2 Days and Counting til Wonderland

Yep. It's finally almost time for our trip to Disneyworld. With our awesome granddaughters. But in the last week several things almost kept this from happening. One I fretted over quite a bit and one happening totally unbeknownst to me. At our end what happened was both a good thing just at an inconvenient time. Dearest husband has finally gotten a job. One that actually takes him out of the house 5 days a week for about 10 hrs a day. This is something I have been longing for for months now. To have my house to myself on a regular basis to do what I want without him being in the way. And the income ain't to bad either. But of course when the job starts a week before you are supposed to leave on vacation and that dearest husband forgets to discuss that with his boss during the interview. Well it makes for one nervous granny, I tell you. But finally on his first real day he does tell his boss and everything is fine. He does get to go. Which saves us a ton of money. The tickets we got to the DW parks was thru the military. His was free. A 5 day all inclusive, park hopper, water park, ect, ect, ect.... Free, Free, Free!! Ours are companion tickets for 5 days but does not include park hopping or the water parks. And he has to be with us for us to use them. No problem with that. We only had to pay $99.00 each. When it was possible he could not go I looked at having to buy new tickets and those same level tickets for only 3 days were well into the 3 hundreds. Each. But I would not have disappointed those girls so I would have bit the bullet and bought them. But alls well that ends well, right??

Then I got a phone call from dearest daughter. Seems oldest grandchild got bit by something a few weeks ago and it got pretty infected. She had to have it lanced, twice and go on very strong antibiotics. I think it is a good thing I did not know this as it was happening. Cause I have cared for many a child who ended up hospitalized for same said infections. And some even had surgery/surgeries before they could finally get over it. And it would have made me so nervous and anxious for her well being, let alone her being able to come with us. So again alls well that ends well. But I am mentally still doing a bit of breath holding. And I think it will be a very big sigh of relief when we finally go thru those Disney gates for the first time. When the rest of the family is oohing and aahing on Cinderells's castle, I will be mentally thanking God we made it there!!

Our weather has been very psycotic this last week. We would have a couple of days of nice spring weather and then a big rain storm, then very cool temps. This morning I woke to heavy frost all over the garden. But a nice warm up is in progress and a tour of the yard this morning shows all to still be well. These tulips are not in my yard but down the way by the church-to-be sign.

Everything is really greening up around here, despite the recurrent chill. The winter wheat down the way is almost neon green. Of course I never have my camera when I go by there. But our grass is growing like a weed. Maybe that is cause there are so many weeds in our grass. Ken managed to finally buy his riding lawnmower and got the grass cut for the first time. The man drives that thing like he is in the Indy 500. And he leaves behind alot of stripes when he goes around curves. I think I will just have to have him teach me to drive the darned thing so we get a nicer looking yard for the effort.

I finally have that finished object I promised last post. I have had it done for a few days but I could not get it blocked. Cause I had no idea where my blocking pins were. But today, while rummaging thru my sewing room I found them in a box. One which only luck put in my way to find. I would have never thought to look for blocking pins in a christmas box I had saved for future use. I was hoping to get this shawl to block out a little wider and a little shorter than it looked unblocked. But it does not seem like that is going to happen. I want to preserve the nice shape of the hexagons and stretching it won't maintain them that way. So I just stretched it a moderate amount and will hope for the best. I figure this is a show piece anyway, one that will rarely get worn. I might enter it in the fair, show it to people to let them see all the natural colors one can get and then let it hang around, draped over something so it can be admired. I will try to get some sort of picture of it on me soon, once it dries.

I am going to try to post while we are at Disney. The girls tend to be very photogenic and Disney makes for a great background. But it depends alot on how dog tired I am at the end of each day. So keep checking back. If I don't get to post while we are gone, I will sure have a doosey to post when I get back!!

Missed by Just this much...

