Pumpkin Sunrise

Winter arrived this week and this winter lover is quite happy!  I watched the snowfall from the inside of my warm and cozy home.  I went out with the big camera and Frodo, but we both gave up in fifteen minutes because....well...we were cold! Funny how last year was bitterly cold and that 20 degrees would've felt warm.  This year, I'm not acclimated to the deep chill. My body was spoiled with spring like temps for too long.  Barely an inch of snow fell when the storm blew through but that's okay.  It's beautiful and it's snow!  I'm wearing wool sweaters, wool cowls or scarves or shawls.  I sift through mitts and pick a pair - this has been heavenly. The quiet days of January continue, I love that after holiday lull.  We are back to the two of us.  Simple meals are planned, the Christmas cookies are almost (almost!) gone and with each sweet treat disappearing we are welcoming in fresh fruits and vegetable.  Yum.  I am enjoying the quiet and silence th

Last week, I started a sweater for myself.  I loved this cardigan so much I'm knitting another one !  I love Quince and Co yarn and I'm delighted to be knitting with it once again.  Santa was nice enough to give me some during the Christmas season :) Are you surprised I'm not reading Station Eleven ? Well I finished it and over all I liked the book.  The ending was sort of "meh" for me but I still recommend the book.  So in the spirit of reading out of my comfort zone, I started Life as We Knew It .  My son read it over the holidays and recommended it.  Instead of an epidemic wiping out most of the civilization, the moon has been hit by an asteroid and has shifted closer to Earth.  For some reason an epidemic is more believable than the moon shifting but I'm enjoying the chaos and the panic. Who knew I would enjoy apocalypse stuff!! What are you knitting and reading this week? Joining Ginny and Frontier Dreams

Weekends are for memory making,  relaxing and enjoying quiet moments of our days.   If you would like, please share your weekend moments  in the comment section with a link to your blog. This weekend was a dark weekend, sure there were pockets of sun but my the dark skies just kept winning.  I'm lucky that I can hibernate inside and knit away.  How's your weekend been so far?  I bet you have snow if you're not in the northeast (grr).  My weekend was pretty good, we had a slow Saturday morning doing our own thing.  I started gathering papers together for taxes and filed a bunch as well.  Of course I knit!!  What's a day in my life without knitting?  Not a fun day indeed. Today I gathered with friends and knit some more, quite nice.  My laundry is nearly finished and I'm sipping my daily cup of green tea. My weekend contained: chocolate chip muffins -  chocolate chip cookies -  risotto - left over curry - daily walks between the raindro

I am finished with the fair isle hat and it's currently soaking as I type this post.  Ah, finishing knits is quite rewarding and soothing.  I have in mind starting another sweater.  Details will be revealed when I know the details! On Wednesday, my son returned to Boston for another semester and I cleaned like a possessed woman.  Bathrooms, dusting and vacuuming.  A slurry of activity that was overdue and much needed.  Now I'm sitting in a relatively clean home and ready for what January has to bring to me. Everyday has been a salad day.  Yum!  I've been on Pinterest pinning away some new recipes and getting fresh ideas for simple dinners.  My health intentions for the new year are going strong.  I am practicing yoga every morning diligently.  As a knitter, I notice and feel those shoulder stretches and appreciate them. The best aspect of January is the way the light shifts.  The days are a tiny bit longer and my front room displays the sun rays in the aftern

I am nearly finished with Station Eleven and I've been enjoying the novel.  My reading time has been slim since my son has still been around since last Wednesday.  However, he is heading to the train station as I write this and I know I'll finish this book today.  Promise.  I know a few of you out there enjoyed this book, do you have other books similar to this one that you would recommend?  Just wondering. My knitting has been all about hats.  I finished two and posted yesterday .  I quickly started another fair isle hat  using the left over red for the blue as the main color.  I boldly thought that I had plenty of the white and during the afternoon of knitting I came to the realization that I was delusional in that bold thought process. So as any knitter would do, I went to my LYS and bought another skein (the ONLY one left....).  I said it was an emergency yarn purchase.  The knitting group there chuckled and the owner said "it's good the emergency department

