Stitching crisis.....and sore muscles

Thursday I found my mistake on 10 lords a leaping and tore out his jacket, redid it found another mistake...tore out the boots redid it. It seemed like I was fighting it all the way. So I guess it was friday that I finally finished 10 lords a leaping, backstitching and all. I was really look forward to only haveing two squares left to do.... I pull it out of the hoop and realize.....I STITCHED IT ON THE WRONG SQUARE. It was in the square for #11. I swear I almost tore the damn thing apart. No wonder it was giving me hell. That evening (after achieving appropriate amounts of sympathy from my husband) I was able to breathe and tear out the entire thing (the only salvageable part was 1/2 the border) while watching Alias on DVD. I love watching all my shows thru Netflix...you can follow the complicated storylines without commercials or a week of distractions between them. Oh and by the way the pattern is 12 Days of Christmas by Alma Lynne it is oop now.

So instead of stitching the same thing twice in the same week, I then chose to just stitch the borders to all three of the last squares to make sure the placement and colors are correct....no chances from now on. I then took a break and went back to stitching on the Peace tree ornament that I had not finished from the exchange . I think I will finish it before going back to stitch the lord a leaping again.

In other news it is fall and that means waist high leaves. Let me give you some background here. Ian and I bought the house cause we love it and its yard with all the trees. but we bought it in the summer....not the fall. Our yard is caught in between the idea of a lawn and a forest. we have old (like 40-50 year old) oaks. and much of the ground is shaded and is just bare soil or weeds. The clincher is we cannot afford to 1) plant the whole yard with seed and maintain it with fertilizer/water/weed killer till it could maintain itself... nor 2) plant a boat load of trees to help it go forest in a short time, and to let it go native on its own would mean a horrid yard for years. also 3) I am not sure I would want more trees...my house is dark enough as it is and 4) I as a environmentalist can not cut down any trees that are not a danger to my house. Note that I am talking about both the front and back yard.

So as a consequence Ian and I have to rake and clear the yard of metric tons of leaves every fall. We are technically outside the city and do not get garbage services ...but our house has the city border sign right in front of it...and I checked last year...we are on the map of the leaf pick up route (which is also the garbage route). So last year we put them on the road and voila...they picked them up. Cool. So this year the pick up was later than usual due to the warm weather, and I checked the city web site and pick up was to begin on the 14th and go thru the 10th of December. Since we were toward the end of the route last year I wasn't worried and alot of the oak leaves are still green and on the trees here. but it was ankle deep in the backyard so I thought that I should at least start on the piles and Ian could do the front yard later. So Sunday I work my butt off from 9am-1pm and get the whole backyard done... well yesterday I decide at the last minute to take a day off from school since I had not seen Ian in about 7 days. We decide to finish the front yard and mow one last time. While we are raking....the leaf guys show!! on the first day!. They won't pick up again for a month but we finish raking anyway and start the new pile.
They must of felt bad cause later that afternoon while we were out they came back for the rest....we are thinking of leaving a cooler of beer under the next pile of leaves.......