Did you notice? I missed my Sunday deadline by just a tad. I had the best intentions but as always laziness just got in the way. I think it was due to the short return to winter we were exposed to yesterday. I just wanted to stay cuddled up and cozy with my quilting or knitting.

Not much has happened around here this last week. We had some lovely weather, some wet weather and then the chilly weather. Zat's OK, it is still spring. Summer will arrive soon enough. A few more things have popped into bloom. My Flying Dragon trees that are growing in the drainage ditch next to the property have sprung into flower. This tree is such an interesting one. It is a native citrus that will survive some very cold temperatures. It is often used as the graft host for commercial orange growers cause it is so hardy. It does have fruit that can, if you are so inclined, be used. Some suggest making a beverage out of them, much like lemonade. We will see on that one!! But it is a beautiful little tree with the longest thorns!! The flowers are white and smell nice, like a delicate orange.

On one of my little jaunts I noticed some violets growing in a ditch along side the road. Now these were not your typical tiny little purple ones, but big white and lavender ones. The flower is a bit bigger than my thumb nail, but still with the flower shape of a true violet, not a pansy. At first I thought maybe crazy person had planted them there many years ago. But then I started to notice them in other locations. Along with some grape hyacinths or muscari of the deepest purpley blue. So the next day, after a good soaking rain, I went and dug some up and brought them home. I am so hopeful that I can get them to grow as I do so love wildflowers and these are some great ones for early spring. But here is a couple of pics I took of the flowers that ended up on my table. Even if I can't get them to grow well at the house, I can always pick all I need along the wayside. Oh, and the white flower must be some kind of wild statice. I am not going to try to transplant any of that. It grows in wild abundance in the ditch up by the school.

We also had a windy day last week. That brought me another treasure of nature. Under a tall pine tree I found this delightful bird's nest that had blown down. It is a medium sized, twig and mud masterpeice. It seems to have a central "bowl" of mud surrounded by a layer of loosely woven bigger twigs. Among the twigs is some of that curly christmas ribbon. The ribbon is white but wouldn't that have been fun if it had been red or green!! Then inside the mud bowl,which by the way, is perfectly round, is a soft layer of dried grasses on which to cushion the eggs. This next was built on a small branch that included a pine cone which is now a permanant part of the nest, glued to the bottom by the mud. I am not sure if this nest ever got used cause there is no evidence of tiny feathers and such. It could have just been built and then blew down, poor birdies with all that hard work. But at least it still has a purpose, one to decorate my front porch. And it is doing it's job quite well. The other items in the picture are both forms of polypore, or shelf fungi. The brown one is probably velvet polypore and the white, which from the side looks like a perfect mushroom, is probably a cottage cheese polypore. Both were collected off the ground here on the property.

My projects are all coming along nicely. I may even have a finished object to show next week!! The shawl is just 17 units from completion. I have been managing to do about 4 a day so even with blocking I could have pictures by this time a week from now. The quilt blocks are being made at the rate of about 5 a week. Now that is slow but at least it is steady. And this without a dedicted sewing area. I sure hope at some point to step up the pace. This week for some reason, I picked up an old hand quilting project that really needed finishing. It is a quilt made from muslin and plaids. It was inspired by a long ago class taken with Roberta Horton who loves scrap quilts and uses tons of plaids. In fact she had a line of fabrics that were sold at LQS's for many years, may still be. I had 5 of the 35 blocks already quilted and this week I have managed to complete one more and am already working on the 2nd. I would love to finish this up sometime this summer and use it on the bed out in the guest quarters. The colors will be perfect and it will fit the double bed out there nicely.

It is less than 2 weeks til our trip to Disney. We are getting a bit excited thinking about seeing the granddaughters and getting to go to the beach, then on to wonderland!! We now have our hotel rooms bought and paid for, our tickets to the park, bought and paid for so all we have left to do is to make the trip!! I am not sure I will even be bringing any knitting with me to do in my spare time. Cause honestly? Do you really think we are going to have any spare time????

