How can it possible be February 3rd already?  It seems like it was just Christmas!

I had every intention of posting a couple more blogs in January, even wrote a draft of one, but never got around to finishing it!

January was a weird month.  We had mostly mild temperatures ( for us) and although I had so much to do, I was somewhat restricted in what I should be doing.  I woke up one morning and my vision had drastically changed overnight.   I felt like I was looking through a cloud of black pepper.  Millions of tiny black specks and one large flashing spike covered the vision in my right eye.  I was sure it was a detached retina, and I had experienced this in my other eye several years ago- so off to the eye doctor went I!

I was partially right - It is the retina, but it has not quite detached yet - it's getting close, but it still is intact.  I have a followup in 2 weeks to see if anything has changed, and I am pretty sure I will be sent back to the same specialist who did laser on my other eye, eventually!  In the meantime, I can't drive, which is not great: I can't shovel snow - which is great: and I shouldn't overstrain my eyes - that's a tall order for a crafter like me!

I am trying very hard to comply to all the shouldn'ts!

I set aside the tiny stitching I was doing on my fox from THE YEAR IN THE WOODS, but I have continued my daily stitching journal - and I finished the month of January.

Check it out!

I'm so happy with how this first month turned out!  I love that every day is just randomly stitched with whatever I feel like stitching that particular day.  I have added a few special days on this one,  For instance, January 12 would have been my parents anniversary, so I stitched the day and year they were married.  The 13th was the day my Dad passed away, he loved birds, so I stitched a bird: and the 21st was my brother's 64th birthday so I added that as well, I will continue adding special days or moments on future months as I go, to give the whole project a journal feel.  At the end of the year, when hopefully I have 12 journals stitched, I am thinking about making a quilt with these blocks.  I should add that each month's block is the size of a piece of photocopy paper (8.5x11).

I am also stitching a denim bag I am making out of a pair of blue jeans - but I will share that with you next time.

I have a bit of spring fever, I have ordered my seeds and have been harvesting seeds from flowers I saved last year.  At the end of this video is a beautiful 3minute segment I put together and set to music using beautiful images from my gardens.  The groundhog said we are in for 6 more weeks of winter, but I'm thinking beyond that already - what does a groundhog know anyway!

Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/gjEVTl2Vg_4