I was diagnosed with Asperger’s and my life suddenly makes so much more sense.
Bailey has been re-named Taco, because this was always supposed to be his name in the first place.
I am riding the tide of life in all aspects, and I haven’t been this active and out and about in years!
I am 10kg lighter than I was 4 months ago: I look and feel absolutely amazing!
I haven’t done any crafty stuff in weeks, because I am so busy being alive, and I don’t even know how I could have been so obsessively crafting before, but I guess I was compensating for some systemic deficits.
And I am laughing, because as I am re-reading my most recent posts here, I came across this one, in particular this part of it:
You know this feeling of when something just hits you, speaks to you, completely clicks with you, like it was made for you specifically, for the essence of who and what you are? I am not saying that my essence is essentially Nordic/Viking, far from it, but I have always felt a very strong pull towards this particular flavor of mythology and culture, as well as visual aesthetics. Artwork, symbols, (modern interpretations of Viking) men, Scandinavian music.
Sometimes, the Universe is cute. Really cute. Excuse me, while I enjoy being raided by this Viking hunk I matched with, instead of crafting and posting updates about it.
…and Vienna Pride has culminated in the Rainbow Parade last Saturday. Of course, I’ve been part of the celebration as always, along with the Alphanerd and our friend S – as well as my daughter, who joined me only briefly for a selfie and then threw herself into the loud and proud crowd (see what I did there).
Not sure until the last day if I really wanted to wear the Melted Rainbow Top and exposing my back-fat for the world to see, I finished it literally 15 minutes before we had to leave the house. I compromised: I couldn’t get myself to wear it braless for lack of boob support (- also: boob sweat soaking into cheap acrylic yarn… no, thanks), so I put on a nice bra beneath and thus felt confident enough, back-fat or not. The Alphanerd insisited that NOBODY CARES ABOUT MY BACK, especially during Pride! And dude, of course. It’s PRIDE.
So let me proudly show you my version of the Melted Rainbow Pride Top:
It feels good to have actually finished something for a change, I do tend to get frustrated with all these big, endless projects I currently have going on. Also, it felt great going back to my original craft: I haven’t crocheted something in such a long time! So I went right ahead and got started on my next crochet project, as I am really feeling it at the moment, and need to ride the wave as long as the tide is good:
It’s Mandala Madness by Helen Shrimpton. I’ve seen someone on Ravelry work this up to about row 50 or so, and then mount the mandala onto the skeleton of an umbrella, et voilá: parasol. I love the process so far, this is the exact kinda stuff that used to keep me so entertained with crocheting. I haven’t touched any of my cross stitch since starting the mandala, and maybe I will stick to one thing for a change before distracting myself with 17 different things at the same time (she said, and the universe laughed and laughed).
My brain needs the focus and distraction, anyway. I will probably talk about this here later, but I am currently undergoing a detailed diagnostic process for something, and this really keeps me up at night. Nothing physical, nothing threatening… just a load of something that needs clarification and would offer a whole lot of explanation for why my life is the way it is in certain aspects. I have also started to be physically active regularly now… and – who would have thought – this really helps me with my chronic depression and with clearing out my brain fog on most days. I am currently riding my e-bike to work every day (that’s 1.5 hours or 22 km each day), and to most other destinations whenever possible as well. Sometimes with a doggo strapped to my back, like:
In May it’s been 131,4 km and 9h 47mins, which is huge for a sedentary amoeba like me. In June I am currently at 109,7 km and 7h 49min, but I suspect with the upcoming first fucking heat wave of the year (and most certainly not the last) I will have a hard time beating last month. In addition, however, I have signed up for a local women-only gym and their program and trainer support has me entertained enough to go back there at least semi-regularly. I am not quite at the recommended twice-a-week yet, even though I really want to get there. It’s difficult to get off the couch when I am stuck in one of my funks, and I am stuck in one of my funks almost every day, lately. So I am extra proud of myself when I manage to lug myself there and get with the program. And I am even extra-extra proud for my recent dedication to my bike. Go, me!
I have mentioned my ongoing photo project here and there, but I have never gotten around to explaining the madness to you, but right now feels like a good time to do so, because there is this one person at work, and I am like…
So I’ll take 15 minutes to distract myself, else I might get a free ride over to HR to explain my expletives. (Actually. I am part of whatever passes as HR in our workplace, so I’ll just give myself a slap on my wrist. THERE! TAKE THAT!)
