Beautiful Foggy Morning

It is an absolutely gorgeous morning today. There is fog and the sun is starting to punch through making everything all hazy and glowing.



The sunlight is starting to fill the house. I love mornings like this. I have a good cup of coffee, beautiful sunlight, going to do a little knitting before taking a conference call at 10am. The joys of working from home.

The snow is still here!

It is still beautiful and white here this morning. The temperature is a little warmer than yesterday which makes it nicer outside.



Elsie was so excited and couldn't get outside fast enough, but had some wardrobe difficulties. What is it with 4 year-olds and getting dressed!?!? We had all of her clothes, socks, hat, gloves, scarf and coat located and in the kitchen. I told her to change into her clothes and we would go outside. "Yay!" she squealed. Next time I see her, she's running through the house in her pyjamas with her hat, scarf, and gloves. "No, you have to put on the clothes and the coat. The gloves go on last." Next time I see her, she's streaking through the house in just her underware. Which, to me, seems just the opposite of where this project should be heading.



Eventually we get the clothes on, but she insists on putting the gloves on BEFORE the coat, hat, boots, and scarf... which means she can no longer use her fingers to put on and zip which causes great distress to the Elsie not to mention the mother as well.



Finally after several arguements and undressing and re-dressing of parts, we are dressed, organized, have Ewan in his down bundle bag and loaded into the pack and off we go!
Elsie took this picture of Ewan and myself...

Yay! Snow!

It rarely snows in Portland... or snows long enough to make everything white... but it did last night.


... and it is still snowing! We could hardly get everyone bundled up fast enough to suit Elsie. I think she would have run out in her bare feet.

I was practicing with my digital camera over the weekend. I took this picture which I like except for the shadow across their eyes...


They sort of look like two masked super heroes. I'm getting better with adjusting my shutter speed, now I just need to be more aware of shadows and light.

Finished projects and Christmas goodies...

No... the finished project is not the basement. If that were the case, it would get it's own post with very large letters. The finished project is the pink wrap sweater that I made for Elsie. I finished it just before Christmas.



I feel a great sense of accomplishment after finishing my first sweater.



I really want to make one for little Ewan now.



I found a great pattern for a boy's sweater in the February issue of Vogue Knitting Knit.1. It has an intarsia skull and crossbones on it. I don't know if I'm ready for intarsia, but I might as well jump in.

I received some wonderful craft/project books for Christmas this year. From the spouse....



apparently he wants my knitting to head in another direction...



Aren't these mitts gorgeous!

These are going to be my next knitting project that I start. I love the ribbon. The whole book is fabulous! The lingerie inspired pieces are great.
He also gave me....



For those of you who have visited the Sublime Stitching website, here it is in book form with pages and page of transfers! And pockets in the front and back to store the transfers after you have torn them out of the book. Each transfer can be used several times.



And from my sister with whom I obsess about Amy Butler



The book comes with all the patterns too!



I know now that I will never be bored or run out of things to do.... which is just the way I like it.

A little more painting... a little more priming

We have added a green wall to the basement and the first coat of paint on the floor.



It has never looked this clean EVER! Miss Elsie thinks it's a wonderful place to practice her dancing.



One more coat of paint on the floor tonight and the big areas are finished. I still need to paint the doors their individual colors. They are all primed and ready to go and the paint has been purchased... now it's just getting both kids to cooperate long enough to paint a door.

New Year's Resolutions

I usually don't set New Year's Resolutions, since I seem to fail at following through. So this year I picked two simple ones:
1. eat more vegetables and fruit
2. make more time for crafting
The first one is a much easier way of saying "loose some weight" and "get healthy" and "feed my family better". So instead of three separate resolutions, it is just one. And one should be easier to keep instead of three.
The second one should be extremely easy once the basement is done and my weekends and spare time aren't spent painting. I also received some wonderful craft books for Christmas which have some amazing projects in them. The corallary to resolution number 2 is to actually FINISH the craft projects. Sometimes I have several things going at once and nothing gets done.

I did a little recycle craft project over the holidays. I had this beautiful pair of cashmere gloves that had holes in two of the fingers. As I was wearing them for the last time, I was wondering what I could make out of them with only eight fingers available for use.


Spiders have eight legs... so I'll make something spider-like.



I washed the gloves in hot water a few times to felt them up a bit, but this cashmere didn't shrink up too tight. They did start to get hairy, which looks weird, but feels wonderful! There is a thread bare section on the bottom of one of his feet. I'm thinking of giving him some toe pads out of wool felt. He looks a little plain but Ewan likes him. He likes to fall asleep with the spider next to his cheek.

Painting until you cramp

We have been painting like maniacs the last four days and are now taking a break. The basement is now sporting a beautifully painted ceiling, stairwell, and studio walls. The bathroom was painted last month. We still have the doors, the floor, and the trim left, but the transformation is amazing! We burned through our Wagner sprayer that we bought eight years ago, so we had to splurge and buy a brand new $300 paint sprayer. (It costs $79 per 24 hour period to rent, and we have several projects in line that require spraying, so we decided to buy one.) If anyone is thinking of purchasing a Wagner sprayer- DON'T. Most of the parts are plastic and after a certain amount of time replacement pieces are NO LONGER AVAILABLE!



After we finished yesterday, the entire family collapsed in a heap and took a nap. I have finished projects to post and Christmas treasures to blog about, but I'm going to take the rest of the day off. I'll catch up on my posting later this week.

I loaded all the basement photos into Flickr, so you can see the progress in order. When one is absolutely worn out from working on a neverending project, it's nice to be able to go back to pictures from the beginning and see just how far the project has come.