Happy Easter

Hope everyone is having a nice Easter.

Here is a little video something from us which will hopefully make you smile.

Enjoy! We sure had fun making it.

You have to click on the 'Happy Easter everyone' below to watch it.

Happy Easter everyone

Still OK here in the boonies

We are still doing OK.  Last night we made a dash to the gas station to fill up the vehicle with gas and get gas for the mowers.  We were very careful, we wore some old surgical masks we have for my husband, just the flimsy sort, and some disposable gloves.

We filled up the vehicle and the gas cans then disposed of the gloves in their trash can.  The gas station is on a busy highway that goes across the state so one never knows where the person who filled up before you has driven from.

Our nearest store is still taking grocery orders over the phone and City Hall delivers them. They even had salt for the water softener.  I just asked out of desperation because when I looked at Amazon the cost was astronomical for a bag of it.  We usually pay about $7 to $8 a bag for it at Walmart and the cheapest I could find on Amazon was $24. So much for free shipping!

Our land is coming alive with trees and bushes flowering and the bulbs in flower. The grass is also growing but the ground is still to wet to mow with all the rain we have had.

I picked up my knitting needles again and decided to start and knit the second shepherd for the nativity scene I worked on last year.  Also I cut out a cover for a dog crate we had stored away.  Our sweet Maggie is terrified in storms so I thought it might be a nice place for her to hide away when the storms come.  I have to get on and sew it all together now.

I took the old bread maker out of retirement.  It is a cranky old thing but it still works.  I have to set an upturned dish on top of the basket as it jumps off the thing that turns the paddle when it is kneading the mixture.  The dish rests against the top but today the glass cracked on it, probably because the dish bashed against it, in the middle of making a loaf.  I stuck a bit of painters tape over the crack. It is still in progress so will know in an hour or so if it still cooks properly.

I have sent off an SOS to my good friend and neighbour for idiot proof instructions on how to make a basic white loaf by hand.  She bakes all her own bread and always has.  She couldn't believe that I have never baked any from scratch before. 

So that's about it for now here in the middle of nowhere. Stay safe and well everyone. XXXXX

Weekly update

I am going to try and update weekly if I can discipline myself.  All still good here thankfully.

We are still able to get most of what we need delivered by the county so that is good.

Beautiful warmer day today.  We are able to go outside because there are no other properties within at least a half a mile.

My husband has COPD and he is coughing more lately but he is not running a temperature or showing any signs of infection.  He should get treatment for his autoimmune disease but all elective procedures are cancelled until further notice.

Stay safe and isolated everyone out there.
XXXXX

All is OK thus far

Just to let you know things are good here right now.  Our local County organised grocery deliveries from the local store for anyone living in their area who needed it especially seniors and people with pre existing conditions.  We qualify on both counts.  We order and pay the grocery store and the county delivers. 

Hoping everyone out there is doing OK and getting all they need.

Take care everyone and be safe.
XXXXX

Still around, just not making anything right now

It has been a weird couple of months here.  All is well so far with my husband's heart, it has stayed in regular rhythm and he feels better for that.  Now he is waiting for another Infusion to help combat the auto immune disease he has.  The only problem with that is it wipes out his immune system as it kills off all his existing antibodies. (The little boogers attack his nervous system and weaken him so they have to go).  But the Corona virus is looming large all over the world so that is a problem because if he gets infected he has no resistance.  Sort of caught between a rock and a hard place. They re-populate over time hence the ongoing infusions.  His choice to make on whether to go ahead this time or wait.  Waiting for it to get approved and scheduled before making the final decision.

To keep himself busy he is resurrecting some novels he wrote about 30 years ago.  A lengthy task. He is hoping to self publish on Kindle Publishing.  I am helping him which is taking up a lot of my time.  That is the reason for the lack of posts.

Spring is trying to make an appearance here in the boonies, bulbs are popping up everywhere and I thought I saw a hint of leaves budding on the trees. 

Hope all is well in your worlds.

Funny old weather

Today it is bitterly cold but the sun is shining.  We had a couple of very wet days followed by a dry and warmer day now it is very cold and sunny and tomorrow is going to be even colder.

My husband is doing OK.  He keeps getting feverish but it comes and goes.  They told him to take Tylenol to help.  We go back on Wednesday for a post op checkup and a visit with his cardiologist.

We set up the monitor which supposedly transmits at night when he is sleeping.  The loop recorder was implanted at the same time as the ablation procedures were done. Haven't heard that it isn't working so am assuming it is.

He isn't feeling quite as good as he first was and I have noticed his nice pink colour has gone and his lips are bluey again.  Hope it is only temporary.  They say it takes 3 months for the scar tissue to build up which should stop the errant signals causing the afib and atrial flutter.

Going to watch a couple of American football games today, these will decide who goes to the Superbowl.  I am hoping the KC Chiefs go through. Go Chiefs!

January is always a bit of a blah month for me.  I need a project.  I have been resurrecting my darning skills and darning some socks but it isn't my favourite task.  My neighbour's grandson and his wife are expecting a baby so I have been checking out yarn online.  Walmart has reduced it's stock of yarn so not much choice there.

Timer to start preparing lunch so off I go.  Stay warm everyone!

My husband's heart procedures were done yesterday

He was on the operating table for four hours. The doctor spoke with me after and said it went well but it takes 3 months before they can tell if it has worked. They implanted a loop monitor in his chest which monitors his heart all the time and records any anomalies and transmits them and an EKG every evening. Pretty nifty in my opinion.

He started with a temperature last night so he has to stay in again tonight and they will review again in the morning. He is sleeping a lot but has eaten today. Yesterday he didn't eat at all.  I can stay in the room with him, there is a chair that folds down into a bed, not the most comfortable but I am grateful to be able to stay with him.

