Things that make the day better

Tomorrow is a national holiday, and because of that great part of the people isn't working. My husband is, so this is just a regular day here at home.

Of course, since I'm not working for now, the day can be rearranged the way I want. Which should be an invitation to productivity in all areas - chores, general to do's, crafts.

But then what happens?

A gray day. Sad, ugly and depressing. Lately I realized how much gray days affect me, and I must say that's a little scary. When we're working, we don't have much time to pay attention to the weather outside, let alone the effects it has upon us. So something had to be done!

My solution was to start a project that was around here annoying me: a SAL, or stitch-along. Anne-Gaëlle, from the blog Au bonheur de mains (I read French, don't you know? Sometimes with the help of Google, but I do! ;-) ), came up with an embroidery project for us to make together. The links are in the right column of her blog, with all the files for download.

Today, reading the blogs I follow with Google Reader, I saw she was asking people to subscribe again - very few of them were giving feedback about the project. Nothing like a tug of ears to get us moving, huh?

I printed out all the files she had already sent us by e-mail (the same that are available for download), and I started to look for some fabric to embroider.

It seems that in Europe it's easy to find linen to embroider. Here in Brazil, Ao que parece, lá na Europa é fácil encontrar linho para bordar. Aqui no Brasil, who knows why, linen is a product of the highest level, costing around 40 dollars. Too expensive for embroidery!

I headed to my embroidery box to see what I already had, and I found some fabric - I think it's fine hemp. I'm not sure it will be suitable for the project, but I'll try.

The next step was transferring the design to the fabric. Since I don't have a light box (yet), which makes this step of embroidery a lot easier, I had to improvise the simplest way:

See how gray the day is?? And the street is too calm, only in the middle of a long weekend you see this in São Paulo...

Very well, design transferred, the embroidery starts tonight. The first stage is the contour, I've already seen the steps to make the chosen stitches and I'll pick the colors later. I decided to make each of the 4 parts of the project in separate fabrics. Later I want to frame them and hang them in the original distribution. I think it will look really nice!

I love paisleys. Or cashemire, or however you know this design. I simply l-o-v-e them, and I thank Anne-Gaëlle for the beautiful design! :)

Now I have to go... it's getting dark and the wind is so strong outside. I don't feel like doing anything other than this embroidery today, but I have to be stronger than that and head to the gym. That's another thing about gray days: they totally ruin your diet, and this fat is not going to burn itself!