November

Maskenball was finished a few months back.  Here it is:

We went to the Renaissance Fair in Bristol, Wisconsin on the Saturday before Labor Day.  It was fun.  Here's one of the rides there.  (We didn't go on any of the rides.)  We did look at the shops there (and bought an ocarina).  There was entertainment including jousting. 

Here is one of the presents we got for our kitties to celebrate the anniversary of their coming to live with us.  It's a spider plant.  We got it because we know cats love spider plants and also as a diversion because one of the cats likes to chew on cords.  This picture was taken right after we got it.  The plant's location now is under the Yankee table.

Maskenball almost finished

My daughter bought me some skeins of yarn when she was in Iceland over a year ago. It's lamb's wool, hand-dyed using plant dyes, from Hespa Dye Studio, Iceland. I love the yarn and the colors. My cats love it as well. It took me a while before deciding what pattern to use with the yarn. I finally decided on Maskenball in Venedig by Monika Eckert - a pattern I'd been meaning to make for years. (Monika is my favorite lace-shawl designer.) I decided to make a shawl with 5 sections/cake slices - and end when I ran out of yarn. I'm almost out of yarn in the middle of Clue 3. But, the shawl is a nice length. I love how it turned out.

March

It looks like last month's wind storm did more damage than we'd thought.  We took the kitties outside during the wind storm to show them that it was just wind - nothing scary - and saw that the wind had about taken off a large branch in back of the house.  It's hanging form the tree in the center of the picture.

Then today, we were looking around in front of the house and saw there was even worse damage.  A big tree in the front yard had almost lost 2 large branches.


On a happier note:  Happy pi day!  We made a chocolate meringue pie to celebrate the day.  Last month, I made a cherry pie to celebrate Washington's birthday.  I need to start making more pies.  We still have quite a few peaches to do something with.

I finished a new sweater for my DS2 for his recent birthday.  It's in Woolspun.


And, I'm no longer sure that thing's come in 3s as my MIL often said.  My DS2 stepped through the wood heating vent in the kitchen floor.  He didn't get hurt.  I was sitting down on a chair in the kitchen when a front leg came off.  I didn't get hurt, but we're going to get a new kitchen table and chairs.  (It's kind of sad to get rid of our old set.  We'd had them about 30 years, and they'd been with us on many moves.)  Our furnace stopped working, and we had to get a new one.  It was only just over a day that we were without heat.  But, I forgot about the trees.  Maybe they belong to another group of 3.

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.