Hoping his temperature goes down so we can leave tomorrow as the weather turns nasty on Friday and I don't want to drive the 150 miles home in the freezing rain and snow.

I have played an awful lot of practise scrabble games in the past two days.

Differing views on retirement

This is a bit of a reflective post and may not be of interest to anyone else but I wanted to get it out of my head and onto paper so I won't keep worrying about it.

My husband and I have differing views on retirement.  Both come from our upbringing.  My husband's family had a lot of farmer's in it.  To his mind you work until you drop dead as did many of his ancestor's.  My husband never went into farming but he has had several businesses over they years.  When we moved here 15 years ago there was a lot to do to reclaim the land etc. and although we have dabbled in enterprises our main focus was on our place.

My family all worked in paid employment for a living where they worked until you were 65 then retired and enjoyed what was left of their life.  I always had paid employment, never my own business except I did used to prepare tax returns for payment in tax season on top of being employed.  When we moved here I worked for about a year then retired. I was 56.

My husband was first diagnosed with heart problems shortly after moving here, he was 60 and had 3 stents placed to open up his blocked arteries.  He had already been diagnosed with central and obstructive sleep apnea and neuropathy and after that he was diagnosed with auto immune disease and diabetes.  He had two of the stents clog up again and was restented then had another stent inserted.  He got sepsis and recovered. Now over the past couple of years these other heart issues have manifested.

All in all, he is not a well man.  But will he retire as such.......No!  Even though he can not do much physically he is writing books to self publish in a bid to make some money.  He has written books before but never published them, some of them are in manuscript form and some are on floppy discs which we may never be able to recover. 

I help as much as I can by reading and reviewing and some editing but he is doing most of it.

For me, taking care of him, the dog and the house takes up pretty much most of my time and I have no will to try and earn money on top of that.  We eke out our money, pay all our bills and eat pretty well.  Actually, keeping my husband fed is almost a full time job. 😀 For all his illnesses he rarely loses his appetite.  He likes his three meals a day and usually two of them are cooked.

I doubt he will ever stop trying to earn money or work on fixing the place up and I worry that he will be like many of his ancestors and work until he drops dead.  He is 75 now and as such doesn't have a lifetime left but will he ever retire?  I doubt it.

All done and dusted

Well, that is not quite literal as no dusting has been done yet but all the Christmas stuff has been taken down and put away.  I took the time this year to reorganise my totes as things had got quite mixed up.  Now I have outside lights and the big outside ornaments plus inside lights in one, stuff that I really don't bring out anymore is in another, what I used this year for the tree is in another and all surplus tree ornaments in another in case I ever get a bigger tree. These are back in the workshop.  I have a tote full of handmade ornaments and my new nativity set which will be stored indoors.  The tree stays indoors too, it has been taken apart, wrapped in clingfilm to keep it nice and tight so it could go back in the box.

I had made much more effort this year and really enjoyed having the Christmas tree and lights etc. up. Hopefully I will feel up to it again next Christmas.

We went last week to the VA hospital for my husband to have the cardioversion (heart shocked under anaesthetic). It took 2 shocks to get his heart back into normal rhythm but alas it didn't last.  He went right back into atrial flutter the same night.

He goes for the 2 ablations on the 14th, it will be several months after before we know if it has worked because the scar tissue has to build up in his atrial chambers for it to stop the misfiring of his heart.  It isn't guaranteed but hopefully it will work.

Meanwhile, we plod on and are grateful that it is winter and the grass doesn't grow because he could not do much outside right now.  I think last year was his last hurrah for doing manual work.  He accomplished so much getting the work done on the house and landscaping.  That might have been the cause. He has had arrhythmia for quite some time but it certainly escalated last autumn (Fall) to the point that he gets so out of breath all the time now with the slightest exertion.  His sleep is interrupted with it too. He really isn't very well right now

I can do a lot of the mowing but I am not able to do any hard physical stuff as my knee gets so sore.

We are debating on putting the house up for sale again, we will know better after he has his heart procedures.

Oh the irony!

Yesterday, New Year's Eve, I made myself a treat.  Scotch eggs.  Now for my British blogger friends these are easily available in the shops and therefore probably not deemed to be anything special but here in the US you have to make them if you want them.

The first time I made them here was in October 2017 when we purchased an air fryer, it was the first thing I made in it.  The second time I made them was yesterday and the darned air fryer gave up the goat.  It made some weird noise and then quit, right in the middle of them cooking!

The irony is, Scotch eggs were the first and last thing cooked in it.

I did finish them off in the oven and they were delicious.  I made three, one for yesterday, one for today and one for tomorrow.  They should get me by for another year or so.

I will not be replacing it, it was quite big and took up a lot of worktop space.  We have since purchased a microwave combi type oven that has a convection cooking setting so I will use that in future.

Happy New Year

It has been a year of ups and downs for us as I know it has been for a lot of the folks whose blogs I read so I am wishing all of us

" A very happy, healthy and love filled New Year and some wealth thrown in for good measure."
XXXXX

The third King made it just in the nick of time

King 3 showed up finally on Christmas Eve. The shepherds were off watching their flocks and never made it but they will be in attendance next year.

I wish all my blogging friends the merriest of Christmases and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

My first make with the Golden Syrup

Caramel Corn!

It has been a very long time since I had made any of this.  My husband likes it, even though he shouldn't as he is diabetic, so I thought I would give it a go.

A quick google for a recipe and after the grand opening of the Lyle's golden syrup, Voila!

I have managed to bag some of it up for later.  This was only half of what I made, the other tray was quickly eaten up by us both.

