Good Morning!

Stitching

These are the first three blocks for the BOM "Leafing through the year". I enjoy the hand stitching and green has always been my favorite color. Link to the BOM can be found in my left sidebar.

Yarn Along

Good morning friends. Time for another yarn along with Ginny. I am on the last part of my Simply Hilary shawl. I am supposed to start the edging but I think I am going to add another pattern repeat first. I like my shawls a little bigger. And I finally put 'Under the Tuscan Sun' aside and started to re-read and old favorite of mine "Hawaii" by James A. Michener. It has been a very long time since I read it for the first time.

Kitten Adventures

Weekend

Our weekend did not go as planned but it was still a good one. We had planned on doing some heavy garden work, instead we got thunderstorms and heavy rain. No gardening. When I look out into that weed covered swamp that used to be my garden I am very much tempted to not grow a garden at all this year. But I know I would regret it later. I guess I just have to do as much as I can during the week and leave the big things for the next weekend and hope it will be a dry one.

The weekend started as usual with my favorite thing to do - a trip to the farmer's market. We bought lots of dark leafy greens, spinach, kale, romaine lettuce and broccoli, also some radishes, chicken breast and eggs and the first asparagus of the season. We had it roasted for lunch on Saturday and it was so good. Around this time of the year I realize how hungry I am for fresh produce and it is just starting to come to the market, how fortunate. ;-) I also need to switch my mind from winter foods to lighter fare now that the temperatures are going up, like salads instead of hearty soups and such.

After market we ran some errands, bought some yarn - I seem to be buying a lot of yarn lately, but that is what happens when you buy a ball of yarn to see if you like it, start some project with it and then need more, because, yes, you do like it - and picked up a book and some movies at the library.

The rest of the weekend was spent puttering around the house, still working on that re-organizing project, which is now mostly concentrated on the small bed room, reading, knitting and watching movies.

And of course there were our kitties. They turned 6 months old on Saturday and we celebrated with a simple chocolate cake with raspberry jam for us and lots of treats and extra tummy rubs for them. Miss Maggie had to spend the weekend in the cage after surgery on Wednesday but she is out now and very happy about it. My little baby Jack is so big now, he takes up half the sofa when he stretches out, I wonder how much bigger he will grow. He is the sweetest cat you can imagine, but then, all our kittens are very sweet.

Yarn Along

Happy Wednesday everyone. Here it is wet and foggy this morning. I hope you have some sunshine wherever you are. Time to join with Ginny for another yarn along.

After I finished my last shawl I cast on the next one. The pattern is called "Simply Hilary" and once you get into it it is pretty easy. I had to get used to increase the stitches by making a new stitch rather than doing a yarn over as in many other patterns. The yarn is 'I Love this Wool' from Hobby Lobby. I am still chewing through 'Under the Tuscan Sun' I just cannot warm up to this book. It looks like whoever owned it before me gave up on it just a little bit further in than I am now. I found an airline ticket stub that was used as a bookmark (why does nobody ever use hundred dollar notes for bookmarks and then forget them? ;-) ).

Have a great day everyone!

Some Random Cat-ness

Weekend

Our weekend contained:

• a trip to the farmer's market for spinach, kale, broccoli, eggs and chicken. I also got two plants for the herb garden, a German chamomile and a lemon balm to replace the one that got killed off my mealy bugs last year.
• mowing for the first time. Spring has exploded around here, everything is green and growing like mad.
• knitting - finished another cat blanket and started a new shawl.
• eating - our St. Patrick's Day dinner this year was Ballycotton Fish Pie, good, but way too much work to be a frequent repeat.

• taking a box of books to the library and a box of stuff to the thrift store
• watching movies on Hulu
• baking bread and making granola
• rain and thunderstorms
• and then there was that - Slainte!

Wishing you all a good week ahead.

Beannachtai na Feile Padraig!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

May you always have work for your hands to do.
May your pockets hold always a coin or two.
May the sun shine bright on your windowpane.
May the rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near you.
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

Finished!

My "Old Man of Storr" shawl is finished. I love the colors in the yarn and the little sequins look like snowflakes or raindrops. I am very pleased with it.

Yarn Along

I did not have much time to read lately, but I always have time for knitting. I am purging my cookbooks and so I have been looking through them to decide which ones to keep and which ones to give away. We are in the middle of a major re-organizing project and I am taking the opportunity for some decluttering.
My latest knitting project is another shawl. I am using this pattern and the yarn is Diva Sequin from Yarn Bee in Scottish Heather. It knits a lot better than I thought and I have only two more pattern repeats to go.

Hop on over to Ginny to see what others are knitting and reading this week.

The Boys

From left to right: Leo, Jackie, Frankie

Weekend

I am pooped. We started a major re-organizing project this weekend and we are about halfway through. It is the kind of project that involves moving furniture and turning several rooms upside down. Tomorrow we are going to move the computer to a different room, I hope all goes well and I'll be back online in no time at all. And because everything is being moved and shaken up anyway I am also doing some purging and decluttering, getting boxes filled for the next library sale, the thrift store and the attic. The cats are wondering what exactly those crazy humans are up to now.
We also went to the farmer's market and ran a few errands on Saturday. And I am working on a new knitting project, that is almost halfway finished already. I love it.
I have decided to give up paper crafting, I have a lot of stuff for card making and/or scrapbooking that I no longer need, including card stock, stickers, rubber stamps, etc. If anybody is interested, let me know.
Lots of work still ahead in the coming week, I think I'll call it a day.

Look what I found today!

Now would that be considered the first harvest of 2012?

New Place Mats

I made new place mats for March today.

Yarn Remnants

I had lots of little balls of leftover yarn and my cats can always use more blankets.

Miss Precious

Weekend

My Weekend included

• a trip to the farmer's market for eggs, kale, broccoli, spinach, spare ribs and sorghum molasses
• meeting friends for a birthday lunch
• buying some new yarn (the red one is not as bright red as in the photo)

• getting lost on Ravelry looking at free patterns for triangular shawls (a few of which ended up on my todo list) and trying not to drool on the keyboard
• baking bread and making granola
• re-organizing and purging my knitting patterns
• and of course, sleeping kitties everywhere

March

In March I will

• meet friends for lunch
• clean the garden
• make garden plans
• work on some hand stitching projects
• make some spring things 
• bake a pie on "National Pi(e) Day 
• celebrate St. Patrick's Day
• catch up on the two BOMs I picked for this year
• get out and enjoy some nature