Welp another week has gone by and another house project got accomplished. Friday after getting Benton to school we did some work in the house trailer to get benches and the tables out that we needed for the weekend. After that we managed to get everything out of the closets onto the tables (work smarter not harder) and get things really cleaned up. A whole other load of things to good will filled my trunk. I finally got rid of my old columbia coat which while in good shape doesn't fit. Ruthlessness abounds. We also went around and got rid of all Compact Fluorescent lightbulbs and replaced them with the plethora of LEDs we had and OMG the brightness from some of our every day lights. Yeah that needed to be fixed.

We now have a rule that the only thing that can go on top of the ryobi battery tool box is the ryobi vacuum. And the main house tool box is now accessible without having to take it out of the closet. Yay! main closet and coat closet I ordered a new smaller bag for the xmas tree and the dyson vacuum now fits in the front closet. I still need to see if I burnt the vacuum out. I'm hopeful it just overheated or has a blockage. There are YT videos for me to look at. Anyhoo that is now stored in the closet. I then spent the rest of the day organizing and purging things in the studio. Slowly. But the room is back to rights mostly and I was able to pull things for the next day for the Hot weather Garb thing we were doing at Poes.

I managed to get myself into a shower (I was gross from all the dust etc) and then hit up my massage which was a god send before meeting Ari (after 3 tries for restaurants) for Sushi at Kazuki. Very nice evening to catch up with Ari who I had not seen since we got back. We then headed to her house to watch the first episode of Wednesday Season 2. That was good but WTF did they do with Catherine Zeta Jone's makeup to make her face weird? IT could have just been Ari's tv but it was odd. Anyhoo, headed home after that and the boys had gotten home and I headed to bed kinda early? I don't actually remember.

Saturday and Sunday was the garb thing at Poe's. We all came out of it with at least one piece of new garb/clothes. I managed to rejigger a saxon peplos from 2018 that I had bought and hated the shape of, also cut our a new shift in my normal pattern and one of the ones Ari makes that kinda hold the girl but not really? But those all got finished with a bit of work when I got home on Sunday night. I do not like my students gravity fed iron. The swivel is clunky and gets in my way for how I Iron. Its only set if you are right handed which I iron both ways. I like my rowenta thank you very much. It was my second time using it but I still hate it. My serger was usefull and we kept blue on it and light colors on poes so we had a good use of things. Ari and I bought brought our featherweights and were able to sew on those while folks used Poe's machine. Its a cheap Brother but works well enough its just not up for my ergonomics.

But I have 3 garments ready to wear now peplos, shift 1, and shift 2 on.


My head had been weird. I got a bad headache at the end of sewing on Saturday and came home, had ice cream for dinner and went to bed early after a shower. I dont know if its the weather trying to monsoon, the change in temp (we dropped 10 degrees to just the low 100s), hormones, work stress or what? I have not felt good. I had to lay down for a bit monday afternoon and took more meds for the pain, that got me through the evening, cleaning up for scribble etc but I was drained yesterday and didn't go to the gym cause I was so nauseous. I think that was from a protein bar I had that has MTC oil and it did not do my system well. I curled up on the couch after work and a trip to the grocer. I really despise my local Safeway and just need to stop going to the one by my house. Sighs.

So work is nuts, we go camping for Highlands on Friday. Its just a bit southwest of Flagstaff. So 5 hour drive or so depending on how stoopid traffic is in PHX or up the I-17 in the mountainous area. We may have the truck/trailer or the van/trailer. I don't know yet we will figure it out tonight. I don't know if I will have effort left to go to knitting but I shall see.

Thursday night I made dinner which was vegan pesto that I then put chicken into along with the cashew/spinach ravioli I got from TJs. My pesto is:
soak 1 cup of cashews in hot water for 20 mins
Drain, put those in food processor and blend for a bit, then add copious amounts of basil, a tidge of olive oil, garlic and onion powder, juice of one lemon and some S&P. Super tasty and easy but a bit of clean up on the blender/food processor. The ravioli were good but I over cooked some of them a tad. I added two cans of chicken that I diced up good and it was a very good meal with leftovers for dinner and pesto for bread.

I worked on the embroidery and got the the leaves all outlined in either stem/chain stitch in two different colors of thread.

Friday we headed up to Phx early and forgot things like our masks (thanks to maggie she had spare) and I forgot my ibuprofen which was saved by Shanda having some in her bag of holding. Anyhoo...we parked, walked to get breakfast at Morning Squeeze which had excellent food. We then walked to the Science museum which was loud with children but pretty informative. The cool thing is they had Power of Poisons traveling exhibit which was very lacking in children and super interactive and informative. I took okay pictures of it but it was low light.

We then headed over to quilt con where I needed a sit down while we waited for Maggie (aka Bertana) to get back from getting her badge from ehr hotel room. We didn't get badges just electronic scans on our phones which made me sad but it was a cool convention, Quiltcon. They used the 3rd floor of the Phx Convention Center, those familiar from Fan Fusion know this now as the Photo Op and Autograph area. Lots of attendees couldn't believe how big the convention center was and I giggled. Uh, this is just one set of the rooms they could use. Though I guess the classes were on the Symphony side which makes sense is a across the sky bridge. Anyhoo...we were there to see the quilts and I had hoped to Meet Chris from Rose City Originals. And we walked up to the Accuquilt booth (this is a thing I want but can't justify buying until I'm older and have more free time) but got to meet him, get a selfie and his STICKERS!!!

