Creatin' 2 Avoid Crazies

Some of you may have heard that in the last few months, Minnesota's weather has been ... interesting.

Yeah, interesting ... if that's what you want to call an extended, week+ long, record setting sub zero temperature blitz ... followed by 3-10"+ blizzards pretty much every other day for a month and a half.

Yep, that gif right there sums up everyone I knew in Minnesota after that stretch.  Cold, snowy and angry.

Like most others in my area, after the first week of "Polar Vortex", I had enough.  So you can imagine how much fun I was having come week 6 of blizzard conditions.  And in case you think I'm exaggerating the constant snow bombardment, to quote my husband: "I tried to go get something in the backyard by going down the deck, but when I realized the snow was past my balls, I gave up real quick."

My husband is 6' 2", just for reference.

Anyway, being house bound for almost two months straight was really starting to wear on me come February, and since I felt like I had already gone to the end of the internet and back twice, I needed to find something else to do in my (limited) down time ... and QUICK!

Thankfully, for some reason, I fell back into cross stitching.  Thank god for hobbies that can suck up hours on end in what feels like two minutes flat!!

As you saw in my Reddit post a week or two ago, one of my first projects back into cross stitching was this guy (which I think took about 12 hours to complete):

I do have to say, it turned out pretty cute once framed, as you already saw in that post:

When I was Googling around looking for that Shamrock pattern, I had started my search by simply typing "green cross stitch", and thus I stumbled across this guy ... which I decided I just HAD to make as well.

Because I was surprise gifting this to an old friend, I kept his sister updated with status alerts; so that project left me with a fun collection of progressive pics:

If you're wondering, Frank was about 20 hours of work.

In addition to using green thread, I did take on a few other adventures, including Pusheen cat in a donut (about 20 hours), and a somewhat "unconventional" commission for a friend's bathroom (a mere 4-5 hours on that one):

And like any good cross stitcher with ADD, I have three other works in progress right now -

An outer space rocket ship (20-30 hours):

A snake ala Garden of Eden (15ish+/- hours):

And ... bringing us back to the start of this story, a celebratory plaque commemorating a friend from St. Louis's trip here during the Polar Vortex (15ish +/- hours):

So there you go.  That's what I've been doing late at night when I've been literally snowed in.  Thank god the snow has melted and I can finally get outside again!

Just ... let me be OCD for a second and finish those three projects above first.