Weaving Away!

I have 18 inches of 8 inch wide fabric woven!! I am so excited! Now I want to make kitchen towels and placemats and fabric for sewing and rugs and.... I have a million ideas flying around in my head. I can't believe once you have the loom all set up how fast you can produce fabric. It is amazing. Now I want to go to the store and get all kinds of thread and yarn to use. I know now what kind of warp thread to get for the rag rugs I want to weave. This is the neatest thing I have learned for a long time. Thank you Sharlene for loaning me your loom - I'm hooked!
And our new dryer comes tomorrow...Thanks to Michael.

Weaving

Yesterday I made good progress in warping the loom. I am almost ready to weave. It definitely takes the most time to get the yarn onto the loom correctly. And it is hard to learn to do it from a book, but the one I have by Debbie Redding has excellent pictures and detailed instructions. I borrowed it from the library and would highly recommend it to anyone trying to learn how to dress a loom. The title is "Learning to Weave" and you can find it on Amazon, or check your library.
Today has been busy at work - getting all the W2's out and paying all the taxes. Thankfully we have a great payroll service that does alot of the work and then sends me a packet with instructions on what I need to do. Well, gotta run....meeting tonight.

Sing a Song of Springtime

I can't believe I haven't posted in 10 days - sorry! January is always my busy month, but I am pleased to say all the tax statements have been mailed out! So now it's time to turn to thoughts of spring and start my seedlings. Tonight I planted peppers, bell, jalapeno, habanero and cayenne. I will start posting to my gardening blog to keep a journal of everything that is planted and how they are doing. I also put together my little greenhouse John gave me for Christmas. It has three large shelves and is very light, so I will be able to move it around easily. Tomorrow I will try to warp the loom....I have been reading the directions over and over and I think I am ready to try it!
Well we were quite disappointed that the Steelers lost this weekend - they've had a great season. I don't like either the Patriots or the Eagles for the Superbowl - hard to get excited about either team. Well, I guess I'll go check in on my gardening journal. Hope to be more consistent with posting now that January's tasks are done at work.

Successful Saturday

The biggest news is that the loom is here! Now I have to learn how to use it!!! We had a great day taking all kinds of things to the Goodwill....furniture, boxes of stuff from the basement. We can even see the floor! It feels so good to begin to make headway on this. We will even have room to move the bowflex down to the basement. Then while I watched Pittsburgh win against the Jets, I worked on Deaf Ministries stuff. Peter says that Neville may want to hire me to do more for them. I love working from home!
We are supposed to get snow tonight...we'll see. Guess we'll keep the cats inside. Michael took all the stuff to the goodwill - he had to make two trips! Lots of trash for pickup on Monday also. Time to review my Children's Church lesson for tomorrow. I've added another blog link today - it's a blog that features crockpot recipes, I love my crockpot and this blog has some great recipes. Happy Sunday!

Thanks FlyLady!

I got rid of 9 32 gallon bags of stuff from the laundry room today = two actual trash and 7 for the good will! Wow, I never could have done it without FlyLady's encouragement. She has been sending me the best essays on how clutter is robbing us of peace and really making me look at why I am hanging on to the things I am. Part of it has always been a fear of needing something and not having the money to buy it. But I made great progress today and it is the first time in years that I actually think I can conquer the basement. I have to work tomorrow but first thing Saturday I'm going to keep de-cluttering the basement and re-claiming my peace.
The weathermen seem to be right...the temperature is dropping rapidly...guess it's back to winter for awhile.

It's summer here!

Well I opened the windows and screen doors and let the house air out today, since it was almost 70 out! It is only going to make me long more for spring, but one should never complain about a nice warm day in the middle of winter...it is a gift from God. Of course by Friday it is going to be only 17 degrees - BUT - it will be sunny! So still something to look forward to.
Today was "Take the Christmas tree down" day. Always a little depressing and as usual no one wants to help mom take down the decorations - we may have to come up with a solution for that next year. Tomorrow we (John and I) plan to get the laundry room straightened up and room made to get the new dryer in. And then the greatest news of all - Sharlene is going to let me have her loom for awhile! I am so excited! I have been wanting a loom so badly, reading all about them, watching ebay for a good deal, cutting up all the old clothes for weaving. And now I will actually get to try one out. Sharlene and Stan are remodeling their house and need the room, but she doesn't want to sell it, so she is letting me give it a home for awhile. I'm not sure where I will put it, but I want it to be somewhere near a window. And it is seed time! The catalogs are arriving and garden plans need to be made...spring is around the corner.

