Monday, June 8, 2026

Vacation and a tale of two selfies

 This past week was vacation for me and my husband.  How does that work into selfies? Well, I'll get to that. Eventually. 

The universe decided to give me a few things to stress and fret about before I went on vacation, too.

My son had an encounter with a bear.  Yes. Early morning, as he was driving to work.  He braked for deer that ran out in front of him, and before he knew it *BAM* a young-ish bear came slamming into his car. Surprisingly, there wasn't as much damage as you'd think. He's fine, the car's fine. The bear ran off. 

After he called me and told me what happned, I drove out to where he was, to check things out and make sure he was okay. Then, on the way back home my car gave a message that was not good. Turns out there's a recall for that particular issue, and the part is back-ordered nationally. Lovely. I managed to find a dealership that had an appointment relatively soon. My car is currently "at the spa," I guess you'd call it, though I think if she was at a real spa, she'd have been taken care of already and be back in my driveway.  I have a loaner vehicle for now. You'd think I'd be happy with a 2025 Toyota Tacoma.  I am not.  I'm so spoiled and use to *my* vehicle and everything is so different on this loaner. 

Anywho ... 

On Friday, May 29, I cast on a new sock. 


I took this photo as we were driving out to the lake for some late evening fishing.  By the end of the workday that day, I was D-O-N-E. Weekend, here I come!

I caught my first bass of the season. I did not keep it. 


We did bring home some fish. When we got home the girls immediately circled my husband.  They knew what he was about to do, and they love getting tidbits.  I tried taking photos and videos.


They were hanging around him, waiting not-so-patiently. 

We have one hen who is a bit more demanding then the others. She kept circling around and looking in the buckets. 


Going to the other side, in case he was hiding something on the other side. 


Time to go check the other side. 



Staring at him until he makes the right choice and tosses them a few things. 



Seriously, look at that stink eye!




Sunday was quiet.  We did more fishing and I caught a really nice bass. 

I was pretty proud of it, so I asked for my photo to be taken.


I was so proud of it, in fact, that I dared to touch the fish with no gloves. Yup, a pretty big deal. 

Sunday I started putting in the rest of the garden. Or was that Saturday? At this point I don't remember. 


 The important thing is, I got the garden in! I had a lot of help, too. 

"Oooo!" I bet you are thinking, "does that mean you have a garden journal?" I do not.  Yet. Crazy, right? I had all of last week to film and I didn't. I wasn't ready, if that makes sense.  Plus, the weather was a bit uncooperative on the days I thought I might shoot b-roll. 

So, it's still on the to-do list to record a garden journal. 

Well, I had to work Monday.  It was publishing day and work life revolves around that. At least for now it does. (If you know, you know) 

Once the day was done I was SO out of there.  I signed off, closed everything up and set everything to DND. 

Woo hoo, vacation! 

The weather was nice, for the most part. 

The grass and leaves burst out and now everything is so GREEN.  Deer are everywhere.


We even spotted the first fawns of the year. 


Over the course of the week we spent a lot of time on the water. We hit a few different areas this year. 

One of the usual spots. 


Loons have been hanging around the lake. They decided my husband was safe and got pretty close to his kayak.  Close enough to get decent photos, anyway. 


A new-to-us spot. We've driven past it for years and always see other people fishing there. 

Not as much current as we thought there would be. It was a beautiful, quiet morning. 



Then we ran into a male Karen at this spot, which sort of spoiled the spot for us. Basically, he thought he owned the entire river. He soon found out that he can't try and throw his weight around without people matching energies.


A different body of water. This made for a lovely morning of fishing, too. 


Hardly anyone else on the water. It was like we had the whole lake to ourselves. 


On Friday, June 5, I posted update on my vanilla sock to my instagram.  Look how much I got done in a week!

This was mainly when I was passenger when we were going somewhere. 


In one week I managed to knit the leg of a sock. When I knit my socks on two circs, I definitely *zoom* through the project. 

At some point during the week I went out to the she shed and pulled floss for two more cross stitch projects I'll be starting this month. 


Wait, make that three more cross stitch projects. What's a few more projects, right? I just need to live forever. 🤣

Friday we brought my car to the dealership to have it diagnosed and see what, if anything, needed to be done. That ended up being a long day and I'm still sort of bitter and sus about how some things shook down.  (Is that even a phrase?) Basically something happened and it was too weird of a coincidence to have happened when it did. That's about all I'm going to say on that. The people working at the dealership were very nice.

