Confined to quarters ....

The rain is pounding down on the roof above my head which

is a comforting, pleasant sound.    It's evening and I have decided

to update my blog since I am not really in the mood to do much

else.    I've been watching "Booktube" videos on Youtube,  I've

been stitching,   I've been reading .... but I am (I confess) feeling

a tad ... dare I say it?? ... Bored!!!!

Recovery from the gallbladder extraction has been uneventful

and everything seems to be fine.   Nurse Phil continues to 

monitor me closely and gives me hell heck if I do too much

bending or reaching.   Hopefully by next week I'll be able to

return to Curves to work out, though I realize that I'm going

to have to start out slowly and work my way back up to

where I was before my little adventure.

We went for a walk today and by the end I was flagging a

bit.  Now that the nicer weather is on the horizon I'm ready

to get out and walk, walk, walk but once again it's

something I'm going to have to build my endurance up for.

Being confined to the house and with the weather too cool

to sit out in I've been dedicating a lot of my time to my

current cross stitch project and I've gotten a lot done!

Now I am not the world's fastest stitcher by any means

so I'm not sure if this is a lot by anyone else's standards

but I'm fairly pleased with it.

The canoe and the streetcar were my favourite things

to stitch and the trees as well.   To the left of the 

streetcar is the Prince's Gates which lead into the

Canadian National Exhibition grounds.    On the 

far right of the design is the Skydome where our

baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays play.   Between

those two Toronto icons is the designers rendition

of the Royal Ontario Museum ... and that thing 

was a stinker to stitch!!!

Now above is a picture of the original building which is

quite a venerable old pile ... classy and typical of the

architecture of the 1914 era that it was built in.

     

And this is the section that was added in 2007.

It's called "The Crystal" and it was designed by 

Daniel Libeskind.   It is very ... modern and reactions

to it were ... shall we say .... mixed (!!!) when it's

plans were first revealed.     

I'm not a fan of modern architecture.  I much prefer

the original structure which the Crystal kind of wraps

around in one area.    And when it came to stitching the

darn thing it was ... for me ... a royal pain!

I couldn't picture in my mind how the stitched structure

corresponded to the real one.  It just seemed like

sections of random shades of blue and white.  It

still looks weird to me but at least I can sort of

see what the designer was trying to do.  I guess.

But that part is now done and I can move on to the

next layer of this piece.

And in case you're wondering .... yes, it seems that

at least for awhile the Crystal's roof did leak.   Ooops!

My reading for the past few weeks has been the

acclaimed fantasy series by Naomi Novik.

The first book came out and was nominated

for a Hugo award  for best novel in 2007

The novels are a retelling of the Napoleonic

wars but with dragons!!!   So a meld of 

fantasy and history which is skillfully 

blended into a fascinating and riveting

story by the author.   

I don't know why I haven't gotten these

books to read before this because I knew

that they were out there and were well

reviewed and quite popular .... but I didn't.

There are more books in this series which

I have in my collection and will read in the 

future but I wanted to get the first three books 

done all in one marathon read.   I don't know

if I'll pick up book four (then five, six etc) next

or if I'll go for a change of pace.   We'll see.

I don't have much else to write about tonight

so I'll just add a cute picture of the cats and call

it a night!

Cheers!