THROUGH MY WINDOWS

The blanket is finished!  I hope Lynsey likes it. She picked out the colors and pattern the last time I saw her way back in January. We meet up tomorrow night to celebrate her birthday at a restaurant.  She's a tall girl and likes to snuggle while watching tv so this should do the job. It's 72 rows with 8 different colors in it. The first two rows are done with just a popcorn stitch straight across. The rest of the blanket was easy peasy. The granny ripple stitch. 

Since the decision to make the 12 hour trip north next month so that I might spend Mother's Day with my parents,  I  have been wondering how cold it's going to be on the Island when I get there. Ordinarily we thaw out from old man winter at least a month head of them down here in the eastern part of PA. However, they had a particularly harsh winter. My "NEST" as I like to call it was almost completely covered in snow! Hard for me to envision because all that goes through my mind is the damage to the roof and other sorts of troubles that much snow and ice could cause to the structure. After all, it's not meant to be an igloo, it's supposed to be traveling the highways and byways by people looking to enjoy their vacations in WARM climates. My mother has kept me updated on the NEST's snow levels in our weekly conversations. It didn't help that the person who plows "them out" ran out of places to put the snow and had to push it up against my NES

My husband, Roger, walks our dog, Mysti, everyday. It has to be pretty awful outside for them to miss their outing around the neighborhood. Mysti is pretty well insulated when she has her winter coat on. She knows that when he finishes feeding the deer they will be on their way. She paces relentlessly around the house and is tall enough to be able to look out most of the Windows. Our Easter bunny is being rained on! Today it's raining and cold. 40 degrees F. She will love it!  Roger also will embrace the opportunity to try and capture what's happening above his head if it should stop raining at all while they are gone.  Roger shares my love of photography with one exception. He loves to take pictures of the sky, exclusively. Clouds fascinate him and he has 100's of pictures of them on his phone. Occasionally I will look up and understand his amazement. Especially when a storm is brewing. Roger does capture some really great pictures of

Man, another breezy cool and damp day. Roger has been busy uncovering the strawberry patch from the leaves we dumped on it last Fall. I have been trying for years to develop a patch of big juicy and sweet Strawberries .  My first attempt was doomed from the getgo. Squirrels! The next year I tried fencing with a net over  the new plants. A big ole groundhog dug his home under   the patch. He was able to picnic on strawberry buds in his own back yard. The next year  I went with hanging  baskets inside the fenced in dog yard. I had to get up very early in the morning to beat the birds to the berries- not a very large yield either in the first year of strawberry growing. They don't start to really produce until the 2nd and 3rd years. So, anyway, out  of the hanging baskets they came and into a raised bed.  A little better luck. I was able to glean about a cereal bowl  of edible berries. Last year I thinned out the overgrowth and planted it in a fenced in area inside  the fenced in y

My family thinks that I am an impulsive person. Lord knows that's not always a good thing. There have been times in my life when I have looked back on situations that I have found myself in and felt like beating myself over the head with my impulsivity. I made a decision today that I will spend Mother's day with my 87 year old mother no matter what happens with my responsibilities here at home. The ocean is calling me and I must go. I have many loves. The love of Roger, my family, and....the ocean. I love to go back where I started from. The house in this picture is owned by Summer people but back in the day a little old lady we called "Aunt Lo" lived there and there was a pier in front of her house that had a building on the end of it. Her late husband's fishing "shop" where he would bring his lobster boat to load up his traps, etc.  Roger and I bought a 27 foot travel trailer (the English would call it a caravan) shortly after

BLOOMING is an interesting word for this time of year-don't you agree? Everywhere we look outside our windows, doors  and on our comings and goings there's new life bursting through, out and up!  I love to go poking around and exclaim to whoever will listen the wonder of it all, the beauty that will soon manifest itself out of the small shoots and closed buds. The colors! Oh, my, the colors that will soon be painted on our Spring canvas. We lost a lot of our dogwoods to bad storms and the hurricane, Sandy, in the recent past. All of these dogwoods were uprooted and destroyed. Our property seemed to take direct hits from the heavy snow and winds and rain while our neighbors suffered minor or no damage at all. We have lost at least 12 full grown magnificent trees. About 5 dogwoods and many of them huge pines that have been around close to a hundred years or more. Thankfully we still have our Magnolia trees. This is a picture from last year.

I am currently in the very beginnings of hooking a new doily pattern. 30 inch diameter so it will take awhile for sure since I have an afghan in the works and 2 partially finished quilts I would like to get to the next stage. I do have a finish to show. It is unblocked but lays pretty flat. The name of the pattern is Seashells. It was taken from a book of a collection of patterns, A YEAR OF DOILIES. I made it using a bright glittery white #10 thread. It is about 18" in diameter. This is not the first time I have worked this pattern and it was a fun one to do. Not hard and does up quickly. It was a miserable day weatherwise.  Cool and rainy. We did celebrate Logan's birthday. It was hard getting him to let me take his picture but I snuck in a couple. Here's one of him playing with Lucy. 10 years old on Sunday. A lazy dog A lazy cat Another lazy cat Blessings to you!