An irrational self indulgence

Last week I had the overwhelming desire for some good old fashioned English flapjack.  I know it differs from US flapjacks but not sure how as I have never had flapjacks knowingly.

Any way, I searched for recipes and they all called for Lyle's golden syrup.  Well, I could compensate, couldn't I?  What did I have to use instead.  I did not have corn syrup and have never tried it but I did have some molasses. I also had pancake syrup.

The recipes all called for quick oats too but I wanted to use up some rolled oats as I bought them and didn't like the porridge they made.

So in my infinite wisdom I made flapjack using the rolled oats, a mix of molasses and pancake syrup and the other required ingredients of brown sugar and butter (which I did have).

It smelt good but it did not taste so good and it didn't hold together.  It needed the quick oats and the Lyles golden syrup.

I went on Amazon and searched for it.

It was available at a price!  I small tin of it was nearly $10, two tins were $13 and I could have got 4 for $17.  My mind opted for the 4 tins as it was so much better value and decided against just one tin as it was way to much money.  Finally common sense prevailed, well almost lol, and I ordered 2 tins.  This was the equivalent of 10 UKP.

Yes 2 tins of golden syrup cost me ten flipping pounds!  Can any of my English blog friends tell me how much a tin costs nowadays please?

But, today, they finally arrived.  Bad weather had delayed the delivery process.  In order to justify my rashness I will be giving my good friend and neighbour one of them.

Anyway, here they are in all their glory and the tins are just the same as they were when I was a kid.  Such fond memories!

Good old English flapjack will be made for Christmas!  I have the correct oats too.

Where do the comments go???

I really enjoy writing my blogs and reading all my blog friend's blogs.  Sometimes I comment but not often and sometimes I get comments.

I always appreciate any one who has taken the time to comment and always publish them, (except the one offering escorts!).

But sometimes they just disappear!

Please know that if you have commented I have tried to publish.  The must be a far off cyber sight somewhere in the blogger sphere where these comments are hiding out.  Maybe it is somewhere near the tumble dryer lost socks place!

The nativity Scene and that cheeky Elf!

 I have not finished all the characters for the nativity scene but I have set it up anyway.  Next year it will be complete with the 3rd King and two shepherds.

Now as for that mischevious elf, he is having a whale of a time at our house.  I really think he needs his own elf on a shelf to keep an eye on him!  This morning he was found trying to hitch a lift on Santa himself!

Christmas preps are about done, cards all mailed, most of the food is bought and presents for the children are almost all bought.

Time to slow down a bit now and watch some TV and do some Christmas baking.

I succumbed

After my lamenting that I really just don't feel inclined to deck the house with Christmas things my husband and I had a chat and decided that as this may be our last Christmas in this house we should make the effort.  We decided no spending though, we would use what we had.  But, there is always a but, isn't there?  Our angel has disappeared, I couldn't find her in our Christmas totes in the workshop so I went to our localish Thrift store and got a lighted star topper for $1. It is a bit wobbly but it works.

The outside lights and big baubles went up on the front porch, even the white wire lighted reindeer made an appearance but this will be his last sadly as his lights on his head and antlers no longer work.  He has served us well over the years.

I strung the lights around the living room, hung up the sparkly stars and did some jiggery pokering and found space for the larger tree.

Elfie has been keeping a close eye on all the shenanigans and reporting back to Santa every night.  The snowman in the picture was one made by my stepson when he was little, we found it in his storage boxes after he was killed in a car crash nearly three years ago.  Although a bit worse for wear he comes out every Christmas now.

We are going to buy presents just for the children this year.  It has been a tough year financially for us and with the house sale falling through it left us a tad on the skint side.

We have lots off upcoming appointments coming up.  My husband has to have an MRI of his heart on Monday, then two days after Christmas he has to have his heart shocked (cardioversion) to try and get it back into regular rhythm to give him some short term relief.  This was supposed to be done on the 18th but they cancelled because they didn't have an anesthetist available. Then he has to go early in January for an echocardiogram chemical stress test to check for any further blockages and damage then in the middle of January he gets two ablation procedures.  Both atrial chambers are being worked on in a bid to stop the afib and the atrial flutter.  This is a four hour procedure under anaesthetic if they can get to it through his groin. They go in both sides.  If not then it will be open heart surgery.  Hoping for the former!

Then there are the usual appointments and follow ups so we will be doing a lot of travelling in the next few months.

Despite all of this we are really trying to get into the Christmas spirit this year and it is actually working.  Yay us!

Wishing the same for you all too.

King #1 is done

I have made the first of the Three Kings.  I am very happy with him, he looks quite splendid in my humble opinion.

I just love his hat.

The grey/silver yarn has a sparkly thread running through it but it doesn't show up too well on the photos.

Now a bit of an indulgence.  We got an 'elf on the shelf'.  Not the expensive $30 one, I couldn't justify that to myself but a copycat one from Amazon.  He is very cute and as Maggie our American Bulldog is the only thing resembling a child in the household she has been told the story of the elf and that he is reporting to Santa every night on whether she has been a good doggie.  So far so good!  She did get me up at 1.30am a few nights ago but that was before the elf arrived so doesn't count lol.

I have never seen the original elf on a shelf close up so not sure how this one measures up but he works for us.  The reviews were excellent so I guess it is comparable.

I am going to see if I can insert some bendy wire into his legs and arms so I can better position him around the place.

Today is Thanksgiving here in the US so I wish all my American blogger friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

I made one sheep for the scene, won't be rushing to make another!

I knitted a sheep for the scene.  Fiddly, fiddly, fiddly!  It doesn't look that great either so won't be making any more. It involves knitting with 2 strands of yarn on thin needles for part of it and that really hurts my hands these days. Arthritis has escalated in them this year. 

