Big Plans for 2013

Happy New Year!

 

The first days of January are always so wonderful. A vast, full year of potential lies ahead. For me the potential holds the following:
 

More blogging

I won’t promise to achieve this immediately, but I do know my blog has dwindled lately, and I miss it. My day job (the one that pays!) has been very greedy with my time lately, which is why the blogging has slowed. I have a plan in place to help correct this situation, but it doesn’t take effect for another few weeks, so you won’t see an immediate change, but I hope there will be more frequent posting in the future.

 

More pictures

I’ve just bought myself a wonderful new camera. It isn’t state of the art (in fact, it is last year’s model), but it is a wonderfully compact Nikon Coolpix S6200 that will live in my purse so I’m more frequently ready to take a picture or two, to share with you.

I didn’t actually use it much over Christmas, because we were either talking or eating, but I did take a moment to snap the following picture while I was eating my lunch today. The view of the decorations from my food court table, at First Canadian Place, was quite stunning. This picture doesn’t quite do the holiday décor justice, but I’ll share it as just one example of pictures to come.

 

 

More cooking

We spent the weekend with our great friends in Niagara Falls. We were there long enough to enjoy some spectacular food and drink. In addition to hanging out in their kitchen we had some time to kill during the day. What are two women most apt to do with time on their hands? Shopping!

We stumbled upon a Stokes store that was having a great sale and so I bought some great new toys. I’m not much of a cook, but I do love a good kitchen gadget. I recently decided that my hand mashed potatoes were not good enough, and that I NEEDED a potato ricer to improve things. So, into the store we went and I bought a potato ricer, micro plane grater, stainless steel measuring cups and a 14L stock pot.

The cooking fun begins tonight with some mashed potatoes, but there will need to be future recipes that involve a large quantity of soup or stew in the stock pot, and something with lemon zest so I can try out my new grater.

For the sake of a gratuitous picture… I give you Cici and her New Year’s friend. Sally played hostess to Cici and the two dogs played, and played, and played. Cici is still exhausted.

More sewing

The weekend shopping spree also saw the purchase of quilt batting, to stuff the quilt I’m making. And, I bought a new pillow form and some fabric for a new pillow for our couch, to replace the current one which Cici has claimed as her dog bed.

More knitting

And finally, I have great plans for more knitting. I’m afraid to look into my stash, as I know I will be overwhelmed, but there is plenty of yarn to keep me busy.

I’ve started my first 2013 knitting project, with plans to complete a lace cardigan in 2013.

I’ve already distracted myself from that project, and decided I need to complete a new pair of mittens before the end of January.

The “I make mittens” group on Ravelry, has been highly active in 2012. Mary Elizabeth, one of the moderators, proactively sought me out this weekend, and had me count up the mittens I made in 2012. I came up with six pairs, which means I now want to knit at least 7 pairs in 2013. Must get started now!

I’m sure I’ll knit some socks, and I’ve got yarn that would make a good hat, and of course there is the Leftover Blanket which would be great to finish in 2013.

So much yarn, so little time!

More time with friends!

I have had some good times with friends in 2012. You know who you are - if you were laughing with me, and not at me. J I hope there will be more coffees, lunches, dinners and drinks in our future!

I’ve also made some online friends for the first time in my life. My introverted, cautious side has held me back from calling people friends, if I haven’t met them face to face, but all that changed in 2012. Sharing a common love of all things Walt Disney World, I’ve been able to virtually meet some great people, that I truly call my friends. Again, you know who you are, if we’ve shared some laughter and support together in 2012. I wish you more laughter and only good times ahead for 2013! (And of course, I wish you many trips to Disney, which some of you are well on your way to accomplishing!)

Soooo…. That should be enough to keep my busy this year!

Blog Catch Up (and a dog party!)

I’ve been a bad blogger lately, and have not found the time to keep up with this thing. My day job has been keeping my busy lately, so I’m home around 7 most nights. By the time we eat and clean up, there isn’t much time left for this blog. I’ve got some plans in place to remedy this in the New Year, so if we all just hang on for a bit longer, this blog may come back to its former life by the end of January.

For now I give you a small sampling of what I’ve been up to in the past week, or so.

We had a pot luck lunch at work this week so last weekend was all about making some broccoli salad and peppermint cookies. The broccoli salad was well received, and the peppermint cookies pleased me, as they always do.

Cici loves the smell of peppermint cookies, so while I iced and sprinkled she worked on perfecting her begging pose.

I’ve been working on the Leftover Blanket lately. It is a great project for a cold winter night. Cici is quite fond of the smell of the real wool, so she usually come in for a snuggle as I knit.  One evening when I turned my back on it for a brief moment, I came back to this…

Admitting that in addition to lacking the time to blog, I also lack the time to bake, I solved my need for Christmas baking, by picking up an order from Gracie’s Christmas Cookies. It has been a challenge to keep certain hands out, to allow for some cookies to still be around on Christmas Eve.

I squeezed in some quality sewing time yesterday, which allowed me to make good progress on my quilt. I now have 48 12” squares ready to be joined together. I predict the quilt will be finished in the first half of 2013.

And finally, yesterday Cici invited some friends over. It was dog party central in our house.

There was begging in the kitchen,

Monitoring of the outside world,

Hanging out in the living room,

And much holding of the dachshund, against his best wishes. Cici is too big to hold like this, so we were all over this little guy.

Only eight days until Christmas! Love this time of year!

 

Quilt Triangles Become Quilt Squares

With the centre blocks all trimmed, it is time to sew all the quilt triangles into little quilt squares.

 

 

 

 

 

After the squares are sewn and pressed, I trim them down to neat little 3½” squares. Once again, I’m strangely compelled by this mundane trimming activity. A couple of years ago, I won the cute little Omnigrid square ruler as a door prize at a quilt demonstration. It is exactly 3½”, making it perfect for this project.

