Spring Break is just about over................

I can't believe I haven't blogged for a week but that's what happens when Spring Break arrives!  It was for my grandchildren anyway.  They couldn't come down but that doesn't mean we didn't spend lots of time together! LOL!  One got food poisoning  (at a restaurant), one got pneumonia and was hospitalized and the other one spent his vacation at home because his brother was sick.  Me?  I spent hours on the phone with all of them getting updates, giving advice (when asked), trading the latest great ideas on Pinterest for Easter and recipes, etc.  I spent more time on the phone this week than I have all year but they're all better now and it was fun!
I did get a few things worked on but I am Spring Cleaning and that involves painting too but more on that later this week. For now it's YOPs we're focusing on.

It's done....finally!  I love this pattern and I actually love the yarn but the bulkiness is too much for my hands and the scarf is not as flexible but boy will it keep him warm.  This is the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern on Ravelry for my son, "Jimmy Me Boy".  We are Irish too so I know he will love it.  Should I give it to him now or wait until next Christmas or his birthday which is also in December?   It's getting a little warm to wear it now or is it?  Some places are still getting snow and they were one of them.  I still need to wash it and block it but it's done.  I also bound off  "in pattern" which I've never done before.  I don't know that it made much difference but maybe it did.  This scarf is taller than me and I'm 5'2" so I'm thinking it's 6 feet long.   Plenty of room for wrapping although it is really bulky.  This would make a good coat! LOL!  I do love this pattern and love making cables so there will be more of these but  not in bulky yarn.
I have finally figured out the front and back post cluster stitches but I can barely see the stitches as the yarn is so "heathered".  As long as it looks fairly consistent and nothing shouts "MISTAKE, MISTAKE!!!!" I'm forging ahead.  I am on row 6 which is the farthest I've ever gotten!  

It is a really soft yarn (Lionbrand Homespun) but again.....I would never buy this yarn for anything it's that awful to work with but the colors (greens and peachy coral?) will go great with my daughters couch and living room colors and it will be a really soft and cuddly throw when finished.....years from now. LOL!  I'm on Row 6 of like 110, I think..... not counting the edging.  Woe is me.
So, now it's time for something for MOI.  I will once again (they were previously frogged as I wasn't very far along and needed the needles for a quick gift) be casting on a pair of socks in my beautiful Cakewalk yarn but I'll have to go find the pattern as I can't remember what I was using.  It might have been my first pair of dpn socks.....yes,  I was using the tutorial from Very Pink.  It's all coming back to me now.

Did I mention this yummy snack and/or breakfast idea?  Quick and healthy.  Ricotta cheese spread on homemade bread or a nice Italian/French style, sliced grape tomatoes, 1 tsp olive oil drizzled on each, some salt and pepper and under the broiler for about 5 minutes or so.  Delish!

 I finished these 2 books this week and I highly recommend them....excellent!  This was a memoir and true..........

Agnes Morley Cleaveland is the author.  I put my glasses on top because the cover was curling up.  Sue Monk Kid's book was historical fiction.

I don't know what kind of bird this is but he was singing his little heart out on a beautiful day here in the Ozarks.

I managed to assuage my sweet tooth also as I made Swedish Browns; a recipe from a dear blogger up North, Far Side of Fifty.    Connie, these cookies are over the moon good!  Healthy too as they have a boatload of cinnamon in them.  I had everything to make them too without having to run to the store....love that!  Thank you for the recipe!

I think I've caught you up with this week so far.  Oh, Nitty had to go to the vet for an allergy shot even after my attempt to feed her really good natural foods and on top of that she had a yeast infection in her ears....I give up!  But other than that she's doing great....hopefully the cancer is bye bye forever.
Happy Trails!  I'll catch up with all of you this week.

YOP Sunday

I don't have a lot to show for myself...same scarf although I'm thinking I will have it wrapped up next week. Grace is thinking..."aren't you done with that thing YET???  She's so good.  She never touches my yarns but I know she wants to.

