Wordless Wednesday - Work in Progress

Life is good

It was a rather Green Christmas

Coming down off the holiday rush always takes time. This season was no exception. We had a truly wonderful holiday, filled with friends, family, warmth and laughter. The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve we held no fewer than 3 parties. There was food and drink flowing, stories, jokes, and games... It was a good holiday.

Crockpot Mulled Wine - Recipe below

But, now we get into the long, slow stretch of the winter. The snow was slow i n coming, but it has hit Indiana with a vengeance. Between Thursday night and today, the brownish-green winter grass has been covered with a thick, white blanket of snow. When I went in to work on Thursday, it was in the mid 40's. When I came home that night, the temperature had dropped and the snow had started to fall. Looking out of our bedroom window at the street below, the neighborhood appeared abandoned. No cars had driven down the length of the road, leaving the snow pristine and unmarred by tire tracks.

Yesterday, we left to run a few errands and then came home to our nice warm house (what a change!) and good food prepared by Big Guy. Little Guy vanished upstairs. He was supposed to clean his closet and put his clothes in his dresser, but I heard the unmistakable sound of battle as his knights fought off the encroaching dragon. Our plan this weekend is simple (especially since Monday is a holiday). Stay home.

I woke up this morning and made a pot of coffee. Shortly, I'll sit on the sofa, curled underneath a blanket as I work on a blanket I'm crocheting. I've been burning through Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Netflix as I work, so that will probably go on again. Little Guy will hopefully finish putting his clothes away and Big Guy will continue to play his Civ 5 Christmas gift.

It's peaceful here. Life is good.


MULLED WINE
2 bottle cheap red wine
1 cup brown sugar
2 oranges, cut into pieces
2 apples, wedged
Handful of cloves
Cinnamon stick
Brandy
Rum

Put the cinnamon stick and cloves on the bottom of the crockpot, top with the apples and oranges.  Sprinkle the brown sugar over the top and splash in the brandy and rum.  Add the two bottles of red wine.  Don't worry about brand or type, get whatever is on sale.  Put the lid on the mixture and set on low for about 6 hours.  Stir once in a while and make sure the lid is on so the entire mixture doesn't evaporate.  It is remarkably sweet, good, and warming. 

Viva la yarn revolution!

It's been a busy week. After the rally on Saturday, I attended another Assembly on Sunday and I knew it would be too busy a week for me to do much else on the ground. In my spare time, I did get another hat done for the Occupiers and a set of mittens as a special request.

I'm not sure that mitten is what you think it is...

The mittens look like they just should not work. The thumb looks odd, the pocket for the fingers looks way too long, but I tried them on, and they are actually comfortable. They should also do well at keeping hands warm. The oddness comes, I believe, from making this up as I went along.

I tried to follow a pattern, I really, really did. I went and looked at no fewer than 10 patterns, trying to find one that didn't seem ridiculously complicated for a MITTEN. I was unsuccessful in my search. Me being me, I decided the best thing to do was DO IT MYSELF. So I did. I took bits of one pattern and bits of another pattern and decided to fake it. The result, as I said, was odd looking but functional. It won't win any awards for prettiness, but it should keep fingers from falling off.

So how did I make such an...interesting piece of crafing? Well, I started by creating a base chain. I stitched 10 and then started crafting around the base chainUsing the last two as a turning chain, I single crocheted along one side, putting two stitches in the final link and then stitched back around the other side, creating an oval. When I reached the other end, I put two stitches in that too, so I created a increase. It worked. I kept stitching and increasing until I felt the mitt was wide enough and then just crocheted a tube.

The thumb was going to cause me difficulties, I knew it. So, when the mitt pocket was long enough, I pulled a lesson from another piece of crocheting I had don and began to crochet in lines again, back and forth, creatiing a gap to go around the thumb. When it was wide enough, I slip-stitched the edges back together and continued to finish the palm. For the thumb, I went back to my gap and basically did the reverse of the mitt. Instead of increasing, I decreased every row and ended up with a thumb. Even more shocking, it worked. Mind. Blown.

I then attached a cuff to the bottom and voila... A mitten. I'm rather proud of myself. Boy, does it look MESSED UP.

This month has been rough!

Well, this month's class is over and I am thrilled to reach the end of the month.  this month was harder than usual due to the illness that went raging through the house.  After it laid us up for a week, I realized that I had lost so much time and missed the grading I needed to get done.  It was horrible trying to catch up.  But last night at 9:30, I filled in the last blank spot in my gradebook and submitted my grades. 

Another month down and now I have a week off.  This break is definitely needed and I will be taking advantage of it.  Part of it is going to be spent finishing the recuperation process from this illness.  There will also be cleaning, crocheting and hopefully calmness.  I need to do some prep for next month, but I am free baby! 

Little Guy and I are going to continue to work on the potty thing.  He's still balking at the potty,  He wants to do what he wants to do and doesn't want to take a break to sit on the potty.  It's turning into a major headache but I cannot give in.  We've relegated diapers to sleep-time.  And, unfortunately, I've learned that sleep time cannot include rest-time in the front room because he'll take advantage of it. 

However, this weekend we have a birthday party to attend and I am rapidly realizing that Easter is approaching and we have gotten NOTHING for Little Guy. This needs to change. 

A Nearly Frigid Fall

A chill is in the air as fall and winter begin to descend on Northern Indiana. I should consider myself lucky that we had such pleasant weather lasting through September, but now I can see the leaves go from green to the yellow and red shades for fall. The warm colors belie the coolness in the air though. We had our first frost this week.

My tomatoes never did well, nor did anything else I planted this year. I know part of it was the sheer distraction we experienced with the losses we suffered this summer, but I also blame the groundhog for eating my beans and the ground for sucking so hard. There just isn’t enough good dirt to grow anything useful. So, next year, Big Guy is building me a raised bed and we’re going to go through and add real dirt to the soul and hopefully do much better.

I finished my super secret project, which was a 9 square blanket for my sister-in-law for her birthday. It turned out much better than I could have hoped for, considering the crunch I was under. 9 granny squares of 9 rounds, with each grouping 3 sets of triple stitches. Clever enough for a birthday that occurred on September 9, 2009.

I’ve also been busy teaching. I just finished a round of Composition 2 and am preparing to start a class for the basics. This will be my first time teaching this particular class, so wish me luck! I was telling Big Guy, I really do love teaching and it is rewarding to see people connect with the language.

We received our Angel Food Ministries box and already have made some tasty meals from it. My personal favorite involved pork chops, pears and fresh sage from my garden. It was truly delicious and the pears complemented the pork beautifully. I also made chicken and beans in the crock-pot because we received two HUGE chicken breasts so I used one breast with beans and I think the other might be slated for some homemade chicken soup. Yum!