Puppy and cross stitch

The puppy has been home for a week now, and is doing well.  Crate training is progressing nicely.  If we need to put him in the crate during the day, he does sometimes yell for a bit but he does settle down and nap.  When I go to bed at night, he's in the crate next to the bed, and generally goes right to sleep.  He does occasionally wake me up in the middle of the night to go out; in that case, having the crate next to the bed is perfect.

Sleeping on the couch:

After taking a walk with Penny!

Up on a hay bale, while "helping" with barn chores.  (It was the only way I could get him to hold still long enough to get a picture!)

In other news, I have started a cross stitch project, for the first time in about 10 years!  I had given up cross stitch (but still had some projects kitted up that I just could not part with) and pretty much given up applique, mostly because of my eyesight.  Even bifocals aren't helping enough for such close, detailed work.  I came across some cross stitch blogs the other day, and some of those people were using lighted magnifiers (large ones!).  After some comparison shopping, hubby bought me a floor-standing OttLite lighted magnifier!

At this point I have dug out my floor frame (it's called a Grip-It Plus, but is apparently no longer in production - although it looks very much like the Edmunds company floor frames).

 

I have set up a new project, and I have been watching videos on YouTube about things like gridding your fabric for projects.  I'd love to get back to some of the very intricate artwork patterns I collected years ago!

My new project is an inexpensive downloaded pattern for a close-up of a guitar and strings, called "Guitar Strings" that I got on Etsy.

Here is my floor frame setup.

Here is the lamp set up over the floor frame with my project.

And here is my project, seen at my eye level through the lit-up magnifier!

It really makes an amazing difference!