I lost the weekend......

Good Evening Internet Friends.

Seriously, I think I lost the weekend.  I cannot seem to find it anywhere and tomorrow is MONDAY!!!

I made strawberry pancakes for breakfast (forgot to take a picture).  Did laundry, vacuumed and cleaned a bit, then took my son to skiing:

Here he is preparing for a jump, I think this is the first time he has done this particular jump as he was really bracing going in to it ☺

He did nail it though, but of course I missed that snap on my camera.

Then we went out for a walk on the trails.  I have to admit that the city looked almost pretty late this afternoon:

I did bake some shortbread cookies this evening:

YUMMY!

Now off to get finalize getting ready to get out the door on time tomorrow morning as it's back to work.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Knitting Along...

Good Evening Internet Friends.

It has been a very long day and I think I will head off to bed soon.

Earlier this week my Grammy was fortunate enough to be placed in the long term care facility in her own home town, with residents she knows, and staff that are colleagues.  I am SO happy for her.

That means of course that she needs some clothing as she only came back home with the clothes that she was admitted to hospital with at the time of her stroke.  This morning my son and I were up and out the door bright and early to hit up the sales at Sears, 50% off clothing today.  All the old lady best brands were on sale so I stocked up for her on pants, sweaters, cardigans, layer shirts, nighties and blouses.  She will be the best dressed resident I think!

Then we headed off to The Bay  (my favorite store) but a lack of the old lady brand name clothes.  Part of the reason for being at the mall early was that I needed to go to the Clinique counter for moisturizer and the Clinique Gift Pack.  I LOVE this pack.  It is becoming a holiday tradition for me to pick one of these up, and to make the deal even better today I got 10% off my purchases!!!

A quick stop for a cookie at Cookies By George and we were off to skating!

My son is doing well with his skating and today it was hard to get a picture that was not blurry as he was really motoring along:

After dinner it was time to take puppy for a long walk in the river valley.

As for my crafting I rationalized that I did not have quite enough projects on the go tonight so I cast on another Fisherman's Wife Cowl.  I am using Poinsettia Thick & Quick that I picked up in Kalispell last spring.  I love this particular yarn because of the metallic threads that run through it, however, photographs of the project are hard to get because of the reflection from the metallic threads:

In just under two hours I am well over half way done.  I plan to gift this to my Secret Santa recipient at work! ☺

Now off to bed as tomorrow is another action packed day.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

It's Finally Friday......

Good Evening Internet Friends!!!

I know it has been a while since I blogged, but this week has been ridiculously long!!!  It has been several weeks since I actually worked FIVE days in a row!  Oy.

This evening I took a bit of time to myself in my craft room.  I have a bazillion Christmas projects on the go right now, but did not have the mental energy to commit to any one of these projects.

So, I decided to make a few more Christmas Cards.  I will need about a hundred for work (everyone there now expects a Christmas Card from me).  As of tonight I now have thirty....

Here are the six I made this evening:

TAH DAH!!!!

Okay, now off to bed for a few hours of sleep as tomorrow is run errands and get kiddo to activities day!  ☺

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Crazy Cat Lady Quilt????

Good Evening Internet Friends!

As you likely know my Grandmother suffered a stroke in September of this year.  She has battled acute kidney failure and aspiration pneumonia and is still with us and getting better every day.  When faced with making decisions about her care I could only make medical decisions as those are what I know best.  TREAT at all cost until you know there is no hope.  That is what we did with her and slowly but surely her kidney function improved as did the pneumonia and today she renal function is that of an 89 year old women with a stroke. ☺

Now she faces the the reality of being placed in a long term care facility as she has not regained strength or function to the left side of her body which is very sad is she is a southpaw (sad face).  She is in true Grammy fashion facing this head on and is learning to eat with her right hand and even tells new staff that she is regaining strength in that hand and shows them that she is trying to eat.  Of course someone always falls for this and she laughs about it.

With her going to long term care I wanted her to have her own quilt.  She left the other one I made for her in Alberta and as such does not have it with her.  "Sew" I made her a new one.

I had a jelly roll that I had been hoarding for a long time and with some help of my friend and neighbor Sharon of Four Paws Quilting who let me raid her stash I was able to make what I am going to call the Crazy Cat Lady Quilt.  My Grammy was kind of this person as if there was a stray or lonely cat within 100 miles she was feeding it and caring for it.  Even ones that came to her house to sleep for the afternoon and then returned home in the evening!

After getting the quilt pieced my friend and neighbor Sharon agreed to run this quilt through her wonderful long arm machine and she quilted cats all over this quilt.  This evening after getting my son to bed after his Geocaching expedition with Boy Scouts that tired him out, I trimmed the edges of the quilt in preparation for binding:

 The entire quilt top spread out on the family room floor.

Detail of the Kitty Face.

