Tea Cozy

I joined Rhonda's tea cozy swap and this is what I came up with. I hope my partner will like it.

Rainy Friday

It was raining buckets most of the day and it was rather cold and dreary. We had to get up one hour early because Del had to work in a different town today and it takes about one hour to get there. So "my day" started early too. I decided to try to do a photographic record of the things I did today. Here it goes:

Rainy view from my bedroom window.

Tea dyed a small quilt top made from leftover blocks from another quilt. (Not sure if I am happy with the result, it looks more dark pink than aged.)


Re-stocked my reading basket.


Started a gardening journal.


Changed the calendar quilt from January to February.


Put out the table topper for February (until after Valentine's Day).


Added a touch of pink to the decoration on the mantel.


Finally figured out how to hang the fireplace quilt, stitched on the little plastic rings and hung it.


Ironed what needed ironing in this week's laundry, folded yesterday's laundry.


Made the starter for a new bread I want to try tomorrow.


Started a new ginger beer plant.


Had the last of the potato goulash and some homemade bread for lunch.


Updated my blog, read my emails and my favorite blogs, played a few games.


Washed dishes.


Finished shopping list for tomorrow.


Sliced a cucumber for dinner (fried veggie rice with cucumber salad).


Heated some milk for making yogurt.


Prepared mung beans for sprouting.

Well, my day was not bad at all, I got a lot of stuff done and it makes me feel good. In the meantime it stopped raining and the sun came out. The weekend is supposed to get warmer and sunny. We plan to check prices for topsoil and mulch at a nursery and buy a lawn mower and maybe the wood for the raised beds and I will be looking for seeds. We will also get our weekly grocery shopping done, go to church and watch the game on Sunday. Oh, and I need to bake bread tomorrow - again. :)

In about one hour Del will come home and that will end "my day" and start "our weekend".

Kitchen Experiment

I call it Maria's Banana Pudding. I used graham crackers instead of Nilla wafers (too sweet for my taste). I layered the crackers with banana slices and chocolate pudding and poured vanilla pudding over the whole thing. I told Del that I was bored this afternoon and that is the result of it. Now he hopes for more boring afternoons. ;)

My current reading basket

My Weekend

Saturday I finished my new shawl. I really like the colors in this yarn (Lion Brand Homespun, color: Corinthian) but they never come out right in photos.


I made a batch of granola with dates, nuts and winter spices. It is delicious and warms you up nicely on a cold winter morning and I baked two loaves of bread. Normally I bake on Mondays but somehow we managed to eat all our bread during the week.

And I knitted a few small dishcloths just for cleaning the cat bowls.


I made yogurt, which, for some reason unknown to me, took 24 hours to "yog" instead of the usual 12, oh well, at least it finally came out right.
Sunday morning I prepared lunch to be cooked in the crock pot and started out with cutting my left thumb, ouch. According to my plans for 2008 I tried a recipe I never made before - "Morrocan Chicken Stew" from the BHG website. It was delicious and is definitely a keeper. I halved the recipe and used chicken thighs.


We started cleaning up our backyard a bit, but it was too cold to do much. So we just sat in the cozy living room and started planning our vegetable garden instead. I want Winter to be over, I did not move to the south to freeze off various body parts. ;)
And after much debating with myself, I decided to put one of my quilts into my Etsy-Shop.

Movie Night

Yesterday's movie was the Marx Brothers' "A Night at Casablanca". Madness and mayhem galore. :) The pizza of choice was tuna, onion and olives.
While watching the movie I unraveled I rectangular shawl I crocheted a while ago. I did not really like it because it was too narrow for my taste. Now I am using the yarn to crochet another triangular one for myself.

New Dishcloths

Ta-da! Here they are, finished and ready to be - hopefully - sold.

Still Knitting

I am currently knitting dishcloth sets for my Etsy Shop. I am using fancier patterns and various cotton yarns. I am also working on a cushion cover for my sofa with yarn bought at the thrift store for $0.29 per ball.

Movie Night

One of the "new" things we are trying this year is dedicating some evenings of the week to a specific activity. Monday is reading night, Tuesday is movie and pizza night, Thursday is men's prayer group at our church. Monday and Tuesday plans are open to change, in case there is a hockey game on. ;)
We have quite an extensive collection of video tapes from our time in Europe as the only way to see a movie in English was to buy it on tape. I made a numbered list of all videos and now each week one of us picks a number (best out of three) and the pizza topping. Last week we watched "Dad's Army - The Movie" and had spinach and feta on the pizza. Yesterday we watched "Rear Window" with Christoper Reeve (quite heartbreaking to see him like this and knowing that he is gone) and had pepperoni pizza.
I also watch videos while knitting or crocheting.

Gifts

This morning I made two quilted journal covers as gifts for upcoming birthdays. I cannot remember where I got the fabric but I think it might have been from my MIL. I was thinking about adding a big glass bead to the bookmark, but since they will be mailed overseas I thought it safer to just tie a knot into the ribbon. They took two hours to make.

Journal covers front:

Journal covers back:

Quilting

Here is my first quilt project of 2008. In 1999 I swapped friendship star blocks with several ladies on one of my quilting mailing lists. And as it happens so often I never got around to do anything with the blocks, until now. :)
My fireplace was screaming for some crafty decoration and so I picked out the blue blocks and sewed them together, machine quilted them and just added dark blue binding and voila! a fireplace quilt. :) While I figure out how to finally hang it (I am thinking velcro), I attached it with some sticky tape for the photos. And I must say I like the way it looks. I want to add more handmade items to my house to reflect who I am and what I like.

The quilt in this picture was the very first one I ever made. I use it as my calendar quilt for January and it hangs on a bookshelf in the in the dining room. Del made the wooden unit on top of it for me and we attached two quilt hangers, the cat pictures in the middle is from a craft fair.

Gifts

The first handmade gifts of 2008:

A key ring or: What to do with leftover crochet flowers. :) It is on it's way to a friend in Vienna.


Another shawl, this one is for a lady in our church who celebrates her 80th birthday this coming Sunday.


And my handmade items for the Pay-It-Forward exchange.

Housekeeping

First off I want to wish everybody a very HAPPY NEW YEAR! May it bring you everything you hope for.
I started the new year with being busy. I borrowed Dawn's wonderful housekeeping plan and adjusted it to my 2 people - 1 cat household. I switched the days around a bit and today was my clean the bedroom day. I stripped the bed, dusted and tidied and washed the linens. Put on fresh linens and this is what it looks like:

What you don't see is the big basket with stuff that needs ironing. :-) I did fold all the laundry that does not need ironing and put it in it's proper place.

I also cleaned the bathroom and washed some rugs.

I made a batch of ginger ale, started bean sprouts (by soaking the beans for 24 hours) and baked bread.

I try to get all my chores done in the morning so I can spend the afternoon with my crafts.