 Spring is arriving slowly in the Ozarks.  I bought 4 bulbs at Wally World the other day for .98 each.  A yellow and red tulip which aren't blooming yet and a grape hyacinth and this daffodil.

 The hyacinth perfumes the whole house!  It smells so Spring!

 I went rogue and started something that was planned for next years YOP list........filet crochet.  I just got the bug and couldn't stop myself from trying it.  There was a You Tube tutorial that had this sample heart and so I did it.  Filet crochet definitely needs to be blocked but I have the gist of it now only my printer is out of ink so I can't print off any of the hundreds of patterns out there.   Plus I need a size 7 or 9 crochet hook which I don't have and some crochet thread which I do have.  Has anyone ever tried using yarn to do it?   Meanwhile I need to update my YOP list and stick to it!

I found several neat websites this week....one called Chip It which I blogged about the other day and I got to thinking about using it for other things besides painting colors.  Tammy mentioned choosing yarn colors so I went out to Pinterest and applied Chip It to some colors of items I liked or that appealed to me in some way.

 I found it works much better if the item you want to "chip" fills the whole Pinterest posting else you get colors like black and white that sometimes aren't even in the picture.  Like above it got the background color of the carpet or whatever it was.  Take it with a grain of salt as I like to say.

 The poster did well because there was no background showing but where's the red?  And the blue sky?  I guess they only have room for 5 colors along the side so you'll have to improvise a little.

 This is also great if you want to use the colors in your wallpaper or even pictures on your wall to come up with a color scheme for a blanket or throw or a rug or on and on and on!  

 I wish Pantone had something like this.
For some reason Spring has made me want to dive into new arenas and try new techniques, new colors, new yarns and more.  I'm already making my list for YOP 1415.....and it includes.....oh, sorry....there I go "jumping the gun" again.   But just suffice it to say that until July, I might be doing some research into Fair Isle, colorwork, dyeing and Irish crochet.  Now, back to my YOP's of 2013-14.  Have a great week and I hope "Spring is popping out all over" at your place.
Happy Trails! 

I'm "chipping away" with Chip It!

I found this REALLY neat tool for use in decorating or just fooling around like I seem to be doing today.  It's called Chip It  and it is by Sherwin Williams paint company.  I've been wanting to do design boards like I've seen around blog land and they make it easy to get started.  Here's what I've been "chipping" today.

Here's some wallpaper I did.  

  Another bathroom...I have bathrooms on the brain lately.

 And here's my master bathroom wallpaper....isn't that cool how it works?  Look at all those colors I could use as trim paint or cupboard paint...amazing!

 Once you get the "chip it" on your toolbar you can chip just about anything.  You just click on a picture and it brings up the paint chips for the colors in that picture. I was chipping from Pinterest for the ones above.  Be careful though.....it's addicting but fun!  

Happy Trails!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!!

It rained all Saturday night and Sunday morning and then in the afternoon it turned to snow!  It's 44 today and melting fast in the bright sunlight but I snapped a few "goodbye" pictures of Winter yesterday.

 

Sue, the "book fairy" stopped by Saturday and left me some treasures.......... 

I've been trying to eat a healthy breakfast and this is my latest.   This is really filling too.  Real Simple magazine (I googled "healthy breakfast") had quite a few simple, quick and healthy alternatives.   1 apple, 1/4 cup of walnuts and 1-2 ounces of cheddar cheese.

bread making day today...........

and I was going to make some banana pudding but it called for vanilla wafers and I didn't have any so I thought I would make my own and I did....easy and so much better than store bought.........

 I also put another coat of paint on the bathroom ceiling edge...just the area over the toilet and I dragged a shelf I had from the basement that I'm going to paint to hang over said toilet.......

It's either going to be pink or green but leaning towards the green.

