The 'bent Needle

Thanks to OLN for the above pic of this year's route.

Hello all and everyone else too! As you might have guessed from reading Kim's blog, it is time once again to watch the Tour de France. We have both been really into this yearly event since we found out that OLN was showing live (or at least time delayed) coverage of the race. I NEVER would have guessed that Kim would be so into bike racing. She trys to deny it, but I am convinced that she only watches it for the buff biker guys... ;-) Okay, I'm just kidding... Methinks that a lot of it -biker guys notwithstanding- is the drama of the race itself. I mean when you hear stuff like the "Operacion Puerto" debacle, as well as the fact that the Yellow Leader's jersey changes daily... Well, let me just say that it can be very VERY interesting. And on top of all that, we still have about 2 weeks of this excitement! COOL!!! If you are curious about more stuff regarding the Tour de France, be sure to point your mouse and browser to OLNTV.com for more information...

(FYI: George Hincapie -Lance Armstrong's #2 man- is 5 seconds behind the leader, Tom Boonen. GO GEORGE! GO GEORGE! GO GEORGE! Ahem... Sorry, got a little bit excited there...)

In our early Tour watching history, Kim had asked me a good question: "Why aren't there any women in the Tour?" "Duh... idanoe..." Was and is usually my answer. (I hate to say it, but I am not that savvy on all this biker stuff...) However, I have been able to find a couple of links at Wikipedia that talk about the ladies and the Tour. They make a little bit better sense of that stuff than I probably could... Enjoy!

And just to show you all that I haven't totally forgotten about stitching -I have finished the Native Wolf project, BTW- I saw the following Stitching Blogger's Question over at Christine's blog and thought it would be a good thing to post about. (And it caught my attention too so...)

"What do you do with your charts once you've stitched them? Do you keep them or dispose of them? If you keep them, do you organize them in a way that is different from the way you keep your unstitched charts?"

Well, I can honestly say that I generally shred my patterns once I am done stitching them. Now, before you all go and have heart failure on me, I just want to say that I don't exactly shred the actual pattern. What I do is shred the COPY of the pattern that I am stitching. The copy is easier for me to mark up and keep track of where I am on the pattern. AND if I decide to re-sell or gift away the pattern, it won't be all 'used' looking. "Slightly used" I think is the proper term. As for the patterns that I do keep, I generally put them back into the stash bucket (or file, as the case sometimes is) in pretty much the same place that the pattern was when I first dug it out. (...or put into Stashedness...)

FYI: I generally have my patterns sorted by size and / or type. In other words, I have a file for the little bitty projects (like the Mickey Mouse that I finished yesterday), another one for the mid-sized ones (like the 5" x 7" Native Wolf), and so on and so forth for the bigger patterns and the ocassional kit. Kim and I also have folders that we have other patterns in as well; we started using sheet protectors to keep some patterns in them. We have plenty of stash, so we have plenty of "stash buckets" too. ;-)

Well... that thunk noise you just heard was my brain shutting down. I am officially out of words. The Tour coverage is almost over too so... I guess I am about ready to shut this post down for now. I will chat with you all later if not sooner...

And now, back to the Tour!!! lol