Pretty Snow

We haven't had much snow this winter.  I haven't even shoveled once yet.  Yesterday we got a bit more than the forecast called for but it sure was pretty:

It will all be gone in no time.  It's supposed to be 51º on Wednesday.  I'm not worried about shoveling any time soon.

My Attempt

I can't knit or sew or do much of anything else right now but I can make balls of roving!  Here's my attempt at the felted wool dryer balls in the last post.

I started with a merino blend roving:

Added a teal shade of merino roving:

And here's the ball before it went into the stocking leg, shown here with a nickel so you can tell its size:

I washed several balls at the same time.  Since the stocking leg was long I figured I might as well do a bunch.  I washed them in a hot load with the red melton wool that I bought at Haberman's last week.  Uh-oh:

Yep, that red wool was bleeding like a stuffed pig.  Somehow I managed to slow down the water in this shot:

All's well that ends well.  None of the red dye transferred to the felted balls:

For comparison, here's the teal ball with the nickel on top of it again:

All in all, this was a very simple craft project.  Knowing how much roving is in my stash, I'd say there'll be more felted dryer ball projects in my future.  You should give them a try too.  I bet they'd make great cat toys, too.  They might even make nice sachets if you add some essential oils to them and place them in your dresser drawers.  Hmmmm.......new marketing ideas are popping up all over the place!

Wool Dryer Balls

I found this great idea on the Totally Tutorials blog I have in my blogroll.  Now I know what to do with all that roving Tanya!

Absolutely Amazing

Please do yourself a favor.  Get a cup of tea or coffee and sit back and take in these amazing time lapsed videos.  You won't be disappointed.

Slick Site

I found another great website courtesy of Worldstart.com today.  It's called Bill Shrink (although I think it's been bought out by another company) and you can give it a bit of information and find better rates for television service, wireless service, gas stations, credit cards, and CDs/savings accounts.  I used the gas station option and it gave me the best prices on my route home, the fill up cost, and the extra cost for going a bit out of my way.  Very slick!

Catching Up

Last Saturday I had the chance to go out and visit Holly, Mike and Baby Denver.  I stopped at Zumba to pick up their favorites and headed out there.  I took a couple of bags of assorted items -- Holly's baby books, photos, those socks from my sock drawer clean up, and other stuff.

I had a nice visit and got to feed a bottle to my grandson before he conked out.  He's getting so big -- over 17 pounds already.  Sunday he rolled over from his back to his belly.  He'll be 5 months old next Tuesday!!

That minty green blanket is the one I knit for him.  Good to see it's being used.

When Holly brought out her laptop and started to work on her grad class assignment, I knew I'd overstayed my welcome so I headed for home.

Once home I started another cleaning chore -- the living room.  Then it was the laundry room.  I'm down to the kitchen table!  Can't wait for all the cleaning to be done and then I'll just be left with the maintenance.  Phew!

The splints I'm wearing on my hands may be curing the numbness but they're causing bruising and soreness in my fingers.  Most nights they slip down my hands over my knuckles so I think I'm taking them back to the store I got them from.  Somethings not quite right.  So while my hands aren't waking me up several times due to tingling, the pain is and so is the awkwardness of wearing the splints.

Yesterday I went for my first physical therapy session for the pinched nerve in my neck.  Nothing really happened there except for a consultation so I'm hoping the next session on Friday will yield some results.

I was supposed to go to the gym tonight but when I let Maggie out, I noticed someone had broken off the bottom half of a piece of fence.  Good thing I saw it before Maggie -- she could have bolted and I would never be able to catch her.  Living near a main road can be really dangerous for pets.  I put her back in the house, dug out the hammer and nails and went to work fixing the fence.  Double Phew!!

Retail Therapy

There's nothing like a little retail therapy to pick a girl's spirit up.  I've been down in the dumps, not really knitting anything at all for more than 6 weeks now.  When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!  Even better when it's online!!

I ordered something last Wednesday and it arrived on Friday.  Speedy delivery, right Mr. Rogers??

Any guesses about what's inside???  

Oh, I'm quite certain you'd never guess this: 

Since I really can't cut or use a rotary cutter right now, I figure this AccuQuilt Go! will fit the bill.  I've been kicking around the idea for a while now and when JoAnn Fabrics had it on sale with free shipping, I jumped.  Now of course, I'll need more dies and I'm already looking around for those.  I tried it out over the weekend and it cut squares and 1/2 squares beautifully.  I even tried it on felted wool and it worked marvelously.  Maybe now I can get going on something creative.

I start my physical therapy tomorrow and I'm looking forward to that.  My neurologist called me today to say the xrays looked fairly good.  Hmmm.  But then he asked me if I have a problem swallowing.  As a matter of fact I do, I said, why do you ask??  Seems there is some tissue around my vertebrae that he thinks I need a CT scan to check it out.  I'll do that once I'm done with my therapy.  One problem at a time!