Feeling like death

My body hates me again.

It's probably due to the fact that I spent all of yesterday morning making food for lunch, but I think it was worth it. I made an absolutely crazy amount of food, but we enjoyed it. And I got photos, so I'll post them when my sister's camera decides to play nice again - I've also got a non-blurry FFW picture!

Dad's been feeling sick so he claimed the couch where I usually sit to stitch (and has my frame) yesterday, so I pulled out JOB and got an early start on it. I had to do a bit of frogging, but mostly it came out right, and I'm pleased. Yesterday's work saw a lot more of the grass/sea bit, even more tree, and a lot of black border. Now all of the ornament border down the bottom is done, and I took the bottom snap off for a while to work on the very bottom edge and made progress there. So the borders are almost done for this panel, which I'm pleased about, and I'm thinking that when I finish the black borders for this I'll put my lengths of black every other thread length into the next panel over, getting it ready to work on when I finish panel 2. I'm also tempted to alternate the 'border length' bit, and make it a black one time when I do it and then the slate blue for the ornament borders/gold for the same alternating times until they're done as well. This panel is coming together well, and I'm very pleased with it. I hope to finish the picture's cross stitching for this panel today, and maybe start on the specialty stitches for the pine needles and the backstitching for the reeds. I've decided that I'm going to leave all 3D stitches on this until the end, or at least until they are no longer likely to come into contact with the qsnaps - ie, can start filling in the rhodes stitches for part 1 when the qsnaps are on a part of the piece to the right of it. I'll probably leave them all until the end though, just like the beading.

I'm being tempted to leave the beads and crystals for the successive parts of MX off
now too, until the end, since it's starting to encroach on the edges of the frame. I'll add the beads for part 4, since there's only one corner's worth of it left unbeaded, but the houses and gardens can wait to get beaded until the end.

Speaking (typing?) of MX, I think I'm going to have to set a dictate that Fridays I will work on it. It's a beautiful piece, but I don't work on it nearly often enough, and I'd like to get at least somewhat caught up. If I could keep at least one side of it somewhere near current, that would be awesome. The latest part is just beautiful - and what's even better, it covers the mark on my fabric that has been there since very early in my start...I don't know what it is, and you can barely see it, but it bugs me and I'm glad that it gets covered with stitches! The only thing that is bugging me at the moment is the rhodes stitches in the wall, which I don't really understand - they're fiddly, and I'm not enjoying them.

I plan today that I'll work on A Restful Night a bit, see if I can get 300 stitches done in any reasonable amount of time, and then jump back into JOB. If ARN isn't going anywhere fast, I'll just stick to JOB and make some progress.

It's grey today. Very grey. And cold. I'm hoping that with some heating on my spirits will lift somewhat!