It Must be Winter

The washing machine never fails until every piece of underwear is dirty...

The oven never fails until Thanksgiving morning with a twenty pound turkey to cook .....

The furnace never fails until the temperature is the lowest in the last three years!!!

Wednesday night I was listening to the wind howl around the eves and remarked to the DH that it was wonderful to be warm and cozy on a night when the wind chill would be in the minus range. Of course it was inevitable that the following morning the house seemed unusually cold (we keep the temperature down to 61 degrees at night, so it is a little chill when I get up). Checked the thermostat and sure enough it was only 52! A call to the emergency number for our furnace service brought a quick response and they fixed a coupler and we were once again toasty. Friday night I again foolishly remarked on how wonderful it was to be warm and sure enough Saturday morning the temperature was again in the 50's. Again an emergency call and prompt service. This time, however, the service repairman (why is it they all look like they're twelve years old?) took a little more time investigating and discovered a drain that is getting clogged and backing up and making the furnace go off. This is going to involve a much bigger fix and cannot be started before Monday. It is almost balmy today at 25 degrees and the furnace is still humming along so hopefully we will remain warm until we get completely repaired.

I really wasn't going to comment on the weather because, hey, it's Buffalo, it's winter, it's cold and snowy and we are really much warmer than say, South Dakota. But I have to be grateful for warm woolen sweaters and gloves and hats and a gas fireplace.

This week:

I put more books on Paperback Swap, about 40 in all and I think that's about it for all that I have on bookshelves at present. All total I have put on 256 books. Here is my bookshelf .

I have been busy working on hats and mittens. Love the mittens. Finished the Give a Hoot mittens to go with the Who? hat and am working on some more Lopi mittens.

Received the yarn that I won from Knit Picks to make the Amused sweater. I will start that after I finish the Lopi mittens. It is Marine Blue in Swish worsted weight super wash wool. I haven't used this particular yarn before and love the feel of it.

Made a hat for DH since he has lost his knit hat. Will have to make him some more hats.

We had our first yoga lesson on Friday with Stephanie.

Made a great bread yesterday. Dilly Bread that was on, I believe, the Yarn Harlot's blog but I can't find the exact post.

Monday I took Jordyn to the library for the three year old Storytime. We played games and sang songs and made a pictureand learned all about shapes and I had such a feeling of deja vue. I know I took Amy to the very same library for story time.... it may have been the very same stories.

Happy New Year

Had a very quiet New Year's Eve and New Years day. Just puttered around yesterday knitting and reading and watching old movies ("It Happened One Night").

I put about 25 more books on Paperback Swap (that was just the first shelf of the bookshelf I'm trying to empty).

Finished "American Wife" which I though was a disturbing attempt to try to explain how any one with brains could be married to George Bush.

Joined three groups on Ravelry that should keep me busy.

1) 52 books in 52 weeks (reading a book a week is sometimes easy, sometimes not). My first book of 2009 is "The Miracle at Speedy Motors"

2) NaKniMitMo (knitting a pair of mittens in January. I started "Bella's Mittens" out of 2 balls of gray Lopi I had in my stash.

3) Hat of the Month knitting or crocheting a hat every month which should get me through more of my stash yarn.

We're having Nathan and Jordyn sleep over tonight. Probably more playing in the snow (it's much warmer today, in the thirtys, and tomorrow for breakfast we can try out the new waffle iron.

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve morning.

All the presents are wrapped. The shopping's done. The cooking is pretty much set. I just have to clean the house so Santa doesn't find a mess. We've had winter storms for the past few days. Nathan was off school on Friday and Monday and it was too cold for them to go out and enjoy the snow day (minus wind chill). We got about 2 feet of snow altogether, but the wind blew it in drifts. Jordyn and I walked Nathan home from school yesterday and because some of the sidewalks were not shovelled, had a rollicking good time climbing snow mountains.

It's supposed to rain today, go figure! Although it is then going to freeze. I have two errands to run today: get the great Christmas morning coffee cakes from Walther's bakery and pick up a couple of books from the library, so I hope it's not too icy. Then it's just sit and wait for Christmas, watch Christmas movies and go to Christmas mass at 6:00 this evening.

Five Days Before Christmas

It's beginning to look a LOT like Christmas. We had about 10 inches of snow yesterday that came down all day, closed the schools and really developed just like the weatherman predicted. We were all cozied up not having to go out in the storm. DH wrapped the kid's gifts while watching "Since You Went Away" an absolutely wretching but terrific movie. I finished the Christmas cookies: the last of the Cuccidati (Italian fig cookies), jam thumbprints, Mexican Wedding Cakes and pizzelles. We then watched "Operation Petticoat" after dinner. What a perfect day!