I have started on one of the wise men.

Had a lot of hospital appointments lately and two more next week.  My husband sees the cardio physiologist on Tuesday to see what and if they can do anything to stop the atrial flutter and afib.  On Monday he has a colonoscopy so he will be fasting and cleansing all weekend, poor guy.

It has cooled off here which for me is quite wonderful but we have had a few days which were even too cold for me.  Thankfully, the upcoming week is not forecast to be too bad, 40's and 50's.

Today we put our purple 'No Hunting' tapes around the trees along our frontage,  I saw a strange vehicle yesterday evening creeping up our driveway. Probably out of area hunters looking for good hunting land. They will have to look elsewhere I'm afraid, we do not allow hunting on our land unless it is ourselves and my husband isn't well enough this year.

Still chasing that Christmas spirit which is very elusive this year. I miss getting all excited about Christmas, now it just seems such a chore.

Housework has also become difficult because my left knee, which badly needs to be replaced, is really hurting and walking is becoming more and more difficult.  I am wearing a knee support all day and using a cane.  We were hoping to be moved by now and living much closer to hospitals and clinics so having the surgery would be a lot easier in as much as there would not be all the travelling to and from the hospital and rehab clinic.  Also it would be easier for the nurse to come to the house for the after care.  There is always next year.....hopefully.   

Mary and the baby Jesus are done

I have got Mary, baby Jesus and the manger with straw done.  I showed a picture to my neighbour who in turn showed it to her adult grandson and he wanted to know if it was a baby corn cob in the manger.  Cheeky I say, cheeky lol.

Anyway here are the family:-

I wish I could get into the Christmas spirit, it is cold enough and I have watched some Christmas movies and have worked on the Nativity characters but no 'spirit' yet.

I even bought this years Jacquie Lawson advent calendar in readiness, which looks to be the best one yet, but still nothing!

Maybe I am a little early this year, who knows?

Our house feels like home again

Whilst the house was on the market and people were traipsing through to view it, it just didn't feel like home any more.  Once we had a prospective buyer and we started packing and has boxes and totes everywhere it was even worse.

Stuff is still packed in boxes and totes but they are behind closed doors for now in closets and cupboards.

We know we have to sell and move but for the next few months until we see if we can get my husband's heart issues sorted and Thanksgiving and Christmas done it is back to being home.

I have even started on knitting Mary!

Well that's that then!

As suspected, the buyers of our house didn't get the financing.  I am a tad annoyed (slight understatement here!)  as they were told from the get go that the house would qualify for a conventional mortgage but not a VA mortgage. They insisted on going the VA route because they didn't have the down payment for a conventional loan and of course, it was a no go.  The VA wanted a series of repairs done to grant the mortgage.  We had spent all our money on doing the other things I have been blogging about so we were not able to do them and besides we had dropped the price by $10,000 to accommodate the repairs.  The house was appraised at $20,000 more than our asking price in it's current condition but VA would not budge.

We knew this would be the case from the get go so why the buyers wasted their and our time is a mystery.  The realtor had made it really clear to them that a VA loan wouldn't work.

For now we have taken it off the market.  My husband has been diagnosed with more heart issues and has been told no more stress and no more hard physical work.  He is restricted to gentle exercise like walking until they decide if they are going to do more procedures on him.  Ablation is what they are looking at where they scar the inside of the atrial chambers to stop the atrial fib and atrial flutter he is having.

I have managed to get some unpacking done but my sewing room is still in disarray with totes everywhere.  Perhaps later this week I will get around to sorting it all out.

Prior to the past month or so's goings on I did manage to knit Joseph. Maybe I will get Mary and Jesus done in time for Christmas, I seem to have lost my mojo right now.  The rest of the characters will have to be a next year project.

Here is Joseph, I am quite happy with how he turned out and the characters are quite a bit bigger than I thought they would be,

Traumatised

It has been a roller coaster ride since my last post.  On the day we had set for taking the house off the market we got an offer.  We had reduced the price of the house and they knocked it down a bit more.  On the strength of their offer and their timing we put an offer in on a house much nearer to the VA hospital which was accepted with a contingency that our house closed on the 16th of this month.

They have not got their finance sorted yet which means it won't close for another 5 or 6 weeks at the earliest even if they do.  That seems doubtful right now.  So we will have to forfeit the house we have an offer on.

It is a horrible time, we are half packed, in a state of limbo and I am close to breaking point.

Decision made

We have decided to take the house of the market mid September until Spring next year.

The house selling season is coming to an end and hunting season will be starting.  My husband doesn't know if he will hunt or not this year but we are out of deer meat so he may.  At least he will now have the option.  It is hard for him these days, all the prep and getting back and forth to the blind in the cold winter mornings.

In hindsight, we listed too soon.  We had hoped for a quick sale as it was priced for that but it didn't happen.  We have made many improvements but most of the viewers saw it at the beginning before they were done.  We will continue with improvements as and when we can so by next Spring we will be more ready.

I couldn't take not doing any crafts any longer so on the last day of August I embarked on my knitted nativity scene.

It is quite a big project.  7 bodies and heads, 7 cloaks, 14 hands, 7 hats or headpieces, 3 gifts, a crib, a baby, a blanket and three sheep, oh and some hair and beards too.

It was supposed to be a year long project and not at all rushed but now I will have to be a tad more speedy in my endeavors but it is so good to be doing something again.  I have only made Joesph's body and head so far.



I found this guy I had made earlier in the year before we embarked on the house selling saga in April.  It was from the same book by Jean Greenhowe that the Nativity scene is in. I like the patterns, they are easy to follow. You can't tell from the picture, the white wool has a sparkly thread running through it so it looks like glistening snow.

