Go Bills! Hurrah 2018!

Another year beginning!  Another yearly post? 

My goal for this brand new year is "Productivity".  I have a really ambitious goal of clearing up a lot of the projects that are just lurking in my craft room and all around my chair in the den, mocking me.

I am usually a process knitter, going with the flow and enjoying the process of knitting whatever without any pressure.  But I have started so many projects and thoughtlessly purchased so much yarn, I need to clear some of it out as it has started to haunt me.

I finished my Christmas socks on the last day of the year.

which makes nine pair of socks for the year. Seven pair were from the dozen skeins of Felici that I wanted to get through last year.  So that leaves five more pair to finish off that bag of sock yarn.

These are the projects I'd like to get through this January.

1. a pair of socks for Chiara's birthday
2. Mitts for Amy
3. Mitts for Jordyn
4. Mitts for Pat
5. Mitts for Stephanie
6. Hat and Mitts for me
7. Finish Stephanie's sweater

Daunting? I guess but the mitts are quick knits that I think I can get done.

I'll check in at the beginning of February to update and sketch out the projects for that month.

It has been snowy since before Christmas which gave us a really white Christmas and it has continued to be snowy and bitterly cold.

Friday is promising to be the coldest day this season.  Yesterday we had blizzard conditions which resulted in a huge pileup on the Thruway.

And the Bills are in the playoffs for the first time since 1999.  

The start of a new year makes me aware of new beginnings.  The busyness of the holiday season, from Thanksgiving to New Years, settles down and there is a stretch of two months where we settle in and watch and wait with plenty of time to plan out the year and set goals.

Not too many goals this year and not too out of reach for me.  

I use the first days of the year to clean out my knitting, sort out the projects that I left at the beginning of Christmas, tidy up the project bags and reclaim needles that have gone astray.

A wild spree of buying self-striping sock yarn has given me motivation to see if I can actually knit it.  So here are the twelve  that I would like to have completed by the end of the year.  One pair a month? Does that leave me with any time to do anything else?  Not sure if it will get done-maybe.  Got to have hope!😉

Pretty, right?  Knit Pick's Felici.  Love the socks it makes, soft and really pretty.  Four pair for Hubby and eight pair that can be for me or other girls in the family,  birthday and Christmas presents maybe.

I managed to read 27 books last year, 11,175 pages (I love Goodreads  it keeps track).  I set my goal to 35 for this year.  I really should be able to get to that many.

Here are the first three books I picked out:

Picking new books and books I never got around to.   "The Handmaid's Tale" is on a lot of best book lists and I loved "The Blind Assassin" so giving that a go right now.

We have come to the conclusion that network TV just doesn't do it for us any more.  The production quality, story lines are just bad.  "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead" "Sherlock", spoil you. So now we watch the original shows on Hulu and Netflix and I am really in love with Amazon Prime.  We just finished "Goliath" (very good) and started "The Man in the High Castle" and "Mozart in the Jungle", both very good so far.

Really? Over a Year?

Wow! I knew it was a long time since I blogged but can't believe it is over a year.  No reason really, just got out of the habit.  Not going to try and capture what I missed in the last year, just going to forge ahead.

There was a lot of problems after last winter, house repairs to fix snow damage, the lining on the pool needed to be replaced, we even had to spend $600 to have the roof shoveled!? that has never happened in all the winters we have lived through.  Our weeping cherry tree in front of the house did not survive the 2015 winter and we will have to remove it this year, so the expenses continue.

The winter of 2016 has been balmy by comparison, no snow days, very few snow storms, warm December and February, So much so that the forsythia started to bloom in February.

However, April has decided to kick us in the butt.  After an early and balmy Easter, we are having some of our coldest weather - with snow.  Ugh! Had to take out the wool hats and scarfs again.

 Yes there has been books and knitting, TV shows and movies, dinners and celebrations.

Spring and gardening will happen soon!

Goodbye February, Hello Spring

I always have hated February.  The only good thing about it is my daughter's birthday.  This February was the coldest in the history of record keeping in the history of this area.  That goes back to 1871.

The beginning of March has been equally as nasty.  Yesterday we had the craziest weather.  Started out cold and snowy, about 2 inches worth and windy, then changed to freezing rain and then just rain when the temperatures went over the freezing mark for the first time since January. I have been very worried about the solar panels.  They have been covered with about 18 inches of snow since January. All the thawing and freezing yesterday made me anxious.  But here is what it looks like today.

Almost all cleared off.  There was a huge dump of snow in front of the garage door that we had to shovel but we were glad to do it since it meant the solar is humming away today making our electricity.  The solar guys told us not to touch the panels, just let Mother Nature do her job and so far they have been right.  (The Christmas decorations do have to go, don't they?  After Friday, temps should be in the 30's and 40's if we can believe the extended forecast.  So soon they will be a thing of the past.)

This is my view as I am doing my yoga in the morning: yes, I can finally see out of the skylight.  All the snow has melted off.  The buds on the tree look ready to burst and I am just so ready for some blossoms.

Here are some pictures of the back yard.  Hard to believe the amount of snow piled up.

Granddaughter making a fort under the round table on the patio.

Standing near the bird feeders looking down at them instead of up.

Hubby trying to shovel the snow away from the mailbox, since the postal service says they can't get near it and haven't left mail for a week.  Yet our newspaper carrier has no problem getting our paper to us every day.  Sigh.

Knitting is at sort of a standstill.  My hands and shoulder were very sore, so I stopped knitting for over a week and have started back very slowly.  I have 5 pairs of socks knitted for the year.  The end of this week is the 10th week of the year, so I was a little ahead of myself.

