The Last One

At least for now. ;-) Just finished my third pair of socks. I love the colors in the yarn, they were the reason I bought it a while ago on Ebay. It is a wool blend and great to work with. The socks fit perfectly. I see a lot more socks in my future but right now I need to concentrate on some other projects that are calling me.

Tis the Season ...

... to be cleaning, clearing and de-cluttering. While going through some boxes with fabrics and scraps and things I came across these little grandmother's flower garden blocks. I remember they were one of my first quilting projects so they are from around 1993 or 1994 and made from Austrian dirndl fabrics. I also found a bag of more pre-cut hexagons. Maybe one day I will actually put them together into a quilt, who knows.

Knitting and Reading

Time for another yarn along. I am still reading The River Midnight, did not have much time for reading this last week, busy with catching up on some housework and starting the clean up of the garden. On my needles this week is my third pair of socks this month, I think I am getting addicted. ;-)

Del's sweater is finished, it needs a little bit of blocking but it does fit better now. I am sorry I forgot to answer a question in the comments on last week's post, the sweater is knitted in size XL.

Hop on over to Ginny's blog to see what everyone else is reading and knitting this week.

Weekend

It was warm enough to start some garden work. We removed the weeds and vines that grew over the azaleas by the carport. The azaleas took quite a beating with all the rain last year and look poorly. I hope they will recover and bloom again. A lot of the plants around the house are quite old and I am afraid the trees in the front yard will give us problems in the coming years.

I also removed all the weeds and the honeysuckle from the lilac bush. While doing so I discovered that a big branch of it was broken, probably during one of the storms last year or from the heavy wet snow we had. It came away when I pulled off the vines of the honeysuckle.

And we also bound up the raspberry bush I planted last year. I have decided to let the strawberries take over the bed (they have to share with the raspberry) and find a different way to grow herbs this year.

The big stump that sat in the corner of the garden when we moved in is gone. It looked like that when we bought the house.

Thanks to the rains last year it is now completely rotten and we just raked the remains flat. Maybe we just sow some grass over it.

We saw the resident red tailed hawks, the flew in very low and then sat on a branch across the way. They are so beautiful. One of them flew low over the house once and looked at me. But I guess both my cats and I are just a bit too big to qualify as prey.

And after all the garden work was done, I finished my second pair of socks. This time without a pattern. They fit much better than the first ones.

Ta-Da!!

Here they are, my very first socks ever (after 40+ years of knitting). I just followed the pattern on the back of the yarn label. The next pair is already on the needles, this time I am not using a pattern I am just following the general instructions for knitting socks in an old knitting book of mine.

Mug Rugs Swap II

These are the mug rugs I received in the swap, I especially like the penguin one. ;-)

Knitting and Reading

Since I am doing both at the moment I decided to join Ginny's yarn along today.
I am almost finished with re-knitting the yoke on Del's sweater (it got too big the first time around, I think I switched to the wrong size needle) and I am reading "The River Midnight" by Lilian Nattel. I am about halfway through the book and like it a lot. The sweater is the Cobblestone Pullover by Jared Flood. I love all his patterns and hope to make a few more of them in the future.

Happy Valentine's Day!

In Search of Spring

Give Thanks!

I just finished the wall hanging and the first verse for the Give Thanks BOM. A big THANK YOU! to  Jenny of Elefantz  for sharing this lovely pattern. I am currently working on verses 2 and 3. It is made entirely from stash, including button and beads. :-)

Mug Rugs

My mug rugs for the Quilting Gallery swap are finished. I hope my partner will like them. They are 6" x 10".

Happy Groundhog Day!

I think he must have heard that I was looking for a recipe for groundhog stew (just in case). ;-)

What did the Groundhog say?

It probably sounds unlikely to all the people currently buried under ice and snow but we are supposed to get an early Spring. Down here where I am it feels like it already today. We have 53 degrees currently, sunny with a nice breeze. My laundry is happily fluttering in the wind and I just opened a few windows to let some of that old Winter air out.
Guess who else is very happy about the sunshine?

Project of the Month - February

What to do, what to do? Oh, yes, almost forgot, I need to make three quilts for my nephews and my niece, that is my POM for February.

Other little projects to work on:

• 2 Mug Rugs for a swap
• 1 cute BOM wall hanging
• knit one pair of socks
• a birthday gift for a friend

It's a short month, so I better get started. :-)

Happy February!

Wow, the first month of the new year is already over. And I am glad to say it was not a bad one. No major appliances broke - although it seems like the washer is on the frizz - and nobody got sick. The outside cats stayed inside most of the month because it was too cold or too wet to let them out. They don't seem to mind, they have their warm beds and plenty of food and drink and cuddles too. Miss K. is doing well, driving me nuts because she wants to be in the porch all the time and I do not let her out if it is not warm enough. Yesterday I decorated my mantel for February.