Detail of the big fat Kitty.

Backing for the quilt as the cat always gets the canary!!!! ☺

Tomorrow evening I will cut the binding strips for this and then get working on that so that I can send this in the care package later this week that I will be posting her.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

The Five Year.......

Good Evening Internet Friends.

Some people have plans, goals, and accomplishments for Five Year.

I however, might just about be finished a quilt that I started about five years ago (not really exaggerating).  Almost a year ago I got the pieces cut out and adhered to the fabric backing but did not get very far on the applique.  Recently I placed a large order to Connecting Threads as they had a 35% off sale and Free Shipping to Canada.  With the Canadian Dollar being low right now this sale off set some of that spending pinch.  One of the items I ordered was the Country Garden thread set.  When the package arrived I knew that I had some applique to do! All of the colors in the set were perfect for my Five Year Quilt Project.

As of a few minutes ago here is what I have accomplished this weekend:

TAH DAH!!!!

I am not feeling particularly crafty this evening due to an impending asthma attack so this was the perfect occupation of my time after my son went to bed this evening.

Earlier in the day I took my son to a different ski venue than he usually skis at simply because they do three week lessons which will no conflict with Christmas Vacation.  Sadly, this place needs some serious help.  I knit for about a half hour inside the building that smelled worse than your grandmother's old damp basement and there was likely some kind of mold in there as well.  The furniture and carpet were original from when the building opened at the same time as the explores arrived (I don't think I am exaggerating here either) and in general the place just looks SAD.  Eventually I went outside for a walk but it was cold.  A sign on the building told me that the parking lot was an idle free zone so after freezing in my car I went and parked on the street and warmed up myself and the car.

My son seemed to enjoy it because although he was in a group lesson there were no other kids that could ski the same as him so he got his own instructor! ☺

 They worked on some of his techniques so by the time we get to the mountains at Christmas he will have his ski legs back☺

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Good Evening Internet Friends!

My Grandma Sadie used this expression about her life all the time.  The older I get though I am not truly sure she understood the concept of it in the manner that I do.

This morning my son and I started the day off by getting up and getting to Santa's Breakfast for 0900 hours.  We made it, although we had to eat at the preschoolers table by the time we got our food!  My son thought it was hilarious that his mom could fit at the preschoolers table ☺

Then we waited in line to meet Santa.  Santa was awesome.  My son has not got a list this year as to what he wants for Christmas so when asked by Santa what he wants he replied "stuff".  Santa was awesome and let him know that Santa has "stuff".  ☺

After that we headed off to try and get my son a hair cut.  Thankfully we were out and about early enough in the morning that his favorite hair stylist was able to squeeze him in.

Afterwards we stopped at Bulk Barn and picked up some random goodies which included these sprinkles that I put on our hot chocolate this evening after walking the dog:

Then it was back to Millennium Place for skating lessons:

After skating  headed off to his Christmas piano recital of which he played his own composition of Deck the Halls.  He was very proud of himself for accomplishing this as was I.

Then it was finally time for lunch.  We used a Groupon for poutine at My Fries.  Yummy as always.

Next up we stopped by Sweet Convenience to buy candy with (you guessed it) another Groupon I had!!!

Lastly we stopped by River City Yarns and picked up some wonderful woolly goodies.

Coming home I decided that maybe I should do something with all of the craft chaos that I have going on right now.  "Sew" here is what I accomplished:

I sewed the buttons onto my Fingerless Mittens (still a silly concept I think) that was one set of mittens from my October box of Yarn Crush.  I did have to make these mittens a little smaller than the pattern not because my hands are small but because although I knit to gauge there was not enough yarn to complete both of them as long as they were supposed to be.  Now I have 4 left over buttons for another project I guess.

Now it's off to bed as skiing starts tomorrow, and there is laundry and baking for lunches this week and groceries and house cleaning and ......................................

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Still Going....

Good Evening Internet Friends!

Today is one of those days that is just not seeming to end.

I awoke this morning to get myself and kiddo ready for the day and discovered 8" of snow outside.  Since the school bus was running 20+ minutes late I decided that we could use that time and shovel the walk (we live on a corner lot).  By 0825 we had the entire walk shoveled, kiddo on the bus and me en route to work:

YAY Us!

Most of my patient's arrived late for their appointments today so that kept me working through lunch and I ended up leaving clinic late too.

A quick stop to pick up kiddo and then off to battle the highway to get to swimming lessons.

After a warm bowl of soup for dinner it was time to get the garbage out since tomorrow is trash day and then I decided that the patio really should be cleaned off from the snow so I did that too!

Kiddo showered and off to bed after stories.  Household tasks completed I opened up my November package of Paper Pumpkin and made one set of the cards:

 TAH DAH!!!'

Love these cards.  

Some months I wonder about the kits, but this month I love both sets of cards!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy