Friday has been attained.

Is it really June?

The weather leaves that open to question. Calendrically, of course, June it is. But if it stays in the low to mid 60s here in Portland, I'm going to find Florida pretty heavy going (Complex Weavers conference).

I have been working on stuff, but not having the extra energy required to turn around and turn on the scanner. Any potentially-extra energy has been expended on preemptive stress and anxiety—in a few weeks, my supervisor will be heading off to spend four months at our subsidiary in the Netherlands, and apparently at some level I feel the unfortunate need to worry now, even though I know it will go fine. (Oh, he and I are the entire department, in case you wondered, and the end of June is the end of the quarter, that surprise of the business world that happens every three months, and our jobs are involved with all the last-minute moving of boxes every which way around the world.) This week I have been feeling like a Hapsburg, being unable at times to close my mouth. I finally deduced that the pain in my jaw resulted from tension elsewhere...and additionally of course my sinuses are continually stimulated by the weather.

At any rate, here is some proof of action.

To begin with—something Completely New *AND* Completely Finished!!! One type of thread (Caron watercolour, 3-ply Pima cotton used in single strands), one type of cloth (cotton Osnaburg), and one stitch (eyelet, I guess you'd call it). Kind of minimalist in its own way.

[As I write this, Thursday evening, Princess the cat is playing purposefully with the container of Holistic Natural Feline Treats on the floor. She knows goodies ought to come out, but they just won't.]

The white embroidery as of Wednesday, June 4:

In conclusion, as part of the ongoing struggle to achieve some sense of actual order, I had to empty the bedroom closet so I could fit in the new shelves I got. Naturally, an inordinately large percentage of the things that came out of the closet will not go back in, leaving yet more things to add to the chaos in the living room. (I eventually reconfigured that enough, once again, that I can get through without too much trouble. And as always, there are numerous cat routes. I'm a good cat mommy, even though she doesn't like me to work on the mat that appeared in her fur. It's spring, technically, and I have been harvesting prodigious amounts of feline fluff. I have a project in mind for it, too. Naturally.)

At the bottom of one stack of four boxes in the closet was the box with my photo albums. I've been wanting to get this picture out for AGES. It's a carved cedar relief of Hathor, and it's my favorite thing from the strenuous visit to the Met in 1997 (!!!) with Marla. We mainly did the Egyptian collection—also Cycladic art, which I adore, and musical instruments, which I covet, and briefly peered down into the armour gallery. But mainly we saw the Egyptian galleries. They are endless. Every room has rooms off it, and littler rooms off them, until you get down to a few closet-sized rooms. I particularly remember one that was floor-to-ceiling full of tiny faience objects. You begin to wonder how there could be anything left in Egypt. It would be good to have some Egyptian version of Ariadne's ball of thread, too, to find your way around.

So after all that, here is Hathor. The picture is rather dark since I was good and did not use my flash.