No Phone Zone

Go here to take the pledge: No texting or talking on your cell phone while driving. The life you save could be your own or that of a loved one.

Shopping sans husband

Do you prefer to shop alone or with hubby in tow? I don't mean grocery shop; I mean casual- browsing, maybe-I-can-find-some-good-bargains shop.

When I'm in the mood for some serious casual-browsing shopping, I've learned NOT to announce my intent until seconds before I head out the door, handbag on my arm, car keys in hand. If I announce it too early, I find myself driving with a male passenger firmly ensconced in the passenger seat beside me or, perhaps, even driving.

Ken doesn't mean to stifle my shopping pleasure, but he does so nonetheless. The minute we walk into, say, TJ Maxx, together, he's ready to leave. He hangs over my shoulder, which drives me nuts, or finds a chair by the door, which tells me none-too subtly that he's ready to head out it.

He never discourages me from buying what I want, so it's not as if he puts a damper on my spending. He's the spender in the family anyway, truth be told. It's just that I know his idea of shopping is to dash into a store, find the item he came for, pay for it, and leave. My idea is to look around for bargains.

Yesterday I gave myself a day alone shopping in North Conway, NH. It was a glorious experience. I probably spent 1 1/2 hours in TJ Maxx, for starters, and found some great deals. I seldom take the time to sort through TJ's racks of clothing, but yesterday I did. I found a Talbot's sweater, regularly $60, for $7.00. I got a girl's size 12 winter coat to donate to Coats for Kids, for $10, and I did some (don't hate me) early Christmas shopping.

As if that wasn't exhilarating enough, I then went to the Talbot's Outlet. Whoa! Was I dreaming? A pair of no-wale corduroy jeans, regularly $54, then marked down to $39, then to $29, hung in the "Take an extra 75% off lowest ticket price" rack. I paid a cool $7.50 for them. I was almost giddy.

The only disappointing stop was at the LL Bean Outlet. I used to find many bargains there, but since they opened their new store in No. Conway, I can't seem to find much that either Ken or I need. Maybe I'm not "at home" in the store yet and haven't given it a fair chance. The outlet store in Freeport, ME seems to be much better stocked.

Anyway, yesterday's trip to North Conway gave me just the mid-winter boost that I needed. I'm a new woman today. I'm ready to tackle the cleaning and cooking with a fresh attitude. Shopping without my husband was good for my soul.

Cake on wheels, etc.

Our family has a budding artist named Miss V. Miss V is only four, but she's not afraid to wield a crayon or marker to express herself.

In this case, she made a birthday cake drawing for her Uncle Ken. As you can see, the cake has many layers and several candles, too. Twelve candles to be exact.

You can also see, perhaps, that Miss V wrote

UN

C

L

E

K EN and HPPYP down the side and at the bottom of the cake. But do you see the "donuts" under the cake? Those are wheels, because Miss V knows that her Uncle Ken likes trucks and tractors. This is a tractor-cake, perhaps.

When she visits us, Miss V likes to sort buttons. I get out my bag of buttons, many which I've had for decades, and Miss V proceeds to sort them by color, by size, by shape, by whatever. She also doles out buttons to the rest of us, choosing special ones that make good gifts.

Here she's using my Nordic pastry tin for sorting.

In other news, our beautiful snow is all but ruined. We got heavy rain and wind from Sunday night through Monday, and that has left us with many bare fields. Depressing. I hope more snowstorms come our way before long, but there's none in the forecast at the moment.

I've been flirting with a little spring cleaning. It's not spring, of course, but I like to get an early start. Today I'm tackling my study, which is an embarrassing site/sight. If I added more to it, I'd achieve the rank of "horder." In my own defense, though, most of the stuff stored in here belongs to my sorority organization. When the new state president takes office in April, she'll acquire these boxes of mostly-useless-but-who-dares-throw-away-any-of-it junk. I can't wait.

But then there are my bins of yarn, too. I have three bins of it to dip into when I feel like casting something new onto my needles. It's a comforting thought to realize my yarn is there waiting for me.

That's the news from here. Nothing too exciting, I admit, but it was time to update my post!

Today: Cross-country skiing

I remember the first time I tried to cross-country ski. We were living at our old house near here, and we decided to try out our brand new equipment on an old logging road in back of our house.

We carried our skis and poles through the woods to the old road, put on the skis, and the rest was disaster for me.

I couldn't stay upright on the darned things to save myself. Finally, as we headed home, I attempted to ski down a slight incline. I did an amazing acrobatic act before landing on the snow. I ripped off my skis, hurled them down the little hill, and said, "That's the last time I'll ever use those *%^$@#^%$ things. Then I picked up the skis and poles and marched home. Ken was probably killing himself laughing as he walked behind me.

