I did get the dishes done. I was busy. I performed The Wisconsin Lilac Chainsaw Massacre and managed to reduce one lilac by half and get most of the cuttings down to the street for pickup. I’ll give another go tomorrow – maybe. I haven’t checked the weather forecast. I also whacked down the invasive dogwood whatever that keeps sprouting in what was once a nice perennial garden. Like an aspen, the thing spreads via its roots.

If I hadn’t had to plant a couple arbor vitae and a lot of tall flowers to keep the old lady that lived next door out of my yard, the dogwood wouldn’t have taken over so badly because I would have kept mowing over them. But the old biddy next door had to be in my yard, pulling everything she considered a weed and leaving them either on top of my trash can of just tossed in my driveway. So I wasn’t mowing that area very much and the dogwood kept growing in the perennials.

The neighbor was a load of fun. She used to sneak over and put her trash in my bin. Her reason for doing so was that the can the city gave out was too large so she would just do it until she got the smaller bin. However even after she got her bin, she’d use mine until I finally told her I didn’t want to deal with her if she fell in my driveway while trespassing.

She objected so strenuously to my cans being on the side of my garage that she could see from her window, that she bought and had someone install, six-foot high vinyl fence panels on her property to hide my cans from her sight. The fence panels ran the length of my garage. I moved them to the front of the garage and she installed two more panels. I considered moving the cans down the length of my driveway a few feet a year to see if she would keeping buying fence but I never did that. She’s gone now so no more problems. I have a nice couple as neighbors now.

Anyway, back to my list – part of the list was to finish 3 Japanese stab bound notebooks for the upcoming Artists’Night we’re having at the Makerspace I belong to. I did practice cards of the patterns I intended to use, but one pattern took a lot of practice to get right.

First there was getting the design on graph paper. Then determining the stitching. Once that was done, I did a practice card. It was stitch, take out the thread, start over, take out the thread. I finally got the pattern and the stitching steps right. I still had a bit of trouble because the more complex the pattern, the longer the thread has to be and even with the waxed thread, tangles occur.

Then the fun began. I lost count of the steps and had to start over. After a few tries, things fell into place and the pattern started to take shape. I got two-thirds of the way done and ran out of thread. Spent a lot of time sewing the book. Halfway through, I realized I used a wrong hole. No big deal. Pulled out the thread and ripped the cover. I made a new cover.

Realized that even though I was using longer length of thread, it was too short. Picked the thread out. Started over, halfway through got a major knot. Gave up. I’ll try again tomorrow. I have to go make a new to-do list.