Is Spring Here Yet???

I really have to get my act together, time is running away from me but am really glad it is March already....what happened to February.....Oh...now I remember....the Olympics, thank-goodness for the Olympics, I think we need it every year to make February go so fast. Do not know what happened to us this year that we went so crazy keeping up with everything that was going on, usually we have our favorites and make sure we watch them but no this year we were totally addicted. Every morning I would say to myself....I am not turning the T.V. on until noon but...it was just like a magnet.....the T.V. would just suck me over to turn it on. I did get quite a bit of knitting done, I knit up some wool hats to felt and got them felted, now just have to decide if I want to put some decoration on them, have to think on that a bit. Have been knitting a couple scarf/hat sets out of a cotton acrylic yarn plus doing some house cleaning, the living room has seven windows with venetian blinds on them, have cleaned six of them and hopefully will get the last one cleaned tomorrow, RH was repairing a crack above that window. Have also been painting all the window frames and baseboards, they only had the undercoat on them. So everything is pushed into the middle of the room and it is getting to me, have decided everything will be back into place tomorrow. Weather has warmed up a bit and most of our snow has disappeared, usually when it warms up we get these terrible winds.....I am whispering this.....(we have not had any wind lately) The weather is changing all over the world....so is someone else getting our wind? The weather getting warmer is getting me in a panic to order my garden seeds. Snow has melted back from my flower beds and so far I do not see any mouse damage. Vegetable garden is still under snow and hopefully everything is good down there too, last year all the little fruit trees were munched off and came from the ground up, so here is hoping they are o.k. today we had so many little birds fluttering around, hopefully that means spring is just around the corner.

I am still here!!

A friend just e-mailed me this morning to say I had not posted for a month.....have I been hibernating for a month? Is it spring yet? I was not going to crawl out of my cave until spring arrived, we have had so many days of fog so bad up here on the hill you could not see six inches in front of your face but this morning the sun is out and I broke my hibernation as I was sure it was spring and had a panic attack as I have not ordered my seeds yet. Plus when Feb. arrives I get this urge to spring clean and have been trying to suppress it. After two months of suffering with my sore foot I can finally say I can feel that it is a bit better and last week just spent two hours in the dentist chair getting seven fillings redone, you are really getting old when you out live your fillings. Now my biggest problem is getting the computers straightened out, finally got my new laptop and for a while it was so great, son Tom hooked up a router so I could use the laptop where ever in the house......then.....one day a blue screen came up saying windows had problems and I could not open anything up.....it took me a week but I finally got windows up and running but can not get it to communicate with the router so have to come into the computer room and unhook the net from the computer in here to hook mine up. As the weather has been so bad RH has been on the computer steady with getting his income tax all ready for the accountant and all the Llama Canada business attended to. Do not know about this windows 7 I tell you, now all our other programs are not compatible with windows 7!!!!!! We had just got a new printer fax scanner not that long ago......it is not recognized by windows seven!!! have finally got the printer to work but not the scanner or fax. Is going to take a while to sort all this out, really did not need this headache. Was just wondering the other day.....after I had been working at sorting out computers for half a day.....can a person claim temporary insanity if they commit a terrible act after fighting with a computer for hours??.....just wondering...When the weather and roads clear up son Tom will be out to get me back on the computer track.
Meanwhile thank-goodness I have my knitting to hold on to my sanity! Have not counted how many socks and slippers I have knit while in hibernation,just keep piling them up. Finally got off the sock run and knit a hat to felt, actually it was knit twice, I hate it when you buy a pattern for something.....the picture they show is so great but what you knit from the instructions they give you is not!! My goodness do not know what this hat would have fit, it was so big there was no way it would felt down enough for a human to wear!! So ripped it out and worked with another pattern, still looked really big but after I put it through the washer a couple of times it turned out great. Decided to knit swatches of the wool I wanted to make felted hats out of and try to figure out how much each color would felt before I started knitting which is what I should have done to begin with. What a difference in the felting of the different colors.....note to self....always do a felt swatch to find out if the item you are making is really going to felt or not. Making the swatches showed me that there was no way I should be using the dark brown to felt something, it felted very little and the green really felted in length as compared to the rest. Now will see if I can put all this knowledge into practice....right?? We will see!! Well better go get at the day and enjoy the sunshine we have not seen for weeks. Posting a picture of my jade plant, of all the years I have owned a jade plant I have never had it bloom!! This one had bloomed twice.....do you think with all the dark and dreary days we have had it thought the end of the world was coming so it decided it better do something spectacular??

Is it too Late to Say Happy New Year???

Trying to get my act together and do something besides knitting socks, got all my Christmas knitting finished in time...can not believe that but I did, but can not stop knitting, have knitted a pair of socks for RH and five more pair of slipper socks since Christmas. Have been under the weather since before Christmas, asked the Dr. if they had any new feet or a new head around as I really needed new one's but she said they had no spares so I better work with what I had, have got Plantar Fasciitis in my right foot, Dr. gave me some information on the ailment, reading it I see it is a common foot problem in sports participants....????...when was knitting declared a sports activity?? Have to get busy and finish sorting alpaca fibre to get to the mill, missed the alpaca run in August and they have another one in February but should have had the fibre there already. Bought some soft foamy type tile to put around my sorting table to stand on so hope it helps. Most of my fibre in in the garage and it has been so cold and windy with blowing snow have not wanted to go out there. Has warmed up a bit the last few days so after the last load of laundry is finished that is where I am going and see what more needs to be sorted so it can be taken to the mill and then should sort some llama fibre and get it sent off to another mill that has a dehairer. Before I know it it will be shearing time again, so better make some room.
Llamas and Alpacas are sure enjoying getting out of the barn to soak up some sun the last few days, was a long cold miserable stretch of weather, this is the first time we have been snowed in this bad since we moved up here in the hills.

