It feels like autumn at last! I step onto the back deck, feel the gusty, cool breeze, hear the leaves rattling lightly, smell the damp rain ... and I'm so happy! Summer is over, finally! Now life and joy can begin!
(I deeply apologize to those who cannot identify with this feeling against summer. I know I'm outnumbered.)
I've been physically active recently. My doctor told me that my pre-diabetic situation remains unchanged since last fall, but that my vitamin D levels were very low; this deficiency was likely causing my fatigue and achiness. She gave me a prescription for D2, and voila!!! I'm feeling so much better!
I've been clipping shrubs and suckers on trees. Totally cleaned and rearranged the guest bedroom after our daughter moved out to the Little Dependency. Dismantled a huge drafting table for Adam and cleaned said Dependency. Finished knitting my homespun sweater!! (It's a bit wonky, but I think I love it.)
Loose ends still need to be woven in. The neck opening remains too big in spite of my cinching it up along the back. The bottom hem curls up. (sigh) But it's still a very fun sweater, and I'll enjoy it. I'm working on another mitred square blanket:
This one will be smaller than the last, and will have a diagonal pattern.
I've tried to keep walking each morning when I'm not doing other physically-challenging farm or house work. Next, I want to paint our front door a bright teal/blue.
Here's a video I made yesterday -- short and sweet. My favorite poem.
Here's another video of ambient music I've been listening to lately. Very soothing.
In two days I'll drive up to West Virginia to see my dear mother, plus son and daughter and baby grandson will be there!!! I can't wait to hold and play with him. I'll be sure to take photos and make a video.
Okay, all you lovelies, venture forth into the brisk beauty of fall and think of all the fun things coming before the year's end. Thank you, Lord!
It's certainly time for a blog post! We've been busy, and I'm sorry to say much of it has been the drudgery of doctor appointments. However, we are so thankful for healthcare, aren't we?
This stunning sunrise greeted me one morning ... Sunday, I think. No one else was awake; no one drove by on the road.
Adam and I are trying hard to be healthier. His health is very complicated with so, so many medications with various side effects. It's nearly a part-time job to keep up with his health, poor fellow! Diet plays a big part.
I'm eating his healthy, nuts-and-bolts bread for breakfast, farm-fresh eggs, and avocado. Pretty yummy!
He made this for lunch: red pepper stuffed with chicken and Mexican rice, and a kale salad.
And this: "sliders" (mini-burgers) and that same Mexican rice. The burgers are steamed over a bed of sauteed onions, topped with cheese, and then a smear of mustard.
Here's a recent photo of adorable Ellie Kate, our newest grandbaby!
I know!! Those EYES!
I'm painting quite a lot. Roses:
Apple blossoms:
Finally I am cracking and picking the pecans I gathered in the fall. They needed to cure, but it's past time to get them into the freezer!
Adam and I spent several good mornings in the veggie garden, which I had rather given up as a lost cause. We did no weeding last summer ... and you can just imagine the carnage! But he is ready to get back outside and gradually build some stamina. Together we cleared the strawberry bed, put in new (well, transplanted from elsewhere) strawberry plants (lots of them!), cleared the asparagus bed, cleared the bed for sweet peas and lettuce. That was a huge start. I wish I had a photo! I would go TAKE a photo for you, but it's raining steadily outside and has been doing so all day and last night. This is a blessing; we've been quite dry, and all those new plants need moisture.
I'm so very busy with my little side business -- making soaps, shampoo bars, painting cards, filling and mailing orders, contacting customers. I desperately want to get back to spinning and weaving, but there's no time (yet). I am still knitting that slow blanket.
Not very elegant looking! This is just the first row. We'll see if it looks pretty ... or looks jakey! At least it keeps my hands busy.
Let me see if there are any new youtube videos to share ...
This was a lovely day trip with two friends:
This is more soap-making:
And this is just an ordinary day of various little activities. Not sure why I thought that would interest viewers!
Much love to all of you in blog land. Stay healthy, stay hopeful, and I'll give you the MOST helpful advice I've heard in several years: Go get a therapist if you need one! It's past time for anybody to be embarrassed about going to a therapist, like we used to be embarrassed about going to the gynecologist 40 years ago. We must all attend to our mental health, and as with all health, sometimes we need a little professional help. That's my pitch for the day 😀
Adam missed me when I was gone. He keeps telling me so. He makes me delicious brown bread for my breakfast toast.
For lunch he made tortellini and Kaiser buns.
I, in turn, mended his favorite mask by shortening the elastics.
I packaged some lavender soap today too.
We have daffodils blooming now -- hooray! I look forward to this each year, a true start of spring and all the new, fresh beginnings for all of us.
Adam is weeding out parts of our veggie garden, starting with the strawberry bed. There ARE strawberry plants in there, I promise! About ten of them.
He's also working on the asparagus bed, and then will clear out my pea bed. Lettuce will go next to the strawberries. It's a struggle because he's been pretty inactive since last spring, while he was ill. He is still having some health issues -- medication and peripheral issues -- but he wants to get back outside.
I've started a long knitting project, a blanket. The pattern is called a "mitered square" blanket. I found it at a youtube channel that I like, and thought, "I can do that!" I'll share more about it in a youtube video soon, but here it is so far:
My sprained knee is much better, and life is stumbling along as usual -- I won't pretend that it's all easy sailing! But we are getting along, just like you are, I hope. 😀 Adam is a lobbyist/advocate volunteer for people with Rare Diseases in North Carolina right now, and he hears about the most harrowing illnesses that some people have, much worse than his own. It is a reminder to be thankful for each normal day, no matter how many things go wrong.