I started Collins "Flame" scarf. I think this will be just what he wanted.

We're supposed to have a lake effect storm tomorrow. Since all the shopping is done and we have no where to go, we'll just hunker down and watch the snow pile up.

Holiday Daze

more animals

Gotta love this website http://icanhascheezburger.com/

The Best Laid Plans

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” Robert Burns

With every good intention I wrote the previous post and the next week my computer developed a "bug". Not a tiny virus, but a brain wiping behemoth that caused our hard drive to lose it's mind-- all of it. Of course being the computer savvy couple that we are, nothing was backed up.

So instead of knitting, blogging, reading or sleeping, I have been trying to restore most of what was lost.

One of the most trying things was trying to remember where we put that interesting article, pattern, web site etc. Or getting our home page to look just like it did. Or re-ripping all of our cd's. Or trying to remember all of the various login's and passwords. Ugh!!!! Fortunately I had pictures on Flickr.

So now I have Norton Ghost which my son-in-law says will restore my settings. We are going to purchase a removable hard drive and I have only re-ripped my Christmas cd's until we get that.

It has been a wintry 17 degrees and snowy blowy the past few days and that will continue through the week. I love this kind of weather at this time of year, having the Christmas decorations up, the fireplace on, hot cocoa and a pile of books. It's so cozy. By February I am so completely done with it, however.

I am doing well with the Christmas knitting I wasn't going to do this year. I finished washcloths with different characters on them for all the grandchildren and the step-grand children.
I used free patterns I found on Ravelry. There are dinosaurs, stars, a penguin, a bat, a horse and a sheep.
I still have four pair of slippers to complete for the girls in WV and Jordyn, but I should get them done this week. I am going to start the scarf for Collin that he requested. A "fire" scarf of yellow, red and orange. We shouldn't have any trouble spotting him with that combination. I'll post it here when I have it started.

Our wonderful library site has added videos to the downloadable audio books, so now you can download things like the old "Dick Van Dyke" show (one of my personal favorites) or the Three Stooges. It's great and they all upload onto my Axim. So now I can watch them while I'm in the waiting mode (doctor's, dentist, meetings, boring drives, etc). They have also greatly expanded the amount of books available and you can have 20 downloads at a time. I was able to replace all of the "In Death" series that I had ripped to my computer. This is such a godsend to retired folks like myself and others who are feeling the economic pinch.


DD#1 has added me to Facebook, so now I have something else to lure me on the computer.

New Year's Resolution

What have I been doing since the last post?

I have been following the pre-election and post-election coverage on the Internet and doing little else. I now feel re-energized and full of hope (even though our comfortable retirement nest egg is more of a flattened pancake).
So now it's time for some resolutions, even though it's short of the new year.

#1) I have to limit my time on the Internet. DH is in Myrtle Beach the entire week golfing. I envisioned getting tons done while he was gone. However, I found I wasted more time. Have you ever gone on Ravelry just for a minute or two to check out your Groups, go from one link to another as you find great patterns, interesting Blogs, delicious yarns and find that two hours have gone by? Well me too. And without DH tapping his foot waiting for his time on the computer, I have no one to stop the insanity.

Solution: I will try to spend no more than one hour a day on the Internet. That includes reading the NYT and Post and checking out my favorite blogs.

#2) I have to stop buying yarn until I reduce my stash. (Confession: I stopped by Jo-Ann's on my way home from Weight Watchers this morning and spent $40.00 on more yarn.)

I have looked into some of the Ravelry groups that deal with people like me, but none of them seem like a good fit for me and that would interfer with my solution to #1.

Solution: I will only buy yarn for the kid's afghans and the "gloves, hats and mittens projects" for them or if I need a bit more yarn to complete a project.

#3) I have been on this knitting binge in a big way since I discovered all the great knitting resources on the internet and my LYS and have neglected all my other crafts. I haven't crossstitched or sewed, even my reading has suffered.

Solution: I think if I limit my Internet addiction, and consciously use my time more efficiently, I will be able to produce more. I should think of my crafting like a job and be more structured.

#4) Not blogging. I really wanted to use this blog as my on-line diary and I haven't been faithful to it.

Solution: I will try to post twice a week and use the blog as a tool to track family stuff and how I'm doing with keeping to my New Year's resolutions.