I brought my cross stitch with me to work on, and asked my husband to take a photo of me. Which felt really weird asking for.  But, if I don't start asking for this, I'm never going to have action photos of me, right? 🤷‍♀️

I was the only person in the lounge who wasn't staring at their phone. 

This past weekend we went for a bike ride. Which, now that I think about it, we only went out for one bike ride. 

Oh and it was a doozy, of sorts. 

I packed a picnic lunch and loaded up the basket.  

The road we usually ride on to go to a nearby lake has some work being done to it.  A large chunk of the road has been torn up and is gravel.  No biggie.  The part that was a doozy was when I left the gravel and my bike tire hit the edge of the asphalt. The bump was enough to make my phone bounce out of the phone carrier, fly up in the air and come smashing down on the asphalt. I was stunned to see my phone go flipping up in the air. The phone holder is the style where you pull it open, put your phone in, and let the hold draw back in and hold your phone. I guess if you hit something hard enough, the bottom drops out, so to speak, and it's enough to let the phone pop loose.  Then when the spring brings the bottom back up, it was enough force to fling my phone up about 6 feet in the air. The screen protector on my phone is cracked, but otherwise fine. 

The rest of the bike ride was uneventful. 

We enjoyed our picnic lunch.  You like my fancy storage containers? 


I didn't feel comfortable taking photos of the water because people were down there. Instead, I took photos of the trees. 






One more thing from Sunday. This heifer was spotted trying to figure out how to get in to the garden and eat all the tasty plants. 


He saw my husband and causally sauntered off.  We spotted him in the front yard, staring longingly at the garden. 

Today was back to work.  Work was quiet and I was able to catch up on most things. 

This evening I started a new cross stitch project, before sitting down to work on this blog post. 

Hmmm, what could this be? 


Okay, to bring it back to the selfies. ...

I'm not much on taking selfies. I'm trying to get more comfortable in my own skin, so to speak.  Making flosstube videos helps. 

One day when we were out on the water (I'm thinking it was early in the week) I thought I'd try taking a selfie while I was out on the water.  No sunglasses and the sun was sort of in my eyes. 


Very owly-looking, right? I have that resting face, if you know what I'm referring to. 

I remembered seeing or reading somewhere that if you struggle with taking photos, to imagine you are looking at your husband or someone you love, and your features will soften.  Or something. 

Well, my husband was right there, so I looked over at him and felt my face break out in to a smile. 


Maybe not the prettiest selfie. I think you can definitely see the love I have for him in my smile. 



Tuesday, May 26, 2026

A quick check in

 You know what? I'm a bit stumped on how to start this blog post. Life stuff got busy and I forgot to write anything.  When I remembered "oh, I need to write something." I promptly got busy with life stuff again, and forgot to write. How funny is that? 

When I saw I had two flosstube shownote blog posts in a row, I knew I needed to do something. 

Then I got stuck on how far back should I go? Do I write a book or do I condense it down? 

I don't know. ... 

Okay. 

Fishing season has officially started. Hooray! 


We haven't been out as much as we'd like, thanks to the wind.  But on the days we have gotten out and on the lake ... 


Beautiful skies. 


I enjoyed a nice Mother's Day. 



A "Fancy" breakfast of French toast, sliced strawberries and homemade whipped cream. I spent my breakfast time with Elizabeth Zimmerman, trying to decide if I wanted to attempt one of her patterns that are written in her conversational way. I don't know that I'm up to it.  Still.  I've had those books for more than 15 years. 

My hummingbird friend returned.  She (or he) buzzed me one day when I was out in the garden area.  I knew that was the command to fill the hummingbird feeder. 



I even made sauerkraut one day. 


When I first started making kraut I used to slice and chop it all by hand. 

Not anymore.  I use my little chopper. 


This batch is still percolating. 

At some point I went out to the she shed and did a tidy up. You'll likely never see it is this tidy again.

As I told a friend, you wouldn't believe all that is squirreled away in the she shed. 

And if you couldn't tell, the weather turned nice. Finally. This past Sunday (I think it was) we had a fire in the woodstove, and by bedtime we had all the windows open, wondering when it was going to cool down.  It was quite the temperature swing. 

I mentioned on my last flosstube that my son has an outdoor project he's worked on for the last several years. ... the weather and the rain caused his grass seed to sprout and grow.  

Course now it's "we need to cut the grass" because it seems to have grown two inches overnight, according to my son. 

The girls are loving the grass and the nice weather.  Egg production has increased a bit. 

I've started planting!

Yes, it's true! 


Slow but surely, it will get put in.  So far it's mostly flowers I've put in containers. I've started working on a garden journal video and hopefully it will be posted this week. 