Great Expectations

Here I am again. For the third week in a row, I have made it here on Sunday evening. Now if I could just find a way to make my writing a bit more interesting.

Lately I have been feeling a bit expectant. No, I am not pregnant. Those days are so far behind me that I can barely remember them. No, my sense of expectation is all spring related. You see, the first time we saw this house, and the country side surrounding was last November. They had already had their killing frost and the landscape was all dead or dying. The previous owners had cleared away most of the vegetation to make things look better for prospective buyers like us. So now that spring has arrived, I walk around the property wondering what will come up next, where and when. Just like an expectant mother, I go shopping but can't buy much cause I don't know what is coming my way in the next few months. New parents have to buy the important things first, such as cribs, strollers and diapers. We have to buy trees for the orchard and equipment for working the garden. We leave the fun stuff at the store, for now, cause we just don't know what will suite our new babies til we see them. But slowly I am making some progress. I have put in and completely planted my herb/salad garden. I would love to have a few colorful fun things to pop in the middle but that will have to wait til I get some other things taken care of first. We have all our trees coming in this week, have muscadines planted and all the trellising materials in place. A whole long row of asparagus in is and peas are growing on their supports. So I just have to wait and let those labor pains progress and before I know it I can sit back and enjoy getting to know my new garden/baby.

Both my projects have made slow progress this week. The shawl is close to 3/4 done. The quilt has several more blocks made. But the good news is that I am finally making some headway on designing and organizing my sewing room. For my birthday I ordered shelving for the closet. I ordered them on line so they would be delivered right to the door. This company also offered more sizing options that any I could have bought at a big box store. They came in on Thursday while I was out shopping. That was perfect cause Friday was my birthday and I could get them put together that afternoon. I took these pics but it is hard to really see. A wide angle lens would have come in handy for that. It only took a few hours to get them all put together and loaded with stuff. To bad there are still boxes all over the sewing room!! And tons of empty space at the top of the closet. So I am going to need to order the extensions to take these shelves up another 24 inches. I will need a stepstool to get things up and down but I can always put stuff up there I rarely need so no problem. It will probably be a few more months before I do order the rest cause it sure was not a cheap way to do a closet!! Now I just need to figure out the very best cutting and sewing tables.

Now just a couple of cute pics of the kitties. Wouldn't want to bore you all with to many of these in a row. Don't you just love the idea of Lexi having a reference guide for her birding. Kind of like a menu at a restaurant!!

Slow But Steady Progress

See, I am making a sincere effort to blog more regularly. The drawback is that none of my projects make enough progress in just one week to justify breaking out the camera. Just taking the pictures is not even the issue. With that comes finding the interface cable, downloading, sorting, open photo editing software, import, edit, tag, name and put in appropriate folders. But don't get me wrong, I love digital photography. Compare it to buying film, loading it in the camera, taking all the pics with caution to not waste film, figure out how to take 24-36 pics with the same speed of film, remember to take film out, take to be developed, remember to go back and pick them up, see 2/3 of them be wasted after all!! Yeah-give me digital any day.

Progress is being made on the shawl. I have passed the 2/3 done mark and should be done in 2 to 3 weeks. For awhile I thought I might run out of some of my colors but after rummaging around in the back bedroom I found some more of colors close enough to fit right in. I should be able to complete it with only a couple of colors being skimpy toward the end. No thought yet on what my next knitting project might be.

The quilt is also slowly making its way. I have 14 blocks now done. The plans to make it all red and blue on a neutral back ground went by the wayside today. I picked up what I had done and had that sense of not wanting to work on it any more. I thought about why that might be and came up with the notion that I am totally sick of red and blue!! Even if they were civil war reds and blues, they were just a bit boring. So out came the rest of my civil war prints and I am going to be so much happier including the whole kit and kaboodle. Actually this ends up solving several issues. The fabric I have will go much further and when I need to buy more(which I will) I will have alot more to pick from.

