Kindergarten was cancelled, the rest of the school was 1 1/2 hours late and by the time I got to the school to drop them off, it was clear that school should have been cancelled entirely. I contemplated taking them back home with me, but didn’t. The buses have chains. It took me 45 minutes round trip to take them, however. Under normal conditions, it’s under 10.

I only have one trash bag left.

That’s my big drama. I tried to buy a box of them the last time I was at Costco, but they were out. Now I’m homebound with one trash bag. That sucks. (Not really, I’ll live).

Cold weather and icy roads make opportunity for a lovely crockpot dinner, and I happen to have one

Dinner is made, the kitchen is clean, and it isn’t even 2:00.

The only thing better than that is to have a cook. Which I don’t. So I’m very, very happy. Dinner done and kitchen clean also translates to some excellent, guilt free knitting time don’t you think?

(Hopefully, the flash picture will help you to see the pattern better, and for reference, it’s about 18 inches wide, unblocked).

That’s where I’m headed, after playing a few games of UNO with my very bored couldn’t-go-to-kindergartener.

It’s so cold. They keep predicting the weather will warm up and start to rain, and it keeps not warming up, nor raining. A few days ago, the forecast for tomorrow was rain, today they’ve changed it back to snow. The roads are icy so we’re not going out much. We slipped all over the place yesterday on the way to church, and we have 4 wheel drive. It’s so weird. Today we’re going to go out and replenish the groceries in case tomorrow leaves us snowed/iced in again. I’m almost out of bananas and yogurt for my shakes, and that’s not ok.

Today is cold and beautiful. The birds are going nuts. The jays came back. I haven’t seen them for a couple months, but they’re here today, horfing peanuts.

We’ve also had a tree full of bushtits, and several flickers and acorn woodpeckers. I set a pan of water out for them as there hasn’t been thawed standing water around for several days.

Yesterday I started working on cleaning out the kitchenette downstairs.

I’ve laid claim to it. It’s my room. I’m going to use the cabinets for storing my stuff, i.e. spinning fiber and supplies, scrapbook stuff, sewing supplies, etc. Also, when I get into fiber and yarn dyeing, and molding soaps, I’m going to do it down there. At some point, Nate wants to convert our upstairs cooktop to gas, and we’ll move our current range downstairs. Right now it just has a mini fridge and microwave.

I also want to work on my bedroom and exercise today.

Not much time for knitting.

Good morning! I had a great week. I exercised and ate well every day, alternating aerobic and resistance training, and eating my homemade shakes. I feel good. I’ve lost 2.8 pounds. Yay!

I’m taking it easy on the treadmill and walks, keeping to 35 minutes and not full speed, because I don’t want my knee and hip to start hurting again. Hopefully I can lose a little bit of weight this way, and push myself harder when I’m lighter on my joints. I’ve also downed the pounds, upped my reps, and closed my range of motion on weights because my shoulder started hurting last year, and I don’t want that to come back, either.

It’s been easy this week. I haven’t had any cravings, possibly because the shakes are so sweet. Do you think that a body’s craving for sweets is a misunderstood craving for fruit? I seriously can’t believe I’m not craving anything, and the only logical reason I can come up with is that two of my three meals a day are fruit.

Also this week, I’ve started this again.

Ahh, wheatgrass juice. It’s so weird.

How was your week?

Yup. I’m still doing laundry. I haven’t touched my knitting, other than to move it from room to room. The laundry is almost done. Really, it is.

The kids have been out of school for two days because of snow and icy roads.

They’re out of school Monday, too in observance of Martin Luther King Jr Day.

It’s beautiful here, and cold. I forgot to cover my cyclamen last night and it froze and died. I’m so sad. It was gorgeous and full of red flowers, and had been for weeks. I also neglected to bring in the hummingbird feeder and it froze solid. It appears the little birds survived though, as I’ve been watching them drink slushy nectar all day.

I can’t wait to post Health Group tomorrow. It’s going to be awesome. Right now, I’m going to sit down and knit on my Sea Silk stole (unless Clark wakes up right away). And it’s about time.

Yesterday, I took Veronica and Clark to a goat farm outside of Monroe. I met the owner, Aline, at the fiber sale in November, and the kid mohair I got from her was wonderful. Having fallen completely in love with a lot of the shawls in the Victorian Lace Today book, I thought it would be fun to get a 1st clip kid fleece to dye and spin into laceweight yarn.

