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Showing posts from January, 2025

Knitting News

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  Good morning! My knitting news is kind of brief. I made it to the separating of the sleeves on my top down sweater and am gloriously knitting stockinette stitch while watching mystery tv shows in the evenings.  What are you working on this week? Also, I have family get togethers this weekend, so I will not be here until early next week!

Weekends

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  Good morning! How was your weekend? My weekend was nice enough. I went out shopping with my sister briefly on both days and also started doing pesky house cleaning tasks. I used the self cleaning function of a VERY old oven and it worked...I was concerned since it is ancient. My fears were unnecessary - my oven is squeaky clean! My next task is moving furniture to vacuum under them, I need my husband's help with that one, but the task is on the list and that is half the battle. Our weather is finally above freezing and on my walk yesterday, I took off my mitts because I was warm. What luxury! I've been wearing double layers on my walks for so long that I felt light with just regular layers.  I started yet again another knitting project. This one is a baby blanket for a relative who is expecting sometime this year. I'm now up to five projects on the needles, that is my maximum. Anything more and nothing will be finished in a timely manner. How was your weekend?

Around Here

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  Good morning! Today our weather is starting to warm up. Yesterday I took a walk after three days of not being outside due to the frigid weather. I was cold, but it was so nice to be outside and get some fresh air. Since I was homebound, I've been doing lots of reading, knitting and some journaling. I finished reading Conjure Women, which I highly recommend. I was captured by the plot immediately. Now I will start reading, The Wonder Garden. I cannot remember where I bought this book and I have no idea what is about as of yet.  This past Wednesday we had no water in the evening for about five hours due to a water main break on our street. I felt empathetic towards the people working in the frigid temperatures to bring back the water. I tried to not be too annoyed by the inconvenience. But I am now living in a state of gratitude for running water. Another book I am starting today is Digital Minimalism  with the hopes of downsizing my time online. I have drastically cut do...

Knitting News

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  Good morning! How are you and how are your projects this week? We are in a deep freeze and so I knit. It's one of the best things about being a knitter. I am almost done with the raglan increases of this sweater and hopefully by next week will be sailing through the body of the sweater! I've been enjoying this project immensely! What are you working on?

Weekends

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  Hello! How are you? How was your weekend? My weekend was ultra relaxing but I made it so. I've been enjoying reading and knitting, sometimes at the same time, in the afternoons before I start cooking. I love the change of seasons and how I move with them. In the summer, I hardly feel like knitting much but I do. In the winter, I can't get enough of knitting. I've mainly worked on my hat or my sweater  on Saturday and Sunday. I walked yesterday and I believe that is the last walk outside until the end of the week. It will be too cold. That doesn't stop me from exercising in the house though. It's been so cold I washed eight pairs of wool socks yesterday! A record.  We really didn't do much this weekend except go to a nephew's birthday party on Saturday afternoon at my sister's house and attend church on Sunday. I've been hibernating. I love winter for the cosy hibernating. Holly says 'hello', she is waiting for her beloved (husband) to come...

Snow Days

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  Good morning! How are you doing? We have been having all the snow this week. Yesterday it snowed so much that my class was canceled and I felt like a teenager getting a snow day. I made good use of my time by reading and knitting. I love my bird feeder and my birds so much. They delight me every single time I look out the kitchen window.  A few times this week I shoveled the front walk and a path to the back deck to get to the bird feeder and found out that this shoveling movement irritates my and and wrist arthritis. So now I am resting my hands again and letting the flare up calm down. At least I pinpointed the activity! I am grateful that I can still knit. I've been reading a book, Conjure Women, and it is really good. I picked up this copy when I was visiting Boston a year or so ago. One of my loose goals is to read the books I own and donate the ones I've read and don't want to keep out of this house. I have about 100 books to go through. Most of them were bought sec...

Knitting News

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  Good morning to you! How have you been?  My knitting is on fire these days. I have three main projects that get equal treatment and spark immense joy. Above is the sweater that I am knitting along with my sister. I love the color and the construction so far of the sweater pattern and the yarn is very tweedy. Next up is my hat which is my third musselburgh hat pattern. Nothing is so satisfying as knitting endless stockinette stitch when you are reading a book or talking to someone. Lastly, I have a shawl on the needles, but I think there was a mistake in the lace portion of the pattern so I am correcting it along the way (and it could be that I made a mistake that I am fixing along the way!) I am pretty confident in my pattern alterations but my fingers are crossed if I have to fudge further along in the pattern as I continue to knit along. What are you working on this week?

