In Which Connor Has A Check Up And I Plan Well In Advance

Connor's day went a little bit better than yesterday; he only had three seizures.  However I think his body decided he needed to be in recovery mode, because he went to bed at four in the afternoon and has been down ever since.  He had a cardiology appointment today, and he actually fell asleep in my arms in the examining room while we were waiting for the doctor to come in!  Then he fell asleep again in the car on the way home.  The little guy almost never sleeps in the car, so that's an indication that he was just plumb worn out.

Other than the impromptu nap, the cardiology appointment went really well.  Apparently Connor's heart condition looks really good; it hasn't changed since the last time they looked at it, and everything is within normal limits.  So we don't need to change his current dose of heart medication, and we won't need a cardiology appointment again for another year!  I'm glad that Connor's heart is doing so well-- that's one less thing we have to worry about.
I finally got around to photoshopping a picture of Ellen's stocking to remove her real name so I could show you a picture of what it looks like now that it's all finished!  I think it turned out pretty well.

While Connor snoozed away today I got to work planning out my next few sewing projects.  I still have a couple that I'm finishing up right now, but I like to work on designs way in advance so that I have plenty of time to figure out how they'll work logistically. 

When I'm creating a pattern I have to figure out now only how to break the design into pieces, but how to layer the pieces to create the proper effect.  It takes a lot of figuring out!  This way while I'm working on the stuff I already know how to do my brain can be busy thinking about the next project.  Since I take a ridiculous amount of time to finish up projects, I usually have quite a bit of time for thinking!



A really, really rough draft. 



So I sketched and finished out the next stocking I'll be doing, which is a polar bear sleeping under a Christmas tree.  Then I roughed in the very first draft of the stocking that I'll be doing after that, which will be a Chinese dragon holding a Christmas wreath.  This was a relatively quick sketch figuring out the layout, so there's still a lot I have to change-- like the fact that I gave the dragon horns when he's in fact supposed to have antlers.  Whoops.  That's what rough drafts are for, right?

Both of these stockings are gifts, though thankfully not for this Christmas.  The polar bear will have a lot of sequins, but it should be fairly straightforward and I don't anticipate a lot of issues.  The Chinese dragon is going to be one of those projects I end up hating-- I can already tell.  It just screams out for lots and lots of beading and sequins and-- Heaven help me-- metallic gold embroidery thread.  But I'm going to do it anyway, dang it!   

I just hope it turns out as lovely as the picture I have in my head.

~Jess