She smells like mud,

and her feet were clean when she came inside.

Last Friday,

the 16th, I ran into a dear friend at the post office. For a variety of reasons we hadn't seen or talked to each other for some months and were glad to see each other and do a little bit of catching up.
The very best part of catching up was finding out that she and her husband are about to finalize their daughter's adoption; the second best thing was getting to hold said daughter!


I am sure you all know what this means.

 

Last week

I knit a hat.

 

This week I got to deliver it.

 

This week I made another hat,

 

and today it is being mailed to its new home.

 

A few weeks ago,

(well, February 22, to be precise, since that was when this picture was taken) our front west-side yard looked like this.

 

A few days later (February 29), the morning after an ice/freezing rain storm it looked like this.

 

Saturday our west-side neighbors (the ones that are on the other side of that forest and don't have to drive past our house to get to theirs) came over to see if we wanted to borrow a chainsaw. Pretty much not, since we don't have a 35+ foot ladder to reach all the broken stuff, nor the desire/time/insurance to do it ourselves. As soon as the ground dries out just a little bit more, the tree folks will be out to make it better, plus they will haul it all away. Which we are sure the neighbors will prefer to what we would do with it, aka leave it piled in the forest to decay away.

I have been knitting

a scarf, which is almost done. It happens to involve a cable needle (since I am a bit of a chicken when it comes to eight stitches in back without one). Because of that, I decided not to take it to the Super Bowl Party we were going to and started a new cowl to work on instead. I finished it today, and am very happy with how it turned out; especially considering I was cobbling together several different patterns. (The scarf will probably be done sometime this week, I would guess Wednesday at the latest.)
On a sort of unrelated note, the Lemon-curd Cheesecake was a big hit at the party.

Wednesday night's fog

left for awhile sometime on Thursday; I even got to see some sunshine and blue sky for a little bit. It also warmed up to somewhere in the mid-40s, and the combination seemed to cause a lot of activity on the deck. (Warning, random picture heaviness ahead!)
This Red-Bellied Woodpecker decided that the house side of the suet feeder would be an OK place to eat for a change.

 

Normally it eats from the other side of the feeder and peeks around to see if I am standing at the kitchen window watching. (Kind of reminds me of how Sadie used to go around to the back side of the island to see if she could convince a cooling loaf of bread to come down to visit her. Right. Like we couldn't hear her tags/nails/self giving her away. "Just because I can't see you, doesn't mean I don't know what you are doing.")

 

This dove was very cooperative about having a portrait session.

 

 

 

There were Downy Woodpeckers about,

 

as well as Blue Jays, but they were being very skittish. I felt lucky to get any pictures of them at all, even if it was shaking its head.

 

White-Breasted Nuthatch

 

There was also some activity in the yard,

 

that moved onto the deck.

 

 

There were also Goldfinches and a few other random birds.

 

Needless to say, all this deck activity caused a fair amount of indoor activity of chatter and moving back and forth from window to door for the best view.

 

The fog moved back in sometime during the afternoon.

 

Same spot, just zooming in on the neighbor's pasture,

 

and more zooming in on their barn (when Hubband first saw these, he thought I had walked down the road, but I hadn't moved).

 

The fog moved in on the back too, for some funny reason. It got a lot thicker and hasn't lifted much today.

 

On a totally unrelated note, I am making cheesecake tomorrow for a party Hubband and I are going to Sunday evening.

Last night

was a rather foggy evening/night. So I decided to try an experiment.
This was with the flash, so the light was reflecting off of the water molecules in the atmosphere.


I think this one was without the flash and is just the light of the headlights, but I can't guarantee that to be fact. (Both of these look better if you biggify, but to be honest, I am still not sure what I think of them overall.)

On Tuesday

I had my usual little helper when I was getting some stuff out of the pantry (you know, that place where treats are kept?), but I decided to give her some catnip instead of what she was expecting/asking for.
There was a whole lot of rolling around on the floor once she had a good snuffle,

 

and not enough holding still to get a good picture of her covered in dried leaves.

Tiger Yarn

has finally come to my stash. Seriously, I have been wanting this particular yarn for several years, but it is really hard to come by. Thanks to something Gaylen mentioned the other day, I found a store online that had it in stock.

 

They had "Monarch" as well, so at some point I (and perhaps someone else in my family) will be sporting wild animals and/or migrating insects on their feet.

See?

I do know how to do crafty things besides knitting.

 

Punch needle embroidery (I promise, this was the best reference link I could find).

 

(Just in case you wanted something for scale.)