I got the house!

If all goes well I will be officially become a home owner on April 28th. :-) This is the most money I have ever spent for my dogs. :-) They will love the big yard and I can finally get a doggy door!

not much stitching going on

Life has gotten in the way of stitching these days. Between the dogs (with the puppy being a particular time suck), agility and looking for a house, I haven't had a lot of time left over. But here is my progress on Farm House by BBD little as it is.


I made my first offer on a house the Sunday before last. I didn't get it as the seller accepted a cash offer. However, I got a call last night from my agent saying the cash offer fell through so I'm back in the running. I'm finding the entire process to be quite stressful. :-) But I should know something by the end of the week.


I had a three day agility trial with the pugs last weekend. We went 0 for 12. :-( I was so bummed. I've been working so hard over the winter to sort out some kinks but we are still not quite there. I have another this weekend and next weekend and I'm hoping for better results. Thanks for stopping by!

well color me stupid

So last Thursday I started on Farm House the next Anniversary of the Heart series. And got a lot done in just one train ride I thought. On the way home I picked it up again totally meaning to keep my momentum going. Then I noticed that I started this piece one block short on the left. I would have to pick out what I've done and start over. Bummer! I so didn't feel like doing that then and in any case, I wanted to have the chart from the one above just to make sure they lined up correctly before I start again, I just put it aside and napped on the way home. This loomed over me all weekend. So much so that I didn't open my stitching bag. So this morning I remembered that I still needed to check the first chart to line every thing up and I tossed it in my bag. The start of daylight savings always messes with me so I just slept on the train into Chicago and never even looked at it. When I got to work I made a quick copy of the top of Farm House and the bottom of Snow Garden so I could tape them together so I could see exactly where I needed to start.

So what did I see when I lined everything up? That I didn't mess up! The lovely BBD ladies made the left hand edge almost the same in both charts and I wasn't off after all. :-) Yeah for this. But I did lose an entire weekend of stitching. Bummer for that.

I started my house quest in earnest this weekend. How distressing and depressing it turned out to be. What I can really afford right now are short sales and bank owned homes. At least half of the ones I looked at where unlivable in their present state. The people living in them either striped them bare before moving or just gave up on doing anything even remotely resembling maintenance. I actually went into one place (that I had high hopes for) that had two feet of water in the basement! The other half needed major work like roofs and windows and things like that and I don't want to start out my home ownership adventure doing that.

So I'll pull ten more or so and go out again this weekend. I'm really sad that I might not be able to have a yard after all. If none of the older homes in the area work I might have to start looking at townhouses. They are newer and for the most part in good repair but very, very few have yards and fences for the dogs. Or another option is to start to look in Wisconsin for houses. But that will add an hour a day to an already almost three and a half hour a day commute. I don't like either option very much at all.

Pink Hill Manor finis

Pink Hill Manor - design by Blackbird Designs
32 count Purely Primitive by Silkweavers
Recommended overdyed floss

I finished up Pink Hill Manor on the way home from work yesterday. I'm a third of the way complete with Anniversaries of the heart! I'll start the next one this evening or in the morning. Isabelle and I have puppy class tonight and she will come home tired so I might be able to stitch without her trying to eat my hoop. :-)

a great weekend

The pugs had a great agility weekend. Aoife got two second place finishes in Novice FAST and her Novice Fast title and Clancy got his first ever Excellent Standard Q! And since he is still in the A class, it was first place! I uploaded a bunch of youtube videos from the trial - the link to my page is on the left side of my blog. Aoife didn't run nearly as well as Clancy did - she was her usual crazy self. On Saturday the only thing that kept Clancy from Qing was dropping the top bar of the triple jump. Broke my heart for him both times because he gives everything he has to the moment and was so awesome on both courses.


I didn't have time to stitch - I stayed the weekend by the trial site at a hotel and played with friends on Saturday.

But I did have time on the train! I'm getting close to the end of this one. Hopefully this week. In fact tonight I'll toss in the next chart with the floss just in case I'm closer than I think I am.

I made some progress

Took the train in this morning and look! I stitched! :-) This should go quickly now that this house is done. This is one of my favorites from Anniversaries of the Heart.

I finally a picture of Isabelle where her eyes aren't glowing. It's so hard to take nice photos of black dogs. Between her color and the fact that she almost never stops moving, it's been tough. :-) I really need to get a good photo of her with the pugs. Then you can see just how much bigger she has grown.

I'm very saddened by the loss of Lisa Roswell and I wish her family well during this time. She was one of my favorite newer designers and she will be missed.