I also have an old picnic bench to paint for outside but it will be painted "Buttermilk".

When it was nice outside last week I had sanded it and tightened the bolts on it so it's ready to paint now.
No St. Patrick Day festivities here except my corned beef and cabbage dinner...yum!

Happy Trails to you...........until we meet again

YOP Sunday

I have been busy with all sorts of things this week.....mostly cleaning and painting so not much progress was made but I do have an "antique" WIP to show you. LOL!
I did finally get all the ends woven in on "the washcloth from hell" and maybe someday I will try it again , now knowing I am supposed to "carry" the yarns.  There it is in my kitchen drawer ready to get utilized.

I did work on this off and on during the week and as you can tell the skein is getting smaller....slowly. 

The antique WIP I dragged out is years old and is a large afghan pattern using Lion Brand Homespun yarn.  I will NEVER EVER let someone else chose the pattern and the yarn.  As much as I love my daughter this project has been like the washcloth from hell except a million times worse!  First of all the yarn is horrid to work with...really horrid.  And the pattern is crochet but with a BPC and FPC throughout which are back post and front post clusters.  I have started and put away this project 3-4 times at least.  I even had a friend , who's a better crocheter than I, try it and give up.  This was several years back before I retired.  I was cleaning out and came upon the hundred or more skeins of yarn to make this gigantic afghan (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit) and decided I had too much money invested in it to give up plus, now that I was retired maybe I would have the patience and time to figure it out and so I did!  It is and will continue to be a "slow boat to China" and it may take years to finish but I am determined plus won't my daughter be surprised! 

These are 2 pictures of the aforementioned blanket. 

This is what I have done so far and I'm only on the second row.  The rows are 223 chains long and the yarn is still horrid and gets caught, so there is no way you can speed up even when you have the pattern memorized.  Plus, the yarn my daughter chose is a heathered/mottled green and pink which makes it hard as heck to see your stitches but will also do a good job of hiding mistakes.  The problem is, when you make a mistake with the BPC or the FPC it shows down the road and the other stitches don't work out so....there you have it.  This project should have a YOP year all to itself! LOL! 

But on the bright side, I felt so good finally figuring out the stitch and successfully implementing it after all these years.  DISCLAIMER:  I did some serious begging praying to my crochet angels before I started so they deserve a lot of the credit or the above picture would not have taken place.
Happy Springtime!  I bought these bulbs the other day .98 each at Walmart and it's been beautiful here.  I was going to plant them but it is now snowing out.....of course!

In case I miss you tomorrow, Happy St. Patrick's Day to you!  My corned beef and cabbage is simmering while I type.  Happy Trails!

Books and treasures in the mail.........

I finished the last of the Janette Oke Canadian West series and loved each and every book.  Such soothing and pleasant reading to be the last thoughts of the day before I go to sleep.  But wait....that's not all!  I've been watching the series on Saturday nights on the Hallmark channel and she visited the set and told Hallmark she's writing another book for the series!  I'm so excited! (This entire series was gotten at my local library).

I finally finished reading this book which took me awhile.  It was not a page turner but one of those books that you become comfortable with but still very interesting. It is about 2 twins who are separated when very young when their parents die.  One goes to live with German relatives and the other stays in the Netherlands and is raised there.  They meet when they are old and recount their different experiences of WWII being on different sides.  This was a very enlightening book and well researched and so glad I didn't "quit it" because at the end it turned out to be a very worthwhile read.  (I got this book at a garage sale from a friend that bought it overseas in Ireland when she traveled over there.)
I started reading The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd.  I've loved all her other books so I'm sure I'll enjoy this one.  She is a great storyteller.  This book takes place during the slave days in Charleston, South Carolina about 2 little girls; one white and one black.  The white girl "owns" the black girl as her hand maid and is given her as a gift on her 11th birthday.  The story of Handful, the slave girl, is partly taken from journals and information about a real person.  Although it is not a true story, it certainly could be with the accuracy that Ms. Kidd utilizes in her books.

