Good morning friends! It’s another Monday. Last week wasn’t great, and this whole month has been blah in general – I will blame it on winter. The blah week culminated in my pulling my back on Friday – ARGH. I always find it hilarious that I never pull my back while exercising, but it always happens when I do something innocuous like sneeze or bend over to grab toilet paper. I’m fortunate that I never pull it badly enough to be immobile. And it’s already feeling better, but is still a little stiff. I’ll wait a couple more days to pick up the workout routine again.
The bright side of pulling your back is you can be totally lazy all weekend, which is just what I needed after an intense week at work. Exhibit A:
Believe it or not, this is still Week 2 of the CAL pattern, but I’m almost finished with this portion of the pattern! That separator took me awhile to master, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty easy. The embroidery is also pretty easy, just a little intricate. I’m pretty happy with how it’s working up. I think I can finish Week 2 tonight.
Last night I went to Painting With a Twist with some coworkers. The theme was “Paint Your Pet.” Before the class, we had to send pet photos to the instructors so they could trace our pet on the canvas and add guides for shading. They wanted head shots of your pet, so I selected this photo. This is Apollo from 2 years ago while I was studying for my first exam attempt.
“Stop studying and play with me. You’re going to fail anyway.”
Even though our pets were already pre-traced on the canvas, painting a splotchy dog is difficult! I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out though.
The splotches on his torso were a last minute attempt to fix my painting, because something seemed off. “Don’t be afraid of the brush strokes,” my coworker advised. I think the brush strokes definitely add more realism! I think Apollo was happy with his portrait as well:
I better go get ready for work – have a great Monday!
Categories: Apollo, Artsy Endeavors, crafts, crochet, Cross Stitch, Embroidery
Jennifer Stark 
I love the way Apollo is looking at the camera! You did a super job! Love it! 🐶❤️
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Aw thanks Mama ❤
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As someone who can’t paint at all, I really admire the portrait of Apollo. And Apollo himself, of course!
An idea if you’re not doing that already: there are some stretching workouts on youtube, adding it from time to time between my other workouts helps a lot so I’m less prone to muscle cramps and pulled muscles later. In the past, I used to only do stretching at the end of the workout but it was just a couple of minutes, a full session (even 15-20 minutes is helpful) added maybe twice a week made a huge difference.
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Aw thank you! Having the instructors trace and add shading guides really helped 🙂
Thanks for the advice! I’m really not great at doing stretching unless it’s just yoga, but sounds like a couple of good stretching sessions is what I need a week 🙂
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I pulled my shoulder the other day when reaching for something. Awful searing pain. Fortunately like you, it didn’t render me immobile but the pain was…wow. I do a lot of yoga/stretching, so I don’t know that it actually helps prevent this sort of thing because it clearly hasn’t helped me. Are we just getting old???
That’s a really cute painting of Apollo! It looks just like him!
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Oh no, I’m sorry! That sounds awful 😦 Yes, I do think we are getting old(er) 😀
Aw thanks so much 🙂
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