So, photos. Photos have always been an obsession of mine, and you might say that this obsession was genetically coded into me.
My grandfather! Oh, I remember many afternoons in his makeshift darkroom with him, where he developed his own photographs, and taught me a thing or two about the process. The makeshift darkroom was actually his small bathroom, where he put up a working table and hung up a red light and then nobody was allowed to enter for hours, because the chemicals were expensive and my grandfather was not a wasteful person. There were strings hung up all across the room where he would clip the finished pictures to dry, just like in the movies – or maybe that’s just how I remember it from movies and it’s mixing up with my own childhood memories; the memories of me being there with my grandfather, watching him work, and seeing in awe how images appeared on white paper submerged in fluid from seemingly nothing, are quite vivid. I loved when I was allowed to be in the darkroom with him, but what’s more remarkable, in retrospect, was the way he meticulously documented every single photo he took. I remember the many notebooks he kept, filled with tables and tables and tables full of photo numbers and dates and locations. Choice photos were glued into special photo albums and annotated, the “rejects” were chronologically sorted into numbered photo boxes. The photos themselves were all meticulously annotated on their backs as well, featuring a date and a location or a short description. The same principle was applied to his 35mm photo slides: each plastic frame was annotated, and sorted chronologically into slides, which were stored in numbered boxes as well. There were closets full of photo boxes, both paper and slides, when he passed.
My father seamlessly applied the same system when he started to take his own pictures. Like my grandfather, he took paper photos as well as 35mm photo slides, the only difference being that he didn’t develop his paper pictures himself. The notebooks with the tables and tables and tables of information were the same though, and were kept with the same meticulousness, along with lists of dates and destinations of the many vacations we went on, and other trips we took and adventures we embarked on.
As you can imagine, between my grandfather and my father, there exists and unfathomable amount of analog photos, all distributed between paper and 35mm slides. My dad pruned out my grandparents’ collection after their deaths and kept only what was important to him, and later embarked onto a huge project to digitize… everything. He bought a flatbed scanner and a device to properly photograph the 35mm slides with, and spent several years in total working through his extensive analog collection. He incorporated the information from his and his dad’s notebooks into the file names and/or metadata, creating a miracle of a database of memories.
Now, me. I haven’t kept any notebooks, but my dad has taught me early on to keep my paper photos in chronological order and to carefully annotate my paper photographs on their backs as well, and that’s something I started doing in elementary school when I took my first pictures, got better at when I became a teenager, and became really good at in my early twenties. I have all my paper pictures sorted in slip-in albums that became many, many slip-in albums over the years. I never took 35mm slides myself, and I started digital photography around 2002 or 2003.
From the beginning, I was diligent and consistent with how I named and stored my digital photos, which was a good thing, because digital content adds up and becomes convoluted and gets out of hand if you are not careful very quickly.
I have a dedicated hard drive (with backups, of course) for pictures only, and they are structured by year – month – date, like so:
2023 > 2023 01 >> 2023-01-01 Name of Event >>> 2023-01-01_001.jpg
I haven’t strayed from this rigid structure since the very beginning.
I have recently asked my dad for all his digitized photos starting from the day I was born, and of course he delivered. Gigabytes and gigabytes. All my baby pictures, all of my childhood, all vacations, all trips, all adventures. A HUGE TREASURE. I then I invested in a dedicated photo scanner, and it’s been a total life changer:
Plustek ePhoto Z300 - I am not sponsored and I bought this from my own money. I just love it so damn much.
I have spent a considerable amount of time in the last few months scanning all my paper images, and then retire (i.e. throw out) my space-wasting slip-in albums in favor of clear plastic photo boxes instead in order to regain cabinet space. Having listened to and learned from my dad and grandpa now proved to be highly beneficial, as I was now easily able to sort my scanned paper images into my existing storage structure on my hard drive right away, based on the notes I took on their flipsides.
I have also invested in Mylio, which I stumbled across randomly, and instantly fell in love with, as it covers ALL my photo database needs, and more. I will leave you to read the product description yourself if you feel so inclined, let’s just say that this program is every wet dream I ever had about organizing and storing my photo library, and I am positively obsessed with it.
