Breathing’s Hard Work, Yo.

So this is the view from my home right now (and has been for far too long, in my opinion. Most of August, though this weekend’s been particularly bad). No, that’s not fog. That, my dear readers, is smoke. Lots and lots of smoke. While I love living in the valley, this is a definite drawback: smoke gets trapped and without a good wind – and one in the right direction, of course – it stays that way. I haven’t been able to enjoy my lovely patio all month because of the fires, I’m sad to say. And the smoke is so bad, you can smell it inside, even with the AC on to filter the air. So yeah, breathing right now is hard work, especially if you’re an asthmatic like me.  (the nearest fire, according to google maps, is 16 miles away, and yes the communities closer to it have had level 1 evac orders. Thankfully, that does not include my neck of the woods, so fingers crossed they get those suckers taken care of soon).

Obviously, I haven’t been spending much time outside, and I’ve been taking it very easy the last few days (no, really, breathing under these conditions is exhausting). I’ve managed to work a little on my bears, getting them into a bigger frame so I can work more easily on them. And yes, I messed them up. They’re a little fatter than they’re supposed to be (but that’s okay, so are hubby and I, so it fits, right?) and some of the garland isn’t as it should be either, but it seems to be coming along okay. I’m probably going to have to pick what little of the garland I did on the left, though.

I really, really, really need to figure out a better way of working on these bigger cross stitches, though. As you can see, I’m trying to do it several colors at a time, but it feels weird to me to do it this way and I feel like I’m constantly in my own way. I won’t take a picture of the floss itself because it’s horrible ratted and I’m ashamed of it lol, but suffice it to say that I’ll need to do that differently as well. I had intended on working on my big map of the Netherlands after finishing the bears, but I’m thinking it might be a better idea to do another one along the lines of this one first before tackling that so I can work on figuring out what works best for me. Not that I have a clue what that next project will be.