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.

Christmas Eve

The last shopping is done.  I got up at 6 this morning to stand in line at the bakery to get our traditional Christmas morning goodies.  Next year I have to call and order early.   Cherry cheese danish, walnut melt-a-ways and pineapple cheese.  Also distributed and back home by 8:00.  Yeah!

Kids are still sick and I feel just miserable, like I'm fighting something off, with aching joints and back.  I'll be drinking lots of orange juice and tea today and taking Tylenol to help ward off the miseries,.

I love the bags I found for the hand knit Christmas gifts this year.

Off to stuff shells and make a cake for son-in-law's birthday trifle.  Why are there December 24th birthdays?

And Closer Still!

All the kids are or have been sick this week.  It's just not right to be sick at Christmas.
We made the obligatory Gingerbread People

And the Christmas Village

Both are Martha Stewart recipes.

Makes quite the mess, but is fun.  We included an igloo made of tiny marshmallows that I think may reappear in years to come.

I also made Jam Thumbprints, Mexican Wedding Cakes and Pizzelles.  Just going to make some Peppermint Bark tomorrow and cookies will be over for another year.
 Everything is bought, arrived and wrapped.

Today we went out for our presents to ourselves, a new TV and DVD player for the bedroom and an IPod and Bose speaker for our tunes.  Can't wait for Christmas to try them out.
 Tomorrow I will make the Christmas sauce with Brasciole and clean the house.

Christmas Eve the only thing I will have to do is put together the stuffed shells, Triffle and artichokes and get the Christmas morning Danishes and distribute them.  Whew!

Christmas is Getting Closer

And yet I haven't started to panic.  All the gifts are purchased or made and ready to be wrapped, sauce will be made next week, cookies this week.  Cards are going out today.

The weekend was great.  Fig cookies were made and turned out delicious. We made a full batch of dough, so we probably got about 30 dozen or so (not sure how many).  Daughter #2 took a big container and I gave my aunt another big container and I still have 12 dozen or so left.

Here is the roaster pan full.  I will frost as I serve them or give them away.  I prefer them plain.

The snow we had last week is melting away and the amount we had covering the solar panels, slowly slipped off.  It was fun to watch.  We might actually make some electricity now although the short, grey days of December aren't too conducive to it.

I finished another pair of socks, my Christmas yarn that I actually got last year.

December Days

Had a new batch of snow yesterday and today that left about a foot of snow on everything, making the backyard look like it should two weeks before Christmas. Lots of strange shapes in the yard

along with some really beautiful sights.  Nothing like pine trees covered with snow! Those white streaks are snowflakes falling.


While I thought that Christmas was going to kick my butt this year, I feel as if I have everything under control.  Presents are all made or bought, just waiting for delivery, most going in gift bags so not  lot of wrapping to do, all the decorations are up and the house looks great.  This is a big job since the grandkids want everything out, while I would like to cut back a bit.  They helped and it is worth the effort.

We have our tree up and decorated which has to be a record for us.  Some years we have waited until the only thing left were Charlie Brown trees or incredibly expensive ones, but this year we went out on the afternoon of  December 8th.  It was a warmish day, no snow, just before the current weather system was due to come and dump on us. We were able get two lovely smallish trees (just the right size) very inexpensively.

One of my favorite ornaments, a sheep I got probably thirty years ago when I worked at a knit shop is next to the only ornament left from our original tree; 46 years of decorating our trees.  I think we lost most of the originals due to kitties.  It would be such an adventure for them to try and knock down the tree, climbing and chasing each other through the branches.  Every year there was a good deal of breakage or with the dogs, grabbing and gnawing some up.  I wonder how many we would have had without all the loss?

Now on the dark mornings I get to turn on the Christmas lights and enjoy the beautiful glow!

Making:

Christmas cookies are on the agenda starting this weekend.  We actually started by grinding the fig filling last weekend.  It is mellowing in the frig.  Cucidati cookie blitz this Saturday.
Then next week I'll make the gingerbread dough and pizzelles, Mexican Wedding Cakes and Jam Thumbprints.  Peppermint Bark is another easy recipe that everyone loves.

