Here We Go Again...

Or as it goes in the Whitesnake song - here I go again!  The heat...the heat is back with a vengeance!! What fun things can I do inside today?... tomorrow ?... Saturday?...  I've cleaned all three floors of my house! I've made tuna pasta salad, scones, salsa etc. I've laundered everything that could possibly be laundered, dusted everything that needed to be dusted blah blah blah...

Well, I do have a lot of computer-related tasks to work on such as my itinerary for the upcoming trip to Ireland. I like to have my entire plan on one piece (or 2) of paper so there is no guess work. For example, once I land at Dublin Airport, go through customs and nab my suitcase I have to find my way to the first B&B so I research buses and trains to find the most direct and closest route to the B&B. Then when I'm panicking I can check my little list and see where the bus/train terminal/station is and which # to take.

Doesn't she look just like me?

And I haven't blogged for a week! I think about it but have no consistent plan about when or how often. So I get lazy. There's no big news so it's hard to get inspired....

• Spool knitting - still working on that while I watch TV at night
• Carving - nope, not in the summer - who wants to sit in a windowless room and create dust when I could go outside and bike/read/walk/hike in Kilally Meadows etc? Not me. That's a winder pastime. 
• Reading - Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth", and "The Nest" by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, and "The Swans of Fifth Avenue" by Melanie Benjamin. And numerous non-fiction books. I put books on hold at the library (online) an often get 2 or 3 all within a few days and then it's a reading marathon!
• Crocheting - going to start something today
• TV - currently watching "Broadchurch" a great British detective series
• Travel - in the past couple of weeks I've gone to the beach once, to a summer festival or two, hiking in Kilally, out for lunch

So that's my life. What have you been up to? What do you do when it's 40c+? (104F) 

Maybe I should go to the movies!

Almost Forgot to Put a Title!!

Everyone ready for the big day? Nope, me either, but I'm getting closer to being done than I was in my last post. I've got four dish/hand cloths made and have given two away; I was lucky to find a big ball of cotton yarn in Christmas colours at Walmart; I use a variety of stitches with the main pattern being single crochet alternating with double crochet. I still struggle with turns and sometimes it looks like I've lost a stitch or three!

I've been baking, sort of - most of what I'm making doesn't require the oven like this yummy cashew brittle. This batch turned out great but two other batches are more like fudge than toffee. Still tastes good though! I also made haystacks (chow mein noodles, peanuts and melted semi-sweet chocolate with a sprinkle of sea salt for added interest!) for the first time and they turned out well. My sister, Lannie, always made haystacks but now she's living in PEI so I have to make my own!

I found a spool knitter at Michael's and am using the leftover yarn I find at Talize (thrift store) - I'm amazed at how quickly it works up - I should have a good sized rug by the end of the winter!

I gave one piece of carved soapstone as a gift (sorry, no photo) and am finishing up the piece below for another gift; this piece is made of an opaque harder type of soapstone that I've never used before and is testing my skills - I love how it lets the light shine through it:

Here's my friend, Robyn, with me at the Village Pub. She's a fabric artist and gave me the SPIRAL pin below! The spiral shape continues to follow me - Annie and I encountered many spirals as we travelled along Hadrian's wall. I've done a wee bit of research and the spiral can represent the journey from the external to the internal which also explains the journey of meditation (outer world to inner world). 

We shared a veggie pizza and a bottle of chianti and had many great and creative ideas while talking - like forming an art collective for women in the Wortley Village area of London...stay tuned...that could just be the wine talking.....

And here's beautiful Luna sitting in the cupboard beside my chair where I work. I cleaned out the cupboard which is REALLY OLD (it belonged to my gramma and was black when I got it back in the 1980's - I have since refinished it); to make room for my yarn etc but Luna decided it was a good spot to keep her eye on me - you never know when a treat might come along!

And that's it for now. There have been several get togethers with friends and I'm heading to a friend's house this afternoon. There was a wee bit of snow in the air yesterday with the Toronto area getting a couple of centimetres. But the temps are going back up again next week bringing rain and highs in the teens!! Yikes!

Just a few more days and then Christmas come and go once again. Months of preparation for a few hours of chaos!