Ah, pancakes. Those are strawberries from our garden last summer, frozen all through the pandemic. They slept peacefully in the deep freeze and came out for this delicious appearance, haha.
Tomorrow I go off for a day jaunt with two friends to a rural area renowned for good bird-watching. Mostly, it'll be a fun day out with two ladies I enjoy very much. I'll tell you about it next time!
I'll end with some cards I painted in recent days, and maybe a youtube link or two to my latest videos. Thanks for coming by for a chat, friend. Take care of yourself.
Is it awful to say that nearly everything else in life has taken a backseat to our stress over Adam's illness? Many of you know, how very hard it is to live day after day with a very ill spouse whose condition deteriorates, and not being able to find a healthcare person who can help. I hardly sleep one night, sleep badly the next, and the third night I sleep too hard, catching up for the other two. My stomach is in knots.
We did have a good virtual appointment with a rheumatologist today who I think will help, ordering lots of blood work and giving steroids in the meantime. We're tired of steroid, but so thankful for them. Adam can barely swallow now.
On to other things!
That's a card I painted from a photo on FB.
A friend bought it right away.
Those are elderberries.
I neglected to visit the veg. garden for weeks,
so this is what was left.
Maybe next year I'll be more careful to harvest them.
I was shocked to discover my lone lavender bush alive.
And flowering! So I snipped a few off.
I painted a little bird and some zinnias
from a friend's photo.
I bought some center-cut bacon, which we usually avoid
because of the cost. But it makes a yummy egg sandwich.
I always have a prayer shawl in the works,
even if it takes me months to finish.
The pattern is simple: Knit one row. On the next row, leave 5 knits on each end. In between, do this: YO, K2Tog, 2K. Alternate these two rows. No purling!!
This is Simply Soft, which is light with a nice sheen. The color is Light Country Peach.
I think that's it for today!
Everyone, thank you for visiting this little spot online.
I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek. I'm struggling to keep busy these days. January has been hard, for some reason. I think I slipped into a bit of depression and found it difficult to motivate myself to do much except what was necessary. I also find myself unusually disinterested in my usual creative pursuits, which is worrying. But I hope as the outside world warms and brightens, so will my inner world. My handspun yarn from all those many months/years ago has been sitting in a bag.
I stopped spinning alpaca fleece partly because I didn't know what I wanted to make with it, and I couldn't sell it. At last, I saw this cool sweater on a friend's facebook page and asked her if she'd send me a photo. She did.
I love the shape, the collar, the bulkiness, and I could see a sweater like this, made from my handspun yarn. The body of her sweater is purl stitch, while the placket is knit, and the bottom edge is ribbing. My yarn is not as bulky as that -- some spots are quite thin -- so I need to augment it with another complementary yarn. My yarn is rather pale pastels, so I chose a white. I was quite limited by what's in my yarn stash; what yarn do I have enough of, to make a sweater? I have 6 skeins of this:
It has a little sparkle to it, which I'm not wild for, but when I combined it with the handspun yarn, I think it looks okay.
I'll probably have to spin more yarn, which will be a good motivation to haul the spinning wheel out of the corner and learn how to spin again, haha. A sweater takes a lot of yarn. I was tired of scarves ... So Many Scarves. In addition to daffodils, now our Japanese magnolia is blooming also!
Monster Egg update: This morning I found an itty-bitty egg, the first egg laid by one of my new pullets. So sweet! Look at this baby, next to the Monster!
When you have hens, you get such a delightful assortment!
I was busy filling a good-sized watercolor card order, but I did paint this one too:
Are you wondering what Adam's whipping up in the kitchen? This was lunch today:
All I can say is WOW. It was delicious. And if you want to learn more about baking a perfect loaf of bread, just view this:
Happy Valentine's Week to you all! Thank you for stopping by! Your visits and comments cheer a girl up :)
Unfinished knitting projects are bad enough, but when one has two hands (which most of us do) and one knits something for one hand, and then waits a month or so ... well, one forgets what one did. I knitted one fingerless glove.
It's not yet been sewn up to transform it into a glove.
I did some sort of pattern from the bottom up: ribbing, stockinette stitch, then some mysterious pattern that must've made sense at the time, then more stockinette, finishing with a crocheted picot.
Now it's January, and I decided I'd better finish the second one. Except I had no idea what I'd done in that middle section, the mysterious part! I hunted through my amazing book of 750 knitting patterns, to no avail. I looked a second, then a third, time. I couldn't find anything that resembled it. At last I chose the most likely pattern match and launched in to the second glove.
I was wrong. Close ... but "no cigar," as they say. I like this pattern better. Should I pull the other one out (soon! while I can still remember what I'm doing?) Also, I dug around in my studio last night for reading material. I finished Cheaper By the Dozen at last, and needed something new. I found a stack of books I must've bought myself last Christmas, or who knows when? Now I will go through them one by one.
I'm starting with The Hare with Amber Eyes, set in Japan (at least at first). It's non-fiction and was reasonably interesting last night when I began it.
Resistance Fighter and The House Near Paris are both WWII France, although the second one was printed overseas, and the cover text is very badly done. Coasting is a sailing book. I've promised myself if I find any of them boring I'm free to give them to the thrift store. Actually our thrift store currently has a sign that says it's not accepting any more books! There are a few "Tiny Libraries" in Oriental, and I suppose I could slip them in there with no one noticing.
Last, some advice about lemongrass. I bought a few stalks at the local Asian market store.
I put them in a glass. From doing this before, I hoped they might sprout roots, and I could later pot them and anticipate mighty lemongrass plants this summer.
The roots have begun! There are quite a few stalks in the glass, so we should have massive amounts of lemongrass this year. I've been snipping off bits of it and adding it to my black tea.
