Catching Up

Whew!  It's gotten busy around here.

It is our busy season at work (my husband and I work for the same company, so we are actually both busy - I'm busy in the office in the day - and back up to full hours, and he is working longer hours (very) for the next couple of weeks).

School is back in full swing - and the extracurricular activities that comes with it.  We decided this year that the boys would not be doing any extracurricular activities outside of the school board, which is a good thing since they have both signed up for cross country, lego robotics, plus soccer for S and spirit club for N.  Most of it is during school hours but 2 or 3 times a week, it is after school or in the evening.

Pottery class is back!  Yippee! Nothing new to share yet, but I am working hard at improving my skills.

All this means that there is less time for crafting and sharing.

 

I have managed to finally finish of a new wool hat for N's birthday (being modeled on the ever cooperative S for the picture).  A truly simple hat...cast on 80 stitches of worsted weight on size 4.5 needles, k2p2 rib for ages, then decrease 4 stitches every other row 6 times, and then every row 6 times, and then k2tog, k1 around for a couple of rows until you have a small enough number to thread your yarn through.  It is my go to hat for N because he loves it.  The orange yarn in there was dyed with Easter Egg dye a while back, and the grey was left over from his hat I made last year that was his favourite hat ever.

I am almost done this fingerless mitt for at work.  It gets darn cold where I work sometimes.  The guys all have layers of fire retardant clothes and coveralls on, so sometimes in the office, I am quite chilly.  If I turn the heat up, they melt, and since there are many of them, and only one of me, the better solution is to layer up myself.  This stash bash fingerless mitt is made of very chunky wool that I spun myself.  It was my first attempt at chunky yarn and I quite liked it but had no idea what to do with it because there was only 8 ounces of it.  It is the yarn I dyed with daffodils.  I don't know that you can really see it, but the last two inches (right by my fingers) is green. That was daffodils too with an afterbath of copper.  It is a really lovely colour in person.

In the kitchen:

An experimental focaccia with four flavour toppings.  I wanted to see what the family liked best so each flavour stripe was cut in 4 pieces and sampled.  The verdict:  the hubby liked the tomato best, I liked all but the tomato, S liked plain and olive, N liked plain and he says he liked the tomato, but he actually pulled the tomato off and left it on his plate - ha.  He did the same with the onion the next day in his lunch.  We will be experimenting with more flavours shortly - I'm thinking herb and garlic or just herbs.  And, as a bonus, I got to use my pizza peel for the first time ever.  With a little practice, it will be great.

Books:

 

 Sorry, my computer won't let me rotate this today! 

My parents recently made a trip to visit family in Quebec.  My aunt sent me some treasures from my late grandmother's house.  This book, for one - a surprise since she didn't speak a word of english, but I guess she must have just followed along with the pictures...and...

Treasures:

 a crocheted rug that will be going into N's room - at least until I can finish the one I started for him months ago, a small vintage table cloth, a beautiful piece of woven linen and some other woven pieces that I will have to investigate.  I am pretty sure they would have been woven by my grandmother many moons ago.  At least one has some irreparable damage on a part of it, so I won't even feel bad cutting it into some smaller tea towels.  I love getting these care packages of treasures every once in a while.

I'll be linking this up with  Creative Friday at Natural Suburbia and Fiber Arts Friday at Wisdom begins in Wonder on Friday.