So what’s the actual project, you wonder? Well, can’t you guess? Yes. I am currently creating a chronological record of my life in pictures and videos, combining my dad’s digitized library with my own digitized library starting from the very day I was born. I am face-tagging EVERYBODY, and I am geo-tagging EVERYTHING, and I am correctly dating every single picture, and it’s insane, and yet so, so satisfying. I am creating categories and filters for birthday photos, and Christmas pics, and weddings, and crochet pics, and cross-stitch pics, and vacation albums, and… oh, I can’t even tell you all the ingenious ways in which I am making my library search- and filter-able, and won’t bore you with all the details, but it’s the single most satisfying thing I have ever done. I can’t wait for the finished result – which will sort of be my… legacy, really.
Others write memoirs… I will have a complete record of my life in visual memories, complete with descriptions and dates and locations.
It’s a very exciting project for me, and I cannot begin to tell you the level of gratitude I feel for both my dad and grandpa for having been/being so meticulous with their own photos, and for instilling this strong sense of structure and record-keeping in me. For teaching me the importance of diligence when it comes to record-keeping. The result is nothing short of breathtaking, as I am now able to exactly pin-point every step of the way of every vacation I have ever been on, even when I was a small child. My dad is able to produce information down to the name and location of a random campground we stayed at for one single night on our travels from Austria across Europe to Portugal by car, for instants. Every hiking trip, every field trip, every sports event, every occasion no matter how small, has been named and dated by my dad. It’s the most amazing thing. Geotagging my pictures in Mylio paints a world map of all the places I have been to all throughout my life, and I can’t wait to see the final result. In “people view”, Mylio shows me every person that’s ever been a part of my life by name, from elementary school friends up to current work colleagues.
I started with in 1979 – and yesterday I made it into the 2000s.
Starting from 2007 the process will become infinitely harder, as the amount of pictures that were taken literally exploded with the birth of my daughter, then exploded again with the birth of my son in 2010, and then yet again with the births of my nephews in 2015 and 2019. It doesn’t matter though, I am enjoying every single picture that I am cataloging in this way, and the trip down memory lane that each one provides.
Now, if you think that I am insane – you are definitely right. But trust me, the immense amount of work is truly worth this monumental effort, and reliving memories as I work through the years is it’s own special kind of nostalgic treat… seeing the faces of people long gone, and of people who have faded out of my life a long time ago for various reasons, remembering what they felt like to me, how I felt like around them. I sometimes want to reach through time and space and do things like fix my weird teenage hair, or yell at my young self through time and space to do this thing or that thing differenty, not to take this route, or that decision. I sometimes want to teleport through time and space right into a certain photo, and relive the moment, or hug the people there on the picture with me. My grandma and my grandpa, most of all. Or my young parents… how did time pass so quickly, and when did they turn into the old folks they are now? It’s maddeningly painful to watch them progress through time on my photos, see them change as they did. Then there is my first real love, the man I strongly believe I was meant to be with through it all – but was too young to seriously commit to: there was too much life still ahead of me, there were too many adventures to be had, too many experiences to live through, and too much of myself that still needed to be found – so he got lost in the process, left behind, leaving a huge hole in my heart that is still there, to this day. His memory and this grief over a great loss are forever etched into my soul, the loss of a future that was never mine to share with him, but the glorified imagination of which sometimes haunts me to this day, especially on particularly suffer-y mental health days.
I sometimes have very intense dreams following a long evening of spending time with my photos, and not all of them are pleasant, but it’s all part of the process and the results that are unfolding are so, so worth it.
How do you store/catalog your digital photo library, if at all? Are you meticulous, like me, or are you someone who just randomly stores photos in boxes with no thoughts of sorting them? Do you regularly back up your photos from your phone, or do you use your phone as sole storage device for all your memories? Do you do photo albums, photo books, have a file system, or pictures randomly living on your various devices in whatever which way? What’s your dea? I am curious!
I’ll tell you what she would do: she would interrupt her newly begun Yggdrasil stitching project, because today she saw…
…on the internet, and remembered that next month is pride month, and that she is going to the Pride Parade on June 17th.
She would then buy the Melted Rainbow Pride Top crochet pattern on lovecrafts by Liz Peltola, and some worsted rainbow yarn with next-day-delivery, and feel an itch in her fingers to get started, so it can all be finished on time.
…it virtually NEVER happens that I see a cross-stitch pattern that I fall in love with instantly and so intensely, that I drop EVERYTHING to buy not only it, but all necessary materials to get started ASAP, and even so I am on edge, waiting for my order to arrive.
