Short Story Long

  If you've never been to Colorado, you might think it's mostly cold and snowy.  It's not; we have one of the highest percentages of sunny days in a year.  You might think everyone drives a four-wheel-drive vehicle.  We don't.  Most of us have one 4x4, but many people with only one car don't, and never need that feature.   This year, our January has been really warm and dry; in fact, yesterday my little family all went to the park without coats, though I wished I'd brought my hat!  Today, it's snowing.  I'm home with no where to go, and nothing that must get done except dinner, and I think I'll have time to knit.  And possibly crochet.  My favorite thing about snow is the sound.  Yes, snow has a sound.  Sometimes you can hear it landing on things, but mostly it sounds like the opposite of noise.  Does that make sense?  It's the best I can do to describe it.  Snow and Solitude are friends. 

So, I've started a new hobby, or as my friend Jeni calls it, a new domestic skill.  I actually learned to crochet as a teen, somewhere around the 12 - 14 year mark in my life, and crocheted a bunch of granny squares.  Then I put them in a box and gave them to my granny for Christmas, of course.  And haven't given it much thought for 20+ years.  But enjoying craft blogs as I do, I've been thinking about it, and every now and then I have had the opportunity to use this skill, if only I had it.  As an adult, I could crochet a chain, if necessary, but that's about it.  Until today!  Today, I learned single crochet, double crochet, and half-double crochet.  Jeni and I are taking the Beginning Crochet class at our LYS, and I picked some crazy colors that I would never normally choose, just for fun.  If there are errors in my work, I'm blissfully unaware.  I've got a handful of patterns bookmarked for future projects.  I'll let you kn...

It may have started when I pulled some snap pea seeds from my Christmas stocking, or maybe it was when the catalogs began to arrive in my mailbox.  Perhaps it was the scent of lemon blossoms in a friend's solarium.  Or when I joined the Gardener's Corner on Ravelry.  Or maybe it's just that time of year.  Whatever it is, I can't help daydreaming about my lovely garden, and how weed-free and full of delicious veggies it will be.  Last year, I was a bit absorbed with trips to knitting conventions, and knitting in general, and just didn't seem to get as much out of my garden.  Although it seemed like BFJ picked up a bit of my slack and took a bigger interest.  The morning after Christmas, I laid in bed and read back through my blog for the year 2012, and was disappointed on how few garden posts and pictures there were.  I'm determined to do in 2013.  I'm definitely thinking of a lemon tree.  Do you garden?  What are you plannin...

I'm staying afloat with my Project 365.  Today, I had a bunch of yarn pictures to shoot, and I was sitting on the patio (which was cold) and this flower just kept saying hi to me.  Finally, I took its picture.  Even in winter, the garden has hidden delights!

 

  Today's to-do list: -cut out and count Box Tops that expire this month. -work on that one last gift, even though it will never get done in time. -don't eat all the chocolate cookies; after all, I told the boys they still need sprinkles! -watch some Poirot while working on the previous three items.  -iron blouse for church tonight.  It's red, of course!  Merry Christmas to all my friends and loved ones, near and far!

No, that's not dirty snow!   After pouring some little jars of vanilla extract, we had some vanilla beans ready for re-purposing.   I threw them in the food processor with a cup of sugar and blended it up.  The big chunks of vanilla were sifted out and processed with a second cup of sugar, and then repeated this with a third cup of sugar.  You can see in the picture how the sugar on the right has more brown bits than the middle, and the sugar on the left has the least.  We actually did a fourth pass with just a half a cup of sugar because I didn't know how much more would fit in the jar.  We mixed it all together and put it back in one of the quart jars that we used to make the vanilla extract.  Vanilla sugar!  Time to make some cookies...!