Hello November

October in Minnesota was a little on the completely unexpected side.
We had snow, we had wind, we had rain and rain and rain, and then a perfectly lovely Halloween to top it all off.

Yesterday the weather was a wonderful 65 degrees and we high-tailed it to the playground.
We have been stuck inside for almost a month with the ridiculous weather and sicknesses, it felt so good to just be outside.

Finished!

Long ago I warned that I would bore you all with pictures of my bathroom remodel, and the day has come.

These first two are from the day we went through with the inspector. You can just barely see the Elder Hug-a-Bug in the blue sling.
She is 10 days old.
We decided to buy this house after my water had broken, but before we went in to the hospital.
Yes. We were a little crazy.
The floor was this lovely (not really) green linoleum tile that was peeling up, but we didn't need to worry about that happening around the toilet, as there was no floor covering there at all.Now there are easily cleanable tiles on the floor. We also got a new vanity. The old one had out-lived its usefulness.


We decided to ditch the gold veined wall board, and went with tile around the tub (where none had existed before) and a soft green for the walls instead of the garish yellow from before.
We have been here for nearly 6 years, and even though it might mean that we eat spaghetti 3 out of 7 nights, and never go out to eat again, we have a functioning shower and a beautiful bathroom and I am over the moon.

Here ends my bathroom worship, thanks for humoring me.

As a clarification, I did no work.
I hired a lovely man to come in and do everything.

Boo part 2

Happy Halloween!

Boo!

It's Halloween time again!
Beautiful light through the trees, leaves everywhere and giant iguanas prowling the neighborhood.
Now, in truth, this is a stegosaurus costume, but the Younger Hug-a-Bug was playing iguana, and who could say no?

diy forest

As I mentioned the other day, the weather here has been really weird lately.
We have had the rainiest October that I can remember, and there have been a few days of snow already.
This, combined with myriad factors that seem to keep me inside (contractor in the bathroom, sick kids, etc.) has made for some long indoor days.

And, earlier this week, when it was actually nice enough to go out to the woods we saw this -
So yesterday, when we had a lovely mix of giant soggy snow blobs falling from the sky and rain, we decided to build a city out of blocks complete with an ocean, a farm, a savanna and a forest.
Not quite the same as being out in it, but it did help.

Tradition

I am really lucky.
I have a beautiful family, a warm house and I love my jobs.
One of my jobs is knitting for people who need projects made.
A couple of years ago a lovely man came into the Yarnery and asked if I would design some stockings for his new daughter-in-law and dog-in-law.
I got a call about a month ago from the same man asking if I would make another stocking for his new grandson.
I love that I can be a small part of creating traditions for this family.
I also love that I can follow the family as they grow together.

Altered

So, last week I wove a scarf that I wasn't too excited about.My weaving teacher recommended that we use variegated yarn for the first weaving projects to hide mistakes. I did that, and I wanted a challenge so I tried all one color, and I could see my mistakes, but I could also not see anything very interesting.
So, I felted the scarf down and added some needle-felting and I came up with this-It is quite floppy along the edges, I am choosing to embrace this, and the fringe looks a little worse for the wear, probably will get a trim, but ultimately I think I made the right choice.
The yarn was 100% undyed alpaca and the resulting felty scarf is warmer and cozier than you can imagine.
I used some handspun (by me) yarn for the swirls, I was going for a winter wind kind of thing.

We have a craft and baked goodies sale next week at church and this is one of my offerings.
I will also bring the PINK scarf that I made last week.This week has been about coziness and goodies, and that's just fine with me.