There is nothing like a quick portable knitting project tucked in your purse or bag for whenever you have the urge to knit.  I loved how fast these hats knit up in the midst of family visiting and the busyness of the holiday season.  I'll be doing hats next season as well. The fair isle hat was lovely to knit.  I am making another one but went up a needle size since the blue hat is a little snug.  I blocked the daylights out of the blue one and it fits my head perfectly.  If you want to dip your toes into knitting with two colors in one row this is the hat pattern for you. The father cables hat  was fun to knit and looks lovely on a head (or not!!).  The cables are many and keeping track of which row I was on was a challenge.  I tend to not write anything down...for some reason it works for me to look at my knit and look at the chart and proceed. So there you go, two hats.  I've cast on another fair isle with red being the main color and hoping I have enough white

Weekends are for memory making,  relaxing and enjoying quiet moments of our days.   If you would like, please share your weekend moments  in the comment section with a link to your blog. Hello! Have you recovered from the holidays?  Getting there?  Oh my, I sure am.  We had the slowest weekend ever.  As promised on Friday, I put away the Christmas tree and all of my decorations.  That photo above is where the tree twinkled and glowed.   I love the wide opened spaces I'm seeing now in my home.  It's good.  It's refreshing.  Our son is still here and he has the "cold" that his sister brought.  This weekend had him on the couch while my husband and I prayed to not catch it and steered clear of his sneezing and coughing.  He's feeling much better.  He leaves on Wednesday to returned to Boston to start up another semester This weekend I... -took a daily walk and was chilled by the winter weather  - finished some hats  - had Chines

Good morning and Happy New Year's day to all of you.  Don't you love the newness of this day.  It's shiny and bright, unblemished and the whole entire year is rolled out in front of us.  I love January 1st.  Along with the beginning of a new year, I see a chance for improvement and growth. New intentions, old intentions, both resurrected.  I've been in list making mode the past few days.  Writing thoughts down to paper makes the goals real and justified.  So here it goes, my ideas and focuses. Health: -I received from Santa a great new cookbook and I've been reading the chapters here and there and want to incorporate more whole food cooking in our diet.  This cookbook is good, I love the recipes and the photos and how "doable" they are as I read them.  I also think we will both like eating them. -Yoga every single day.  That about sums it up. -Eating less sugar (who me??) State of Mind: -practice living in the "now" and qu

I'm reading two books and they are both the same.  They are both slow going as well, partly because of me and partly because of the full house.  I am not finding much time to read!!    Station Eleven  is coming along and I love the writing style.  My other book is One Thousand Gifts  and that is inching along. My knitting has been here and there as well.  I've been leaning towards quick projects.  The hat on the right is finished and came out a wee bit small.  I'm hoping a severe blocking session will make it bigger.  The wool is super wash and that tends to grow for me.  The hat on the left is making me quite happy to knit as well!!  Lovely pattern :) The origami butterfly was made by my son, who has been making all sorts of paper creatures scattered around the house.  I'm thinking of hanging them all on the tree. What are you knitting and reading this week? Joining Ginny and Frontier Dreams

Weekends are for memory making,  relaxing and enjoying quiet moments of our days.   If you would like, please share your weekend moments  in the comment section with a link to your blog. How was your weekend? Today when I took Frodo outside for a walkabout, I spied four deer in the woods and lucky me, I got the photo of one!  It's not easy when Frodo is tugging me and I only have my iphone and it only zooms so much.  I feel like my day is complete. My weekend is the extended version since I didn't post on Friday.  Christmas was lovely and we enjoyed having all the kids home for the holidays.  We opened gifts, I made waffles and latter we had a traditional turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and stuffing.  Before we said Grace we did Oplatek  and I remembered Christmases past and traditions that last.  I'm lucky that my church has the wafers available and maybe my children will keep the tradition when they start their own celebrations

This week I've been knitting two projects.  The first is the scarf for my husband on size three, what was I thinking?  It is not a Christmas gift, phew.  But the purple is dark and hard to see for me so I keep making little mistakes...so daylight is the only time I work on it.  My next project is a hat for me?  or for whoever?  I loved this pattern when it was first out and have been itching to cast on!! I'm reading two books, first one is on the kindle-- One Thousand Gifts and my second book is Station Eleven .  I cannot really comment on either since both are in the early stages of reading. What are you reading and knitting this week? Joining Ginny and Frontier Dreams