State of the Me first:  The mammogram and ultrasound were normal; I just have 42-year-old never-been-pregnant boobs, with "perhaps a cyst, perhaps a lymph node, but definitely benign" lumpy bits.  No word back on the thyroid lump, but my lab tests came back normal (which doesn't really mean anything, since "normal" is quite a large range, and may not be actually par for me).


Now, on to the good stuff!  In between working on the jacket (which I have named Patience), I am working on embroidering the laurels on my fitted dress that I stamped with laurels all over in a fit of some kind.  The white paint started to wear off, so I thought "what the heck" and started embroidering over the paint.  I've been working on it as a break from the more rarefied work of the jacket, and also because the jacket is no longer portable for events (but I'll be bringing it to Sweden, I promise!), so having something else to work on makes my hands happy.  The dress (here half-way down the page) is quartered blue and white (proTip:  Quartering your half-and-half colours makes you look slimmer!), and has corresponding laurels, 27 on each quarter (plus I forget how many on the sleeves).

I got the first blue quarter - the back - done a couple of days ago.  It took me about 216 hours, and used about a cone and a half of Halcyon Yarn's Gemstone silk in white.  And here is what it looks like:


That's part of the library Bob is building behind me.  The second pic is for scale.

I've finally found the right size silk in a blue I like; I've ordered (I hope) enough.  It's coming from the UK, so I guess I'll know when it gets here.  It wasn't hideously expensive, so I'll find a use for it, even if it isn't quite right for this.  Sadly, Halcyon does not have a colour I like, and I haven't really wound my head around ordering a bunch more white and dyeing it to the right shade, but I'm not saying it's out of the question.

I figure the whole thing is going to take about a thousand hours, so well within my abilities, right?  The good thing is the style never goes out of fashion.

It's been gorgeous here, and I've been able to open the windows, because the trees haven't hit full pollination fog just yet (probably next week).  We went out today to get lumber to work on the library, and I picked up a few cheap pansy flats to perk up all my patio pots.  We've had daffodils blooming for a couple of weeks already, and I've actually snuck a few more in (they probably won't come up this year, but they'll be smashing next year), because I got sick over the winter, and then got too lazy to plant the rest of the bulbs I bought for naturalizing.  Sadly, all but one of my snowdrops either died or got eaten, but I did have one brave little snowdrop down by the mail box, which made me happy.  The frogs have gone mad, and are singing their little hearts out, and leaving great strings of eggs in all the woodland puddles.  And I saw my first seasonal bunny a couple of days ago, and my vultures are nesting!

I love spring.

Vulture eggs, 2012