Winter is here...

Winter is here in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, we had the lamest.summer.ever so I shouldn't be surprised. It's been wet for weeks and now it's grey, grey, grey. Bleh. I'm fighting the beginnings of a cold and trying to drink lots of juice and taking my echineachea and elderberry.

Travis shoved a popcorn kernel in his ear last night and it's all scraped up along the canal. We sucked the kernel out with a straw so he wouldn't shove it into his eardrum again. I am taking him to the Doctor this morning to make sure he didn't damage his eardrum. I'm pretty relaxed about taking kids to Doctors but I don't mess around with my children's hearing. Brad took the girls to speech therapy so it will just be the two of us at the Doctor's office.

My star quilt is coming along. I almost have all of the 4.5" squares pieced (of which there are hundreds, it feels like). After that are the blocks and then the sashing and then the piecing... Very exciting. I already have my next *two* projects picked out. Although they just go in a bag under my bed until I have the money to get them quilted, it's nice to finish things.

In stitching, I'm working on a drawn thread sampler. It's cream on cream and moving along smoothly. Some bands are quite tedious but it does look stunning.

Yesterday a woman posted (accidentially) the most hate-filled anti-Obama post to the American Needlepoint Guild list. Whew! I'd heard that there was stuff out there like that but had no idea how bad! This election... like all elections... is a mess. Even here we're seeing the ads between Gregoire and Rossi that are just filled with "he said, she said". Like they have to harp on the stuff that isn't important to show that they aren't too extreme on anything that actually matters so they'll appeal to the masses.