Shakes, rain, and Santa

Monday night, DH and I planned a leisurely evening that included a trip into town for a Shakes frozen custard, a bit of stitching for me, reading for DH, and a bit of TV watching for us both.  We went to Shakes (a fresh homemade frozen custard establishment for those of you not familiar with it) and ordered our usual treats.  When we went to pay for it, the young man serving us said that they were giving it away free as they had to close down in twenty minutes due to the 60 mph winds, rain and hail that were due in about an hour.  (The Shakes building has a lot of windows.)

Uh huh.  DH and I went home and thankfully the rain didn't start until we got there.  Then boy! did it rain!  And then the power went out.  It was raining so hard it was blacker than pitch and it was still daylight out.  So no stitching, no reading, no TV watching.  We sat and watched the storm until bedtime - thankfully, there was no hail.  With no power, I had to drag out my portable battery to power my CPAP machine; I'm glad I invested in the silly thing.  

Tuesday dawned bright, sunny, and sodden but with the power back on.  We finally have all the mowers and the tractor working again and it's too wet to mow anything.  Yes, the tractor was down as DH got it out to mow and ran over something that caused a bolt to break.  It took him a few days to find one locally.  It wasn't expensive or hard to replace, you just have to go to a tractor store to find it.

I'm coming along on the Santa.  It's a fun, easy stitch.  It's a good thing I love DMC 930 as I'd say over 80% of the design is stitched in this color.  Here's what it will look like finished:

Here's where I am with it.  This one of four patterns from an OOP leaflet by Homespun Collectibles called "2000 Collection of Santas."

LoneStar