Ok, it happened once, of course, and resulted in my ongoing love affair with the Kaleidoscope Dragon, which has been neglected for way too long now, due to Mojito: the Cross Stitch Project, which is – frankly – boring the living crap out of me by now.
Three attempts at one and the same piece really aren’t good for my motivation to stick with it, let me tell you. I am currently 41.45% in, and yesterday’s shopping spree for the new project has at least motivated me to try and speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed up and get it done and out of the way.
Meanwhile, inside my WIP cabinet:
Actually, more like:
Seriously, though. Sometimes I sabotage myself by getting too much stuff started all at once, and then these unfinished things become a heavy mental load rather than a pleasant distraction from Life(tm). That said, I am frustrated with some of them, for various reasons. Life being as it is, I have decided not to sweat them any longer, and just go with what feels good, instead. This is supposed to be a relaxing hobby, yes?
Yes.
Actually, not sweating the unfinished business and just doing what feels good resulted in something pretty awesome fairly recently.
I am very much in love with my bottle-cap sized D&D symbols which happened out of sheer inspiration and a flash of “must-have-these-mini-frames” after seeing them on Facebook, much like what happened yesterday.
(They still need to be finished off: a wooden lid is meant to be glued to the backsides, and I bought a set of tiny magnets that I will stick onto them, so I can put them up on my bedroom doorframe. Pic to follow for sure.)
So, what happened yesterday, exactly?
Well, this did:
Yggdrasil, the mythological Norse world tree. And this is, in my humble opinion, one of the most gorgeous depictions of it out there, at least to my taste. You know this feeling of when something just hits you, speaks to you, completely clicks with you, like it was made for you specifically, for the essence of who and what you are? I am not saying that my essence is essentially Nordic/Viking, far from it, but I have always felt a very strong pull towards this particular flavor of mythology and culture, as well as visual aesthetics. Artwork, symbols, (modern interpretations of Viking) men, Scandinavian music.
(My current music obsession is Danheim, my current visual obsession is Owen Janes. You’re welcome.)
The pattern designer of Yggdrasil is Fran McKay of ChameleonXS. The pattern is fully compatible with Pattern Keeper (- which I know, because I have already successfully imported it), and it can be bought here for more € than I am usually willing to spend on a pattern. It calls for 73 colors (72 if you choose to forgo black), and is supposed to be stitched on black fabric (- which is why black can be forgone, in theory).
Once again, I have placed my order with the Cross Stitch Corner, which really can’t be beat in terms of price for DMC floss in my corner of the world. The fabric I bought is 1 square meter of black 28ct Cashel linen. I will stitch the 14ct size (about 60×60 cm) over 2, which will be a first for me. Going to stitch over 2, because I can’t stand the aesthetics of 14ct Aida if it’s not a full coverage piece, and linen is much finer and more elegant than plain ol’ Aida. The downside: linen’s expensive, ugh.
Because I will be working on black fabric and thus completely ruin my eyesight, I have also decided to try something else in terms of magnification and lighting. I used to have these magnifying glasses until my new pup chewed them to smithereens. They were good, because they allowed me to peek over their rims when I wanted to look at something other than my ongoing project without having to remove them, but they were also bad because they hurt the bridge of my nose badly, and I wasn’t able to wear them for longer periods of time without adding some sort of cushioning between them and my nose. I replaced them with these magnifying glasses after the incident with the teeth, which are good because they have much better lighting and don’t hurt my nose, but are also bad, because I can’t peek over them, so I constantly have to slide them down my nose if I want to look at something other than my project. This, of course, is really annoying, because obviously I have to look over at my tablet for the pattern constantly.
My newest acquisition is this clip-on magnifying glass with integrated LED lighting, which arrived in the mail today. I clipped it onto the base of my laptop, and I am totally in love. No more fiddling around with the glasses, it has much better light, and I can look any which way I please without having to peek over, under, or sideways. I think my eyes will thank me, as they have taken quite a beating since I started this hobby a couple of years ago.
So now we wait. My order hasn’t been shipped yet, so my plan is to get as many stitches into Mojito as possible, before it arrives hopefully next week. Tomorrow’s coronation celebration is a perfect reason for me to sit on my butt all day and merrily stitch the day away. (Don’t judge, I am a sucker for Kate!)
