Company

I spent Sunday and Monday on the couch.  Usually I work on Monday at my day job and Sunday I am in the shop with the machines.  Let's just say I was indisposed.  Both boys sleep next to me when I am sitting on the couch, but when I am napping, there is only room for one of them.  Good dogs, they took turns. 

Happy New Year

I went through my photos to find an appropriate picture for today's blog.  My library was filled with photos of sewing machines in various stages of repair.  I found this photo of a lily from my poor, neglected perennial garden.  I was playing with my Canon SLR that day.  I was  trying to learn all about f-stop, shutter speed and exposure.  Finally I gave up and just used the automatic everything button.  Some day.....

I don't regret neglecting the garden. It has been neglected before and it will revive this spring when I get out there and weed it and thin some of the plants.  I don't regret not growing vegetables, either.  I can weed that garden as well and, honestly, all those garter snakes don't bother me nearly as much as the mice in my sewing loft.

I am absolutely happy that I spent the year with vintage sewing machines. I admit that I went crazy buying machines.   Most likely it was an addiction.  It was, most definitely, a diversion from the stress of my life: fracking fears, work, work, work, fracking fears.  The highlight of the year was Ray White's class in Ithaca.  I would take his class again in a heart beat.   I laughed so much and I made some new friends. 

Plans for 2012?  More sewing and sewing machine repair.  Weeding the garden in the spring and growing some vegetables again.  The manure will be perfect this year and I have a seed catalogue waiting for me.  Hopefully Anna and Max will be on the east coast again and I can spend some time with my very amazing son and daughter - in - law.  Steven's older son and family from California are planning a trip out east.  We all can gather in Vermont with the rest of his family and perhaps  the Cortland contingent can go as well. Somehow Mom, Alice and I will get together; here, Chicago or North Carolina.  Family, friends, poodles and sewing machines.   Who could ask for anything more?

Off topic...Wrigley

Wrigley is a "labradoodle" that came to us three years ago from New Rochelle.  He needed a new home because, at 9 months old, he was too rambunctious for the brand new baby.  So he joined Frannie and Wilson here in the country.     He does not shed, fortunately, but that is about where his kinship to the poodle ends.  He walks like a lab, "talks" like a lab,  plays like a lab, is solid like a lab and he smells like a lab; especially when wet.   I prefer to think of him as a mixed breed, but he truly is a designer dog.  His mother was a first generation labradoodle; his father a standard poodle.  That makes Wrigs an F1B labradoodle.  Whatever he is, he is a great dog and I adore him.