Tale of a Shooting Star…

Not a whole lot going on here. I feel like I’m really trying to make up for lost time now that I’m feeling better. With Terry’s help, I painted more scissors tonight. I put the final clear coats on two pairs, so they will be dry and ready tomorrow. I decided to start again on the other two that I had previously painted. I found the leftovers of some chameleon paint that we had played with a couple of years ago; it will look like two different colors, depending on the angle of the light on the object and where you are relative to it. We have three different colors, but I chose my two favorites and Terry helped me with the painting. It’s actually a multi-step process. You have to put on several coats of a flat black paint, then build up multiple coats of the color-shifting paint and then end with several coats of a glossy top coat. We got through step two (the color-shifting paint) and will finish with the top coat tomorrow or Thursday. This weekend, I’ll be taking a coveted pair of matte metal Dovo scissors and adding my favorite purple-green chameleon paint to the handles. 😀

The bottom line is that there are no losers in The Great Scissors Giveaway. Even though I had greater than 20 entrants, everyone will end up with a pair of scissors, one way or another. The ones that I’ve painted may not be perfect, but they will be uniquely me. Hmmmm… if I get good at this, I wonder if I could sell them… Food for thought.

Anyway, I’ll post pictures or scans once they are all finished. Probably this weekend, as I have a game night tomorrow and we’re meeting up with Terry’s dad Thursday night.

OH! I almost forgot my big news of the day. For those who have seen the photos from CATS the other weekend and those who met me in person, you know that I have VERY long hair. Well, had. 😉 Yes, I finally decided last night that I was fed up with all of this hair and went today to get it cut. I was only going to get 4 inches taken off, so that it still hung below my shoulders, but apparently my stylist had other plans. It’s now layered and shorter than I wanted. A lot shorter. Put it this way, when I say that I want the cut that Jennifer Aniston had on Friends, I don’t mean that you should take off 5 or 6 inches and then keep going, and going, and going. She got a little carried away with the layering. I think she definitely had a vision in mind and it was not shared by me. So, my shortest layer ends around the bottom of my ear and the longest layers end at the shoulder (Cathy, think your current haircut but just a tad longer; that’s what I get for envying your easy-to-care-for ‘do!). SHOCK! I’m still getting used to it. Maybe I’ll post a CATS photo and an after photo once I get the hang of working with it for a few days. It feels very strange to not have all of that hair hanging around. I was used to just gathering it up and throwing it over my shoulders to get it out of my face, now it’s right there, all of the time. But, as I told Terry before I went in and he’s been graciously reminding me since, it’s just hair. It grows. Give it a couple of inches and it will be closer to what I had wanted. 😆

Okay, that’s it for now, I just finished bundling up some more packages to go out tomorrow morning. And I’ve been fighting a headache since we left work, but it was a tough day fighting programming that didn’t seem to want to work how I intended. Plus it’s THAT week of the month, which usually means a migraine that I’d rather not have. So, I should get to bed, as I had a bout of insomnia last night and was unable to get to sleep for quite some time (fussing about my hair, funnily enough; tonight, it might be my mind fussing over it in the opposite direction!).

I’ll try to post tomorrow during the day, since we’ll have game night, probably into the wee hours. I’ll be taking a couple of hours off on Thursday, mostly likely, and working from home.

Tah!

P.S. I claimed another exemption to my 50 Projects Challenge today. I think I may have found the one store on the planet that still has (hopefully!) one of the Lorri Birmingham hardanger tea tray linen kits called Summer Hearts. As Cathy probably remembers me lamenting at CATS, they did not have that season in Lorri’s booth and I was quite bummed to find out that she was retiring and what they had there was all she had left. I talked to her during class and she was going to try to hook me up with the chart and the fabric, if she still had some, along with a detailed list of materials and where I could buy them, but I haven’t heard from her yet and the actual kit would be a lot easier! So, cross your fingers that they still have one. I have the other three seasons and the tea tray, so I’m really desperate to round out the set. If this order goes through and I win the two eBay auctions that I’m bidding on, my Lorri Birmingham exemption will be fulfilled and no longer in play.

Well, let’s see. I haven’t posted anything meaningful in several days, so…

I actually went in to work 3 days this week. I took Monday off to sell my first car, the beautiful Grand Am to my little sister. She is 21, graduated in August and is now looking for work as a qualified medical office assistant. My lovely 1995 Grand Am that only had one owner before me, has all of the paperwork including the original sales sticker, just over 41,000 miles on the odometer (yes, those are original miles) and fresh paint on portions of the trim that were suffering from age. Yep, she’s a cream puff. And my dad bought her from me as a graduation present to my sister. She seemed pretty overwhelmed when we went to get the title and tags transferred, so I suspect she’s still getting used to the idea of having her own car. Now she just needs to become familiar with the car and driving, in general.

Tuesday, I decided to work from home while Terry went in. I was actually quite effective. I sat out in the reading room, in a comfy recliner, with the bright sunlight streaming in the windows. Once I got over the hump, which for me is around 10:30 in the morning when I desperately want to go back to bed, I was in good shape.

The rest of the week was good, despite all of the issues I ran into. I think I’m starting to come up out of this depression a bit because I’m feeling a bit lighter than I had been.

Tonight, I fried up some bacon. Yummmmmmmmmmmm! I LOVE bacon. So much. Haven’t had it in a while and no one makes it super crunchy like I like it anyway, so we decided to have bacon and eggs for dinner. 🙂 That’s breakfast for dinner twice in a row, as we had waffles and sausage last night. Mmmmmmm.

On the stitching front, I finished Just Nan’s Be Witchy (the Hershey CATS special) on Friday night. It’s been my commute project all week and I just needed to add the beads on Friday. I will see if I can’t get it into the WhimZi frame that I purchased for it before I got to bed tonight so that I can take it to work tomorrow and hang it up in my cubicle. Otherwise, I’m working on Catherine-Michele’s Round Robin. I need to have it in the mail next Monday morning, so I have this week and next weekend to finish it. There are a lot of different colors in the piece, so the color changes are tedious. I also started on the Scissors Fob Exchange piece for the Robin’s Nest. It is my commute project from here on out and I’m hoping that it will go pretty quickly.

I just came in from painting some scissors. I had some spare, boring metal scissors laying around and some spare car paint, so I figured why not? I have three pairs drying overnight to see how they come out, but I think they’re mostly done. I may put a clear coat on them tomorrow as a finishing touch. I have one last pair outside drying in between coats. I’ll go out in a few minutes and put another coat on it. I’ll probably do this a couple more times on this pair before I call it a night.

I also made up a TON of little packages today, most of which will be winging their way to various destinations all over the world tomorrow morning. What doesn’t go out tomorrow will go out on Tuesday, barring any major problems. And now I’m off to put another coat on those scissors.

I went out to get the mail, bring back the trash can, the recyclable bin and all of that fun stuff when I found a little bubble envelope hiding in my mailbox. It was from Cathy, but I wasn’t expecting anything. Hmmmm… now what could it possibly be?

She stitched the most gorgeous Hardanger suncatcher for me, with the klosters in a yummy pink and purple overdyed thread on a very delicate pink hardanger fabric. I had admired this design very much when she made one for Becky some time ago, so much so that Cathy was kind enough to write to the designer and receive permission to photocopy the chart for me since the book was out of print. Knowing that I’ve been down lately, Cathy stitched one up for me in my favorite colors.

Isn’t she an incredibly talented dear lady? Thank you so much, my sweet friend!

Sorry about the flash!