A few years ago I brought home some Perler Beads (or Hama Beads) hoping that the grands would have some fun with them on rainy days or days too cold to swim.  They were a resounding success.  So much so, that I have boxes of beads and lots of sites bookmarked with great designs to make.  That sucking sound is me being pulled in as I found snowflake and Christmas ornaments galore on Pinterest.  It is a fun and soothing little craft that I am really enjoying.  Great for small motor exercise.

Not sure where I'm going to put them, but I'll find a place.

Santa likes them, too!

Knitting gifts are all done and ready to go.  Bath Mitts for the whole gang!

An easy pattern that I think everyone will like.

The rest of December is making things for me!

#snowvember

Yes, we had a storm that kept Buffalo on the national news for better than a week.  No, it didn't affect our corner of the world at all, as far as snow went.  There was a clear dividing line that had the snow remain to the south.  We are use to snow, drifts 7' high are not that unusual.  But straight, solid 7' was very unusual.  All the highways were closed and all schools in the area were also closed, even the ones that had no snow because the driving bans kept staff located to the south from getting to their schools.  So our kids had Tuesday off, then they tried to have them in on Wednesday.  My high schooler said that very few of the teachers were there, so Thursday and Friday were also Snow days.

Here's a picture of an unbelievable amount of snow.


Also this picture is a favorite.  Having snow completely blocking you in the house has got to be a frightening experience.  Good some people made the best of it.

  

So I had nothing much to do but get ready for Thanksgiving.  All my veggies got done along with my two pumpkin pies that are in the freezer.  Today I made an apple and a blueberry pie.  I need more pie plates, since I still need to make chocolate pie.
Also, I was able to get Christmas knitting done.  Or almost done.  And the Buffalo Bills rolled over the Jets 38-3.  A really nice present for all the snow bound and the water logged, now that the snow has melted.

Before the Polar Vortex

Today is Veteran's Day and it is a beautiful, sunny warm day with a gentle breeze.  The perfect day to hang laundry outside!

I lost my dryer in September, I think, and have been trying to see how long I can do without.  So let's say the 1st of September was first day of this little experiment.  It is never a good time to have to  make a major investment in an appliance, but this came at a very inopportune time indeed. September is usually warm and sunny here and I have a clothes line that I use all summer to dry my sheets and the bathing suits and towels from swimming (love the smell of sheets hung out in the sunshine) so I decided to see if I could put off the new purchase for a few weeks.  I figured my grandmother had seven children and no dryer and she managed quite well, how hard would it be for me with just two adults, who mainly don't get terribly dirty.  Hubby takes his dress shirts and pants to the cleaner anyway, so I wouldn't have the problem of ironing them.

So the game was on!  How long could I go without having to buy a dryer!

September and even October, when it got a bit rainy was not a problem.  I washed clothes around the weather forecast instead of when the hamper was full.  I hung indoors on my wooden drying rack in front of the fireplace, all t-shirts get hung on hangers to dry and the system's been working fine.

My kids got into the spirit of my contest with myself, and have been cheering me on.  I thought I was going to have to give in this week, as I had a load of towels, sheets and sweats and jeans and the weather has been really too cold and rainy for hanging outdoors.  But because of the hurricane that is pushing frigid air into the US, we have a day today that is going to be sunny and breezy with a high in the 60's.  We get the cold air tomorrow.

So this is the scene in my backyard:

It actually makes me feel very clever and strangely empowered to try to "beat" the system.
I always feel betrayed when my appliances die on me.  My toaster oven has been broken for several years, it has to be manually started and stopped but as long as we are willing to keep an eye on the toast, it still does the job.  When it stops doing that, I may get a new one or try to jury rig a solution.

More about the Lace

I finished the Fiori Di Sole, washed and blocked it and it looks wonderful.  Not an error that I can see! (Doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I can't see them.)

I need to make an amendment to my statement of the last post about this being used for weddings.  It can be used for any occasion - if there is a wedding, if there is no wedding, for using when accepting a Nobel prize or Pulitzer or whatever the very special occasion is.  There is absolutely no pressure on anyone to get married.  If they want Nana and Papa to be present for a special occasion and we can't be, then I hope the shawl will hug them in our love!