We are having a couple of quite hot days today and tomorrow but I believe from thereon it will start to cool down.  There are signs of Autumn (Fall) already.  Leaves are beginning to change colour and fall and acorns are dropping.  The humming birds are still here and I found out that it doesn't hurt to keep putting out nectar, they will go when it is time regardless of the feeders still being full and sometimes others in flight home will pop down for a drink on their way. So for now I am keeping them filled up.

It will be nice to have it a bit cooler though, so I am looking forward to the next few months.

Hope everyone has had a good summer.

Home sellers fatigue syndrome

Home sellers fatigue syndrome!!!

I have it! The phrase coined by a reporter named Nancy Watkins, (according to the internet and we all know it doesn't lie, right)?

When we decided it was time to sell our property I never envisioned how frustrating it would become.

My husband, bless him, is on a mission to get all the jobs done that need doing.  Every time a potential buyer comes but doesn't buy he comes up with a new reason why they didn't and a new project to complete.

He is nearly 75 and disabled, I just had my 71st birthday and am badly in need of two new knees.  We really don't need to be doing all this stuff but he persists and out of guilt I do my best to help. It is surprising how much a person can do sitting down.  My husband's legs are very weak from the auto immune disease but he is very innovative when he wants to be so his trusty 'box' has had a lot of use these past few months.  The box is one he made from scraps of wood which he uses to sit on for outside jobs.

Today, I put my foot down and said No!  I am having a day off!  He went out and did some stuff but I stayed indoors.  We are having really hot and humid weather right now which doesn't agree with either of us.  We saw his neurologist yesterday who told us about 'Cooling vests'.  He wrote to his PCP asking him to see if the VA will provide one for him.  If not we will purchase one for $100.

I am sure that a lot of the people who come to view are just curious but do they realise how much time and effort goes in when a viewing is scheduled.  I have a checklist of 15 things that I do for a viewing.  Things like put all medications out of sight, apparently viewers are put off by such things. Move the dog beds, same thing.  Put on the bed cover, we only sleep under sheets in the summer time but the bedroom looks much nicer with the comforter on.  I won't bore you with the rest of the list but you get my drift. These are aside from all the cleaning.  My house has never been vacuumed and dusted so much in years lol.

The photos on the listing are not deceptive, unlike some listings where the photos are enhanced to make the rooms look huge, they portray the house as it is.  So if people are interested enough to come and look after seeing them they should not be disappointed as the place actually looks a lot better now than when the photos were taken.  So, I am a little disappointed and surprised that no one has made an offer yet.  The realtor did take new pictures last week when he was showing the house but so far they have not appeared on the listing.  Must call him about that.

Also, we have to be out of the house when they come and we have to take the dog so that means we can't go and get a meal or shop or anything because it is too hot to leave Maggie in the vehicle even with windows open so we have to ride round for about an hour and a half.

On the plus side though is that the jobs are getting done, albeit slowly and if we do not manage to sell we are reaping the benefits.

Our biggest job so far was to get the front wall of the workshop replaced and landscaped so as to prevent flooding.  This is a job we have ignored for years and years.  My husband was convinced that the early viewers were put off by this so we spent quite a lot of money to have a new pathway concreted and a concrete wall put in so that the water wouldn't seep into the shop.  Of course, this was well above our pay grade so we contracted the concrete guys to do it. We had to cut down the studs in the wall and splice them back in for the wall and put in framing for the windows.

My husband and I planed and tongue and grooved the cedar for the wall and re-purposed some old windows to put in and my step son spent 4 days of his vacation putting the wall up for us.  The prep took us a long time as we can't do much at a time.

The landscaping took a long time also, what would have taken us just days years ago takes us weeks and weeks now.

There is no flooding in front of the shop now even with the nastiest storms.

Here are the before and after pictures.

This was a real eyesore

Now it looks really good

My making things is on hold.  As my fellow crafters know, making things usually involves a lot of mess so I am not doing any so that the place stays tidy.  My fingers are itching to knit and sew.  I dismantled my knitting machines so the temptation is not so bad for that.  Hand knitting will be coming back out soon though, I need to be doing something and I have the nativity characters to start on.  I just need to be a bit more tidy when I do it though so I can just shove it all in a cupboard very quickly when someone wants to view. The sewing machines are calling out to me too but I have packed away all my fabrics.

Hope every one who reads my blog is having a good summer and life is as good as it can be.
XXXXX

Still no house sale but plenty getting done

So, the irony is we needed to sell our property because the upkeep was becoming too much for us.  BUT, in order to sell it we are having to do all the things that needed doing.

We love our property, we have a largish house, a huge workshop and 20 acres.  Now the land isn't flat, it is hilly and wooded.  There are about 7 acres that are cleared and have grass that we mow but it isn't farmland, just recreational.

By the time we have sold it and paid moving costs we will end up in a smaller ranch type house (bungalow) with a small (by comparison) back yard (garden) and no workshop.

But we will be much closer to the VA hospital and that is becoming very important due to the number of ER visits we have made over the past few years.

We keep plodding on, doing as much as we can and hope that someone falls in love with the place just as we did.

We have had a lot, and I mean a lot of rain this year.  The downpours would flood in front of the workshop and it would leak into part of it.  We had new sloping concrete poured in front of it and we took down and replaced one wall and put up new guttering.  It is so much better and we are very proud of ourselves.  We did get some help from my stepson when he and his family came to visit a couple of weeks ago but we did weeks of prep work before he came and have done lots since he left but his help was invaluable.  He was able to do the work that required ladders which we can't do anymore.

