An interesting challenge

I have been given a very interesting challenge by my husband.  He is wondering if within a 12 hour period could I manage to shop at 10 Michael's stores.  Yes there are 10 Michael's within driving range from where I live.

Is this a possible task? I would say it could be done with some planning and some determination.  First I would need to determine the exact location of all 10 stores and then figure out a route to get to all of these stores within the given time slot and have time to shop at all of them.  The good thing is the stores open at 9am and close at 9pm so this could be planned for a Saturday.

Also how can I prove that I have been to all of the stores within the 12 hours?  My idea is to at least purchase something at each of the stores so that I end up with 10 receipts at the end of the day.

Now what I need is other suggestions on how I can accomplish this within the 12 hours.  Any ideas would be appreciated. 

Will try and keep everyone up to date on the progress of the planning of this challenge. 

Rejected love

This picture was taken a couple of evenings ago in our apartment hall.  Yes we noticed this little guy sitting by a door so I grabbed my camera and had to take a picture of him.

This poor little monkey is sitting rejected leaning against the garbage chute door.  I hope he found a new home instead of being put in the garbage.  By where he was sitting someone figured maybe someone would take him home instead of throwing him out.

This is the funniest thing I have seen sitting out in our hall and one that probably made a few people smile. 

So I hope rejected love found a new love.

What have I been up to

Tea Time - Kathrin Ellison

So, what have I been up to lately?

I have been trying to do a lot of different things lately to get the thumb bending like it needs to do.  The biggest challenge is finding something that I can do easily at a given time.  With my thumb I have had to be very careful lately so that I don't overdo anything that I have been doing.  The good news is each day I am seeing progress on how the thumb is feeling and even bending. 

The one project that I have found that works most days is my petit point that I picked up at the NeedleWorkers Marketplace in April.  As you can see I really don't have a lot more to do so will need to figure out something else that works well once this is done.  After I fill in the area you can see I have 10 rows at the top and bottom to fill in with the pink and then the project is done.  I am happy to see the progress that I have made on this project but also sad to see if coming to the end.

I have also found that I can crochet some which is helping as well because I am one of those people that has to have a few projects on the go at once.  I have only been working on granny squares since getting back to working some without the splint on.  My knitting needles haven't been used much since I hurt my thumb but hope that in the next couple of weeks I will be able to get to knitting as well.

Now to try and figure out what project will work for the next little while as I work on getting the thumb to bend to 90 degrees again.  It's been two weeks since I starting using the thumb a bit without the splint and so far so good.  Now to remember that I need to take it easy sometimes so that I don't overdo it.

Time for some tea.

Update on thumb

Thumb splint

So last week I had to go back to the hand clinic and see the specialist so that he could tell me if I could start bending my thumb again after the 6 weeks of keeping it straight.  There was a bit of a concern on my part because just over 2 weeks ago my thumb did bend a little bit while trying to dry it.

Now the results of seeing the specialist is I can slowing start to use my thumb without the brace on.  It still means I have to wear the brace at night, out in public and when my thumb gets tired.  So now for the next three weeks before going back for more physio I just have to try and start using my thumb.

Finding out that I could start using my thumb again without the splint was great news.  I know it's still a while away before I am free of the splint totally as I don't see the hand specialist for 3 months but at least this is a start.

This weekend I finally was able to start crocheting a bit.  I know I'm not as fast as I normally am but at least I can do it without the splint on, so I am not complaining.

So now to just take things slowing and see how the thumb feels each day and see how the bending progresses over the next little while.  Yes slowly is what I need to remember.

Looking for trilliums, found butterflies

Yesterday we had a very nice adventure. As I cannot do a lot of my crafts my DH decided that we should go for a drive and enjoy the nice weather.

The trillium (flower of Ontario) is currently in bloom so we decided we would go and try and see some in the wild. The weather was perfect so off we went in search of seeing trilliums. It didn't take long for us to see some trilliums in some wooded areas. Of course once we saw some we had to continue and see how many areas of them we could see. Trilliums are a little hard to see when driving but it was a lot of fun looking in the areas by the road to find small patches of them. Sometimes we were very lucky and found larger patches of the white flower hidden in the shade of some trees or in valleys that have not been developed.

Along the way we discovered another part of nature which resulted in me laughing. We founds thousands and thousands of butterflies darting all over as we drove. The name of the butterfly was the Viceroy which looks like a Monarch butterfly but smaller. These butterflies were dancing all over and some were flying by the windows and some sadly hide the windows.

Normally you see a few butterflies at a time but yesterday I couldn't believe how many we saw. Seeing these beautiful creatures fly by made me smile and even laugh. Enjoying the beauty that nature holds made me feel so much better yesterday as it gave me some time to forget about the crafts that I currently have problems doing.

Millions and millions of trilliums and thousands and thousands of butterfies, what a great day.