The weather has been quite a bit nicer a bit more regularly now. Although this weekend we did have a generous amount of rain. My lettuce, radishes and peas are all coming up well. The peas will have to be ferociously weeded here soon. I put them into the garden right after it was rototilled and only thought I got out all the grass!! So this week I will try to start getting that bed cleaned up a bit so the peas don't have to much competition out there.

I am loving my bird feeders being right out side my bedroom window. So is Lexi!! The bird population here is a bit different than in Oklahoma and I am constantly trying to use my bird identification book to get them all sorted out. So far some of the new birds(to me) are the dark eyed Junko, Carolina Chickadees and Eastern Bluebirds. In Oklahoma I could not get the birds to eat from the feeders unless they were yards away from the window. Here the feeders are less than 1 yard away and the birds waiting for their turn to eat often perch within inches of the glass. Of course Lexi goes into heavy stalking mode and jumps at the window when they are that close.

Another advantage of having acreage to roam is that I am much more tolerant of weeds. Who is going to try and have a perfect lawn with so much to care for. So now I am learning to enjoy the beauty that comes with those weeds. Hope you all enjoy them thru these pics. And see you all next week.

What A Difference A Week Makes

I know, suprise, suprise, I am posting after only 1 week!! I am really trying to develop a new routine and making blogging a little bit more of a priority..

In just one week our weather went from freezing, with a dusting of snow to almost 80 degrees for the last 3 days. That allowed me to get outside, alot. I managed to get peas planted in the main garden and to make a salad border to my herb bed. I put in scallions(2 types), lettuce(several mixes of leaf lettuces), radishes and carrots. Everything got watered in and now we are awaiting a week of predicted rain and more seasonable temps. It will be a bit longer before I start planting the intermediate season stuff like beets, more carrots and spinach. And I need to buy some seed starting mix to get all my warm weather crops going in the mini greenhouse I have set up on the front porch.

When I went outside this morning I was greeted by some pretties, brought into bloom by the milder temperatures. First would be my 1 and only daffodil. I put in 2 bags, 30 bulbs each, of naturalizing daffs. They got put in the ground a little late and in a hurry. But so far almost all of them have sent up leaves and I will have a few more bloom before the season ends. But daffs will multiply readily and in the next few years I should have a beautiful driveway lined with yellow nodding heads in the spring.

Then I noticed that I had gorgeous white blossoms all over the bush right by my driveway. Yesterday the buds were all still tight with no sign of color. I think that my brother/sister in law told me this was a shrub magnolia but I could be wrong. But it looks a lot like the magnolia on the other side of the house. And I am confident about that ones identity. And to be sure I walked around the house to look at the leaves on that one to see if it indeed matched and it was in bloom also. It is a bit taller and it's blooms are a dark purple. I never used to be a magnolia fan but I think I am now!!

Now some pictures of my furniture finds. I think I mentioned the display coffee table last week. I ordered this off Ebay hoping to get a decent peice of furniture. Boy was I happy when this arrived at our door. It is all solid oak with tempered glass. It is very well made, all by hand and should last me forever. The seller never even charged me shipping and it arrived in a huge wooden box that he built around the table so it would arrive safely. I will probably be ordering a end table later on. The quilts in the table are some older ones I bought years ago on ebay, before everyone caught on, and things were still bargains. BTW-there are baskets under the table. They fit perfectly and allow me to store my knitting projects right where they are easy to get to.

