One down, two to go!

Happy Friday my friends! We’ve made it through another week. We have beautiful blue skies again today and warm temperatures in the 50s are predicted. Next week it will be much colder and a rain/snow mix is forecast. We need to enjoy this beautiful weather while we can.

I am feeling much better. After the telehealth appointment last week and getting antibiotics, I quickly began to feel better. My voice still isn’t back to normal and I have a cough during the night, but I’m thinking that might hang on for a while. I’m just glad to have some energy back and able to get out and about.

I’ve been busy in my spare time this week starting Christmas stockings for Alex, our daughter-in-love “T”, and Baby J.  They saw Brad, Mandy and Pipers socks I that made for them years ago but hadn’t realized that I had made them. They don’t have stockings at this time, so when I offered to make some for their family they were very happy. I finished the first stocking last night. It didn’t take very long, only a few days, but it’s my first color-work project l and it also uses charts. These are both things that I have never done before, so please don’t look too closely. I also haven’t blocked the stocking yet, so there are some wrinkles. When I have all three stockings completed I will duplicate stitch their names on the top in white. I thought I better start early in the year in case of disasters and the fact that it might take me all year to knit three stockings. 😍 I couldn’t stop the top edge from rolling under, so I crocheted around the top, first with single crochet and then a row of half double crochet. I thought that worked well.

After I finished the stocking last night, I started this dish cloth in the lemon peel stitch. I’m using an H hook and I started out with 27 chains.

We have not been happy with the freezer in the kitchen since we moved in. It only left me about one and a half feet to get into the pantry and then we couldn’t see what was inside. Several people here at the apartments have told us they have their freezers in the closet of the second bedroom. So that’s what we did. We moved the freezer into the yarn room closet…

Then we moved the shelving unit out of the main bathroom into the space where the freezer was…

and moved this dresser out of the closet in the yarn room and into the space in the main bathroom where the shelving unit was! This is working out much better. Eventually I’ll go through the drawers in the shelving unit and it will actually make more storage for the kitchen. I also have a “bon appétit” sign in storage that we will hang above the shelving unit.

I also need to go through the drawers in this dresser and clear out a lot of craft supplies I no longer use. This was Dennis‘s dresser when he was a baby. Each of our three children used it when they were babies and it’s been my craft dresser for years. Dennis refinished it many years ago and I absolutely love this dresser.

My orchid is blooming profusely with six blossoms on it. It’s the first time I’ve ever been able to get an orchid to rebloom.

Apparently the light here in the apartment is very good for plants, because they are all doing well right now.

I have always wanted a pot of ivy and this one hasn’t disappointed me. If you remember when I got it, it was being thrown out at Walmart about a year and a half ago because it was virtually dead. They gave it to me for free and look at it now!

Lizzie ended up staying with us for almost a week and a half while their floors were being done in the house. This is what both of the girls looked like every evening after playing hard all day. Lizzie was on Papa‘s lap and Zoey was crashed out on my lap.

She went home the night before last and it sure is quiet around here now. Zoey is really missing her. I have never seen two dogs love each other as much as they do. They even seem to have their own language that they talk to each other in. One of them will say something and then the other one answers. It’s just too cute.

I can’t begin to tell you how content I am here in our little apartment. There are fun things to do all of the time and yet you can go into your own place and hibernate if that’s what you want to do. It’s a very, very active building. There are people jogging on the trail around us and taking their dogs for walks constantly. There’s always something going on. At 1:00 and 6:30 today they’re showing a Kenny Rogers concert in the theater. A Zumba class is going on downstairs right now.

One lady who lives on the floor below us has her long arm quilting machine in their living room. They had to take the window out to get the machine into the apartment! She hangs quilts in the hallway outside of their door and changes them out every few weeks.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week. Do you have big plans for the weekend? We don’t have anything in particular going on besides church activities. Next week we’re having friends over for dinner. Please stay well and healthy everyone.

Blessings and love,

Betsy