peaches!

Our peach tree outdid itself this year. After getting only half a dozen peaches a year, we got over 100 this yeaar! The peaches are cut up and frozen for pies. Even our apple tree bore fruit this year - 10 apples.

I'm proud of a sweater that I just recently finished. This is my first project involving duplicate stitching. I may wear the sweater only as a comfort sweater. I'll have to see how the knitting group I'm in reacts to the finished product. I've also finished the sweater I was crocheting - Tunisian crochet.

June

I feel old now.  As of this month, I'm officially old.  June was a cloudiest June in record as well.  And, I like sunny days (with, of course, some rainy days in between to make things interesting).

We have a new refrigerator.  I guess it's our anniversary gift to ourselves.  It's a Samsung.  I'm just glad that it keeps food cold and doesn't leak from the water dispenser tubes.  It's also helping me finally learn left from right.  I don't know why, but I've never had a good handle on this left-right thing.  I don't get confused in German, Spanish, French, or Latin, but I do get them backwards in English and Swedish a lot of the time.  I left the stickers on the fridge handles with the L and R on them.  lol  I did wonder once why the L was on the right-hand side, though.

I made my first tam!  I followed Alice Starmore's direction for designing a tam.  This is the top - which looks an awful like a stargate.

Here's another view (modeled by a small-sized soccer ball):

I've finished all 5 of the Song of Ice and Fire books.  My oldest son got me hooked on the books and the tv series.  My other son got me hooked on David Weber's Honor Harrington books.  A new book, a prequel to the series, came out, and I read it along with him since it was co-authored by Zahn (a favorite author of mine because of his Star Wars books).  I liked the book and then started reading from my son's collection of Honor Harrington books.

May

It's almost not May any more.....
We took 2 trips this May: to California for DS1's graduation and the next weekend to the Indy 500.
Here he is just after the graduation ceremony.  My hubby and I flew out there as did our 2 other kids plus my sister.  It was really fun seeing everyone!

 We did some sightseeing while there, of course.  Here's a pic of the lone cypress off of the 17-Mile Drive south of Monterey.

April 2015

I saw my first finch of the year today - at our finch feeder.  Spring is here.  The daffodils are in full bloom as are the tulips.  Even our peach tree is starting to bloom.  (There are no blooms on the apple tree, though, or our hazelnut trees)  I haven't done any planting in the garden yet.  It's still too cold.

I'm continuing to crochet a hotpad per month.  Here's one that I thought would look like a flower but instead looks like an orange slice.  I should have chosen colors better.  lol
Since Nerdopolis has next month off, I won't be doing a hotpad next month.

I'm behind on trying to knit 12 sweaters this year.  I've only finished 2 so far.

March

We went to Wrigleyville last Saturday and don't see how Wrigley Field will be ready for the Cubs season opener on Sunday, April 5th, - just over a week from when this picture was taken:

The field itself looks nice, but there is a lot of construction still going on.

Evidently, the winter (even though it wasn't as bad as the one last year) was worse than they had planned on. Even the large video screen, that is being built before the bleacher seats are, doesn't look like it will be ready to go by opening day.  But, it will succeed in blocking views from the roof tops on that side of the ballpark.

Most of the snow has melted around here.  All that's left are remnants of what had been piled up to clear the streets.  Our daffodils aren't blooming but are up - as are the tulips.

There must be a fair number of coyotes in the area.  I hear them howling just about every night around midnight.  They don't howl for too long, but it is an eerie sound.  I'm ambivalent about the coyotes.  They did get rid of most of our chipmunks who were burrowing under different things and eating out of my vegetable garden.

I'm not going to plant vegetables this year - except for perhaps a hot pepper plant in a planter.  The vegetables in my garden did poorly last year.  So, I'll be planting just flowers and herbs there.

I've finally finished a pullover that I'd been working on for quite a while.  (I hate to finish things - possibly because I don't want to have nothing to do.)  I've worn it a few times.

I'm not participating in the Geek-along this year.  I still haven't finished the blanket from last year, and I don't recognize most of the panels for this year.  Instead, I'm going to try to knit 12 sweaters this year.

February

I'm trying to post at least once a month this year. Here's the snow we got on the first of February. The pic was taken the next day, but there is still about a foot on the ground - much more where it had been piled up to clear paths and the road.

I didn't get the double knit blanket seamed together, but I did get a lace hotpad/doily crocheted. I found the one this was based on while emptying a box.

And, I also got a couple hats done (for the successor to NerdWars on Ravelry). Here's my snowflake hat - done in mosaic knitting:

To change the subject.... The soap dispenser in the kitchen seems to be working now. I've learned more about soap dispensers than I ever wanted to know. I've reassembled it a few times and cut the long tubing to make it shorter. I'm not using the small bottle that came with it but rather a large bottle from the store that I set under the sink.

January

One of the things we got for Christmas was a Game of Thrones jigsaw puzzle.  It was harder than we thought it would be.  Granted we hadn't done any large puzzles for years, but....   Usually, when one gets a piece in and confirms it with a couple more pieces, it's where it should go.  Not in this puzzle.  Some days toward the end, we took out more pieces than we put in. My DS2 shown a flashlight down at the pieces to check fit. Here is the puzzle in progress:

And, here is the final version, with the second layer added plus a third layer of castles:

I've been working on getting the Geek-along squares joined. I'm working on my third row of squares now. I'm using the "official" join. However, I slipped stitched along the edge instead of picking up sts along the edge in order to make the join look smoother. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get all 24 squares joined together by the end of the month.  But, I should be able to get 12 of them joined together.  Plus I'm not sure whether or not to do 4 more squares and have a 4 by 7 square blanket.  Here are the first 2 rows:

By the way, the Geek-along has all new squares this year - in dk rather than worsted weight yarn. I'm still working on a knitted cabled pullover and a Tunisian crochet pullover. I'll post pics next month.