I love cross-country skiing now and look forward to getting out several times each winter. Most of our adventures are in the woods behind our house, but we try to get up to Jackson, NH, at least once a winter to spend a day on their beautifully groomed trails.

Today was our first time out on the skis this year. The snowshoeing trail we made yesterday served us well, but it's a fairly mild day so the snow alternated between super-slick and super-sticky. I found myself on the ground, flailing like an overturned turtle, twice. There's nothing harder than trying to stand up with your skis attached to your boots and your legs heading in various directions.

It was a good excursion today though. We always keep an eye out for deer, because the woods are a busy roadmap of deer trails, but we've yet to spot one. We figure the deer are hiding behind trees, snickering at us.

The top photo shows a spot where at least three deer bedded down last night. Ken said this might be a spot where they'll "pen up" soon, if the snow gets much deeper. Once they pen up, they pretty much stay in that spot for quite awhile. Ken said years ago, when he was a boy in Bridgton, ME, he was snowshoeing in the woods and came upon a deer pen. There were 7-8 deer in the pen, and they simply watched him with interest as he skirted around their spot. I'd like to come upon a scene like that.

I hope we can get out skiing again tomorrow. The forecast calls for rain coming in on Monday, and I'm afraid the rain might ruin our good snow conditions. We'd better get as much fun out of the snow as we can, while we can.

Snowshoeing

Back when Ken and I were dating and I had accepted his marriage proposal, many years ago (like 39+), I knew I was marrying a guy who likes the out-of-doors. The gift he gave me that first Christmas was a pair of ice skates.

Ken bought me this pair of snowshoes shown here in the header about 36 years ago. They've seen a lot of winter hiking, although we abandoned snowshoeing for quite a few winters after we got our cross-country skis. My snowshoes are the old style, handmade of an ash wood frame and cowhide. They're a good, study shoe. Ken's are the new-fangled aluminum kind. His seem to sink deeper into the snow than the old style does, so I'm satisfied to still have my original pair.

Today was perfect for snowshoeing. We've had two nice, heavy snowstorms over the past three days. I asked Ken if we should plan to snowshoe or cross-country ski today. I thought his answer made sense: we'd snowshoe today in order to make a good trail for cross-country skiing tomorrow.

So that's what we did this afternoon.

I love being in the woods in the winter, and by "being in the woods," I mean going out into our backyard and entering the woods from there. We can go about 1/4 mile into the woods and still be on our own property, so we don't need to worry about trespassing.

We saw a lot of evidence of deer, as you can see from the first photo. That's a perfect impression of a deer hoof in the snow. We saw various deer trails and several "beds" where they've spent the past few nights. We noticed a spot where they go to drink fresh water, for several of their trails led to that one spot of open water.

We saw evidence of a woodpecker's hard work, which is obvious in the second photo.

I suffered only one mishap, a tumble forward into the snow when my snowshoes slightly crossed each other. That's what you have watch out for when snowshoeing: the shoes want to cross each other when you're not looking. I'm thinking it would be smart to take my ski poles with me the next time we snowshoe.

Here's the nice trail we made for tomorrow's skiing.

And here we're arriving back home after our little jaunt in the woods.

New snow!

I got (am still getting) the new snow I've been wanting. We have about a foot of the stuff, so the world looks beautiful from here.

I'm hoping we can get out on our cross-country skis this afternoon. We should have a good base now for gliding along.

Molly likes to go outside and play in the snow. Trouble is, though, she never remembers to wipe her feet before coming back into the house.

My clogs: the final step...and one or two other items

Get it? Clogs...step??

Just an attempt at a pun, folks.

So when I'd finished knitting and felting my clogs, I was not done, done. Not by a long shot. We have hardwood floors in much of the house, and knitted/felted clogs on hardwood floors would make for some fancy but unintentional ice skating maneuvers. I don't fancy doing a triple lutz or a salchow jump when I least expect it, regardless of my enjoyment of figure skating as a spectator.

(By the way, if you're a knitter and have not yet signed up to join Ravelry.com, you really must. What a great treasure this site is.)

So I went to Ravelry, typed "felted clogs" and then selected "projects" in the search bar, and spent awhile looking at the beautiful felted clogs others have made. I was especially curious to see what they said about putting a non-skid sole on the clogs. I know you can buy actual leather (I think) soles to attach, but I was curious to see if something else might work.

One clog maker was pleased with the result of attaching some of that rubbery shelf-liner stuff to the soles.

Another mentioned using a clear bathroom caulk. Intriguing thought.

Yet another said she simply put "bubble paint" on the soles. So I decided to try this first. I bought a little bottle of Scribbles 3D paint and applied it to each sole. I then let the paint dry for several days. We'll see. I haven't given the clogs a test-drive yet, but here's hoping the 3D paint stays attached and I don't do any unexpected acrobatics.

Next item: Snowflakes.