We had a good time. Aline is a jewel, and we were delighted to see she had peacocks, chickens, dogs, blue headed turkeys, and baby goats! Veronica got to hold this little angel that was a whopping two days old.

and a baby angora as well

We were unfortunately in a terrible rush by the time we got out to the barn, so I didn’t have time to take great pictures, which is a shame.

I came home with a 49 ounce fleece that has gorgeous luster, and is incredibly soft.

I also bought a bag of kid mohair dyed various blues, and she gave me a baggie of tussah silk and angora rabbit to blend and play with.

But right now, I HAVE to do laundry, dangit.

The yarn is using up faster than I calculated based on my swatch, so I might be emailing you, Dris. :-). It’s still too soon to tell.

There are a few mistakes, and I have no idea how they got there. Two I’ve fixed without picking back, one splendidly well I must say which is cool since the diamonds are lace knit every row instead of every other row which complicates things, and I don’t usually fix lace, I typically rip back and redo because lace can be a nightmare. Two other mistakes I’ve left alone. They’re not obvious, but I still can’t imagine how I missed some yarn overs and still maintained the stitch count enough to continue the pattern without noticing. So lame.

I’m going to clean my kitchen all the way, and get a good start on laundry before letting myself pick it up again. And that sucks. I really don’t want to. I just want to knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit……………

Cute kid pic-

Great week! I have a chart I’m keeping that gets a star if I have my homemade shakes for breakfast and lunch, snack well, and exercise. If I exercise early enough, I can get a star for the day before noon! I have a star on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week. One of those days I had two fried eggs instead of a shake for breakfast, but I was still happy with that.

I’ve also been drinking a lot of water, which is another goal of mine. And I’ve started growing my wheatgrass again!

The first tray should be ready in a few days, and my blood is going to need the cleansing when my cells start dumping junk.

For some reason, it hasn’t been hard this week. I don’t know why, since I’m doing what I’ve been trying to do since the beginning of summer last year, and haven’t seemed to manage yet but right now, it’s not hard. I’m really excited about finally having a little bit of momentum.

We bought a scale last night, so I’ve finally updated the Health Group information in the sidebar. It was difficult giving up the stats from my all time high, which I’ve been clinging to to make me feel good, even though there hasn’t been any progress in the last couple of years. It was a leap of faith to start at 0 again.

How are you doing? Anyone else starting the year off well?

Danielle M sent in a picture of her Mistletoes stockings.

They’re gorgeous! Good job!

I’ve been spinning things, and knitting a little bit. I’ll show you Monday. What I’m really excited about is Health Group tomorrow!

Ok, I bailed on you this week. Here’s what I’ve been doing aside from trying to clean things.

The Sea Silk stole, which isn’t looking as wide as I expected, but I have faith that it will block and relax a little.

And I’ve been spinning some of the targee fleece

I didn’t know what I was going to make with it, so I just started spinning a single I might ply into a worsted weight yarn. It looked very fuzzy. I started spinning thicker, to see if it would show off the colors in the wool better, and it also looked extremely fuzzy, in a weird way.

Also, the wool grabs onto itself a lot, and it was really difficult to separate into a thick draft. (Am I even saying that right? I have no clue what I’m talking about, I’m just trying to explain it). I didn’t like the way that looked either, or how hard I was having to pull on it, so I decided to try laceweight.

It is really easy to spin that way. It’s pretty. The fuzziness is less apparent, and it’s a strong single. So I’m spinning a little bit onto two bobbins. I’ll ply them together, set it, and knit a swatch to see if the yarn is nice. If so, I have a shawl in mind out of the Victorian Lace Today book I linked on Monday, but it’s huge and will take a lot of yarn, which means a lot of spinning.

Nate suggested spinning it up and making another pair of clogs, which sounds like an excellent suggestion. I might to that, too. There’s enough wool here.

Funny story, my friend Hayden was here last night (oh, and none of us threw up this week, thankfully) to knit. Towards the end of the night, when I’d had enough of trying to keep my place in the lace pattern of my stole, and remain conversational, I grabbed the rolag (carded wool to spin) off of my counter and sat at my wheel. Hayden said, “Oh, that’s what that is! I thought it was a huge dust bunny, and was trying to figure out why on earth you were keeping it!” Haha. That’s kind of embarrassing. I’m glad I started spinning it to clear things up.