Friday, January 28, 2011

At Least The Sun Is Shining!

The weather is so weird! Now this week has been milder weather with a lot of sunshine. Then next week we are going back to frigid weather again! Sigh! I know it is boring to keep on harping about the weather.

I have finished the quilt top. I want to get a backing together and send this off to the quilter to finish the quilting. So the wedding quilt is a little bit late. I don't think they will mind.

That has been my whole focus this week has been the quilt. I did go outside and work at picking up more trash in the side yard. The former owners just dumped their trash on the ravine side, and they had a burn pile there also. Last winter I did not pick up much, but I am making an effort to pick up more this year. It is an endless job, since a lot of it is piled upon one another. Just as one pile is unearthed, picked up, and taken away, there is another mess underneath it. Really what is needed is to shovel it out, but where do I put it? I did hire someone to do that with the most obvious metal and upper layer when I first moved in. The local dump is very, very expensive.

I did finish that skein of yarn to finish my handspun sweater. I am back to that again. I am on the waist shaping stage, and have to keep up with that with the cable pattern.

I went to Thursday night knitting last night. Darn! My LYS, HandHeld, has roving now. Shoot! I had to buy one, but gosh! did I really need another thing to spin? I have a lifetime supply as it is. I have a pile that I started of "play" fiber that I want to get to soon. If I can motivate myself, I will have some really pretty yarn by Spring.

Patty just came home last night from the hospital. She has been undergoing heartworm treatment. Evidently she was negative for mature adult worms when she got rescued last February, but there were eggs or larvae that matured in the time I have had her. She tested positive on her yearly checkup. I have been giving her the monthly treatments, but that only kills eggs or larvae. Now I have to watch her like a hawk for the next two weeks for any symptoms that might occur from the treatment. She also is on an antibiotic for the bacteria that come with heartworms, and baby aspirin for thinning her blood. There is always a chance that a dead worm segment can morph into a blockage in a blood vessel, and, like a clot, can kill her. She seems to be pretty much back to her normal happy self since she is no longer contained in a cage. She was pretty depressed when I picked her up yesterday, but she seems to be really perky this morning.

There is a young adolescent male cat hanging around here lately. Noodles is beside himself trying to defend his territory with a bum leg. He is the aggressive one, not the interloper. The little guy is very friendly, and does not look malnourished or abandoned. He sure does need a trip to a vet to take care of the wandering gene that goes with that part of his anatomy. He needs to stay home.

The days are getting longer, and it is more light out when there is sunshine. It is the time of the year I start getting antsy for warmer weather. I did order some seeds last week. I am getting ready. I have plans of how I want to do the yard this year. I removed the fencing that took forever to put up, but it is useless. It just made the mowing harder last summer. I can't get the posts out yet. I will have to wait for more of a thaw.

Oh-I did finish the gray socks, and I am still working on the pink socks. But as you notice, I am not knitting very much.

That's it, I guess. Try to stay warm and toasty until the real warm-up comes. These teaser days are a killer for me. But I try to get out in the sun when I can get the sun. Next week I go back to hibernation stage.

Have a good weekend. More later.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Hibernation!

Thanks to my friends that seem to be worried that I have gone underground and have not been out to visit anyone. I have decided maybe hibernation is the correct thing this winter. I DO NOT LIKE COLD anymore. I began hallucinating about where a nice beach would be and wouldn't it be wonderful to just lie in the sun and be WARM. My husband used to tell me that I was a lizard in the wintertime. I would find a nice sheltered place out of the wind to sit in the sun every winter. I found myself standing in front of the french doors in the sun a lot-when there was sun. The cloudy, gloomy days are dreadful. Noodles has been very helpful. He helped me lay this scarf flat to dry. He sits in my lap while I am knitting. He snuggles under the covers at night. He stays close by to get any chance of shared heat.
I really haven't been doing a lot of knitting. Unfinished projects just languish in the piles. I pick them up and work a row or two if I am sitting still. But for the most part I have been sewing on a new quilt top. I made these blocks, and now I am sewing the blocks together. I think there are two more rows to finish. I first sew the row, then sew it to the bigger sewed rows. I have to lay things out to check colors, patterns, etc.
I have been reading a lot, too. I finished two books last week. I am telling you-hibernation. Limited activity.
There was a spurt of energy this past weekend. There was a brief warm-up, and I worked out in the backyard both days. I needed the sun, I needed the exercise, and Patty and Noodles needed company.
I know bears sometimes come out during the warm-ups and maybe eat a few roots. I think that's the idea. Go out in the warm-ups and get a little work done. Then when it is cold again-hibernate some more.
I like this photo of Patty. It sums it up. I had thrown a pile of clothes on the floor while I was in the bathroom. I came out and there was Patty. Is there anything better than Mom's dirty clothes, a sunny spot, and a toy mouse nearby?