They will go right up on my designated cross-stitch-display wall in my living room above my piano, and by “right up” I mean: whenever I have enough finished pieces to make some sort of plan about what goes where. As of now, I really haven’t finished very many pieces for myself, and the ones that I am currently working on for myself are large(r) full-coverage pieces that will get their own separate spaces, so as to not lose their visual impact among the “planned chaos” that will be my display wall:
Klimt’s Lady with a Fan (Riolis) will go into my upstairs bathroom, which is turning more and more into a Klimt-only space. The walls are painted yellow, I have some golden wall-stickers in there, 2 framed Klimts (Danae & “Expectation” of the Stoclet Frieze), some gorgeous magnets on my door frame, some stickers on my tiles, and a gorgeous fan in a corner on my cabinet. Eventually, I will also buy a golden faucet, lamp, (paper)towel-holder(s), soap-dispenser and trash-can, as well as this art nouveau toilet seat. I mean… right??? Right.
The Kaleidoscope Dragon (Paine Free Crafts) will probably be supplemented with theDesert Dragon (Paine Free Crafts) and both will take me years and years to finish, especially if I keep on sneaking in other projects, but will eventually probably replace the current center piece of my living room: a large square golden Aztec Calender. It looks awesome, don’t get me wrong, but a) it’s a remnant from my ex-husband, and b) it’s an unloved replacement of a MUCH BETTER Aztec Calendar that I used to own. (That previous one was also made by my ex-husband, but he ended up selling it off at an art exhibition without my consent, and while he has been emptily promising me an exact copy to replace my loss for 10+ years now, I have come to accept the fact that there never will be a compensation for this. I might as well hang my own stuff instead.)
Mojito the Cross Stitch Project will of course be supplemented with Bailey the Cross Stitch Project, once I have a visually fitting perfect image of him, and they will most likely get their separate space to shine as well.
What’s planned then for my display wall, you might wonder, if all the stuff I am working on clearly isn’t? Why, good question! Here, have a good look at my Etsy favorites. Random! Assorted! Stuff! Snarky sayings, cool/cute little designs, all sorts of nerdy stuff. (Stuff I will never get to at the rate I am going.)
Noooooot to mention all the patterns that I have already bought and that are patiently awaiting their turn on my Google Drive.
Oh, and this:
These came in the mail today, because I am a total impulse buyer, and someone posted them on Facebook, and there was NO WAY I wouldn’t buy them, too.
They are 2,5 cm in diameter, so what can possibly look good in there?
Well, if I did ALL of these, I’d need 44 of these mini frames, there were only 30 in the package. Let’s see. I will start with the D&D classes, and have already begun to convert the class symbols to 20×20 pixel art using the FlossCross designer. The plan is to do them all in one color per set, probably some shade of blue for the D&D symbols, red (obviously) for Vampire, and some green-ish for Werewolf.
The mini frames are 25 stitches across on 25ct cloth, so I am going to try and see how they work out, and maybe sell my patterns on Etsy, because why not.
25 stitches across on 25ct cloth
I think they might look good on my display wall in loosely connected clusters. Or maybe as magnets on a door frame. But that’s talk of the far future, of course.
I will now interrupt my work on Mojito the Cross Stitch Project to work on this instead, because I clearly have some sort of crafty ADHD on top of the mental disorders I can already call my own.
I have decided that today will be a crochet and Netflix and Generation Zero day. No cross-stitching. I feel that I need to ride the wave when inspiration hits me, otherwise I will never ever get any more crocheting and/or knitting done in my life for all the cross stitching I’d rather be doing.
I have finished and joined 6 squares for the Story Weather Jumper, but I have picked them apart again at the seams. I decided to weave in the ends for each square as soon as it’s finished, and I have found a neater way to join them:
I don’t feel that anything is lost, since I only have 6 squares so far, and I much prefer the neatness of handling squares with their ends already weaved in.
Let’s see how long I will manage to keep it up today, after getting only 4 hours of sleep last night.
Have a puppy, they said. It’ll be fun, they said!
And of course it’s all fun and games until said puppy decides he wants to get up at 5AM on a Saturday morning after I had barely gone to bed at 1AM (- because it was Friday night, ffs!), and was not having any convincing to lay back down and STOP! IT! ALREADY! OMG IT’S 5AM!
All these “gentle discussions” Bailey and I were having in bed of course woke up the OTHER doggo sleeping inside his box, who then started to scratch and whimper, wanting to be let out, because why does HE have to sleep and be quiet, when the other one gets to be all up and part-ay???