My next furniture find was a godsend. I was sewing at my dining room table. It was too high and hurting my neck. I had hoped to find a small portable sewing table online, but the ones I found were going to be about $150.00 with shipping. Well, this week on my shopping day, I stopped into an antique store in Fayetteville, looking to see if they still had a ceramic peice I had passed over several months ago. Of course it was gone but this little table caught my eye. It was marked as "antique sewing table" for $125.00. I did think this was a decent peice and the price was probably worth it. But I wasn't willing to shell out that much right then. So I stopped by and talked to the owner, telling him how I was intrigued by the table, but really couldn't afford it at that time. I was not trying to talk him down, really I wasn't!! But he started scratching on his notepad and said "$75.00" And without even hesitating I said "SOLD" And it came home with me..It is solid mahogany with a metal bar on the bottom that holds the legs in place. You lift the bar up slightly to fold up the legs which is what makes it portable. Very very nifty. Wish they still made them like this. Now mine is a bit crooked over all, but still very usable and now is holding the machine in the following pictures. I used it to sew a few blocks last night and it is just the perfect height.

I have been plugging away on the swirl shawl but don't have any new sweaters in the works. The quilt is still slowing making progress also, but alas I need more fabric. So I ordered some today and will probably have to order some more.

My kitties have developed a new daily habit. They found that for most of the mid day, the sun shines into our bathroom right into the soaking tub. So they started taking sun baths together. It was so sweet to see them all warm and snuggled up so I threw in a big feather comforter to make it even nicer. They love it!!

And Miss Daisy can't be left out. Although it is a bit harder to get pics of her!!

What's Been Going On

Just the same old, same old. But I do have a finished sweater to show off. And a few newly started projects. Plus our new-to-us bedroom set, which also led to a new quilt being started. With me, it is always alot of starts, with not quite as many finishes.

So I will start with the finish. To make me feel good. To remind myself that I do make nice, useful, comfortable things and not just waste hours crafting. Cause sometimes when I have to look at all those UFO's piling up I do get a bit down in the mouth with what time and money has gone into them. And that will probably never get done in my lifetime, at least by me.

So here is Gathered Pullover #2. Just to remind. The pattern is from Interweave Knits, available from their on line store for immediate PDF download. It is an easy pattern to work, although my version does have a few modifications made to suite me a bit better. The yarn is DK weight this time, and dyed with the liquid gleaned from soaking black beans before making soup. This took 2 skeins and their is a slight difference between them, despite being dyed together at the same time. I don't have a proven explanation for the difference. One is a more solid blue with tiny bits of a lighter blue. The second, which ended up being the sleeves and top of the sweater, has a lot more variation to it. And the lighter spots were a bit more green than blue. I would have been happy with both skeins being either version. So probably when I run out of frozen black beans, and need to do more, I will re-dye. My feeling is that I had too much fiber in the pot at once. The fiber tends to take up the dye fairly fast and maybe I did not get the yarn moved around fast enough to be even. The other idea is that when hung to dry, 2 of my 3 skeins had contact with my fiberglass shower wall. Maybe there was some sort of chemical reaction?? Who knows. But so far the blue has held up well under 2 washings and wearings, plus all the time that went by while the knitting was underway. So I feel pretty good about it's fastness. And of course, I can always re-dye if it fades!! So here are a few pics.

This next project has been going on for about a month. Previously referred to as "Secret Project" I am not sure why!! But this is my swirl shawl in progress. I have always loved this block and recently finally purchased the pattern. It is a JoJoLand pattern that I bought at a LYS. Every other quilt shop I saw this in was always out of the pattern when I asked to purchase it. The yarn is all fingering weight, sock yarn, dyed with natural materials. These were all the experiments that I did whilst I was new at the whole mother nature dyeing thing. Some of the materials were cochineal, black walnut, apple, marigold, lichen, dahlia, logwood, indigo, black bean, balloon flower, pecan, hibiscus, coffee, hollyhock, and dock. Well at least that is all I remember at this time!! The blocks are knit on to each other so no sewing together which I know would drive me crazy at the end. I am about 1/3 of the way thru and I know it will look a million times better once blocked. But it can not stay secret that long so here goes with the sneak peek!!

