Superbowl Fever and sore hands!

Here in Arizona everyone is fired up about the Arizona Cardinals going to the Superbowl! Go Cardinals!! It’s truly unbelievable as the Cardinals have never gotten much respect and been such losers forever it seems. We’ve got our championship T-shirts and will be glued to the TV next Sunday cheering them on with beer, pizza, and Superbowl snacks. LOL My heart is mostly with the Chicago Bears but I also support the Cardinals. That’s the case with a lot of people here – when you live in a city like Phoenix where most of the people are transplants from elsewhere, a lot of sports fans have dual loyalties – to their hometown teams as well as where they live now. I think there will a collective faint in the state of Arizona if the Cardinals actually win it! I’m almost afraid to watch it.

The end of January is rapidly approaching. I did pretty well on my goals for this month but didn’t meet all of them. I was supposed to get one ornament stitched this month and didn’t do it, and I was supposed to get some time in on my French Alphabet Sampler and that didn’t happen either. I have decided to lay off from stitching for at least 4 days this week so that is also taking time away. My hands have really been bothering me lately so I am giving them a rest. I stitched a lot more than normal the past 3 to 4 weeks and my hands hurt and are stiff so I’m assuming I’m getting arthritis. I’m on a computer keyboard at least 8 hours a day and that plus stitching in the evenings is taking a toll. I have been applying heat, massage, doing hand exercises, and taking Ibuprofen – hoping it starts helping soon. It’s kind of depressing me though – I need my eyes and hands to hold out for many more years!

Here is where I left off with my Beatrix Potter SAL. The light pinkish thread came out looking a bit lighter than I wanted it to, but I will only be doing a few medallions in that thread so I think that will be okay. I'm really enjoying stitching on this and not having to change colors so often like some of my projects. It won’t be picked up again until February.

I’m trying to pull myself up onto the ‘stash wagon’ – but it’s painful!

I certainly don’t need any more but it is so hard to resist. I try to shop at my LNS and local quilt stores to support them, yet the husband and I both want to try to save more money "just in case". We both are a nervous about possibly getting laid off especially when you see the news every day. When you work in Information Technology, at a lot of companies you are considered “overhead” – never good in tough economic times. Just the other day I saw news on Vonna’s blog about the new Blue Ribbon Designs that are out on the website – yikes! I love them all! Guess I will just keep adding them to my “buy list” that I keep. For now I‘ll be concentrating on my 3 new starts and stitching from stash as much as possible.