I'm Back!

You're a great audience. Wish I had a better act.

The big downsize, declutter, and move are done and over with. The house has been sold. I feel lighter. The relief of not having to worry about what's going to go wrong next is immense.

Things I don't miss:

The bugs that make their way into your house no matter what you do. Creepy-crawly things. Especially the camel crickets. ::shudder::

Worrying that there will be water in the basement after an incredibly long, hard downpour.

Lawn and garden maintenance.

Going up and down stairs.

Driving everywhere.

Things I miss:

My kitchen appliances. They were better than what I have now, not that what I have are bad, just not as good. I really miss my gas range, but I'm managing and learning the tricks of cooking on a glass cooktop.

My pond.

The flowers in my yard.

And that's about it. I love my new apartment. I love being up above most of the surrounding buildings, looking out over the neighborhood treetops. The balcony and the triple paned sliding glass door let so much light in! It's quiet, for the most part. Noise comes in from the hallway, but there aren't that many apartments on my hall, so not much traffic.

I love being right next to the subway. I can actually get to it without having to walk in the elements. There's a covered area before the escalators that I can reach from my building. I can get to a good restaurant and shopping area in two stops, along with Whole Foods. And I can walk there in good weather in about 20 minutes if I do my powerwalk. I did that yesterday, going to a chocolate shop, an ice-cream store (should have omitted that stop), and a weekly farmer's market, then walking back home. It was great! I didn't take the car out once yesterday.

You're probably wondering if I've been doing any stitching yet. I have. Not very much and not very productively. I've been working on "From Molehill to Mountain" with fairly static results. It seems I stitch a section, go on to the next one, then find that I did the previous one wrong so have to rip it out. These aren't even large sections, although the piece is on congress cloth so size is relative. I'm hoping to make better progress today. Last night I copied the master chart for the block I'm working on and numbered the areas that I keep getting wrong (putting them in the wrong place) in the hope that that will prevent misplacement from now on. We'll see at stitchie this morning.

I also almost completed the May installment of the Stitch of the Month. Which is rather sad, when I consider it, because these installments are not that hard. I could have had it done if I worked on it about 15 minutes longer. Maybe I'll take that with me to stitchie instead of FMTM. It might be that I have to work on FMTM in solitude to avoid more inaccurate placement of stitches.

So no pictures of my inadequate progress.

One thing I did accomplish, though, was charting "Halloween Abstract," a charted needlepoint design by Jeff Kulick. What a learning experience! Scarlet Thread will be producing more of his charts, and I'm confident that they'll be much easier to do now that I've got this one under my belt. Another case of "How hard can it be?" You'd think I'd have learned by now.

If you haven't already seen it, check out Scarlet Thread's interview with Jeff.