Next I do need to show you a few quick pics of the bedroom suite we finally ended up with. Found it on Craig's list for a song. It had been the guest room suite of a guy with a half million dollar house and had hardly ever been used. It is from a high end manufacturer and the only blemish on it is one we put in getting it in the house!! It came with a mattress and box spings that was worth more than we paid for the whole set. And boy is is comfy!! Pardon the the unmade bed. See the gray lump at the bottom?? When that lump is sleeping, the bed does not get made!!

And that leads me right into the last project. A quilt. For that bed. Nothing I have comes close to fitting in either size or style. I had a quilt started. With all brights and polkadots. But I laid those blocks out over the bed and boy did that not work. At all. So I rethought. One block I have always loved was Rolling Stone. I made 1 that is in my sampler wall quilt, hanging in the living room. And of course, my passion for civil war prints is pretty well indulged, so I had plenty of fabric to get started. That is, if I could find the box with all my civil war prints in it. The same said box also has my round robin blocks in it and I have seen it since we moved. But at this time, it is hiding somewhere. So I had to go buy a few new prints, none of which I like as well as what I have hanging around somewhere. But at least I could get started. I made these 2 blocks in just an hour or so. I didn't spend alot of time pinning or matching and they still came out just great. So maybe I can do something without my OCD slowing me down!! When the blocks were laid on the bed, in the room, they felt just like they belonged. So I just have a few hundred more blocks to whip up. Well, maybe just over a hundred. And this will get sent off for machine quilting, so it can go on the bed sometime before the next century begins.



Other than that, the garden's the only thing keeping us busy. I personally dug, with a shovel, a huge herb bed up by the back porch. It is at least 25 foot by 10 foot. Every shovel full of dirt held at least 1 big fat earthworm. And the dirt was so black and healthy looking. Better than the big garden a few yards away. I have not planted any herbs yet. It is still just a bit too cool. But it is ready. This year the bed will also hold all my salad veggies. So I just have to step out the door to pick a bowl of salad. I also put 4 blueberry plants in and hubby planted 6 muscadine vines. We will probably go pick up fruit trees over the next couple of weeks. We are hoping to buy them all locally but may not be able to find everything we want. So then we will go back to mail order. BTW-I ordered but have not received, 3 lilacs that supposedly handle warmer winters better and bloom well in the lower states. I can't wait til I can bury my nose into a bush full of amazing purple pannicles and breathe deep that amazing smell.

I Got the Blues, Yes, I got the Bluesssss.....

As usual, it has been a few weeks. I have been busy. Nothing unusual or new. Well, except for knitting projects. And dogs.

Let me introduce my dearest dog, Daisy. DBIL & DSIL brought her over from Chattanooga almost 2 weeks ago. Of course she remembered us and was happy to see us. But when Mary & Richard left she did seem a bit confused. And she hated our tile floors. But she has settled in without much ado at all. She had a couple of accidents in the house until she figured out how to let us know she needed out. She has never bothered the cats(their food or their litter), gotten in the garbage, barked much at all, or tried to sleep with us. We can have her out in the yard and she will run but not run away. She does not dig or chase cars. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?? Well there are a few things that we did have to work on. She chewed a baby tree in half one day out in the yard. We caught her so she did get properly admonished. And for days she kept trying to get in our face constantly all day long. We solved that in just moments when we figured out how to use the "penny can". She will back off and go lie down as soon as she hears the noise. We have actually only had to use it a few times in one day and seldom since. Now she seems so much more settled especially in the evenings. I am working on training her. She sits, stays and comes pretty well. We just started on "lay" down but at the rate she learns it will be old hat in a day or so. The cats have taken their good old time getting used to it all. Especially old Lexi. But for the first time, tonight, Jack is asleep in a chair in the living room just about a foot from where Daisy is also lying. One of the reasons I wanted Daisy to be ours, was that she was a good walker. Turns out she is not able to go on our walks after all. She is awesome but the other dogs out here distract her too much. There are so many dogs that are not confined to quarters and come out when we pass by. There has never been any aggression between them and Daisy. But she thinks they want to play and it is too hard to drag her on by. So I go by myself and most days I walk further than she could anyway. And both DH and I get her out in the yard for plenty of play time. By the way-the picture of her on the love seat?? It is the only thing we can not break her of. She loves to sleep there at night. So we gave up. And everynight I cover the loveseat with her fleece afghan and she gets up there and sleeps like a rock.

