What, what?!?

Two months?!?  Holee~Bat~Babee!  Two months since I last posted...wow.  Altho, this last year has been pretty scanty post~wise as a whole.  Let's see if I can't do better this year, what say, hey?

So here's a picture of our two lil girls {Shaddow is our big girl and she is not in this picture, if I am not mistaken, at the time I was holding the camera, she was outside on the concrete park pad sunning herself and soaking up the warm rays even tho the day was not exactly warm}.

Sophie is the darker zaftig chiweenie while Ginger is the skinny blonde model.  Ginger has been with us for almost three months now, tho we are considering mid~March to be her birthday because no one is sure how old she is.  She has gained one whole pound since being with us, so she is now thirteen pounds and I think she is her full grown adult size.  Sophie, like me, needs to lose weight.  For Sophie, it is mere ounces, but I think she is finding it to be a chore also.  Relatively speaking, three or four pounds from the 22 she weighs is roughly like me losing forty to fifty at this point.  Poor thing, she can't even jump up on the bed and her stocky lil legs and long spine are not meant to handle any excess.  So we need to stop giving her so many treats and now that the holidays are over, there are not quite so many tasty dishes...for either of us.

Well, I've settled into the new year.  Wrote a short short for the writers' group here, keeping track of assignments, activities, and goals.  So that's good.  I started off the year with catching up on several to~do lists of stuff that I'd put on hold during the holidays, including getting organized in general and transferring birthdays, anniversaries, and appts to the new calendars.

This means that several of the meetings that I'd been meaning to get to, but had been lax on attending; well, now they are fresh in my mind and so I have no excuse for not getting to the various committees, writing groups, knitting groups, etc.  None.  Sigh.

Unless you count the odd weather we had this past week.  That provided an excellent excuse for me to stay indoors, out of the chilly wet slushy snow that actually stuck to the ground, which is a big huge thing for Mississippi.  I can drive in that, but many others can not so why would I want to risk an accident in several tons in order to show at a meeting?  Besides, I kept warm and toasty and dry and comfy in my jammies.  Cuddling with the pups and a pile of yarn, tho not always at the same time.  Lots of folks don't want items with pet hair, not even short lil matching hair.  Especially if it isn't their pet.  Can you imagine?

There are some after~holiday yarn sales at a few of the tried and true places.  One of the places, Herrschners is having a pretty decent series of sales because they are starting their own yarn company which I think they plan to sell exclusively their own brand {Willow} instead of what had been the house brand {Herrschner} and other yarns like Red Heart, Lion's Brand, Caron, TLC, Village Yarn, Nob Hill, Sundance, Northland, Universal, Dept 71, Bernat, and others.  The last few times I dealt with Herrschner, it was a pain in the ass and there were all sorts of SNAFUs.  But this might be worth it, cuz the sales are pretty tempting.

I brought home an afghan I had made several years back from my husband's youngest son's house.  I'd made 120 hexagons and joined them into a king~sized afghan.  The problem was that I didn't join the full width of the hex seam cuz I was probably thinking that I would need those corner stitches to seam the strip together.  Sillee mee!!

So I had this gaping hole at the juncture of the three adjoining hexes and I thought, "oh I'll take the quilt theme one step further", cuz it was basically like a Grandma's Country Flower Garden pattern in that the hexagons are used in both.  So I tied knots at those junctures, thinking about the lovely knotted quilts.

This experiment? FAILED.  The yarn is meant to have nice drape, and it does.  So nice that the knotted areas drape too.  Which is so not what I wanted to happen.  So I'm going to take the seams out and rejoin all the hexes again.  Completely, this time.  No knots that might fray or come apart and no big ole gaping holes.

I'm also doing some hats and scarves for St Anne's in B'ham.  I want to get those done and out to them so that they can use them while it is still cold enough to need them!  Otherwise, what's the point of hats and scarves?  I'll probably send them a few lapghans too, later in the year, cuz you can always use those.

As far as news in the family, my husband's eldest daughter graduated with her associate's while his youngest daughter just enrolled in college.  His middle daughter is doing great in school, 4.0, go girl, go!  His older son just was promoted at work and is making it thru his New Jersey winter {bit of a difference from Mississippi, doncha know}.  His younger son made chief in the coast guard last month and so will be attending school for awhile this spring.  He also got his next assignment and it was exactly what he wanted.  Yea!  So it seems everyone is doing well, working hard, and for the most part happy.

So I think that my husband is happy.  He is enjoying his last few weeks of football, and is off work tomorrow as it is a holiday at the university.  In fact, I hear him urging one of his teams to get it together right now.  I mean, they do hear him, don't they?

Hope every one stays healthy, avoids the flu, and is landing on their feet ok post~holiday!