This past weekend was Memorial weekend. We were to have company come up.  The visit was canceled almost at the last minute, for very good and understandable reasons.  A bummer, but my hubby and I managed to still enjoy the weekend, once the weather went from rainy and crappy, to *OH WOW it's warm out there!"

On Monday, when we were out on the lake, we saw two bald eagles.  It was a very cool experience to see them. 


I'm guessing they were not a bonded pair because someone has to be with any eaglets they may have, right? 

Of course I've been crafting.  Here's a couple photos from the last few weeks. If you want to see almost the most up-to-date, you need to watch my flosstube!


I will share that I finished the second vanilla sock. Yay!



Today was back to work. I would have really loved to have had one more day off work. Oh well. There's always next weekend, right? 









Friday, May 22, 2026

Flosstube #46 - An unexpected PSA (May 22, 2026)




Thank you for watching my video. I am so glad you stopped by! If you like what you see, please subscribe and click the notification bell to be notified of when I load new videos. 


Current Works In Progress (WIPs)




Project name: Foraging Grackle

Started: May 6, 2026

Finished: 

Designer: Mudpuppy Stitchery

Chart Purchased: Mudpuppy Stitchery patreon

Fabric: 14 Count Aida, "Silver" 

Floss Used: 07, 09, 11, 35, 154, 161, 310, 413, 732, 824, 826, 934, 936, 993, 3750, 3766, 3814, 3836


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Project name: Eastern Bluebird

Started: May 3, 2026 (corrected date)

Finished: 

Designer: Mudpuppy Stitchery

Chart Purchased: Mudpuppy Stitchery patreon freebie

Fabric: 28 count evenweave "Ivory" purchased at Hobby Lobby

Floss Used: B5200, 320, 312, 518, 922, 3325, 3799, 3843, 08


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Project name: George's Green Frog

Started: May 1, 2026

Finished: 

Designer: Mudpuppy Stitchery

Chart Purchased: Mudpuppy Stitchery patreon freebie

Fabric: 14 count Aida, "toast" fabric purchased at Hobby Lobby

Floss Used: B5200, 09, 11, 223, 304, 610, 644, 906, 907


Stitch-along projects (SALs)



Started: April 1, 2026

Finished: 

Designer: Lori Holt

Chart Purchased: Chart was won from Sambrie Stitches

Fabric: 14 count Aida, hand-dyed by me, green.

Floss Used: 347, 893, 151, 976, 3820, 3052, 3848, 3813, 926, 3768, 930, 3799, 535, 3866


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Started: March 1, 2026

Complete: 

Fabric: 14 count Aida

DMC: 347, 3328, 3712, 760, 761, 922, 729, 471, 937, 3345, 3814, 993, 598, 597, 322,  08, 07

Stitch-along with Alison, @Mrs.AZfamilyzooStitchesAlison, and Mair, @sincity_crossstitcher. Chart purchased at Fat Quarter Shop. 



Finished Object (FO)




Project name: Strawberries and chickens

Started: April 28, 2026

Finished: May 12, 2026

Designer: Jess at LumiStitch

Chart Purchased: Gift from the designer

Fabric: 14 count Aida, hand-dyed by me

Floss Used: 310, 435, 777, 816, 841, 842, 987, 3347, 3852, 3865

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Knitting


Vanilla sock

Started Jan. 1, 2026

Yarn: Patons Kroy Sock Yarn

Colorway: Blue Striped Ragg


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Other items of note:

I won a pattern from Patty. I received "Beekeeping Crows" by Happiness is Heartmade.

I chatted a bit about Spring Mingle

Blog post I mention about the crows and ravens. 
https://amniconstudio.blogspot.com/2025/08/fall-is-starting-to-creep-in.html


Other channels mentioned


Jess - https://www.youtube.com/@LumiStitch

Kenzie - https://www.youtube.com/@mudpuppystitchery

Alison - https://www.youtube.com/@Mrs.AZfamilyzooStitchesAlison

Bethany - https://www.youtube.com/@Bethany.BirdStitcher

Mair - https://www.youtube.com/@sincity_crossstitcher

Jodi - https://www.youtube.com/@Stitchyplum

Sarah - https://www.youtube.com/@KindaLoopyPodcast

Becca - https://www.youtube.com/@SamBrieStitches

Denise - https://www.youtube.com/@BlackRibbonStitchStudio

Payy - https://www.youtube.com/@StitchingWithMyKitties-xe8qz

Fat Quarter Shop - https://www.youtube.com/@FatQuarterShopFlossTube