Still Working away...almost finished!!

Can not believe it...almost finished...knitting..only one gift left to knit, Baking....just a couple more things to bake, got the plum jam made today. RH was away for the day so no interruptions so managed to accomplish a few things. Weather has been so nice lately, was above zero today and had really planned to get out and visit the animals but ran out of time. Now I hear the wind blowing again and they say more snow. Hope it does not amount to much, we have enough snow on the ground for Christmas. RH just got all the snow pushed away from in front of the feed bin the other day and the feed truck came today so that is done.
I have four big Christmas Cactus and they have been blooming like crazy, took all the dead flowers off of them yesterday and there are a lot of buds coming so hope they are out for Christmas. Well off to bed and hopefully finish up the knitting tomorrow. We do not have our tree up yet...we do not even have a tree yet. RH went down to the tree lot in town, he had bought a beautiful tree there last year and wanted to get the same type for this year......this year the tree was eighty dollars.......who would pay eighty dollars for a tree you only have up for a couple of days!!!!! Now I could see it if it had roots and could be planted!! Needless to say...we still do not have a tree.

Baking and knitting and Baking some more!!

It is thirty below at our place right now and will probably get colder as it gets dark...why are we living here in the winter!! Grey kitty says she is not coming out from under the afghan until spring, she is a house cat...what about the poor barn cats!!I should be knitting them hats as Little Grey froze one of her ears a bit last winter and they are in the barn with a stack of hay bales to snuggle in.
Just finished baking eight dozen chocolate chip cookies and have all the dishes washed up, did the gingersnaps a couple of days ago and yesterday did some chocolate noodle whatevers, tomorrow is the make jam day, all to go into Christmas bags for kids and grandkids and grandkids girl friends. Few more days of baking and will have that ready. There are twelve of them this year. I also do up little bags of goodies for all the nieces and nephews on my side of the family, twenty bags to do there. pretty well have the stuff ready to go into them, just have one more thing to put in, I take some paper sandwich bags and stamp llamas all over them and tie a ribbon around the top with their names on them, do not see them that often and by doing this I remember their names and they remember me...the "Llama Aunty". Am also trying to get some Christmas knitting finished.....might be some I.O.U's there. Still have to do up my Christmas letter.......think I will make it?? Is it better if I just ignore how many days I have left and just keep plugging away.....or should I get all organized and figure out how many days are left and figure out what I can do???...I think I will just live dangerously and wing it, leave the stress to the last day. Well off to knit......sure hope it warms up around here!!

Well have we got snow...and cold...and snow....can not keep the snowdrift shoveled off the front step, good thing the wind keeps the snow away from the door downstairs or we would be jumping off the back deck to get out of here. For the last two days we have had very...and I mean very high winds but was not bad as it was warmer but last night the temps went to twenty below and the wind is still blowing from the north...do not even want to know what the chill factor is. We did not get to either day of the Christmas market, have only seen one truck go by the last two days and it was yesterday someone got through to try to get a large bale of hay into their cattle up in the hills, watched them snaking in and out of pastures where wind had blown the snow off the ground to miss the big drifts on the road and then seen them get to the pasture but do not know if they found their cows to give them the hay. Now this morning a snowplow went through so roads will be open for a short while. RH moved animals around all day yesterday to try to get them all into barns or shelters, the shelters keep getting blown full of snow so he has to shovel them out, the llama females we have no trouble with them staying tucked in the barn but the two alpaca females just will not go into their shelters, which is usually o.k. but this year they forget they have baby Bella to take care of, so RH moved goats around and got them into the big barn where he can lock them in until the weather clears, Mummy alpaca is not a happy camper but Bella will be safe. And then because Mummy Alpaca is a fence jumper when we try to put her somewhere she does not want to be RH had to drag panels over to the paddock where she is to discourage her from jumping out where we do not want her as there are males on the other side of the fence. Yesterday he said the males outside had ice hanging off their eyes and mouths so he got them up and got the ice off their faces and got them eating and moving around. The male llamas are so hard to house as one will go into the barn and keep all the others out so we have high slab fences they can tuck behind to get out of the weather. Which could be another problem as the winds get so strong they blow sections of the slab fence down...so far no one has been hurt. What would we do with ourselves if we did not have all these animals to take care of. It is survival of the fittest I tell you!!

Storming and then Storming!!

Was supposed to be our last market of the year today and tomorrow but woke up to wild wind and blowing snow, could not even see the barn so no market today and it has stormed all day. The wind was coming from the northwest all day so the windfence was protecting the house a bit but now tonight it changed to straight north so no protection from the windfence, house is creaking and moaning. The snow was piled up on the front step halfway up the door and RH cleaned it off when he came back from the barn tonight, I had taken Maxx out to do his business and could hardly stand up in the wind. Now I just looked out the door and the step is covered again and snow half way up the door again, if we open the door it will all fall into the house.I do not think there will be any getting on the roads tomorrow either unless the wind quits during the night and we see someone cleaning the road early tomorrow morning...chances of that happening are nil. Roads have been closed all around us.
On the happy side I love the colors of the yarn I dyed the other day, not the best picture with the poor light in here but it is not bad, just does not show the shine of the yarn. The color of the yarn was just a bit darker than the cone sitting with the skeins. It is llama that a fellow had spun up at a mill from his llamas a few years ago and he donated it to the llama club for a fund raiser, I bought the two cones and have been dyeing it up and making scarves with it, it is very fine, makes beautiful lacy scarves. Will tuck it away until after Christmas. Well here is hoping this bad weather goes away in the next day, the wind is making me a little crazy I tell you, is supposed to turn really cold for next week.