 

 

Meanwhile, when the ADD kicks into gear, I’ve been working on the Leftover Blanket. I was disappointed when I realized I wouldn’t be able to finish it before winter arrives, but this weekend I realized, it is going to be wonderful to settle down under the blanket, while I work on it.

 

 

 

 

Tonight’s plan is to plant myself on the couch, watch TV and knit. I’ll start with a dash of comedy with Big Bang and Two Broke Girls reruns, then I’ll give the debate a chance, and when I’m bored with the debate I will watch Parenthood. Parenthood was so sad two weeks ago and I can’t believe they didn’t give us an episode last week. They better give us some emotional relief this week! 

Yarn Mail

I love getting yarn in the mail! It is just such fun to walk in the door from work and see a new bag of yarn sitting on the table waiting for me to discover it.

Yesterday, I received my mini-skeins from Lydia at White Iris Yarns. The colours are so lovely!

Tonight, I rushed home from work and wound the skeins into little yarn cakes, all ready to get worked into the Leftover Blanket.

If you didn’t read last week’s post about Lydia’s inspiration for these yarns, be sure to go check it out now. She put some wonderful thought into these colours.  (Beautiful Inspiration post from September 9)

Can’t wait to see how they knit up.

Beautiful Inspiration

This week, I once again fell prey to the temptation to buy mini skeins of yarn from a random stranger off the internet. I was poking through the Ravelry Forums when I saw a posting about an offering of mini skeins based on “Colors of the Americas”.  I tried to avoid the temptation, but eventually I had to give in.

Mini skeins are something that Ravelry peeps (and I’m sure others) offer as yarn for use in scrap items such as my Leftover Blanket. A 5-gram mini skein of yarn will make a couple of squares for the blanket. While I don’t need more yarn, I love the idea of incorporating many different colours into my blanket; so I’m always open to the possibility of buying more mini skeins. In this case, I wasn’t really tempted at first glance, but once I saw the inspiration I couldn’t stop thinking about this yarn and had to buy it.

Lydia McKay hand-dyes yarn and sells it via the White Iris Yarns shop on Etsy. Etsy is a great site offering small business owners a marketplace for their handmade goods. Lydia uses Etsy to market her beautiful hand-dyed yarns.

As part of her post on Ravelry, Lydia shared pictures to demonstrate her inspiration for the colours she chose to represent the Colors of the Americas. I love these pictures, and they pushed me right over the edge and I couldn’t resist buying the yarn. I’m happy that she is willing to let me share the pictures here, so I can spread my excitement while I wait for the skeins to travel my way from Washington.


Arctic Warbler

Booby

Broad-Billed Hummingbird

Hyacinth Macaw

Indigo Bunting

Painted Bunting

Monk Parakeet

Roseate Spoonbill

Slate-Throated Redstart

Big Bend Patchnose Snake

Garden Tree Boa

Green Vine Snake

Red Fox

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

Mount McKinley

Dahlia

False Dragonhead

Mariposita

Passion Flower

Thank you Lydia for sharing such beautiful inspiration. Can’t wait for the yarn to arrive!

Sea Glass Inspired Necklace

This weekend I found myself floating around, unable to get focused on any one thing for long, but I did manage to stop by my beading table enough times to finish a necklace.

The necklace is made with beads from the Michaels store we visited a few weeks back. I love the green and turquoise colours, and the shiny small and medium beads, combined with the larger matte beads. All combined, they make me think of sea glass. (I love sea glass and if I lived by the ocean I would spend much time looking for some.)

I struggle with how to best display beaded creations for a photo, so here is a less interesting photo composition, but one that shows the beads off nicely.

As Cici followed me around, playing the role of assistant to my photo session, I thought I’d see if she would make a good model for my beaded creation.

Leftover Blanket Update

I’ve managed to make some progress on the Leftover Blanket. As I captured it for the blog, Cici continued with her assistant responsibilities and chose to add her thoughts and paws to the picture.

Next up, it is time to get started on some socks or mittens as my project for August. I’m going to have to get some focus on a new project soon, if I’m going to be able to finish it by the end of August.

Stay Tuned... Someday I'll Finish Something

I’ve been slower on the updates this month, due mostly  to my day job exhausting me, and the weather being too hot to make much more than a cold drink each night. Every day I do a bit of work on something and think about how I’d like to post it on my blog when it is finished.

Eventually I will finish something, but in the meantime here are the things I wish I was making enough progress on to be blog worthy.

I’m back into beading and this pile of beads and strings is just about to grow up to be a necklace.

I love these new green and turquoise beads and they will be quickly strung as soon as the pink piece is finished.

This month’s mitten project is only a few days from completion, but not ready for prime time blogging yet.

And once those mittens are off the needle, I’m be diving back into the Leftover Blanket and hope to make enough progress on that to warrant a blog update soon.

So, stay tuned and I’ll post a finished item soon (hopefully.)

Home Alone

This afternoon I experienced a rare moment of being home alone. Here is how I spent my time.

I started by eating my favourite soup that the boys in the family don’t like.

Then I settled onto the couch with Cici to work on the Leftover Blanket.

Cici became quite comfortable and relaxed after a while.

She needed the rest, since we had been out playing ball earlier which left her sprawled out and panting on the floor.

While we sat on the couch I watched a couple of movies. “From Prada to Nada” which is a modern version of Sense and Sensibility set in East L.A.  (Not great, but good enough for a Sunday afternoon); and “Real Women Have Curves” (Really bad – makes From Prada to Nada look like an Oscar contender.)

In between the movies I made brownies.

It was a great afternoon.