So thanks again. I am fine. I am just staying close to home and I don't go out much. But this will pass, as it does every winter. It just seems that each winter that passes becomes the one I hate the most.

Monday, January 10, 2011

A Little Snow After the Wedding

This is my brother and my niece before the wedding. She was warming up and trying to tune her guitar.
As you can see, the wedding was on the mountain top and it was a sunny, clear day. The wind had died down some, so it wasn't totally frigid, just cold. It was a beautiful day to have a wedding!

My niece is Shelley King, a professional singer from Austin, TX. She sang them a song she had written called "Is There a Reason?" I found it on ITunes yesterday and downloaded it. It was so perfect for their wedding song.



I got this shot with my brother and his wife behind the couple as they climbed up the path to the cars.
So it was an emotional roller coaster all day, and I took the whole day yesterday to recuperate. I thought I was getting a cold, but I guess it was allergies. My cousin emailed me after I sent him pics and said it was too early to tell if I had pneumonia.
So now it time to settle down into the winter's rhythm and knit and sew and stay quiet until it is time to garden again.
We did get a light snow last evening and night. It was not very much, but enough to close the schools because of the rural roads. I had called my brother and told him they needed to head home sooner than later. They ran into snow near Ft. Smith, but once they turned off I40 to go south, it got really bad. So they had a long, slow drive home. Shelley is supposed to fly to New York today for an East Coast tour. I hope she can get there. I think this storm was heading that way.
Well, I will close now and head to the sewing room. I want to knock out a coupla more blocks. I have neglected that for a while and it is time to get back into a routine. I also need to spin up the sweater yarn and get that plied and blocked this week.
Have a good week. Stay warm and keep knitting!



Sunday, January 2, 2011

Do You Have A Plan?

I am not one to sit around and think about what I want to do during the year-as in resolutions. But I do like to have a plan. But this year, I do not have a plan. I am still a fairly organized person, although the chaos does occur when I am in a dither.

When I was younger, I used to make distinct goals on the decade birthdays for the next ten years. I liked to work on those things. Then the August after the 50th, I got laid off. I no longer had money to do the things that were on the goal list. I went into survival mode, and the whole goal thing was forgotten. I think it was frivolous.

I spent the day yesterday cleaning and organizing my sewing room. That feels really good. I am so amazed at the amount of fabric I really have tucked away for whatever emergency that may occur. Some of it is not so good, so I think the next task is find a home for some of this stuff.

I think the new word for the year should be possibilities. There are infinite possibilities for knitting, quilting, sewing, spinning, dyeing, etc. etc. You get the idea. There is such an extraordinary resource in patterns out there on the internet. There is always a pattern to be found for whatever yarn I have decided to work with at that time.

Yarn-oh, yeah! I don't need any yarn right now. I just need to use it up. That is the rub-huh? Time to do all that knitting with all that yarn.

And fiber! Lord, I do not need any more fiber right now. But I got some really nice stuff for Christmas presents this year. And those push all the old stuff back in the bins again. I also carded some yummy stuff in pink that I want to get to really soon. In fact, it will be next in line. But I really like that deep red stuff I got from M. I have to get the yarn finished for the sweater, then finish the green I started, and then I can do pink or red or whatever. That's kinda like a plan, huh?

I don't think of myself as lacking time to do stuff, but sometimes it seems that things just don't get done.

That's why I think I need a plan. I really have no idea of how much I knit this year or spun or dyed. I haven't really sat down to think about it. Because that is what it takes-thinking and trying to remember everything over a year. I started a journal some time ago, but never kept up with it. I just kept going. As soon as something was finished, something took its place. I was really tired of everything by November, but I pushed through to the fiber show at Mt. Magazine. Then I slowed down through December, and most everything was just light knitting or spinning. There was no rush.

But now it's January. Time to move on to a new beginning.

I have a knitting friend that can tell you exactly how many stitches she knit in a finished piece. Shawls are overwhelming. On my Yarn Harlot calendar she said it takes 1,760 yards to make a mile. I cannot do the math. I am not that kind of knitter. I just enjoy the skill and the finished project. I am definitely a process person, but the finished project is satisfying.

Okay-so now we move on. I expect that it is a good idea to have a plan, but I have a tendency to do something impulsive that is not on the plan. So maybe I will come up with a loose plan. Something like-knit more yarn out of the stash. Spin up the fiber stash. Do more dyeing (include an indigo pot). That's all pretty loose and could really be tightened up. But right now, I think I will stick to the loose plan and fill in the spots as I start doing some of the things I would like to get done.

Well, I am just rambling today. It is time to just think out loud. I am eating a sandwich, trying to get my spinning quota done today, and then off the JE's shop to sit and knit this afternoon. She had me at "We will go get something to eat after the shop closes." I like the idea of eat.

Happy New Year-Happy New Beginnings!