be asked to stay.

And though I totally lack a social life at the moment and I’m desperate to interact with people my approximate age, no connections are probably better given my current situation. I need to reestablish myself as a single professional woman.

Perhaps what I need is a one night stand…

So, I have finished stitching my Stocking Stuffer Exchange (actually the stitching has been done for a couple of weeks) and have plans to finally do the finishing tomorrow. I have not yet done the finishing because I have been yo-yoing back and forth between two finishing methods.

The first method is something I haven’t tried before so I was thinking of forgetting about doing it this close to the deadline and doing a method that I have more experience with instead. However, I really think this particular piece lends itself more to the first idea and so after a lengthy consultation with my mom I have committed myself to finishing the piece like I originally intended to. Check back in a couple of weeks to see how my finishing turns out!

In other news, I have decided to listen to the advice of the majority of my fellow stitchers and give my sister/nephew his Baby’s 1st Christmas ornament before Christmas. It is my plan to have it finished and ornamentified by December 15… Wish me luck! I am doing pretty well so far: I am almost finished with the front side (just need to do the Smyrna crosses) and I have already charted out his name.

And now, let’s step away from the obligation stitching for a moment so I can report some progress on the long-neglected “Above the Clouds!”

After 5 months or so, I finally pulled Confetti out of the WIP pile and put some stitches into him. I have to admit that after I did all the confetti stitching on this project over the summer I was kind of burnt out and frustrated with it and as a result I have been avoiding working on it for quite a few months. However, the area that I am currently working on doesn’t really have any confetti stitching, so it has been stitching up smoothly and I am actually enjoying working on it again.

I got a taste of re-entry shock the other day. You see, a couple of weeks ago I caught a cold. The cold turned into sinus infection and I needed antibiotics. I went to see the doctor. I have no health insurance. I live in America.

I blame Iowa for all of this. While living in Germany, not only did I have cushy private insurance, but in the four and a half years I lived there I didn’t have ONE sinus infection!

So I went to the see the doctor that has been my doctor in Small Town Iowa since I was 12. I went to the new clinic and to make my uninsured pain worse, was told that they would have to charge me the “new-patient” fee for an office call.

I told the receptionist that I couldn’t be a new patient; I have been coming here since I was a baby, and surely they had my records. In fact, the last time I was here was in February 2002. Apparently they had either lost or decommissioned my file, because the receptionist claimed they didn’t have any records for me.

$111 later, I got to see my doctor (who remembered me!) and was told what I already knew: I had a sinus infection. Drugs Medicine was prescribed and now I am hopped up on antibiotics and over the counter nose spray. But damn if I don’t feel better!