Pumpkin Sunrise

I don't know about you, but January was glorious for me.  The quiet days slipping from one to another supported lots of creative time for me.  I hope February is just as good.  Around here we have no snow and after three days of sunny skies we are back to clouds and dreariness.  Thank you for your compliments on the hat and mittens I made the preschooler.  I started the bear hat last night. I am having some issues with my right thumb hurting (too much knitting on double pointed needles).  I should give the hands a break....should.  But I really want to knit!  The RA doc thinks it's mild OA, I think it's a flare up and it will go away eventually. If you remember last year my RA doctor retired (boo) and now I have a young doctor.  I saw her on Wednesday for a six month recheck, I am slowly forgiving my old doctor for leaving me.  This new one wants to re-diagnose me and so every time I have routine bloodwork every three months do...

Last week I delightfully fell down a fabulous rabbit hole of knitting for the preschooler whom I babysit.  Finally I found a pattern that she was so excited about.  When I arrived early in the morning I showed her the cat hat telling her I needed to sew the ears on and then it was hers. She was thrilled!  Over and over she said 'Mrs. Karen, I love my cat hat'.  She wore it for most of the day. Because she loved the hat so much, I whipped up some mittens as well.  Thank you Jane for the mitten pattern recommendation.  Super easy and fun!  When I finished the first mitt, she tried it on and then said 'Mrs. Karen, you did a great job on my mittens'.  (YUP.) Today she thanked me again for her hat and requested that I knit the bear hat that was pictured with the cat hat on the pattern.  Well of course!

On Saturday we had lunch with our son and his girlfriend, it was so nice to see them and spend the afternoon with them.  Hopefully we will have more visits like this until summertime when he moves to where ever he gets a job.  He's been interviewing so it's early days. Yesterday after Mass, grocery run and chores, my friends came over for some much needed knitting time.  I do love being with them immensely!  I worked on the felix sweater  most of the time.  I am loving how fast it is knitting up! Last night I switched to working on my purple sweater .  I ordered some twist shorties from Handsome fibers .  They are generous with their coupons.  Anyways, I just didn't feel like doing the sleeves on dpns so I thought I'd give the twist shorties a try.  This set will work with my other sets by the same company.  I love this style of needle! How was your weekend?

sweater body finished, onto the sleeves! Yesterday I decided to pull out my paints and paint on watercolor paper.  Lately my artwork has been daily sketching with a little bit of paints on drawing paper.  I love the fastness and the ease of mental  low pressure when I do a daily sketch. I pulled out a new paint set that I received from Santa and I sat at the table with high expectations of great artwork about to be produced by me.  Sadly, I made a hot mess of it.  I was disappointed and frustrated. felix cardigan cast on Of course I will not share the picture!  I almost ripped it out of my watercolor sketchbook but then I thought, 'where is the learning if I don't have documentation of my progress?'  You see, I LOVE to flip through notebooks and see my progress.  The progress isn't linear nor is it beautiful but it's there when I show up day after day.  I capture shadows or a blend colors just right. I have my very first sweat...

Over the weekend I finished this cowl and since then I've been wearing it.  A dear friend gave me this skein for Christmas and I knew I wanted to knit with a pop of color during January.  I shortened some of the sections of the cowl since I only had 300 yards out of the 500 yards required.  I love how the cowl turned out and it fits nicely. I am sure I will be knitting yet another one since this is only my second time.  The first cowl became a Christmas gift.  Someone asked if this would be a great knit for beginners.  If you know how to knit - purl - cast on and off - increase and decrease - and have skills for using youtube tutorials, I think this could be a great project for sampling different skills. Ravely notes

Good morning!  My weekend is still going strong but I thought I'd post this morning before the post gets away from me.  Even though today is a holiday, I'm still going to the gym.  Once I'm in the habit of doing something good, I continue to do so.  Saturday morning we had a snowstorm that was glorious.  Beautiful snowflakes fell slowly and I didn't have to go anywhere important. I read Grant all day.  Literally.  I started around 10 a.m. and finished around 9:30 p.m. Of course I took breaks for eating meals but I didn't even knit while reading.  I wanted that book done and out of my rotation. Phew!  The book was fantastic but Grant's death was a sad one.  He died of tongue and mouth cancer....boo.  Anyways, I feel light as a feather now that I finished reading.  I haven't started anything else new.  I'm reading   Dutch House and A Better Man .  I hope to make progress in both of those books. ...

Many of you wanted to see the way I track my days.  So without further ado, here we go! My mornings are usually filled with chores and the gym.  As soon as I wake up I write in my journal about the day before and write a gratitude list.  Next comes the Catholic praying and reading.  Any errands that I have to run are in the morning as well.  I've been like this since the kids were little.  I would try my best to get every chore done so that I could have an hour or two in the afternoon before dinner preparations to knit. I've noticed that going to the gym takes up a lot of my time but I do read my Kindle while walking on the treadmill so I'm happy!  I meet my trainer two times a week instead of three times a week.  I'm doing lower body exercises on my own instead. Because all of my family are out of town, I spend considerable time on the phone.  Again, I was like this since I was a teen.  I LOVE to talk.  One of the bes...

My chili pepper cowl is an hour or so away from being done.  I was graced with some pockets of time during babysitting to add some rows.  I'm excited to finish this and wear it! Truly I apologize for the terrible photos of my sweater .  I worked a long day yesterday (babysitting) then had an appointment after that.  Needless to say by the time I was free to photograph daylight hours were over. Imagine my sweater in purplely goodness! I am now at the part where you split the front and back hem of the body of the sweater.  I will not make the back longer than the front as per instructions.  They will be the same length. So so so excited to be ever so close to sleeve knitting!!

My weekend was a fun one.  On Saturday I woke up to unusual weather, too warm and too breezy!  However, we had a two hour drive to a wedding so I was completely fine with no snow in the forecast.  We witnessed the union of a lovely couple, the daughter of a friend.  Weddings are delightful and full of promises and new beginnings.  I love love. As I prepared for the wedding, I wrestled with nylons and various dresses in the closet etc.  Needless to say I need to find some new clothes to wear to another wedding later this year.  Nylons DO deteriorate after many years, trust me.  Ordinarily I do not wear them, but I didn't want to be cold. Also at the wedding we spent time with our daughter and son in law (yay!). Yesterday I started going through some cookbooks for some new recipes.  Every new year I am motivated to try new menu plans and then I set that goal aside.  It's January and once again I am eager to switch up the ...

This week was my reentry into babysitting.  I had a lovely month off which went by way too quickly.  From now until June, I will be babysitting once a week without any holidays or breaks unless there is a snow day.  The preschooler and I have some great times, we try to get a walk in as long as it isn't too cold or too windy.  We bundle up and talk non stop about shiny rocks.  There's a lot to be said about shiny rocks and what constitutes as a 'good' shiny rock.  I have learned that she is the expert and I am the apprentice. I witnessed a beautiful yet unexpected snowfall mid-week.  Glorious!  I was happy to wake up to a few inches of snow and eager to wear my new snow boots (the above photo is not a photo of my snow boots!). I've been tracking my days in my daily planner diligently.  I'm surprised by a few things after only a mere ten days into 2020.  When I track what I'm doing, I want to write down something interesting....