Mud&String

It’s always a pleasant surprise when I come across something totally unexpected, especially family things, things that I haven’t thought about in years and years or things that I didn’t know existed. Things that are tied to my family are infinitely precious to me, as family members are becoming few and far between as the years march on. This desk belonged to my mom’s father, my grandfather, who…

The much anticipated relocation of Casa Coleman has been and gone, leaving behind mountains of boxes. Who knew we had so much stuff? Mr. iKnead made the final old house to new house run about 8 o’clock last night. It could have been a bittersweet moment, leaving the old house but we were so exhausted neither of us even thought about it until this morning. We LOVE LOVE LOVE our new home, even with…

I actually started this post yesterday. I promised myself that I’d get it finished and posted today. Here’s what’s happening here at Casa Coleman…. Last October, Mr. iKnead and I started thinking about downsizing, leading to lots of Zillow time and lots of exploring neighborhoods and house fantasies. In the end, we decided to take the plunge into building our dream house. The actual building of…

11:50 p.m. and I’m Not the Least Bit Sleepy – A Great Time to Blog

My projects are chugging right along as far as I can tell. I picked up counted cross stitch after about a 20 year hiatus and found that I love it just as much now as I did back then. The pattern I picked out is a doozy called Thistle – Cross Stitched Quilt Blocks from Carolyn Manning Designs Almost to the halfway point. I’ll have to make a run to The Shepherd’s Needle for more DMC before we…

Lowering My Standards or Giving Myself A Break

I’ll take the latter, thank you very much. 🙂 When I was a worker bee, I published a post three times a week on average, usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Since retirement, I MIGHT get a blog post in once a week or so, all the while making promises to myself that “next week I’m getting back to three times a week”. Now, if you are a regular reader, you know that three posts a week has yet to…

If You Find…

If you guys are artists/crafters and I know most of you are, a lot of the time your FOs tend to pile up faster than you can gift/donate/sell them. I mean,you can only foist gift so many things to friends and family before the eyerolls and less than enthusiastic thank yous begin. 🙄😑 With this in mind, I googled what to do with art overflow and found a great Facebook group called Art Abandonment.…

I suppose it’s time to show you guys a couple of things that I’ve been obsessed with these last few weeks. After all, Christmas knitting is behind me, at least for the moment and I promised myself a few selfish projects as a reward for finishing my gifted projects in time for the actual gift giving. ON MY NEEDLES Remember the Gray Days sweater project? Well, after putting it aside in favor of…

I hope everyone had as great a holiday as we did! In fact we had such a great time together that we stretched our Christmas over three days of fun, food, presents, games, grandkids, cousins, and the chaos that springs from six kids from 10 to 2 years old and seven adults who threw adulting aside for a couple of days. CHRISTMAS REVEAL! Giant Arm Knit Scarf/Throw   Trieste Hat Trieste Hat and…

Ten days until Christmas and while I’m definitely in hurry up and get these projects finished mode, I’m not panicking. I am, however, hyperfocused and am determined to be finished by Christmas Eve. No photos as these projects are destined to be gifts, but here is a photo of the grandkids to ooooh and ahhhh over. Susannah, Harper, Annabelle, Charlee and Emma Shepherd After a long dry knitting…

First FO of December

OFF MY NEEDLES First Christmas FO 2020 Trieste Hat and Mitts No real details as this is a gift, but this pattern knitted up so easily and quickly it will definitely be in the gift rotation for a long time. Pattern details can be found here. NEW HOUSE NEWS Mr. iknead and I had our last meeting today with our builder to finalize our house plan and tie up the few loose ends. We’ll sign our…

Every potter loves a successful firing! I get a little anticipatory rush when it’s time to open my kiln and see whether or not the kiln gods have smiled upon me. This time, they smiled. 🙂🙂🙂🙂

Before Firing

Starting with the lower left pot, here are the glazes I used: Copper Red, the pot above it is wearing June Bug, the middle pot is glazed with Blue Stone and its neighbor wears Blue Spark.…

OFF MY NEEDLES

My Five Roses Shawl is finally finished and I think it turned out really well. There were a few moments when I seriously considered frogging and starting over but I’m glad I didn’t. My project notes are here.

My Five Roses Shawl

Christmas knitting continues. With My Five Roses completed, some of my self imposed pressure has eased and I plan to focus on my Christmas projects…