This was a very satisfying knit, beautifully written with beautiful results.  I had never done a crochet castoff and initially found this a bit daunting as it felt fiddly to me, even though I have crocheted quite a bit, and there were a lot of stitches to cast off.  However, once I got into a rhythm and didn't try to rush in an effort to be done with it already, things went very smoothly.

Done but scrunched up.

   Having a good soak

 All Rung Out

Using the blocking wires 

 Pinned out

This is a little blurry, so you can't see all the pins I used.  Three boxes full!  Each crocheted chain needed to be pinned to fully open up the design.  It took about an hour plus to get it all done, but well worth the effort.

Now to figure out how to store this so that it stays beautiful, clean, safe from creatures and dust.

Persuing Perfection

"When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target. "~George Fisher

I love knitting lace.  I don't have many opportunities to wear my lace shawls, but I do love the process.  I had a great idea!  I would make a box full of knitted heirloom lace as a gift to my granddaughters and grandsons.  My intention is to make several different white and off white shawls that would be appropriate for brides to use on their wedding day.  

The first of the shawls is on my needles now.  I am making Rosemary Hill's gorgeous Fiori di Sole out of a silk and wool lace yarn.  It is perfect, in my opinion, for a wedding shawl.  

And that is the problem -"perfect".  I want this to have absolutely no errors, not even those wonky stitches that sometimes appear, and that is a high bar.  

I am at the midsection which is 5 repeats of 20 rows of a leaf pattern, that I find easy to intuit as I'm knitting.  Ah, such conceit.  I figured I could watch TV while I'm knitting this, no problem.  Life lines?  I don't need no stinking life lines!

So for the past two days I have been like Penelope, knitting by day and unraveling by night.  All the rows I knit  yesterday have to be re-knit because I found a large hole in the 5 stitch edge (the edge for Pete's sake, so easy!) that I couldn't fudge and I couldn't ignore.  

Fortunately, I had  put in life lines, as the day before I had to unknit 8 rows, one stitch at a time.

Glad to report the lifeline worked like it was suppose to and made the ripping out quicker with no fear of dropping stitches.

If I get through this, I also want to make a really pretty white heirloom lace baby blanket to add to the box.  Kind of a hug from Nana, even if she isn't there.

Normal Time

The start of school, cool beautiful sunny days, a hint of color in the trees -   the best season, fall!
Everyone returning to a "normal" routine including us.  No more early morning kid pick ups, swimming lessons, a craft table instead of a dining room table, reading time and knitting time and sewing time, once I clean up the house!

Now is the perfect time to review what went right and what to improve in the garden next year.  The best part of gardening is the surprises.  We cleaned out the garden area to the right of the shed.  The butterfly bushes did not survive the winter, but because they were not competing with them, the three $1.99 rose bushes that I planted probably 4 years or more ago in the same area, had the opportunity to thrive and bloom.  They are beautifully unusual colors, orange, mauve and a pretty red and they have produced lovely flowers all summer and are still going strong.

I forgot, again, to purchase gladiola bulbs in the spring (I need to set some kind of a reminder).  I love having them flower in the late summer because most of the intense flowering of the lilies is over and the fall flowers haven't come in yet.  I always plant zinnias, sunflowers and glads to continue the color.  Because I don't dig out the spent bulbs after flowering, they sometimes survive winter and re-boom and this year I did get about a dozen surprise glads.  Makes me happy!

We planted a very few vegetable plants and got a small harvest.  We are not going to plant a veggie garden next year.  We would like to put a grape arbor with some seating in that area, but maybe will just replant grass and use it for games for the kids.  Croquet and badminton need a little more room than we have available right now.  We had great luck with tomatoes in pots, so that may be a way to get some fresh vegetables.  There are just so many inexpensive farmers markets where everything is available.  Sometimes the cost is not worth it.  This summer has been cool and not very sunny, everything seems to be a bit late, including the sunflowers. Food for thought over the winter.

So for now it is clean up and planning for next year in the garden.