A couple things

Stitching large

Have you ever used a magnifying glass while stitching? If so, did you find it helpful?

Yup. I sure do. Age is rearing it's ugly head, and I can no longer focus on small little things like I could when I was younger. It sucks. But, I have my handy-dandy magnifying glass, and I use it with abandon, especially when I'm stitching over one, but occasionally even when I'm stitching over two on small (for me) fabric. I don't know how long I've had this magnifying glass. I don't remember ever not having it. As you can see by my little ruler, it's more than seven inches long... I could get out a longer ruler and actually measure it, but I'm guessing that it's about eight inches or so from stem to stern. You should see me when I use it. I'm sure it's quite comical. I'll have the stitching frame on my lap, propped up so I can sort of see what I'm doing, a threaded needle in one hand, and the magnifying glass in the other. A third hand would come in handy here. Uh, no, before you ask, I don't use it for every stitch—I only get it out when I need to have a closer look... when I think I may have missed a stitch, or I want to prevent missing one.

Blinding

Except for our little library, which is at the front of the house, there isn't a single covered window in our upstairs. Or, well, there wasn't until this weekend. It's been so hot out that we've been miserable. Our upstairs really heats up early in the day. There's one kitchen window that faces basically east, and all morning the sun beats on it, and heats up the whole place. Or, well, it did. Dave's had this mini-blind for a good sixteen years that he has never used. He bought it off of a friend who moved and no longer needed it. It's perfect for our kitchen slider, as it was built for a sliding glass door.

Here's a really horrible before picture. Well, sort of a before picture. Usually our kitchen table is in front of the window, and Dave had already moved it before I got the camera out.

So anyway, Dave dug these blinds out of somewhere in the garage. He spent some time hosing them off, spraying them with cleaning stuff, hosing again. Then it was my turn. I wiped over every one of those little slats with cleaning stuff. Every one of them. A number of them I worked on for a while to get the sixteen years of accumulated grime off of them. Some slats had old, dried up masking tape goo on them. That was a joy, let me tell you. But they're done, and up on the wall over the window just in time for the heat wave to mellow out. We'll be ready for the next heat wave. Bring it on!

P.S. Yes, that's Ricki sitting there. Awake. And wondering what in the world we're doing. I think she likes the end result, though. It is much cooler by that window than it was before.