I have started my sixth pair, a really pretty Knit Picks Felici That I have had forever.  Just wish I had gotten more of this yarn when it was available.  I really like the softness of it.  Good for the kids socks since it is not the least bit scratchy.

This is Martinique colorway and is prettier than I thought it would be, green, blue and purple stripes.
I should have this sock finished by Saturday and be right on track for my 52 in 2015 sock goal.

Just three more subzero days to get through before it begins to warm up.  Hooray!

Valentine's Day and Socks

Temperatures are supposed to plummet this weekend (below zero for highs) with wind chill in the negative.  The weather forecast mentioned maybe and inch or two of new snow so imagine my surprise this morning when I woke to a steady stream of snow.  So much on the ground and so much more this morning!

This was first thing this morning, the snow is almost up to the top of the patio table. This is not drifted snow but actual snowfall that has been adding inch after inch of  snow each day without any thaws since the beginning of January.

Same view a bit ago with the snow up to the table top.  Amazing!  We are safe and sound (so far) inside with a pantry full since we did our shopping yesterday.  Nowhere to go since I had planned a nice Valentine's Dinner for two at home.  I really dislike going out on holidays like Valentine's or Mother's Day.  Too many people, too rushed servers to really enjoy.  So we are having fillet and shrimp with baked potatoes and sour cream with our Valentine's candy (Orange chocolate sponge candy) for dessert.

I have declared an extended moratorium on yarn purchasing after I caved and bought a striped Christmas sock skein.  I have declared 2015 the year of  "52 Socks in 52 weeks".  One sock a week in between other knitting seems a little nutty but something I can attempt.  

Saturday will be my day to mark my progress.

So far I have completed and gifted four pair of socks.  That is correct, not one for myself.  A pair for Chiara for her birthday, a pair I gave to Amy and a pair for Collin that I have been meaning to make for about 4 years.  I finished another pair for Steph but haven't been able to give it to her yet. 

Four complete pair, eight socks.  Since this is the seventh week of the year, I am doing great, so far.

I have another pair for hubby about half finished.

It is Paton's Kroy sock yarn that I have had in my stash for awhile.  I am knitting it even though I had horrible results from a Kroy yarn I used last year. It was a stripe that had a long repeat which made it very difficult and needed quite a bit of finagling to get both socks to match.  I was a little leery when I started on the pair I made for Amy, but it turned out beautifully, pretty colors no problems matching the socks.  I was tempted to pick up a few more skeins the last time I went to Jo-Ann's but remembering my resolve to not buy any more yarn for a while, I resisted.  Good thing!

The hubby socks are a very pretty blue and brown marle and I was very happy with it until I got to a knot; a knot that threw the repeats of the first sock off so much that I didn't have enough yarn to finish. That is finish with the correct color repeats.  I am about a toe and an inch short.  I started the second skein for the second sock hoping there won't be a problem with that skein.  Right now I am at the heel flap.  If there are no problems with this skein, I will see what I have left and try to piece together the yarn to match.

So here is my resolve: it is not worth the aggravation and time to make socks with a yarn that may be cheap, but gives less than perfect results.  No more Kroy yarn.  

I have tried Opal and love the way it holds up and it is not terribly expensive so that may be my go-to sock yarn.

I like all the hand dyed striped yarn, but most of it is $25 and up and is just too expensive for my budget.  I am sure the artisans who make these yarns are charging what their time is worth but it may be a luxury I can indulge in on rare occasions.

Besides, I have an entire storage bin of sock yarn to knit through before I need to replenish.

Making Progress

Its sunny but cold today.  We had a good storm last week Thursday and Friday that left about 18 inches of snow on the ground.

The kids had Friday off and Thursday my darling daughter picked up the kids so I wouldn't have to go out in the storm.  So I got four uninterrupted days to straighten out the mess that was my sewing/craft room.  It always gets trashed over Christmas as that is where all the presents get wrapped and the normal decorative items get stored.

I got rid of a boatload of old knitting magazines and cleared out a shelf on the bookshelf to house all the notions needed for sewing, thus clearing off the sewing table.

Clear table with happy pin cushions waiting for me.

Today I took advantage of hubby going to work and oiled the machine and changed the needle and sat down for some much needed practice.  Got to know my machine again and sewed on a simple little Christmas quilt

.  Straight lines and turning corners.  Perfect practice.

Another New Beginning

I love the start of something, a new season, a good book, a new knitting project.  But the best is the start of a new year.  All bright and shiny and full of possibilities.

This year is starting off very quietly for us.  A day to kick back and rest a bit.  Holiday parties and get-togethers are over.  The decorations need to come down but that is a job for after the weekend, I think. I hate putting Christmas away.

Resolutions for this year - stay healthy, live mindfully and lighten up.   I want to continue with organizing myself and getting rid of excess. I also what to do more sewing.  I have plenty of material to go through.

Again, continue to knit down the stash.  I did fairly well last year but there is so much it seems like I barely put a dent in it.

I finished 14 pair of socks in 2014.  Wow! That really surprised me.  During December I made 4 pair. They were the only projects I worked on in between all the Christmas stuff.  I started my first socks for 2015 last night.  I think they will go to Chiara for her birthday this month.

I am going to try and get all the afghans done.  I have yarn for four.  Today I am going to start the Dinosaur Afghan that I got yarn for so many years ago I don't remember.  There is enough yarn to make two, which were going to go to Collin and Chiara, if I recall.. They have both outgrown them, but Chiara says she would still like one, so I'll make it and maybe a Diagonal Blanket with the leftover yarn.  I hope I still remember how to do Intarsia.

It is very cold and the wind is howling today.  We did have some snow overnight but not enough to even need shoveling.  I think a cup of hot chocolate in front of the fire is in order.