crewel weather.

Hee hee, I made a pun! See, the reason I’ve not posted in a couple of weeks now is because the weather has indeed been quite cruel (so many thunderstorms with torrential rains!), and we’ve had some severe flooding in our basement as a result. Two Sundays ago, flash flooding on our street backed up the storm sewers and sent over 2 feet of water fountaining through our floor drain into our basement, wrecking lots of stuff (including our furnace/HVAC system) and making some pre-existing problems with our gutters and foundation much more obvious and in urgent need of remedy. It’s been…quite the adventure. Dealing with the insurance company, the HVAC folks, and managing the cleanup hasn’t left me with very much time for crafting, and the timing could not be worse – apparently I have a very strong nesting instinct and OMG, all I want to do is get things ready and make things for the baby. But alas, no. Not until we’ve got our house fixed up. And of course, there’s the expense issue, too, which is extra stressful coming as it does just before I take a big paycut (and we add a third member to our family). I kind of want to crawl in bed and hide for a long, long time…but I’ve got to be a good little grownup and just take care of things. C’est la vie.

I don’t have much knitting to show y’all – the Garter Rib cardigan is a couple inches longer, and that’s about it on the knitting front. I have been able to sneak a few moments in for some embroidery, though:

I’ve now finished 2 letters on my alphabet sampler – only 24 more to go! Here’s the A:

For the A, I learned how to do chain stitch, satin stitch, and french knots – 3 new skills on one letter! Next up was the B:

For the B, I learned how to do stem stitch (and lots of it!). I’m sure my embroidery is far from perfect, but I’m really pleased with how these are turning out.

Of course, I’ve been full of all sorts of ideas for what to do with my newfound embroidery skills (I’ve long dreamt of embroidering some of the neuroscience diagrams I’ve seen in my classes because I just think they’d look so cool in that medium!), including some ideas for the munchkin, but I’m not sure I’ll find the time before the munchkin arrives to make good on any of them. It’s amazing how quickly this summer has flown by – next week I’ll be in my third trimester (already!), and before you know it, the munchkin will be kicking me from the outside rather than the inside (which they currently do pretty much constantly – I have the wiggliest little munchkin who ever wiggled in my belly). Crazy!