Thought I had better post as it had been almost two months since my last one.

No sale yet and still working hard

We haven't sold our house yet and hare still working very hard to get in as tip top shape as we can.  We realise that to keep it like this all the time is really much too much for us now.  But as it is still for sale we have to keep going.

Life as we know it is going to change probably this year

Have been so busy I have not had time to blog lately.

My husband had another emergency room visit and subsequent hospital stay which made us realise that it is time to move on from our country paradise in the middle of nowhere and join the world again in a small town near to the VA hospital.

The reality is we are getting too old to keep up the 20 acres and all that involves plus country living with wells and lagoons etc. and we need to be much closer to his hospital for all the appointments, stays and emergencies.

We are gutted, we love this place so much but we have to be honest with ourselves.

So, to that end we have been getting the place ready to list on the market.

We hit a bit of a hitch as I have come down with a really nasty cold which is rendering me pretty much useless but hopefully a few more days will put paid to that.

So, many changes to come, some will be for the better and some for the worse but realism has set in and we know we have to do it.

Will keep you updated........

It is like Groundhog day here at the moment

We are in a really weird phase where our computers/internet/wifi/phones are all causing problems.  Everything seems to take forever to sort out and when one thing gets sorted another thing comes and slaps us in the face.

The quote of the month was made by my husband.  "In an effort to re-design our lives and cut costs, things are spiraling out of control."

We are trying to cut our monthly expenditures, started with the cell phones.  Our phones were old and outdated and our service was way too costly.  We finally decided to transfer to a new carrier which was much cheaper and get new phones. (The cost savings would quickly make up for the new phones cost.  We didn't choose expensive phones). We did that but the phone was difficult for my husband to use so we ended up returning one phone and just keeping mine.

I have just spent an hour or more trying to pay the final bill of the old carrier online.  They made it extremely difficult but I finally got it done.

We got some weird emails so we changed the password on the modem/router and are in the process of changing all passwords and removing payment details off accounts.  That is taking forever.  Then we couldn't get the wifi extender to work, that took most of yesterday to sort out.

Getting the drift lol?

Anyway, onto nicer things.

I made the monkey!

We got snow!

Birds waiting to get onto the feeder

Having their fill

The pattern booklet arrived and yay! it does include all the nativity characters plus sheep.

I can't explain how happy I was and the rest of the patterns are wonderful too, I will be busy knitting all year now.

Change of my last post's title

After a rather obscure response from a far off land offering escort services I thought it was perhaps a good idea to change the title of my last post.

The search for a particular knitting pattern can be problematic!

I have to admit that I can be obsessive.  Not so much in my latter years but occasionally something  will still grab my attention and I really want it.

So what is it that has got me all fired up?

A knitted Nativity scene.

One of the blogs I read had a set that the blogger had made.  It is enchanting. As nowadays I much prefer knitting small items I thought this would be perfect for me to make and there would be no rush to complete it, after all Christmas is 11 months away!

So I set about googling and found a couple of books on the Alibris site, one was called "Knit the Christmas Story" by Jan Messant, I knew from the cover that this wasn't the same Nativity scene but it was a pattern book for a nativity.

Another was  'The Christmas Handbook" by Malcom Bird and Alan Dart.  I knew that Alan Dart created patterns for toys etc. so I hoped it would contain the pattern for the nativity scene that the blogger had made.  Sadly, it didn't but it is a charming book and it took me right back to Christmases as a child in the late 50's and early 60's.

I also found a third book which I knew would not have the pattern I was looking for but it did have some lovely patterns for knitted toys.  This one was called "knitted Toys - 21 easy to knit patterns for irresistible soft toys" by Fiona McTague.

These books were all published in the 80's but are in excellent condition and definitely worth the money. Alibris is a used book site and the prices were very reasonable but the postage wasn't particularly cheap.

It cost under $7 for all three books but the postage was $11 so a total of $18.

After I had placed the order I found out that the patterns I was looking for were actually authored by Jean Greenhowe who has retired but still has a website with details of the booklets available and links to where the booklets can be ordered from.  They are mostly in the UK.

On her site the details of the booklet Christmas Special show that the Nativity scene is included in the 28 page booklet as well as many other delightful Christmas things to knit and I found a supplier who sold it. BUT, there is always a BUT isn't there? On this supplier's site the booklet does not show the Nativity scene but it does show all the other items listed on the Jean Greenhowe site and it does have 28 pages.  So, I ordered it in the hope that it has the scene included and it was an error on the part of the supplier to not show it.  So another $11.

So now the total is up to $29 spent and I still am not 100% sure I will get the patterns I am looking for.

Now for the good BUT! I have the book 'Knit the Christmas Scene' I bought mentioned above and I can access pictures of the Nativity scene I want on the Jean Greenhowe site so I am sure I can modify the patterns in my book to look like hers.  At least I have a guide as to number of stitches and rows etc. from my book.

And if all else fails I can download the Alan dart version of the Nativity scene from his website for 2.50 UKP.

Meanwhile, while waiting for the Christmas Special booklet to arrive, I have started knitting a cute monkey from the Fiona McTague book.

I know this is a long winded post but I wanted to get it recorded for when I need to look back on what transpired.

Not a lot of anything going on right now

Today it is sunny and fairly warm outside.  I took Maggie for a nice long walk and run.  I don't take her every day especially if it is too hot or too cold but please do not think she doesn't get any exercise, she does, we have 20 acres and I take her out many times a day and she can run around to her heart's content.  She stays withing my sight which is a good thing, the going for a walk thing is really for my benefit and I do not do it enough!

