Jasmine Tea, Cross Stitch, and Rain

The title is pretty much everything on my mind today - we had one nice crisp sunny day yesterday, and now we're back to grey, leaky skies... it almost feels as if the sun forgot to wake up today.  I've been at very loose ends - not a lot of energy.  Not exactly achy, but sometimes rheumatoid arthritis creates a bottoming out of energy, like a leaky balloon... everything is just a bit too hard to bother with.

I am glad of the lack of ache - it let me stitch a bit on a perforated paper sampler I'm working on - it's my own design and I'll take pictures very soon.  This one will be given to an auction at the UU church I attend late this year, but I can already see I'll be stitching it again for myself, as I like it very much.

I chose to stitch on paper because I have a tendency to put time into stitching, and then losing steam at the end and never getting them properly finished - with perforated paper, it doesn't have to be stretched and you pop it into a frame as soon as you're finished.  Since this piece was for an auction, there's a deadline involved and I just didn't want to run the risk of blowing it.

Jasmine tea is my drink of choice today - my son in law came over quite early today, on an errand to pick up a blend of chamomile and mint tea for my daughter who has reached the 'I-can't-breathe' stage of a cold that's whipping through their house.  While I was putting that together for her, I got a hankering for some jasmine tea for myself.

He brought my granddaughter Hailey over - it's so neat to have them visit after living with me for the first year of her life - she now gets very excited as they walk in, saying 'Hi!" and waving to everyone and everything.    She's also quite fond of pointing and demanding 'whazzat??' - and I had a pile of Halloween decorations in a pile ready to find a spot for them, so she was impatient to get down and explore.  This year they'll all have to be placed with a careful eye to breakable vs. unbreakable and I'll want to keep a couple plush decorations on hand to let her wander with.

Speaking of, they just got pictures done that they took last month, and one of them includes a t-shirt I cross-stitched for her.  Hailey adores Yo-Gabba-Gabba ... I'm not sure if there's a child alive who doesn't. It's a strange phenomenon how this show that has some strange advice ('don't bite your friends'... all the kids I know will quickly figure out the loop holes in that thought...especially when you call the peas on your plate friends that want to come to the party in your tummy... but I digress) and pretty good indy pop guest bands also has whatever that mysterious something is that hooks every kid in the universe, including those way too young to get anything about it other than the pretty colors.

But she loves them, and so I designed a little motif featuring Foofa (the pink character) and stitched it on a t-shirt using 14-ct waste canvas.  It stitched up fast - but boy, it'd been a long time since I'd used waste canvas, and I forgot what a long tedious chore it is to ease the  threads out after you're done stitching.  I'm very glad they got a picture of her wearing it - she's growing so fast that it's already being worn by one of her stuffed toys now.

So... other than crafting and sipping and doing a whole lot of nothing, I did get some yogurt strained and thickened (I love Greek style yogurt, but hate paying the price charged for it - a container of plain yogurt, strained over a bowl through a strainer lined with a coffee filter does the trick).  This time, I strained it once, stored away the liquid in the bowl (whey), stirred and strained again, and it came out really thick - just about cream cheese consistancy, and I've got almost a full jar of whey to use for the next little while.

I'd meant to start some bread dough today... but.. eh.. there is that energy thing.  And my youngest is in the kitchen making cupcakes, so probably best if i just keep my feet up and wait awhile.. or nap.