A while back Kay in Hawaii happened to mention that snowflakes have six sides. Coulda fooled me, and here I've lived in Maine all my life and she lives in Hawaii.

I immediately googled "snowflake" and discovered Kay was right. (But although she lives in Hawaii, she and her husband and children lived in the Chicago area for many years, so she is well acquainted with snow.)

Anyhoo, I tucked that little tidbit into my memory and all but forgot about it...until I was watching Millionaire one day last week. The contestant, a Princeton grad student, was asked, "Snowflakes are traditionally which one of the following: pentagons, hexagons, octagons, or decagons."

I said to myself, rather smugly I admit, "Well, obviously they're hexagons."

The contestant didn't know the answer. He chose "Ask the expert."

The expert didn't know the answer.

The contestant then chose to eliminate two of the possible answers.

He was left with hexagon and decagon.

He still didn't know the answer.

Rather than risk the $16, 000 he'd already won, he decided to walk away.

So I now realize I'm in a very select group, apparently, of folks who know that snowflakes are six-sided. Had Kay been the contestant, she'd have boosted her winnings up to $25,000.

Final item: I'm ready for a new snowstorm.

(I took the header photo one morning last week when I noticed how pretty the icicles looked as they hung from the porch roof. They've long since melted.)

I can hardly believe it myself

I made myself a pair of felted clogs. Actually I knit a pair of felted clogs.

Using this pattern and this yarn, I knit a pair of clogs that actually look and fit like comfy clog slippers!

I wasn't convinced this could be done, although the directions seemed to say it could.

Using a size 13 circular needle, I began knitting the first clog on January 1. I encountered several knitting directions that I'd never dealt with before, such as "w&t," for "wrap and turn." The sole of the first slipper was almost done when I faced the fact that my yarns colors were a poor choice, so I raveled and started again, this time choosing a dark mixed grey for the sole and a rust for the top. (I've become a real pro and raveling and starting again.)

I've never done so much counting while knitting on any previous project. The thing knits up fast, though, and by the afternoon of January 2, I had the first slipper all knitted.

Still I was skeptical that these could actually be made to look like clogs, given the big, floppy nature of the pre-felted item.

Forging ahead, I finished knitting the second slipper last evening.

I was eager to get up this morning to get at the felting stage, but I was also really nervous. I've done machine-felting of knitted handbags and mittens, but a pair of clogs? I was afraid of making a major mistake and ending up with a pair of teeny-tiny clogs that would fit the brown dog in the photo above. And I knew she'd refuse to wear them, even if I made two more for her other two feet.

I put each clog into a nylon net laundry bag, added a little shampoo to the hot wash water, threw in a couple of tennis balls and other dog toys to give the clogs a good thrashing, and waited for the washing machine to perform its magic.

I checked the progress every five minutes or so. Once the clogs were getting closer and closer to a size 7 1/2, I tried them on. They needed just 3-4 minutes of agitation to be perfect.

I removed them from the wash tub, rinsed them in cold water, put them back into the tub to spin dry, then put them on my feet to shape.

They're now drying and will continue to dry for a couple of days. Then voila! A pair of handknit woolen slippers!

What amazes me is that someone was able to design a pattern that would result in felted clogs.

A look back at my 2009 knitting

I really should keep a journal of my knitting, with date started, date finished, brand of yarn, yardage of yarn, pattern used, size knitted, etc. This information would come in extremely handy when I'm using the same pattern a second time.

I keep saying I'll do that, but so far I haven't.

But anyway, here are many of my 2009 projects.

Top row, left to right: deep blue Aran wool cardigan for myself, Baby Surprise Jacket and hat for a friend's grand daughter, green short-sleeved cotton cardigan for myself, brown cotton February Lady sweater for myself

Second row: Brown cotton pullover and hat for a grandnephew, wool baby blanket for afghans for Afghans, various Fair Isle hats, tiny sweater tree ornaments

Third row: scarf (modeled by the inimitable Molly Brown), February Lady sweater for my niece Cheryl, socks and felted mittens for afghans for Afghans, doll sweater for "Kayleigh Calista," a Cabbage Patch doll which a grand niece received for Christmas

Fourth row: several balls of brown wool which started out as a fitted pullover for myself, but after days of knitting and finally measuring it, only to find it was about 12" too wide, was raveled and became a v-neck pullover for myself; fingerless gloves, elf slippers, and, finally, about the fifth attempt at following a very complicated pattern for another pair of fingerless gloves. This yarn eventually did become a pair of gloves, but I forgot to take their picture once I finished them.

Some of the additional things I knit this year:

Two more February Lady sweaters

Countless socks

Three more pairs of felted mittens

A black swing jacket

Several scarves

Etc.

I like to do a little knitting each morning with my first cup of coffee, and I like to knit again in the late afternoon, just before getting supper. I guess I could have worse habits.