winter days

    The sleet/freezing rain seems to have stopped, but it is hard to tell.  The snow has a crisp ice crust which should make sledding fast and slightly dangerous - the best combination!  Our back yard has the perfect sledding run that ends one of two ways (well, maybe three) and you always hope for the first.

1. You start at the top of the hill near the red maple and race down towards the shed, and aim to stop by hitting the front of the shed with your body at a sideways angle.  Headfirst happens, but it is not fun.

2. You hook to the left at the bottom of the hill and run the danger of sledding off the edge of the "cliff" created a few years ago when a flood washed away a large chunk of our hill.  It is not as dangerous as it used to be, since we have about four years worth of leaves and branches starting to build things up.

3. You hook left and as a means of avoiding flying down the cliff, you get tangles in the yews that were planted to try and hold some of the soil and curtail erosion.  A prickly alternative.

The children are off from school due to weather.  The cat is on the windowsill asleep after watching the bird feeder.  Classes do not begin for me until the day after tomorrow as I teach only on Tuesdays and Thursdays this term. I have a ton of reading for school to finish, a hot tea kettle and a warm fire.  Good day.

no tomatoes for you

    There was the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld - "No soup for you"  and this season, I must be the tomato Nazi.  I cannot give in.  January arrived and so did the dozens of seed catalogues who have me on their mailing lists.  I love this time - so cold and snowy outside, but daydreams of harvest time rolling around in my head.
    Every year I try something new, something I  have not grown before.  Last season was tomatillos - pineapple tomatillos, too be precise.  The verdict was: They are WONDERFUL!  So easy to grow and very prolific.  I love crops I can eat straight from the plant, as I am weeding.  However, last year, for the second year in a row, my tomato plants succumbed to the late season blight.  So this year,  in hope of freeing the garden from it, I am bypassing the tomato sections of the catalogues.  I hope a season without them will mean next year will be better.
  So this season I will be focussing on greens - lettuces, spinach and chard - and trying kale for the first time.  I plan on beets, because, well, I like beets! They also make some lovely dye.   We  will have the requisite pole beans and zucchini, but perhaps we will skip the gigantic space eating winter squashes.  I may tuck in some amaranth, as it is so lovely, and finally cucumbers.  But, no tomatoes for me...

The Red Chair

   This chair belonged to my husband's grandfather. It was in his office when he was the County Executive of Baltimore. This was between 1958 and 1962.  We think it was in his office when he was on the Board of Commissioners between 1942 and 1954.
      Regardless, it is an old chair.  It is a much loved chair.  For the 23 years I have known my husband, I have loved this chair.  It sat for nearly all those years in my mother-in-law's damp basement.  Nothing was done with it in terms of restoration, except someone, possibly my husband's grandmother, replaced the seat cushion with a vinyl covered cushion - yuck!
     What makes this chair so special is its inviting nature.  This chair calls to you,  "Come and sit. Flip a leg over the arm and rest your head in the spot between the wing and the back as you nestle in with a book.  Come and relax."
     The wings on this chair are far deeper than those found on contemporary chairs, allowing you to really snuggle in and get comfortable.  And countless people have done just that.  My children, my nieces, my husband, his brother, and heaven knows how many others have all flopped into this chair wriggled back and flipped a leg over the arm.
    It is for this reason that I have been asking friends and relatives, work associates and strangers for the name of anyone who does leather upholstery.  I finally called a local museum, who gave me the name of a guy, who gave me the name of a lady, who now has the chair in her possession and is ordering new leather to re-upholster this chair and bring it back to life.  After fifty - plus years, the surface is cracked and rips as you look at it.  The countless legs draped over the arms  have disintegrated the leather and the inner stuffing is showing.
     It will take a few weeks, and a lot more than a few dollars, but this chair will soon be granted another 50 years,  or more,  of happy readers draped sideways as they relax.

The Garden in WInter

A few images from this morning in the back yard. Just the winter coating of snow and the special protected spots that offer up surprise little gifts.

Remnant of summer

sedum disguised as Queen Anne's Lace

winter dinner for the birds

A lost shot

Stone stairs

a bird bath

snow sculpture formed by an overhanging step

snowcicle

hidden  treasure

waiting for the spring

Reminds me of a tiny snowman trying to climb a wall

Zinnia in the snow

"Here's rosemary for remembrance"

The sundial - there is no time in the winter

a hint of greens to come, hidden in a nook

Entrance to the chipmunks' den

verdant greens, even in winter

Resolve

   I wish I had more of it - resolve, that is.  I hope to do things, I often succeed, but I rarely resolve to do them and follow through - too much pressure.  So here are my hopes for the new year (call them goals if you like):
* purge a great deal of un-needed, unused, or unhelpful things from my house and my life  

• at least a third of the junk/fabric/etc in the basement sewing room which makes it too crowded to use as a sewing room!
• there are still bins of baby clothes and toys in the attic, and my youngest is 5 now
• I ask you, truly, how many sweaters does a person really need?

