A New Start, and a Birthday Gift

Hey Blog Buddies,

I've put CT13 aside for now and decided I needed something a little smaller to balance it out, so I started "I Stitch..." on Monday.  Here is my minuscule progress:

You may be wondering why I skipped

over the "IT" in STITCH.

This is a very old freebie from 1997,

and the directions said to use

SNC Sherbet, "a special 1997 edition color."

Well, no one at the LNS was quite sure

what color that was, so we guessed 

and picked out a variegated light orange.

I know it shows up great in this photo,

but stitched in real life, it just didn't pop--

especially with all the ecru in so many of the bands.

I had stitched the STIT in the coral/yellow,

then I tried the bolder variegated on the CH,

frogged the STIT, 

went back to the beginning of the word, 

and that's why I ended up with

ST   CH.

Yesterday was my birthday, so we took a trip

to The Lake (by which I mean Lake Michigan).

We spotted a strange-looking (to us) waterfowl

with a white head and a black-and-white

striped body.

He wasn't in my Birds of Illinois book,

so I have no clue what type of bird this is.

That's the only photo I got of him,

he saw me and started swimming away fast.

We had lunch at a new (to us) restaurant,

The Flying Saucer in Humboldt Park,

which is a neighborhood in Chicago.

It may look a little sketchy from the outside,

but the inside of the restaurant was clean

and the food was good.

I love funky little neighborhood places like this.

(I'm a pretty cheap date.)

The day was absolutely gorgeous

and warmed up quickly--no jackets required.

I even went without a jacket,

and I'm the first to get chilly.

At the end of the day, I peeked at my blog

and got my final birthday present:

100 followers!

Woo-hoo!

Watch this space

because I plan to do something special

for one of my followers very soon.

Hope you're liking the weather where you're at.

Thanks so much for visiting!