Friday, January 8, 2010

Cat in the frying pan


Now that I've captured your attention, let me explain lest you think we are having cat for dinner.  Let me introduce Noodles.  She was Hawaii born and bred and had a need for warmth so she would camp out in this old cast iron pan over the pilot light.  This photo was taken about 25 years ago in the duplex DH and I shared not long after we started dating.  Noodles lived a long life of 20 years.  She was deaf and we actually had to have her ears trimmed away because of ulcers.  Her skin was very sensitive and she loved the sun!

I bought a scanner for the family for Christmas so that we can convert pages and pages of slides that we have and came upon this pic.  We plan to scan lots of old slides from Mark's parents and put them on cd's for everyone.  It make take awhile, but if we scan a little everyday it should be doable. 

I sat down to post last night and ended up spending way too much time fiddling around with the blog.  Tried a 3 column template but some of my gadgets didn't work right so went back to minima.  All that wasted time!  I like my new background though. 

Life in retail is slowing a bit but people are still returning massive amounts of merchandise.  People overbuy, then pick and choose what they want to give as gifts and then return the rest later.  It's always kind of a letdown in a way when we go from crazy busy to the slow times of January and February.  We are all scrambling for hours so that the paychecks aren't too pathetic, though they are even when we have lots of hours LOL.  I finally have weeks with 2 days off in a row and one week with 3 days off!  I have ambitious plans to paint a room and do some other household type stuff.

I was so tired during the holiday madness that I didn't stitch much.  I'm working on Prairie Schooler's 2009 santa now (the one with the skates!).  I'll post pics when it actually looks like something recognizable. But I did manage to finish up an ornie for my wonderful friend Lee.  Here is the pic that I stole from her website since I completely forgot to photograph it before mailing it.  I had a lot of fun stitching this, especially since it was going to Lee.



DH is a nut.  We scrambled to replace our daughter's totaled car so that we wouldn't have car sharing issues and then he decides he will walk the almost 4 miles to work.  Yesterday, in the snow, he rode his bike.  Go figure.  We did find a good little car (a Honda CR-V) for Claire but now she is really timid about driving in all this snow.  There is always a bit of anxiety when choosing a used car.  We came upon this nicely priced CR-V at the Honda place just up the road.  It has many miles on it but they had put lots of money into it to bring it up to snuff and and it is bright and shiny.  Hope that Honda's reputation for long lasting cars proves to be true.

Thank you for visiting!  It really means a lot to me.

7 comments:

Melissa said...

Hi Barb, welcome back! That's a great picture of Noodles - what a name! Noodles is ready on the stove!

I saw that ornament you stitched for Lee on her blog - it's wonderful! I hope you get more stitching time now that the holiday madness is over.

Hmmm, your comment about the 3 column template thing. I was going to try doing that and now I think I might not bother...we'll see!

The weekend is here! Have a good one.

Lisa said...

Love the photo of Noodles in the Pan. Beautiful stitched ornament. I look forward to seeing your PS 2009 Santa when it is finished. Last month I started to go 3 columns, but got a little skittish when I had to save so that I didn't loose my blog...that is when my nerves got the best of me and so I stuck with 2 as well. Oh, well - it just means that my blog will be a little less cluttered: "simple and to the point".
Take care!

Jan said...

Oh my what a picture! Noodle was a beautiful kitty, know you will treasure this, so glad you found it.

Hope you get done what you want and plenty of time for rest too! Sometimes that is just what a body needs.

Kathy A. said...

Oh my goodness what a wonderful photo. I even called in my DH to check that out.
Glad that you survived the holiday rush and life is settling down to some kind of normal.
Love the new look on the blog.

Jennifer said...

What a wonderful cat photo. My parents had a white cat when they were first married ( 50 years ago!) and she was also deaf.
Honda is a wonderful car. I hope your daughter can overcome her fear. I know what that feels like and I sympathize with her.

Carol said...

Awww...Noodles is so sweet, Barb. She lived a nice long life, didn't she. We had an all-white, also deaf cat when I was growing up, too.

Love the ornament you made for Lee--it is just perfect for any stitcher.

Hope the Honda CRV works out for your daughter--we are thinking of buying one ourselves so I'll be interested to see how you like it...

Lynn said...

Love that picture of Noodles!
I'm a fan of PS so I loved your ornie. Looking forward to seeing your progess on Santa.