Great Granddaughter has arrived!

Here she is - lovely little Miley - my first Great! Weighed in at 8 lbs - 21" long - happy and healthy. This is our brand new person, less than two hours old, born on Sunday, July 5, 2009.

Winter Birds

Besides knitting, a few other interests occupy my time. The animals in my life are primary to my survival - and I am also a bit of a bird watcher. At this time of the year it's mostly watching from my kitchen window, or in the back yard when I feed them (a nearly daily chore at this time of the year!). Here are a few pictures taken this week out my kitchen window. Some are snow buntings that only come during bad weather. They will disappear at the first sign of a thaw, or if the days are very sunny and calm. But when the weather is lousy, here come my beautiful little friends, settling in clouds on the ground and in the feeder in my window. Also pictured are the mourning doves, a junco and a female hairy woodpecker on the suet cake on the feeder by one of the trees.

When I'm outside filling the feeders, the snow buntings sit on the power lines and encourage me to hurry up with their little chirping. They are soon joined by mourning doves, blue jays, american tree sparrows, house sparrows, starlings, juncoes, woodpeckers and chickadees - they will come to my hand for sunflower seeds. It's still a thrill for me when this tiny little life puts its trust in me and walks on my outstretched hand!

Faroese Flower Shawl

A few pictures of the Faroese Flower Shawl by Lucy Neatby. I knit it in Bernat Berella 4, meaning this to be an everyday shawl used to keep warm during our cold Quebec winters. Being allergic to wool, and not always able to afford my favourite alpaca, I often am forced to use acrylic yarn to get the job done. This is my second Faroese shawl this fall, there being a 13 year gap since the last lace endeavour.

This allergy is a regular PITA, as there are so many totally lovely yarns and colours - especially the hand painted offerings I dream and drool over on the internet sites - this is the only way I can enjoy them, more's the pity.

Please excuse the lack of finesse in the picture order, I don't have this blogging thing down completely yet.

Fern Lace Scarf

This scarf has been a true labour of love. My oldest and dearest friend (we have been friends since childhood) and I are both the same age and we don't exchange gifts at Christmas as a rule. However, this year I thought that since I'm back to knitting it would be nice to make her this lace scarf, a small token of love and thanks for all the years of friendship.

Because I procrastinated starting my Christmas knitting, as previously mentioned, I got lucky with the scarf as her birthday is January 15th. Now all that remains is to package it up and drop it in the mail.

This is a free pattern, one that I fell in love with and will surely use again as the occasion arises! The designer is very hands on and is more than willing to help out with explanations and so on.

Google Adsense & Christmas Knitting

Here's the thing.....I followed the bouncing ball and trusted Google with this Adsense thing, thinking it could eventually give me a couple of pennies just for the fun of it. FUN you say??? Balderdash! Google has bugs in the application form and no way to let them know except through their so-called forum. So I gave up, after all who is Google to tell me that Quebec does not exist in Canada????

Now I receive an email reminding me I need to finalize my Adsense account. SO I try again. Same error, same no way to contact them and get an answer.

Therefore I have deleted this !@#$%^ thing from my website until they get their act together.

And all this time I could be knitting.

Speaking of knitting, here are a few pictures of my Christmas gift knitting this year. Next year I promised myself to start before mid-November. Oh sure, how could I ever get anything done if I started early? Procrastinator being my middle name-nothing ever gets done unless it's under pressure. Why? How would I know, something in the genes, perhaps. That's an easy cop-out don't you think? Blame it on the ancestors.

Adsense Problem Solved

Hours later, problem solved - don't ask.........

Google Adsense

Help!! I just applied to Google to put in ads and now, as you can see, the first thing you see when you bring up this blog is this HUGE ad - and my account isn't even "approved" yet! Anyone know how to get rid of it???

Spinning?

Because I have too many patterns stashed away both on my laptop and in person, and because I have more yarn stash than ever before in my life, so to keep myself busy (?), I've decided to try a new hobby - spinning.

I belong to a Yahoo Group called Traditional Knitting and the list Mom, Liz Lovick, is more than amenable to helping out her members with such good advice and the benefit of her expertise. I pestered the heck out of her yesterday - yes, on New Year's day - trying to decide how I should go about purchasing a drop spindle, and what were her recommendations. She very generously took the time to explain to me about various types of spindles and give me some advice on types of rovings (this may not be the correct terminology, give me a break, I'm just starting out).

There ensued a discussion of my -ugh- wool allergy.......lately I've discovered aplaca, and this sumptuous yarn has become my favourite. Liz gave me her recommendations as to what type of alpaca would be the easiest to spin for a newbie.

I just can't say enough about the invaluable advice I got yesterday, it was so good of her to take time on New Year's to help me out, it's really impressed me no end - as you can see from my going on and on!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Just noticed there have been 31 visits to this pitiful little blog - to those 31 I apologize for the woeful lack of content - although they probably will never see this as they won't be returning........

We are 6 minutes from 2009 - I wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy New Year - the whole world is in need of some prayers for peace and harmony - maybe we could contact our 'Higher Power' (whoever that may be to each) and request help for this human race. We surely do need it, now.