Well, it's been over a week that I've had this book and I haven't learned Yoga yet but I am reading the book and I'm on the  "breathing" chapter and I think I've got that down pat! LOL!  I've wanted to learn yoga for a while now as I want to remain flexible in my elder years.

I have never read Jane Austen before....any of her books.  Yet so many are in adoration of her writings.  I decided I needed to see what all the fuss was about so I picked up the only book they had available at the time in the library.  I've just started reading it and I think I might have watched it on PBS before, or at least parts of it.  Time will tell.  I'm not much into "romances" or "childish women" so we'll see.  Right now it seems like one sister is very "emotional" while the other is "sensible" thereby the title evidently.   I'm banking on the sensible one but then that's just me. LOL!

I got a lovely "surprise" in the mail the other day from my daughter.  We like so many of the same things and I always love anything and everything I get from her.     

I got cherry duct tape, Lipsyl lip balm which she swears by and it has a little bee on the side that you push to get more balm....too cute!  There were 2 Yankee votive candles, Valentine cards from her 2 little sweeties; Sam and Grayson, a lovely card and note from my daughter, a cute bracelet, a set of colored sharpies and Orange Blossom Hand lotion from The Naked Bee and did I forget anything?
It was such a treat to get something in the mail for no reason or season!

 My daughter is an elementary art teacher and the outside of her cards are prettier than the cards........(I think so anyway but I might be prejudiced a bit)

I'd like to enlarge what she calls her "doodles" and make them into appliqued wool pieces. 
Any who........that's all the news that's fit to print from here.  I hope you are all ready to enjoy your weekend!  Happy Trails!

Spring cleaning.....I think..........

I have really been busy around here.  I am deep into clearing and cleaning but of course I run out of steam before I get everything I want done.  It was foggy the other day and so pretty.  I love fog as long as I'm home and not out trying to drive in it.

Whenever I change the sheets on my bed, Grace loves to hop up there on the newly "fluffed" feather topper I have.

 I took a "selfie", in case you're curious what I look like. LOL!  My hair is gray now, my blonde days are over with, I'm lots heavier but I notice it stretches your skin so you don't have as many wrinkles so maybe that's good thing? Ha! Ha!  I'm healthy and happy and that's all that matters to me.

 My pattern notebooks were getting so full that I needed another one and I found an old notebook from one of my technical conferences I used to attend at IBM.  They're huge and sturdy so I "repurposed" it.

 See how much bigger it is than a normal notebook?

 I pulled the labels out of the plastic sleeves and replaced it with some prettier scrapbook paper.  Lots of room for patterns now!

 We had a few nice days of 70's so I got outside and washed the screens for the windows which I usually do in the Fall but it got cold so fast I missed my "window of opportunity".  I take my screens off in the Winter as I can see out the windows better and I wash the windows in the Fall.  My Dad always used Pella crank out windows in every house he built and although I like the regular sash windows I must admit these are easy to clean!  I can clean both sides from inside the house and also the screens come off and on from inside.  I didn't take a picture of the clean screens as I figured it wasn't really that interesting.    
I was planning on washing the ceiling in the bathroom....my starting point for Spring cleaning and I mixed up some TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) which I have used for years for cleaning walls and ceilings.  Unfortunately, the people they hired to paint and wallpaper cut corners and didn't seal the ceilings or the walls that they wallpapered so when I went to wash the ceiling this is what I got.  Pretty awful...now I have to paint it.  The wallpaper is coming loose in a few places and I really don't want to paint over it at this time so I washed it good and I have tubes of ready to use wallpaper paste for repairing it.

 The TSP did a nice job on the cleaning the wallpaper though.

 So, I am off to repair and paint!  Oh, there's all kinds of useful information and tips on Pinterest for Spring Cleaning.  As you can see, I need all the help I can get!  Happy Trails!