The blues that I got?? They are these beautiful ones that I got when I used the liquid from black beans to dye some yarn. The first dip gave me the blues in the hat. Which will also be a sweater(already on the needles, another gathered pullover). The second dip gave me the lighter blue. I am not sure if it is lighter cause the dye was beginning to exhaust or if it was because the yarn was not superwash(takes color faster and better) or if it was cause I ran out of cream of tartar so I only used alum as a mordant. What ever reason, no matter. I am going to knit and felt some hotpads and the color works very well with my kitchen. The third dip was over an already dyed yellow yarn. I threw it in to get some green and although the pics don't really show it that well, it is a very pretty green. Some folks on my natural dyes Yahoo group say that black bean dye fades fairly fast. But so far the hat has been worn out on all my walks for almost a week. Probably at least 8 hours of direct sunlight and I have not noticed any appreciable fading. So I am going to hope for the best and accept any fading that may come over time.

I have several new knitting projects going. Of course you could tell from above that I am making a new Gathered pullover. In that lovely blue that is the same as the hat. This is DK weight yarn so it will have a bit more body than the same sweater knit in sport weight. And I plan on making several more adjustments in the pattern to make it a bit more perfect. The other project is one that I am doing to use up all the bits of natural dyed yarn I have on hand. No pics yet. Lets just say it is going to be gorgeous. More on that later.

We have finally started making real plans to take our 2 DGD's to Disney World over their spring break. We have our hotel rooms booked and most of our travel plans laid out. We haven't told the girls yet and hopefully we will do that this weekend. I can't wait to hear those happy voices shouting out with joy!!

Awesomeness

Awesomeness on this walk, on a gorgeous winter day, in the amazing state of Tennessee. I know, I do go on a bit too much about our new locale but unless you have been here, don't you roll your eyes.....

Awesomeness on this finished project. The tshirt I am wearing under the sweater simply does not do a thing for the look, but it was what I was already wearing. And DH is so not the photographer. But you get the idea. This is knit from sportweight yarn, hand dyed by me with husks from black walnuts. It is not as dark as I would like but I think I am not going to get it any darker. I want to immediately cast on for another one. But no yarn........must order......must wait for delivery........must dye..........must wash.......and wait for it to dry............swatch........so no new sweater til sometime next month. So I guess I will dig in my stash and start some quicky project to tide me over. I would start peicing a quilt but I can't seem to find my rotary cutter. I know I packed it to be in the car when we moved but I sure can't seem to find it now.

Awesomeness, cause I managed to get thru an entire week of healthy living. I was feeling a bit sluggish due to the 15+ lbs I had put on since summer. I am not exactly sure of how much it is since I have not owned a scale in many years. But I found a website that is proving to be very helpful to me in getting thru the weight loss. It is called Sparkpeople. It is not just a weight loss site but has tons of info, tools, inspiration and success strageties. It was started by a man who made a bundle with an on-line company that he sold to Ebay. He wanted to give back to the internet world so he started this site and offers it all for free. I joined a group that is doing a cyber walk across the US. I chose Portsmouth NH for my starting point. This is where DD will be living very soon. And I will end at the other coast, at my DS's location. I am using Mapmyrun.com to help me track the journey. I am in Mass. right now and I do think this is going to be a very long term commitment!! But the group has been together a long time and are very supportive to us newbies.

http://www.mapmyrun.com/walk/united-states/me/kittery-point/386680740102

Any non-awesomeness in my life right now? The cold we are getting ready to have the rest of this week. I do not do 8 degrees, even at night. But what's a few frigid days deep in the month of January. I have my knitting and my friends to keep me warm.