On Days Flying By, Projects Finished, Food and Wildlife

Where in the heck has the time gone? I last posted on January 28th and here it is March 7th. Yikes, someone stole February. I thought when I last posted that I would have my projects finished, or almost so, in a short week or two. So much for thinking.

Getting on with it. I've made a winter wall hanging of our lake. Sue gifted me a fall wall hanging a couple of years ago, and I just thought I should have a winter one too. Can spring and summer be far behind? I have to admit that I've not been getting friendly with my new sewing machine as I should and I am not the pro machine quilter that Sue is, but - well, it's done, just don't turn it over and look at the back Okay?



The fabrics that I choose for this piece are indicative of winter. The water has a snow and ice cover with dog foot prints crossing it. The trees are pines. The inner border is snowflakes and the outer border is frost.







Now it's companion piece done by Sue Strauch, quilter extraordinaire.
















I am so happy to say that I've got the BlueBell sweater almost finished. It's off the needles and ready to have the sleeves inserted. I'm not looking forward to that job. I have just a bit more knitting to finish on it. The lace trim goes around the neck and has to be knitted from each side, kitchenered together at the back and then sewn onto the neck. Almost done, can spring be far off? Here are a couple of photos, the color is actually a lovely dusty lavender but probably won't show up as such.









This was a fun sweater to knit, the anticipation of the finished sweater kept me going. Would I change a few things, you bet! I would short row the shoulder shaping and then do a three needle bind off to eliminate having to fuss with sewing the shoulders together; I think that I would rather pick-up and knit the sleeves from the top down to eliminate having to inset them but I'm not sure about that.
All in all I like what I see and am looking forward to trying it on.


My knitting basket holds all sorts of projects. Some started and put down for lack of interest; some started and put down from frustration; some just on paper with yarn ordered; some ongoing and some finished. I like the finished ones the best, and then the ones that I've not started yet!

I like a challenge. Trying something new will entice me every time. Sometimes I like to knit something simple, something that is a no brainer so-to-speak. Sometimes there is something that just must be knitted, with a time schedule for finishing and all. Whatever the reason, I like to knit. I find it very relaxing and most projects allow me time to let my mind wander. I don't often watch TV; it's on in the background but I am usually not really paying any attention to it.
I just sit, knit and think.

On the subject of food and the D word. I love to eat, I love to look at food, I love to cook food, I love to think about cooking food BUT, I don't love my love handles. That being said, I can also say that I am trying, really trying to lose about forty or fifty pounds. If you look at the meter on the blog you can see that I did manage to lose ten pounds. Then something went wrong.. What you say. Three meals eaten out, a rib roast and some stuffed shells. A bump in the road? I sure hope so.

I have been walking with himself and the dawg, but not faithfully enough. I was supposed to join the Y in Granby, CT and do three days of swimming and other stuff, but a nasty cold got in the way of that. Joining is on the schedule for next week.

I think that I need to preplan our meals so I can plan the fat and calories out of them. I used to plan our meals for two weeks at a time and it made life much easier. I think that if I do some planning it will also help with the food budget.
We shall see.

We put our bird feeders right outside the dining room slider for the winter. We have been enjoying the daily activity and spending much time raping on the window to scare the squirrels away. We have grey, black, red and flying squirrels. Our bird count varies by the day and the weather. The yellow finches are beginning to color up. We have purple finch, a couple of different woodpeckers, cardinals, bluejays, junko, titmouse, and a couple of more whose name slip my mind right now.



I did say that we are all enjoying the activity didn't I?

It's Been Forever

It's not that I didn't want to blog, it's just that I never seem to get around to it.

For the New Year I am going to try to keep a bit of a diary of what exactly is going on in my life. Here goes

I am really trying to be aware of what I am putting into my mouth. I am also going to make an attempt to spend more time getting off my butt and less time making excuses. Tomorrow I am going to the Y to see about water exercise. It's a bit of a trip to get there; 22 miles one way. That's what comes of wanting to live in the woods. We've always eaten healthy for our meals, it's the trips to the kitchen in between that is taking me down. It wasn't that long ago that I was as skinny as a rail. That was back when I went to work, took care of the family and watched out for my Dad. Now I move from the computer to knitting, to sewing and back again. It's got to STOP. I've got to move. I WILL.

