Pumpkin Sunrise

  How are you? Are you living your best life? Well, around here I'm trying my best while I navigate feeling a bit under the weather earlier this week and a myriad of things to do. My ideas and tasks are like buzzing little gnats around my face. I write down those thoughts hoping to swat away their annoyance but then more pop up. Isn't that life? Each morning I ask myself 'how present are you going to be today?'. The answers vary but I do try. I haven't done a Happy list for awhile so here it goes: - for May arriving tomorrow - y a y -for apple blossoms and rhododendron blossoms and dogwood blossoms - breath-taking beautiful -for SIMPLE dinners so I don't have to spent much time in the kitchen -for every single belonging that we donate and get out of the house - it is freeing -for Frodo snuggles and his complete devotion -for Holly's antics and playing fetch with me each morning -for morning coffee -for notebooks and pens and watercolors -for being okay with

  My knitting news isn't much since I've been exclusively knitting the same project for the past couple of weeks. That is what happens when a shawl is lace weight and on size four needles.  I love working on this shawl so much and I'm seriously contemplating another one in lace weight right after this one. This might be too much of a good thing and I might change my mind. What I like about doing another one is using up more lace weight wool in my stash and not thinking too deeply upon following a pattern since the stitch design is permanently memorized.  What are you working on this week?

 My goodness did I just have a difficult time aligning these photos, so goes a Monday morning.  How are you? How was your weekend? Spring is here! Look at my dogwood trees, although the blossoms are a bit tiny this year, still they are beautiful. We started the Big Declutter this weekend. I went through all of my clothes and will donate what is in the photo below. My husband is half way through his clothing. The problem with big closets is that you can stuff them with tons of things you don't need. I probably could get rid of more clothes but for now I'm satisfied with the progress. Baby steps with letting go.  Even though we are busy with the decluttering, I am managing to sit and knit each evening on the same two projects. I also squeeze in some sketching time. How was your weekend?

  Good morning! How are all of you? How has your week been?  Spring took a nose dive for a few days with temperatures in the forties. Good grief. I am thankful that my rhododendron blossoms survived. Within days, my flowering apple tree should be showing off. The older I get the more I like spring. I don't mind the cold blitzes all that much either. I'm hoping today we get out for a daily walk in sunshine. Frodo had a 'beauty' appointment and is looking ever so dapper. He shivers for two-three days from the conservative hair cut. He's such an old man, we just blanket him up and love him as his body adjusts. The knitting continues to be only at night time. I have officially started the Great Declutter this week. I worked mainly on thinning out the filing cabinet and the overflow of documents into SIX shoeboxes. I've made great progress and finished the last drawer yesterday. I'm now contemplating going through my clothing. I know once I start I will create a

  This past week I've been working on the same projects. As you can see in the above photo, I finished the first Christmas stocking and have started the second stocking. This is my zoom knitting because I do not have to think for most of it, just stockinette stitch around and around. The second project is the triangle shawl . I work on this mostly in the evenings, overall I love the pattern but the hand dyed wool tends to pool once in a while, I'm hoping that the pooling looks like a design feature. Unfortunately I was mid-row when I snapped the photo so you cannot see the triangle shape, trust me it is a triangle. What are you working on this week?

  How was your weekend? My Saturday was wonderful and my Sunday was 'okay'. Saturday I spent the afternoon reading The Outsider by Stephen King (it is really good).  Whenever I have an afternoon reading it reminds me of my childhood and teenage years when I would marathon read. I highly recommend. I finished the first Christmas stocking out of three to be made and cast on the second one. I'm pleased with my progress and now I know exactly how much red yarn I need. I will write some notes to my future self. Sunday is my chore day and I was delayed to do any of them because my husband has been doing some drywall mudding and painting in the laundry room and the master bathroom. I cleaned up all of that 'drywall mud dust' in the laundry room and that set off an allergic reaction. I wasn't wearing a mask and I should have known better. Being a human that can learn, I wore a mask in the master bathroom and thus avoided an allergic reaction. I was super grumpy over the

  I just love the mood of the above photo, I snapped it yesterday morning to capture the green sheen of spring arriving and afterwards noticed the sunrise trying its best to break through the clouds. Isn't it funny how you focus on one thing and one thing only and there are so many other elements when you expand your awareness. As you can probably tell, I've been diligently living in the now and ignoring the 'what ifs' of the future, well, I am trying my best to live in the now. Witnessing nature definitely places me in the here and now and I find it soothing to embrace the change of seasons. I'm grateful I live in the northeast where there are four seasons to enjoy. I took an eight month break from sketching daily and now that I am doing it once more, I am loving it. I see so much progress from when I first started the practice. I'm confident as I continue showing up and sketching, my skills will continue to improve.  Now onto the Christmas stocking, I had eno