Down from the mountain

After being computerless for a while, I have returned with some photos of Uncompahgre Peak. We were in Denver for a wedding, but what's a trip to Colorado without climbing a fourteener? So after the wedding weekend, we headed down to the Lake City area. The weather was nicely much cooler in the mountains than it had been in Denver. The hike started on a nice bright morning. Here's the rocky summit:

You can see that the clouds were starting to gather. They quickly turned dark and reminded us why we needed to get an earlier start to our hike. Get off the mountain by 1pm is the rule we'll stick to from now on. Wiley did not enjoy hiding out under a rock while waiting for the hail to stop on the way down the mountain. But he did make it to the top and back down again. Some people had their doubts that he could handle it.

Voila!

As promised, here is the completed wedding cross-stitch. Note that the wedding isn't for a another week, so SHHHHH.... don't tell the groom and bride about this. Actually, it won't be that big of a surprise for them anyway. And I couldn't wait to put this online, especially because I won't have much computer access after the wedding.

This lettering was done using the DMC rayon floss. It does have a certain shine to it. This design had a simple color scheme with only 4 colors, but it makes the lettering that much more striking. We were also excited to find a two-tone from and the black/red matte that highlights the colors of the cross-stitch.

Water

Thanks to the city rebate program, we replaced our who-knows-how-many-decades-old toilet (with an estimated 7 gallons of water per flush) with a simple new toilet (1.6 gallons per flush). I really didn't know just how much water the old toilet was using, but I always knew that it took FOREVER to refill itself. It's one of those toilets that you check on several minutes later to see if jiggling the handle will make it stop... only to find out that it always takes that long to refill itself.

Now instead of flushing that extra 5.4 gallons of water, we can use it on sunflowers and tomatoes, YAY! Of course, the city has another rebate program for xeriscaping our yard, but that takes far too much planning. I prefer to do my home improvement piece-meal. Getting the xeriscape rebate requires an approved plan and a minimum of 500 square feet. Maybe I'll pull it off this fall.

Work in progress

The wedding cross-stitch that I have been working on for months is nearly finished! I'll post it when it is... but first I'll share with you the history. I thought my husband's art would make great cross-stitch patterns, better than a straight from photo to pattern converter can do. Here's a painting of our dog that he made.

I was hoping that he could take a photo of his cousin and fiancee and turn it into a drawing that would make a good cross-stitch wedding gift. The photo we used was post last week. And here is the resulting pattern on grid... It was difficult to explain to my hubby why the lettering on this would be nearly impossible. I think I pulled it off, though. It was fun designing a cross-stitch pattern with someone else, but it was also frustrating working with someone who doesn't cross-stitch. I may try it again, but not on my next piece of work.