On the Mend

Good Morning friends!

I think I'm finally on the mend here in the Queen hospital! Hubby and I are both still coughing a bit, but I'm told that the cough will likely be around for awhile so we'll just have to deal with the annoying thing. I'm still tired very easily, but with some long nights sleep, that seems to be improving too. I even went to my knitting group on Tuesday morning and had a lovely time with two ladies that I haven't seen in over a year. They won't be back for a month because they are off to Hawaii for 3 1/2 weeks. I wish I could hide in their knitting bag and go along. Away from the snow, fog and rain. Sounds good to me.

Tomorrow night is the Valentine Dinner at church. We have two professional chefs in our church who have volunteered to do the cooking. It should be wonderful. Fabrice is from France and like an adopted son to us. Hubby baptized him and then performed the wedding for him and his lovely wife Heather. We are like their adopted parents and it thrills us no end to see them becoming more involved in church functions. They met as pen pals in High School creative writing class. Isn't that romantic? She was here in Spokane and he was in the south of France. He later went to Paris and became a chef but true love was too much for them and he moved here and married Heather, golly, it's been about 8 years now I think. Time flies. They have the cutest baby named Julian and he is our grandson for all intents and purposes. Anyway, Fabrice will be taking over my kitchen tomorrow to do a bunch of prep work for the dinner. It should be lots of fun!

I have some finished projects to show you, so with no further ado, here we go!

I finished my scarf! I do like the pattern very much, but the obvious striping hasn't grown on me, so I think it will go into my gift basket for when I need a quick gift for someone. Meanwhile, I bought myself some new yarn as you'll see in a later picture.

My valentine heart dishcloths are finished for my two sets of yearly dishcloths. I've begun another one of the lacey hearts for me, just because I really like it! I'm allowed aren't I? The lacey one only takes about 2 hours, the solid one took days. And that, my friends, is the difference between size 3 and size 6 needles! The lace pattern took more concentration and counting too, but still was much faster.

I decided to make a loaf of bread yesterday, but had a hard time getting it to rise because of the chill in the air. I took it to the basement and set it on the gas stove right over the pilot light and look what happened!

It was delicious for dinner along with real butter and homemade mushroom soup. Yummm!

This is my new yarn! I very rarely splurge on yarn from a "real" yarn store. I usally buy Michaels or JoAnn's yarn and sometimes Hobby Lobby. My wonderful Mother-in-Love sent me money for my birthday and looky what I got. It's an 85% Merino/15% Mulberry silk blend. I plan to make another scarf for myself with it. I had enough money left over to buy some precious little sheep stitch markers that I've been eyeing for a long time now. I have the plastic circle ones that work just fine. A whole box for $2.95, but just look a those sheep. And it was birthday money! I didn't have to take anything out of the grocery budget to buy them!

One skein was exactly what the pattern called for, so I got out my trusty scale and ball winder and wound two 51 gram balls with it so I'll know exactly when to stop and begin making the decreasing side.

Aren't these little guys cute?

And now, I need to get busy. Tonight is Bible study here and we're having a video with popcorn. We usually go out to dinner before study, but tonight we're doing a finger food potluck. I'm making my infamous barbeque sausages, (cut up sausage, put it in the crockpot with barbeque sauce! So easy!) But I'm also going to try out a new recipe and make apple struedel too so I need to get busy on that.

Thank you for all of the comments about the wood stove. The store came out to measure, but we haven't heard back from them on an actual price, which will be the deciding factor. It was an overwhelming majority vote of yes, get the stove so now we'll see what happens. I'll keep you all updated on it.

Now, I need to get off the computer and get busy. Have a wonderfully blessed day everyone. I wish we could all spend a day together and really share with each other. Since that's fairly improbable, hug someone that's not expecting it, you'll be amazed at the response. Everyone needs a kind touch now and then.

Blessings,

Betsy