First Finish of 2014

My little wall hanging for January is finished.

What I am working on - Knitting

I am knitting the second pair of socks from the fall colored yarn.

I have also cast on a pair with the halloween colored one, this one is very thin even for sock yarn and I had to change the number of stitches which brought about my least favorite part of knitting - math! But I managed to figure it out. :-)

Just in case anyone wonders, this is my laptop in the background. I do most of my knitting while watching movies on Amazon.

Reading

I am currently reading "Charlotte Gray" by Sebastian Faulks, one of the many 'yet to be read' books on my shelves. Although the description sounded very interesting it has so far failed to grip me. But since I am only on page 30, I hope it will get more interesting.

Monday

I woke up all stiff and achy from sleeping too long in one position. But after washing and hanging three loads of laundry and cleaning the bathroom I was as good as new.

The weather is sunny today and much warmer (in the 50s) so I could let the kitties into the porch for a much needed snooze in the sunshine.

I think I did enough housework for one day and will now spend some quality time with my knitting needles until it is time to fix dinner.

Hope your Monday was a good one too.

Weekend

Our weekend started with a thunderstorm on Saturday morning, accompanied by really weird orange light. I think it was caused by the sun rising behind the fog. It rained heavily for most of the day so all outside plans were cancelled.
So was my plan to baste and quilt the January wall hanging. :-)

But there was chocolate cake for consolation. I also baked bread.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny and luckily the temperatures are quite nice now, we are thawing out, but the garden is a big swamp, the water has nowhere to go, the ground is completely saturated. Since I plan to have a container garden this year, we must come up with some plans to ensure proper drainage for the containers.
We are having a 'lazy' Sunday, just hanging around the house, playing games, reading and after lunch we will be watching movies.

Hope your weekend was a nice one too.

Friday Night with Friends

I need a little extra motivation to get me going on my projects every now and then, so I decided to join "Friday Night with Friends" hosted by Cheryll.
 Tonight was the first time of 2014 and I worked on the border for my January calendar wall hanging. Got it all finished and ready to be basted and quilted.

Feline Friday

Baby, it's cold outside.

Pay it forward 2014

I promise to give something handmade to the first 5 people who comment on this post to be delivered sometime during the year. If you leave a comment, please offer the same thing to 5 other people.

Only comments left here on the blog will count.

What I am working on - Sewing

These are the first three blocks from a 2013 BOM. Rather than putting all 12 together into a big quilt I will make small individual calendar quilts. I plan to make a border for each one that mirrors the pattern of the heart. I have not added any of the beads and sequins and I did all the applique by machine.

Brrrrr!

We woke up to a whooping 5 degrees this morning. The house was reasonably warm, my preparations from yesterday worked.
These are the windows in the mudroom, the ice is on the inside.

Floyd, the extra cat, spent the night inside but he insisted on being let out in the morning. Maybe he thinks he is a polar bear because he is white. His daughter seems to think the same, I found her between the blanket and the window and a few of her hairs got stuck in some ice. Silly furry monsters. ;-)

I am baking bread, the oven is on a low setting to help the dough rise and it is going well. I have cooked beans to add to the potato goulash I am making for dinner and there is some orange punch simmering in the crock pot.

The cats are either running around like crazy or snoozing on the bed and in the sun spot by the window. The car started up without any problems this morning, good old boy that he is.

I am set up to do some sewing but I can't find enough outlets to plug everything in I need. I don't want to blow a fuse. I'd like to watch a movie while sewing but that means I have to plug in the speakers, together with the power converter for the sewing machine and the Ott-Lite for my poor old eyes it may be just a bit too much, guess, I'll go without the movie.

Hope you are all keeping safe and warm. I leave you with a picture of Mr. Jackie, telling me that he absolutely needs more treats. See you all soon!

Monday

Well, my day did not go quite as planned. Instead I was preparing for the low temperatures we are expecting tonight and tomorrow. I hung blankets on the bedroom windows and a quilt in the doorway to the kitchen, the kitchen door went missing long before we moved into the house and normally it is not a big deal. But with the current cold it makes it difficult to keep the middle room, where most of our life seems to take place, warm. The kitchen gets warm enough from cooking and baking. There are extra blankets for the cats and for us and I made a new sleeping box for the extra cat that lives in our garden/basement. I will sleep a little better knowing he is inside tonight. I closed off the front room for the time being, it faces north and is the coldest of all the rooms. As always, once something becomes inaccessible for the cats it also becomes extremely interesting. ;-) They have calmed down now and are all snoozing on the bed, except Mr. Jackie who is with me. 
I hope tomorrow I will be able to go through with my plans for crafting, reading and just a bit of cleaning. I will also bake bread, which will definitely warm up the kitchen.
Wherever you are tonight, stay warm and take care of your pets. And check in on your neighbors, just in case.

More Yarn

Yes, I know, I have plenty already, but this is actually the second part of my Christmas present from Del and I have a specific project in mind for it. It was supposed to arrive before Christmas but the first package was lost.

Feline Friday

The first Feline Friday of 2014 is actually a look back at "Boxing Day" at our house. ;-)

I did not get their presents finished in time so I decided to give them something else to play with. They sure love boxes. Does anyone else have boxes full of boxes in their house or are we just weird?

Taking Stock

This is all the yarn I currently have in the house, except the sock yarn I am knitting with at the moment and some cotton yarn remnants. Some of it I will let go because I will never use it but I think I can come up with projects for the rest. If nothing else, my cats can always use more blankets.

New Years Day

The day was cold and sunny and we started it off with some shoo-fly pie for breakfast.

We had stuffed pepper soup for lunch, one of the best recipes I pulled off the internet last year, followed by more pie and coffee.

Spent the afternoon knitting and watching movies. We found out that Del is allergic to honeysuckle. He pulled some off the fence on Saturday because it was about ready to bring our rickety old fence down and by today he was covered in a red rash. A quick run to the pharmacy was in order, some antihistamine tablets should take care of it.

Some of my dishcloths were getting ratty and needed replacing, so here we go, new dishcloths for a new year.

Happy New Year!

May the new year bring you good health, happiness and everything you are hoping for.

From our house to yours:

Holidays

While 'cleaning' out my camera I found a few more holiday photos.

St. Nikolaus Day

Christmas Breakfast

Sunny Frankie

Presents

I totally forgot to show you the lovely Christmas gifts I received from my friend Coleen. The little bag is perfect for my new sock knitting project and I love the basket, so handy to keep all the little things I use for sewing and knitting close to me. Not in the picture are several bags of kitty treats that turned my little darlings into addicted monsters. ;-) Boy, they sure love those treats!

And from Santa Del I got new sock yarn. When I told him what color I wanted (pea green with orange and purple) his reaction was: 'Well, they are your socks.' Guess that means I don't have to knit any for him. :-)

Yuck!

This is not how I had planned to spend the end of the year. I caught a stomach bug and was out cold for 24 hours. I am feeling better but I am still sore all over and stiff from laying in bed for a whole day and two nights.
I hope this thing is going to leave me soon and pray that it will not take up residence in Del.
Legend has it that how you spend the time between the years will influence the way the new year will be going, I just hope it does not mean I will be sick on an off. I have not been sick for so long it really hit me hard.
I do plan to spend at least the last day of the old and the first day of the new year doing things I enjoy, hoping this will cancel out the bad things.

Feline Friday

Treats anyone?