Christmas came and went and all was very nice.  We had to go to Columbia just before and just after Christmas for my husband to get his immunotherapy infusions so we stayed home alone so he didn't get in contact with anyone and risk getting anything.  They suppress his immune system intentionally to slow down the autoimmune disease but it does leave him vulnerable to infections and viruses.

I made the apron mentioned in a previous post for my neighbour.  It is a good job she is a smaller build than me because it sure didn't fit me very well!  It was fiddly to make but she really liked it as did some of her grand daughters.  I will not be taking orders. 😌 I didn't take pictures which is most unlike me.

In case it didn't work for her I also made a plastic shopping bag holder out of a new tea towel, very quick and easy to make.

Not much else going on in the crafting world.  My husband is setting up his office/studio and I have been helping him with that a bit so I have not been idle.

A blog friend has asked me to make a dog collar for her dog and as soon as it warms up for more than a day or two I will get out to the workshop and make a start on that.  I really enjoy the leather work and it is something we both get involved in.  My husband cuts the leather.  I attach the hardware and do the patterning and the holes, then he colours it.  I then gum trag the edges and the back so a real joint effort.

Not much else happening, waiting on a call back to see if I have to go in for a D&C after my bout of woman's problems.

Hope 2019 will be a good year for everyone.

Update on the update

This was the still to do list:-

Put up inside decorations and little tree

Gifts for 5 grandkids and other daughter to order

Wrap gift for littlest grandchild and mail

Find another gift for husband

Get something for Maggie the dog

Get rest of food shopping

Make Christmas cake and shortbread

The first 5 things have been done.

Here is Fern in all her new clothes before I wrapped her to send to our youngest grand daughter

Undies and top first

Now with skirt

And finally with jacket, shoes and hat.

I have started making an apron I promised my good friend and neighbour I would make her for Christmas. I have been putting it off but today I bit the bullet and cut it out and started sewing it.  It involves using a lot of bias binding but the sewing machine is struggling as it seems to be coated with something to stiffen it so it isn't going too quickly.

I am making View C

Christmas progress

Christmas cards all made, written and mailed.

1 gift for husband found and ordered

Family gift for one son and family found and ordered

Daughter's gift ordered and received (she better not be wearing them yet!!!)

Outside lights and ornaments put up and tested

Inside ones bought to house

Bought nice big piece of beef for Christmas dinner (husband doesn't like turkey) and fixings for Christmas cake.

Still to do:-

Put up inside decorations and little tree

Gifts for 5 grandkids and other daughter to order

Wrap gift for littlest grandchild and mail

Find another gift for husband

Get something for Maggie the dog

Get rest of food shopping

Make Christmas cake and shortbread

It is only December 5th though so should have plenty time to get the rest of the Christmas stuff done. There will only be the two of us and Maggie this year so no need to go daft.

I find that my enthusiasm for Christmas has wained a bit the past few years, I remember my Mum was the same at my age and I couldn't understand it at the time.......but I do now.

For our youngest grand daughter I have knitted the American doll clothes written about in a previous post (plus a top) and I have decided to dress Fern with them and send her too.  I found another doll in another thrift store which I was going to send but decided on Fern because she reminds me so much of our granddaughter with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. The new doll I have named Leigh, she has long brown hair and brown eyes and was made in 1995, she is in excellent condition for the age.

I seem to have become a rescuer of wannabe American girl dolls. I will still have the new doll Leigh and Peggy after Fern goes to our granddaughter.

We have had the usual unplanned expenses arise that we always seem to get just before Christmas.  The furnace went out, fortunately the replacement motor was covered under warranty but we had to pay $190 for the labour.  Husband needed new glasses and we had to pay $86 towards the cost of them, extra trips to hospitals and of course we have the expected property taxes but we had managed to save for those.

Two more hospital trips at least before Christmas too.

On a very different note, I watched most of the funeral today of George H.W. Bush the 41st president of the USA.  It was a very dignified and profound ceremony, very touching and a lovely send off for him.  Recorded the rest to watch later.

Who would have thought atherosclerosis could be a good thing?

The appointment with the vascular surgeon was yesterday.  It was with much trepidation we made the trip to Kansas to see him.

I saw the nurse and gave her the CD of the CT scan.  Many minutes later the surgeon came into the examination room carrying an ipad.  He showed us a close up picture of one of the aneurysms.  "You see that circle of white" he asks.  "That is calcification"

I was thinking OMG, it must be really bad.

BUT, it is a good thing it seems.  He said that with the calcification the likelihood of a rupture was negligible.

Wow! where we relieved?

So asked a lot of questions about whether heavy lifting or stress would be detrimental or should I change my diet at all and he said "No, just go out and live your life, no need to change anything"

We left his building very happy.

Bring on Christmas!

An update on the Christmas cards, early snow, a new kettle and some health issues.

It's been a pretty strange month. I have been getting on with the Christmas cards and finally got them all done yesterday.  I am very happy with how they turned out.

I recycle cards received from previous years.  I used to keep cards for years then eventually throw them out.  Last year when I decided to make cards I thought it would be nice to recycle cards we had received, that way they get another go around. I cut out pictures and messages and also stamp out the 'Merry Christmases' from the old cards.  The stamping out is very time consuming but I like to use them on my cards.

I also use Christmas fabric, I cut out the shapes and use them.

So here are this year's.......

Here a couple of insides

And a back.  I decided to put a logo on them, Fernwood Springs being the name of our property

I think I missed a few of them, but you get the gist.

One of the weird things is that we have had snow, it is still on the ground but thawing.  It has been very, very cold, that is unusual here for the time of the year.

We have had two electric kettles go belly up on us these past few months, both were stainless steel and came with good reviews but proved to be pretty useless.  So, I decided to try a glass one this time and was delightfully surprised when I switched it one and it has blue lights all around the bottom when it is on.