* practice patience

• pretty self explanatory 

* try to be kinder

• again- easy to understand.  As I tell the children, kindness counts. 
• a little less sarcasm and a bit more encouragement - for everyone

* finish painting the kids bathroom

• I got the walls done in an afternoon this summer, but never got the trim painted.  The walls are bright blue and the trim dull off-white.  It will look so much cleaner with the glossy bright white I have for it. 

* paint the kitchen

• We have been living with the former owner's pale blue kitchen walls for five years and it is time to put my own mark on this.  The former owners were wall paper fanatics, and I have stripped the borders from one bathroom, the hall, and the kitchen, as well as the tiny flowered wallpaper from my two sons' bedrooms, and the mallard duck wall paper from the other bathroom.  
• There is still a lot of their choices to change. 
•  We did repaint the foyer from builder's beige to yellow, but had to stop before the second coat when our youngest entered his Picasso phase and started wall drawing.  
• The dining room had old lady floral wall paper with a blue background and pink flowers - it's gotta go!  
• Then the piece de resistance is the living room which has a white on white patterned paper.  This would be lovely, except when they hung the paper, instead of butting the edges up against each other, they overlapped it, so nearly every seam is lifting, and in the afternoon and evening, when the lighting is right, every seam is visible. 
• My daughter has a wallpapered room as well, but her's was well done with lovely paper and although she wants us to strip it so she can paint her room purple, we've told her she is on the bottom of the list.  

* knit a complete pair of socks

• I started a pair about a year and a half ago. I saw some sock yarn for sale and on a whim, bought it and started knitting the pattern found on the label.  I stopped somewhere in the middle of the heel gusset and i now have no idea where to begin again.  I also did something with the gauge because they look like they will be large enough for a diabetic person with swollen ankles.  I think I may have to rip out what I have and start from scratch!

*  knit an aran sweater

• I talked about this last year, but realized I needed a book on cables and such in order to learn how to knit the fancy stitches required for the sweater.  I have a gorgeous sweater that my Irish godmother had made for me when I was fourteen - unfortunately, although it still fits from side to side and top to bottom, my arms are about 5 inches too long for it.  So I found some fisherman's wool yarn and will start with that.  I have also got some delicious wool fiber so I can spin the yarn for a second one after I get the technique down for the first.  If I do not make myself crazy with the first sweater - this "test sweater" will be for me - I hope to knit one for each of the children.

* losing a few pound wouldn't hurt me either!


Good luck with your resolutions, goals, hopes and other plans for the coming year. 

Happy New Year!

   The Christmas season was a welcome relief from the stressful semester we had at the college.  Budget cuts, as well as normal teaching  and design requirements, made this fall term feel more tiring that usual.
   Christmas Eve and Day our nuclear family was together at our home.  We did nothing grand,  mainly hung out, wrapped presents (Finished making some!) and baked/ate/slept.   My husband and I finished  our Christmas Eve wrapping/distribution duties at 3 a.m., and the children woke up at 5 a.m. ouch!
    The 26th saw my mother, one of my sisters and her son visiting us.  It was a lovely visit and we pulled out the china as well as my grandmother's crystal.

 This crystal has been in boxes for about 19 years, since I never felt I had the proper place to display/store it.  On top of that, with the number of times we have moved since we were married, I never felt we were in a place where I could unpack it without having to repack it all in a year or two.  It was like greeting an old friend to see it on the table.

   We opened our Christmas crackers and told the really bad jokes we found inside, and proudly sported our paper crowns in a very stylish manner.
  

My very chic nephew, daughter and husband in their Christmas crowns

grandma helping with great-grandmother's  "special glass"

   Now this was also the evening that the big snow storm hit the East Coast.  I had thought that they would be spending the night - this was what we had talked about, but my sister got it into her head that she had to drive home that night - even though we told them the storm was going to peter out by morning.  So, what is normally a 2.75 - 3 hour drive took them six hours.  Crazy!

   We traveled during the next week, but more on that in another post - I haven't had my coffee yet!

Some knitting

Here are a few photos of the afghan I made for my sister's Christmas gift.  I spun all the yarn and tried for a chunky, nubbly texture.  I like it.  She seems to like it, so all in all, I am pleased with the effort.

the unblocked afghan

I loved the heathery brown of the Romney lambswool

Pink is dyed Romney lambswool, the cream is Corriedale

I was aiming for a slightly bumpier texture, but maybe next time