Weekends

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  Good morning! How are you? I am doing great and the weekend was fun. My sister and my aunt celebrated birthdays this weekend. Actually a lot of my family have birthdays in January, do you have a month where all you do is celebrate a birthday? On Saturday, my sister and my brother in law came over for a lasagna dinner along with board game night. We celebrated her birthday on that day as well. I'm hoping all this game playing is good for the brain, it's definitely good for boosting happiness. My sister and I ordered a sweater kit from Woolly Thistle and started our sweaters on Saturday. What fun!!  My January so far has been a knitting starting frenzy, the cold crisp weather inspires me. Yesterday, my family all met at the william penn hotel in Pittsburgh to have a brunch buffet to celebrate my aunt's birthday. It was nice to be with family and eat good food. I have some exciting news! Our son, his wife and the two kids will be moving here somewhere in the greater Pittsb...

Quiet Days

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  Good morning! How are you doing? How is January so far? After my company left last weekend, I have put my house back to the way it was and fully recharged my battery with lots of knitting and reading. I am working on another hat (remember it's hat-knitting mojo for me right now). I started a new book to read and it's one from my shelves which will count towards my ultimate goal of reading what I own and then donating the book out of the house. Sometimes I keep books if I find them extraordinarily touching. I've struggled with maintaining my walking outside, there is a limit to how cold I can be. I continue to exercise inside with my weights and doing yoga poses. Even though it's cold, I continue to love winter the most. My creativity soars in brisk weather! I have exciting news to share. As you know, Holly only loves my husband and shows that love only to him. Well, other day she gave me some head butts for the FIRST time ever. I felt so loved by her, then she took a ...

Wool Bundle Hat

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  Good morning! How are you doing?  We've been so lucky to have snow flurries every single day this week and it's beautiful. It's quite chilly out so walking has been brisk - I toy with not walking outside each day, but then I'll walk a bit giving myself the option to turn around and go home if I am too cold. Usually, I keep on walking. I can tolerate the cold more so than the unbearable heat in the summer. I finished my hat ! I received this beautiful yarn bundle from my sister for my birthday in November. I loved choosing the striping sequence and it was fun to knit little bits of mini skeins. Even burying all those thread ends wasn't a chore but a delight.  I wanted a loose hat (I dislike tight hats, I feel colder in them) and I wanted the hat to be slouchy. I just created this hat out of my head with a slightly educated guess to the size. I knit the length until I felt it was long enough on my head with some slouchiness.  Over all my guessing turned out great!

Weekends

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  Hello! How are you? Can you believe it is 2025?  Right now I'm sitting in my clean quiet kitchen writing this post. Our company left early Saturday morning. I put away all the kid's stuff, stripped beds, cleaned the extra bathroom and did the sheet and towel laundry as well as undecorated the house. It was the fastest I've been ever. Of course I took some medicine for my arthritis to get me through the work. My arthritis flare is subsiding and I'm grateful! Picking up kids and putting them into and out of carseats in awkward angles (not to mention pushing those safety strap buttons) is not the exercising I do on a regular basis. Also they are DEAD weight. Argh. We are getting a little bit of a snow storm, it doesn't seem too bad right now but I don't have to go anywhere or do anything. Yesterday I did our laundry and cleaned up the house some more. It is all looking pretty! Above are the books I believe I will read. I want to read what I own (always a goal tha...

Knitting and Toys

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  Hello! It's been some time hasn't it? My family is still here visiting but it's nap time and I'm quickly making this post a priority because when my family leaves on Saturday morning I will be putting away Christmas decorations and then I will need to recover physically from that. I hope to be back at this space sometime next week. I'm having a great time with the grandchildren, lots of playing (and crying, ha ha). We went to the museum the other day to look at the dinosaurs and that was a ton of fun. What wasn't fun is that my son arrived with some kind of stomach bug but luckily no one else got it from him. That is the Christmas miracle that warms my heart.  I still have my arthritis flare, I think it will stay with me until they leave and I can completely rest for three days. It's mostly my hands and wrists. It's not from knitting since I am barely knitting. The above project is a hat that is almost finished! I will start decreasing soon. I want it...