Sometimes simple things really amuse me.

And finally to the health issues.  I started peeing blood nearly two weeks ago. It got pretty bad and I came over all weird-like so my husband took me to the ER.  They were very good and efficient and did a CT scan.  Seems nothing unusual to see, no kidney stones or masses, which was a huge relief but it did show an incidental finding of two aneurysms on my splenic artery which they advised I saw my Dr. about pronto.

I went to see my doctor, turns out the bleeding was a woman thing, heck I am 70 years old for goodness sake!!!  She sent me right up to see a gynecologist, I told him I must be going through puberty again, he replied, 'Nope, ain't happening"  Anyway, a biopsy was done and again, thankfully, no masses but benign things that will need attending to.

Meanwhile my doctor has also referred me to a vascular surgeon about the aneurysms because she was concerned about their positioning. Just waiting on a call from them about an appointment.  Worst case scenario is a rupture before I get seen to, once I have seen the doctor though it could be the removal of the spleen, or best case, but not likely because of their position, is a repair of the artery.  Time will tell on that.

I have started making our Christmas cards, our new roof and helping my husband make shelves

Not much making of anything from me these past few weeks.  I did find another couple of machine knitting swatches that I turned into hats for the 18" dolls.  I have one for Peggy now and put one in with the clothes I knitted for our grand daughter's Christmas gift.

This is Peggy's hat and the other one is very similar. A great way to use up test swatches!

We have had the rest of our roof replaced this last week thankfully now we will be nice and dry for years to come.  Our house which has multiple roof areas is now all done with metal roofing.  The original part of the house and the sunroom already had metal roofing.  The addition had shingles, they covered the outside porch, the kitchen, the new downstairs room and the large screen porch on the rear, so quite a large area. Then there is a separate roof on the upstairs extension. Now we have copper coloured roofing and it looks wonderful.

This is the addition, the front lower roof was done a couple of years ago, this past week the corresponding lower level on the back was done and all of the upper level.  All the woodwork needs re-staining and sealing but that is beyond our means both physically or financially right now.

I have been helping my husband in the workshop with a project he is making for his office, some shelving for under his desk so he can have all his computers on one desk. We did get two of our computers repaired this past week so that was a bonus.  I haven't really been much more than moral support for him but he appreciates my humble efforts.

As for the Christmas cards, I have made a start.  I got the blank cards and envelopes and blank address labels.  The cards are white this year but I think I prefer the beige colour I used last year.  I had to re do all my labels because I lost the originals when my computer crashed.

This is my second year of making cards.  It takes a long time but I really enjoy doing them.  I recycle old Christmas cards.  I cut out verses and pictures to re-use using fancy edge scissors.  I cut out "Merry Christmases" using a die on the Sizzix Big Shot machine. (This machine was a Christmas gift a couple of years ago, a tad frivolous but a lot of fun and I buy the dies and embossing folders when they have their 80% off sales).  Each one takes awhile as they have to be pressed out and they are very fiddly.  It is not like just cutting out a star or a tree.  I have also cut out some different fabric items like snowmen, Christmas trees and snow globes etc. from Christmas fabric. I used pinking shears for that.  I will emboss the front of the cards with Christmas designs as I think that gives them a nice look.

It does seem like a lot of time and effort but I will continue to make them until it isn't fun anymore. I will take some pictures when I have made some more progress on them.

Oh, and one more thing, it makes a heck of a mess, little pieces of card and fabric everywhere!

What I have been up to

I have been pretty busy these past few weeks.  A couple of visits to the VA hospital for my husband and another coming up this week.  A visit for myself to the doctor for my annual check up.  She sent me off for xrays of knee and shoulders.  Advanced joint disease apparently so she is setting up a consultation with an orthopedic specialist for me. Everything else was OK except I am now on the lower end of pre diabetes so I have to watch my diet.  A1C was 6.1.  Pre diabetes is 6.1 to 6.5.  I am not too worried and I will mind my diet.  One of the adverts on TV for diabetes meds strive for an A1C below 7.1 so I am thinking 6.1 isn't too bad.  My husband's is 7.3 and his doctor isn't too concerned. He does take meds but not insulin.

I have been knitting up a storm for the 18'  dolls.

Shoes for the twin dolls.  I made up the pattern for these and am using up left over yarn from other projects.

A hat for one of the dolls made from a swatch knitted on my knitting machine.

And finally an entire ensemble for our grandaughter's Christmas present

I have stopped for the time being.  I have really enjoyed knitting these clothes but I need to do some sewing next.

For today, at least, it is cooler

Yeppers, for today at least, the high is going to be 65F. (18C) Sheer joy!!!  It will be short lived but appreciated immensely.  Back up into the 80's (26-32C) until the 22nd September then it should stay in the 70's (21-29C) for a while.

We have had a lot of rain and storms this past week and Maggie, our American bulldog, just hates storms.  She didn't like the thunder coat we had for her as she didn't like putting her feet in the holes so I made her one that has velcro to attach the top to the bottom.  She loves it and likes to wear it all the time.  I am keeping it for the storms though and winter when it is cooler.

Need to get some more velcro to make it a little more snug.

I woke up a couple of days ago to a searing pain in my heel.  I assume it is plantar fasciitus.  I had it years ago and it is not fun.  Had to change my orthotics and medication to be able to walk.  Trying to keep off it as much as I can but that's not as easy as it sounds.  Have to see the doc soon for annual check up so will ask about it then.

Meanwhile, still knitting.  I have made a little jacket and panties for our grand daughter's 18" doll and am working on a skirt, then a hat.

Photos when the whole ensemble is made.

Have a great weekend everyone.