My hand knitting is keeping me content. I find knitting to be very relaxing and I can get lost in it. I am not much for TV, mostly because I cannot seem to claim the clicker and himself and I don't have the same taste in shows. Even so, I can knit and watch at the same time. My problem with knitting, as with all of my hobbies is that I love a challenge, I love to start. I start, and I start, and I start. I've got to learn to finish one thing before I begin another.

I am going to try to keep from starting. I will try not to begin any new hobbies, and I will try to have only one project going in any one hobby at a time.

I am knitting a BlueBell sweater right now. It's a pattern from Webs in Northampton. I had a real problem with the pattern when I started knitting it. Well, it wasn't the pattern, it was operator error! We were in Florida, moving our stuff out of our place there and I was trying to knit to relax. The pattern begins with a lace border along the bottom and up the sides. I plum wore the yarn out, casting on, knitting, unknitting, etc. Now things are going along fine.

My knitting basket has some stuff in it that need to be acknowledged. 1. There is one finished child's mitten and another that is at the thumb gusset. I am using the pattern in the knitter's handy book of Patterns I lost my way and need to rip back and start the thumb gusset over. Golly, it's just a little kids mitten, how long can that take? 2. Then there is the pair of Maine Morning Mitts that I just absolutely had to have in a pink/purple run of Noro. That little project is barely off the ground. I should be able to finish the two mitts in a couple of short days. 3. The next project is for sure going on the back burner. I fell in love with the mittens that grumperina posted about here I bought the pattern by Eunny because she writes such awesome directions. I quickly went out and bought some yarn; I watched the UTube video on tubular cast on; I tried, I really tried. It's not happening. It's going to be a project for another day. 4. There is a pair of socks, worn some, but not comfortable. They were my first attempt at toe up. Will I knit toe up again? Probably yes. There is a cast on that I want to try. Problem is, I need to learn how to cast off so I can get my foot in the darn sock. So, these have to have their tops cut off and cast off again - probably will use the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast-off that is covered in this article in Knitty: Summer 2006. 5. There is a bag that is ready to grab that has needles and baby yarn and patterns for infant and premie hats. That's just an ongoing project. The last one I knit was actually a helmit with ear flaps. It's so cute. That's about it for what's in the knitting basket. OH, there are other projects, but they are packed away on the unheated summer porch. Any discussion of them will be for another day. The day that I come to terms with everything that's out on that porch!

My chunky knitting machine is sitting here in the dining room. I was going to make mittens on it and that project never really got off the ground. I want to get back to it though.

Sewing, yes, there is sewing too. My machine is set up and on the ready. In fact, there is something under the presser foot. I probably have about 15 minutes of quilting to finish and a binding to put on a small seasonal wall piece. Got to get to that before the season is no longer. Other that that, I have lots of projects ready to go, but only one other one that is actually started. I'll cover that on another day too.

I said that I don't do TV. Well tonight I made an appointment to have ownership of the clicker for a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. It's almost time so I'll say goodnight.

It's just been One of Those Days

Today should have been a great day. It all began quite normally. I woke early, the dawg had taken over my share of the bottom of the bed, and, knowing that it would be a losing battle to try to get her to move - I left.
The coffee perked and didn't spill over the counter. It was not raining. I found the PIN for my debit card. Things were definately looking towards a good day.
The phone rang. It seems that our grandcat died during the night. Well, that sure is not the kind of news you want to hear early in the morning or at all for that matter. This was totally unexpected, he hadn't been sick, he was only three, yadayada. He was just there in the living room for the babes to find, stiff!
Any other problems today were pale by comparison. I had been working on the latest sweater project for our grandaughter, but put that aside when I took my coffee out to the patio. I had my Morehouse Farms merino sock. Opps! is that a free and easy stitch just hanging there about fifteen rows back? Sure nuff it was. Tore that back and picked up the stitches and then it was off for a haircut.
I managed to get out and back without any further problems. Back to the patio, back to the sock. I commented to himself when I got back to where I had discovered the stitch only to discover that I had added a stitch..............you guessed it, about fifteen rows back. Being the anal person I am, I could not be content with a simple knit two together so - it was back to the frog pond. Said sock project is having a time out right now and I am back to working on the sweater.
Notes on the sweater. I didn't trust the pattern directions on the sleeve decreases so did my own thing - had to take out about six inches of that baby too! But that was yesterday.
Guess what, it's raining...........