Life got heavy

Without going into detail right after my last post my mom started having some health problems which required a couple of hospital stays and then some time at our house, which was made harder by the fact that one of our cats wanted to kill her cat! I am an introverted person and am very much comforted by my usual routine, so a month where nothing was normal was extremely stressful. Things have smoothed out a bit for now, so I am enjoying the lull and trying to get back into a more "normal" frame of mind.

I will say that all of the time spent in hospitals was made easier by having some stitching with me. One of the projects I worked on was Just Nan's Bumble & Hoot Needle Book, which I had started at a car appointment and worked on a bit more at the laundromat. I had finished the border and was about half way done with the lightest color in the owl after the first two sessions, and I finished it during the first hospital stay:

It still needs to be finished into a needle book, but that level of concentration is beyond me at present so it will wait until I feel up to it! The chart calls for over dyed threads but the design is so small that I didn't see the point of spending a lot of money for them so I just used DMC floss that looked similar and am happy with the results.

During the second hospital stay I started and finished one small Lizzie Kate designs and started another; the finished piece is Eek! on a piece of PTP Haunted Belfast with some minor changes:

And then I started A Little Boo on a great Belfast Silkweaver solo:

Once I was home again and things settled down a bit I was able to spend time in my craft room again and I decided to finish Nora Corbett's Luce Mia before starting a Mirabilia model; here she is on an orphan fabric from Ship's Manor:

The Mirabilia model is a fairly good-sized one with a finish date in May, but I've made some good progress now and am not feeling overly stressed about being able to complete it on time. Because of that I took some time this past weekend to update my daily temperature SAL, which hadn't been touched since the beginning of February. It is now up to date as of yesterday, and I'm hoping to get back into working a square every day:

On the non-stitchy front I am pleased to report that while life got heavier Roxie got lighter! The girl who came to us on 12/31/19 at 58lbs is now down to 49.9lbs! I had thought she was looking slimmer but thought maybe it was just my imagination or that I was getting used to her size. It doesn't really show up in pictures very well, especially since I can't get the same pose for any of them, but here is a picture from the first day:

And from last Friday:

Only another 22lbs to go! And in more good news she and Murphy, while not best buddies, are reasonably good pals:

Two dogs is still more work than I really wanted, but on the bright side it's not as much work as three dogs, which is what we had when my mom's dog Ellie stayed with us (though they all got along pretty well)!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!