Still raining

The flooding situation is getting worse in Cincinnati and it is still raining. Although our temperatures are going up almost to the 70's tomorrow and then on Friday it's going to be 17! As Andrew likes to say "Welcome to the Midwest" No wonder we are all sick with weather like this! I switched my days off this week, so have Wednesday and Thursday off and will work on Friday. Guess I'll take down the Christmas tree since I have two days in a row to do it. Then we can get the wonderful Christmas present from Michael delivered....our new dryer! We can't wait!

Still Grey but ...

Well it got colder, but not cold enough to get snow - just a misty sleet - however the day was redeemed for me by a wonderful treat from Walter - swiss chocolates (thank you Berkmeyers!)
It was the best chocolate I've ever tasted...and brightened my day!
Then Daniel and I had a great evening - Papa John's pizza and we watched "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. A very good movie, much different than I expected - if you haven't seen it - rent it....very good. Tomorrow night we will watch "The Alamo" - Hollywood Video is having a special for $9.99 you can rent any of their movies marked MVP - as many as you want during a 30 day period. They don't have the newest releases....but if a movie has been out for 3 or 4 weeks, they qualify - so we signed up and now we will be able to see all these movies we wanted to see - but didn't want to spend the money on. An excellent idea for January since we are stuck inside so much. I am hoping that at the end of our 30 days "Troy" and "King Arthur" will be available.
Daniel continues to enjoy his film making class and is going downtown to make a video as a service project for a non-profit group...he will film and edit it and they will use it for their fund raising. Pretty neat!
I have a few things to tie up at work tomorrow, even tho it's technically my day off...then John and I are going to use one of our Christmas gifts (a McAlister's Deli gift card) to go out for lunch. Sounds like a good Friday to me. Happy Weekend Everyone!

Wet Wednesday

Still raining in Cincinnati....but getting colder, so maybe it'll turn to snow. At least white snow is more cheerful than dreary gray skies and brown earth. Guess I really need to start sitting under my light therapy light more regularly and try to ward off the Jan/Feb blues.
My voice is beginning to return and most of the bronchitis symptoms have let up - hurrah! I am back at work this week and spent today (my day off from NCCC) working on Deaf Ministries stuff. It's great to have a job that I can do from home, and still enjoy being around John and getting to talk to him while he is home and awake! I just need a few more bookkeeping jobs that I could do from home and I could work totally from home.
I am still working on a few Christmas presents that didn't get finished in time. A good reason to plan out what I am doing for everyone next year and begin now. I finished knitting the Joseph figure for my nephew Cole and hope this year to complete the shepherds and the wise men. Now that I am familiar with the pattern, I hope it'll go faster. Last year I made him Mary, baby Jesus, a manger and a sheep. The boys liked their slippers and Daniel's "hobo" gloves turned out nice. John wants a pair, but wants his knitted not crocheted, so the stitches will be closer and thus warmer, although I put Daniel's on and they seem warm enough crocheted. I haven't finished John's scarf or a present I'm making for my mom (which I can't talk about, because she reads this). Well, time to make chicken pie for dinner - sounded like a good choice for a cold, damp day!
Take care of each other!

Happy New Year!

Well I went back to work today - with a partial voice. I still need to be careful with it. We have had nothing but rain lately and it looks like more of the same all week. I wanted to start walking again, but probably should wait with this bronchitis still hanging on. We think that all the moisture was the cause of our garage ceiling falling down. What a mess, drywall everywhere, but nothing was damaged....just lots of clean up. It's hard to believe that Michael is 24 today... where has the time gone? Not much more to tell, watched tons of movies last week while John was home and I was sick - on New Year's Eve we did a marathon of the Lord of the Rings Extended versions....it took 12 hours to watch all three! I don't think we'll do that again soon, but it was kind of neat to see the whole trilogy.