There was beautiful sunshine today but cold wind – as you might expect for a mid-winter day. 🙂 The high was around 30 degrees today (though I did not go outside to test that prediction). We had snow in the morning but apparently it all melted off before I woke up – my husband said he thought it might have just sublimated of the ground from frozen snow directly to water vapor in the sunlight. 🙂

I spent much of today working on clearing my desk of paper work. I sorted through and paid bills, then gathered data and wrote out an end-of-year report for Social Security about my brother’s expenses (as ‘representative payee’ for him, I’m obliged to prove to them that I am actually spending his disability money on his upkeep and well being at least once a year). 🙂 I felt really good about getting that done as it always weighs on me until it is finished.

I _thought_ I would sew at my machine for at least a couple of hours today but I ended up doing slow stitching instead – see the photo above. This is the first daily square for my 2026 stitching calendar/record. I still have not figured out how to create url links here on WordPress so I will just have to text-share that the format I’m using was created by someone whose blog I follow – an embroiderer named Karen something (sorry, terrible record keeping). Here’s the info on the pre-printed fabric form from Spoonflower she designed:

If you are interested, maybe that will help you track her down?

My thought for the day was fireworks for the New Year … sewn using freeform variations of cross stitch, outlined with a whipped back stitch frame for the day space. Bright colors to make up for the lack outdoors. 🙂

I feel a bit unsure about the ‘cotton poplin’ fabric this is printed on. If you look carefully at my embroidery pic, you might see the needle pricks left in the fabric. It seems to be woven with a pretty dense thread count – if I remember my quilt shop info correctly (no guarantee I am as it has been almost 12 years since I closed my shop), most quilting cotton is printed on 60 to 68 count greige goods (pronounced ‘gray’, meaning unprinted ground cloth). I think this poplin is more like 70 or 75 count (threads per inch). Shrug.

Other than my paperwork and my embroidery, I spent the day peacefully reading and watching various streaming stories, some fictional (old episodes of NCIS for comfort), some nonfiction (how to organize ufo projects and what childhood might have been like 30,000 years ago during the paleolithic ages).

🙂 Linda