Saw a lot of teh quilts on display (or tried to there were a lot and my knee while better was cranky pants by the end of the day.) And shopping. I got some notions (needles, needle minders) from Rachel Rossi, stickers and a small bag from the MQG shop, stickers and a 1.5" iridescent ruler from Feral Notions, yarn/fiber/needle minder from Storyteller Stitchery who are local, and I got a pattern Called Splintered Spectrum from Lemon Quilts. I was surprised by Mel who got me a Lap App which I didn't realize I needed and have used the heck out of Sat/Sunday embroidering especially when I grabbed a clamp to attach my embroidery hoop. So effing handy. To understand how this works see The designer explaining it. Yes its expensive but its super well made, good materials and damn if its hella handy. Maggie had seen it with me and I couldn't' figure out what it was for and I went around to see something else on the next aisle. After I left Maggie got a demo of it and immediately tried to find me or Mel, found Mel first and he bought it for me once he saw what it did. I'm super grateful and super happy with it thus far. My only beef and I will call them is I would like to get the other heads for it to do the ipad stand and/or the bead table and not have to buy a separate thing? Maybe? I will use it and see. But I see this useful for all types of in lap hand sewing and I could put my third hand attached to it too. I will probably make a bag to carry it and have the caddy stuff. But right now i love it.

We had a wonderful dinner and drinks at Harumi (sushi) and then mel drove us home. My knee was on fire and we got home, I iced it, took more drugs and we we went to bed. Saturday I woke up and my foot and knee both shifted and settled more in place. The swelling had gone done a lot since the weekend and it was nice to have full extension on my leg. I was good and elevated it most of the day in-between walking around. I watched movies (Muppets Treasure Island --Muppet Haunted Mansion -- Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion --Rosario Dawson Haunted Mansion. I love them all and marathoned those. I got the center of the rose done and I love how it turned out. Sunday was embroidery in the afternoon as we had errands to run for household things (harbor freight and ace hardware) before I sat down and got going on couching goldstyle thread. I got through the little leaves and almost finished the last petals that are padded. Here is where I finished up. I'm going to finish the padded couching and then I think its pearls around the outer edge of the petals and then its done? Its rather striking with what is showing now but I'm not sure yet. Gonna take it to scribal tonight to work on it and get some peer review on it.

I also need to get some laundry done (like my war stuff) and finish the deep clean/declutter/destash/organize of the studio. Finding things immediately when I want them is fucking fancy as hell and then there is the filing cabinet to deal with. And I have this weird thing where I want to wear a new dress to Cassandra's elevation and I will have like 10 days to make one....doable but necessary?

The weekend made me inspired and needing some that with the world being dumb right now. Just want it.

Work was a lot of meetings and finance ick but we managed and I got my slides in for the monthly review.

After work I managed to make it to the gym for the first gym workout for the year. I have logged a few walks but wanted the gym to clear out of the "new" people. I had a 5 min wait for a squat rack and started back at the levels from October which I thought was okay. Then I did dumbbell dead lifts at 60# and it should have been heavier but yanno...not killing myself the first time with weights in 6 weeks. So yeah I did good, lifted well, got complimented on my skull leggings and then went to the treadmills. I cracked the incline to 4, hit 2.5 mph, turned on my book and did a mile. My ankle seemed to be cool with that. I will try that again with a bit more speed tomorrow and see how I do. Incline is good and hard and stead is better than crazy running I think.

I've also started back in on trying to watch my macros. And looking at my food choices. So I made a big salad with a very light dressing, tons of veggies and then had pork chops with that. Today for snack I made hard boiled eggs to have with thin sausage and triskets. Trying to get the protein there, watching my portions and snacks and booze. Not being too stringent...just trying to make better easy choices.

I'm on the last week of my anxiety meds and the magnesium drink in the evenings has been good too so I think that is helping my brain a lot. I'm also trying to pebble myself with my to do list. I set a few things per day to do and that is it. If I get more done, shiny, but if I do everything I actually put a fucking gold star sticker on the day. Silly but its nice.

Last year danabren said to cull your inbox and unsubscribe from things you don't want to see. And I've done a lot of that, as well cancel or pushout subscriptions for coffee, shampoo and undies etc. Trying to simplify things in my life and that is also helping.

I did not do anything but meal/snack prep last night when I got home after 7pm with Benton. I did catch up on some YT. But tonight is knit night. I'm super happy about that and glad to have the time to go. Last week I was just too tired after the week and car shenanigans and was cold and peopled out. The week before that was recovery from my elevation so first time back so yeah. So glad to go to knit night.

I do need to find time to hit yoga oasis at least once, better would be twice a week for yoga but I will get what I can. It maybe once a week on one week and twice on another due to being able to go on off Fridays and Sundays. Little steps.

Gonna try for Sunday and to make Willa go with me.