(Deciding to have dogs/puppies AFTER your kids have almost grown up and certainly don’t bother you on weekend mornings anymore is a real special kind of masochism, let me tell you.)
So yeah. Much fun. And after coming back from a grumpy 5AM morning walk on a Saturday after going to bed at 1AM because it was Friday night, ffs?
Back to sweet sleep he goes right by my feet as I sat down by the kitchen table with my laptop, so as to not wake the Alphanerd.
Well, I am glad some of us got some sleep, BAILEY.
You may remember the first mention of Mojito the Cross Stitch Project from my post-pandemic-reappearance post. It was my first ever attempted cross stitch project after discovering the enormous possibilities, and I was really excited about it. Here are some pictures of way back when:
I was about 33% in when I realized that a) my ingeniously penciled-on grid lines would totally shine through all the light floss of my dog and b) I had been merrily stitching away with a wrong color for way too many stitches for frogging to be feasible anymore.
I chucked it out with a heavy heart and finished a bunch of other stuff in the meantime, wanting to get back to it at a later time, when I wasn’t so upset over messing it up anymore. Well, that time had come in January. I felt the itch to get back to Mojito the Cross Stitch Project and went as far as buying a whole new set of DMC floss as per the pattern that I had re-created in pic2pat, ordering it over at the Cross Stitch Corner, a store local to Germany. The first time around I had used some no-name floss that I have in abundance at home, having ordered this as a part of a huge “beginner’s set” of like 150 colors – before I knew if I’d even like cross-stitching, or that DMC floss exists. Since there were no real corresponding numbers on my no-name floss to the DMC floss listed in the pattern, I had been eyeballing the color approximations. This time around, I wanted to do it correctly:
This was attempt #2.
Was, you ask? Why, yes! Was! Because I am an utter idiot who apparently cannot count to save her life, I had to chuck this one into the bin as well. Things were going great until I was about 25% in and realized that my Aida cloth WAS! TOO! SMALL!
25% DONE BEFORE REALIZING THAT I AM A DUM-DUM
I swear, I was counting and calculating beforehand! And I didn’t start stitching until I was 100% certain that I would have enough fabric on both sides. Someone must have come in and cut it while I wasn’t looking – that’s my story, and I am sticking to it.
So I decided not to be fooled by Aida-cutting gremlins again, and ordered some pre-gridded 18ct Zweigart via prime shipping to be delivered the next day. I would start over TOMORROW, and nothing was going to stop me!
Right?
I sure did get the delivery notification the next day: my Zweigart was to be picked up from the P.O. box downstairs, and I was all excited, only to find: nothing.
NOTHING.
There was a delivery notification, but no delivery. I called customer service, and… well… huh… oh, I dunno… we will have to check with the carrier… you will hear back from us within 3 business days.
3 business days? Are you kidding me? It was Thursday by now. I wanted to start over right away! 3 business days meant I’d get it on Tuesday, that is, if they’d find its whereabouts at all, and I am not one to wait, if I have set my mind to something. I went to work the next day, googling local stores that may carry what I needed and found Gerti’s Nähstube fairly close to where I work.
I bought some marbled dunnowhat-ct beige vintage looking cloth, the kinda thing I normally wouldn’t ever go for. Other than that they had nothing pre-gridded, just regular plain old 14ct Aida. The fabric I bought is a bit finer, and I guess the marbled effect will make for a nice frame around the full-coverage Mojito – IF IT WILL EVER BE FINISHED.
I now started Mojito the Cross Stitch Project for the third time. Due to the new fabric being much finer than my previous Aida it now fits the whole piece into my q-snap frame, and I don’t have to move it around anymore. (And yes, it’s big enough!) I have enough of it that I can make a corresponding piece of Bailey, if I manage to take a similar picture of him during our next hiking vacation in the Alps.
Speaking of Bailey! Thanks to that little shit I am now the proud owner of my second set of magnifying spectacles. Yes. Puppies chew on things, did you know that? I did. At least in theory. In practice I was really surprised and pissed that he managed to grab my specs and chew them to smithereens. Mojito would never in a million years do such a thing, so I didn’t even think of keeping them out of reach. Also, what’s the appeal? He has like a gazillion suitable puppy toys available. He’s truly lucky he’s so damn cute. And fluffy. And soft.
(So soft!!!)
(And cute!!!)
So this is where we are at with Mojito the Cross Stitch Project v3.0. The third time better be a charm.
Crochetophile's Parlor 