The Train Saga

I finally finished the second test stitchout of the steam engine. It looks good with the new colors. There's only one color I need to change. I could start it tonight, but I'm too tired to finish it and I don't want to leave it hooped over night. I'll get at it in the morning.

Train Shirts and Travel Quilt

I'm currently working on a couple of gifts. I'm embroidering shirts for my friend's 2 & 4 year old boys. The 2 year old's is finished except for sewing it back together. It has a cute wooden toy train embroidery. The 4 year old's is a work in progress. Slow progress. I found a wonderful embroidery of a realistic steam engine. When I test stitched it, the embroidery was too dark to look right on a navy blue shirt. Next I'll test it with lighter colors. It has 50,200 stitches and 29 color changes and takes hours to stitch out. It's a gorgeous design and will be worth the time. I'm just afraid that the new colors won't work right. Then it'll be back to square one.
The other project is a travel quilt for my sister and brother in law. They've been all over the world, so I'm embroidering various countries and landmarks. The background will be a couple of world map fabrics. It will take a long time to finish, but a joy to work on.
Soon I have to make time to do some love quilts.

It irritates me when people try to limit me by saying that a particular activity, event, etc. will be too much for me. I make allowances for those who do not know me well, but NOT for those who do. I'll set my own limits, thank you very much. The trouble is that when I get on my high horse about something, I sometimes fall off the other side. I hate it when I get snippy with someone and later have to admit they were right. If they hadn't overstepped their bounds, I probably would have asked for help anyway. Yeah, right. I'd rather eat a bumble bee than ask for help most of the time. When you get old though, there are certain things that can be a bit difficult.

I used to wonder why old people bent over at the waist to pick things up. They looked so silly! When I became an old people, I realized it's because your knees won't always bend and/or hold your weight. So now I look silly with the rest of them on the days that I can actually bend at the waist without falling on my nose. The rest of the time, I ask for help. But that's the only situation where I need help. Okay, maybe there are a couple of other situations. I don't want to talk about it.

My motto of late is, "Don't bury me, I'm not dead yet." I may be getting older. I may not be as healthy or agile as I would like to be. But I'm definitely not dead.