The Weekend Roundup: C

Today's Weekend Roundup from Tom the Backroads Traveller has the following prompts:  Starts with C, Week's Favourite, and Clouds.

Starts with C
We had a snowfall earlier this week and it accumulated quite a bit, so there was a lot of clean-up required.  This was my car:

Here's the chicken coop (double C!), with the path that I dug to it so I could easily get out there to fill the feeder and waterer!  The chickens don't like to come out of the coop at all in this weather.

I found some crab-apples still on the branch, wearing snowy hats:

Week's Favourite
I had a slightly less crazy work schedule this week, which allowed me to take a few minutes to work on a craft project - I wanted something small and easy that I could complete quickly.  Thus, I knitted this cute little hedgehog.  That was my favourite part of the week!  (Bonus letter c:  The back of the hedgehog is knitted with chenille yarn).

Clouds
After the snow, there was some blue sky, but as usual at this time of year, there were also clouds, and within about 20 minutes of this photograph being taken, there was no blue sky to be seen at all. 

At this time of year, I get rather tired of grey, dismal, cloudy days.  Today is actually sunny, although very cold, but that's better than gloomy.  The long term forecast for the coming months suggests that by mid-February, we are going to head into a period of lower-than-normal temperatures which will persist throughout the month of March.  I'm not looking forward to that.

Friday's Hunt v. 4.11

I had my spinning guild meeting last night, so I didn't get around to doing Friday's Hunt yesterday. I do enjoy getting together with other hand spinners to chat about fibre and yarn and spinning.  We have a great tribe!

The prompts for Friday's Hunt with Eden Hills this week are:  Starts with K, stinky, and old.

Starts with K
Well, as anyone who reads this blog from time to time will know, I am a fibre fiend, and that means that among other things, I knit.  I wish I had more time for knitting, but recently I have completed a project that I really like.  I made a purple bouclé yarn vest with an alpaca/wool blend yarn.  I had a lot of the yarn in my stash and wanted the right project for it.  A bouclé yarn is one with little loops along its surface, which gives the finished project a highly textured surface.

One of my current projects (I always have a few on the go) is this cowl, knitted in locally-sourced and processed yarn that my parents brought from a holiday in England - the Yorkshire area to be precise.  The cowl is called Harmonia's Rings and you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

I like the beaded edge on the cowl, which you can see in the picture below.  I'm on the last skein of yarn, so nearly finished.


Stinky
We recently adopted a pair of young rats from one of Marc's colleagues.  Her cat was frightening them, so they were looking for a good home for them.  We love their cute little faces and their funny antics.  The brown rat is Violet and the grey and white one is Ivy.  People sometimes complain that rats are stinky.

I cleaned their cage this morning so it would not be stinky - rats are not very easy to litter train, so they pee around the cage, which can make it stinky if you don't clean it regularly.

Old
I recently unpacked some boxes in the basement that had some of my old toys in them.  One of the oldest is this stuffed hedgehog.  It was one of my first "teddy bears" and was made for me by my maternal grandparents.  Her name was Mrs. Tiggy Winkle, named after the character from the Beatrix Potter books, all of which I also adored!  She has been loved for many years and looks a bit squashed as a result, but she is a very special old toy.

I also found this marvellous finger-puppet mouse bride, which my mother made for me when I was very young.  She is also a very old toy, but also well-loved and often played with when I was a child. My mother is very creative and made me many little animal toys when I was young, many of which I still have.  It's lovely to re-discover them!

Friday's Hunt v 2.27

It's time for Friday's Hunt again, and the last Friday's Hunt for 2016.  It has been a fun meme!  I think Teresa at Eden Hills plans on starting it again for 2017, and I'll probably join since it helps keep me blogging.  When work is busy, I can't blog as often but I do try for once a week at least! This week, we have the opportunity to choose our letter of the alphabet.  As usual, we have week's favourite, and also celebrate, as our prompts.

Starts with R
R is the starting letter of a lot of good words!  Rest!  Relax!  Read!  Recuperate!  Rejuvenate! Revel!  I tried to spend time doing these things over the holidays, taking time to also reflect on the past year. For me, relaxing usually comes in the form of doing something creative with my hands, and this past week was no exception.  I did some spinning of some blue-faced Leicester fibre in lovely muted jewel tones.

I also starting making myself a new hat.  This is the Baa-ble Hat, depicting (of course) some sheep on a snowy day.  I think it's a really cute pattern and I'm making good progress on it.  I decided to do the sheep themselves in some angora blend yarn, which is giving them a lovely fluffy texture.

So, before we rush into the new year, I hope all of you take a little time for yourselves to relax and rejuvenate.

Week's Favourite
I think my favourite thing that happened in the past week was seeing the look on my mother's face when she opened the sweater that I had knitted for her as a Christmas gift.  I don't have a picture of that moment.  My mom had bought a sweater kit from Fleece Artist in 2010 but had not quite had the time to get to it, and she had never knit on circular needles before, so it was a bit overwhelming for her.  She had taken the kit out to show me this fall, and wondered if I could help her do it.  I took the kit home with me to "study the pattern" and "wind the skeins of yarn into centre-pull balls" for her (well, those were the excuses I used!). Instead, I actually knitted it as a gift.  It was the first sweater I ever made, but it came out quite well, I think.  My mother was just so stunned to see it sitting there in the box as she opened it - she had absolutely no idea.  I can't show you the look on her face, but I can show you the sweater.  It is knit in Fleece Artist blue-faced Leicester aran wool along with alpaca bouclé yarn that is mixed into the body and also makes the collar and sleeve cuffs.  It is the Trina Jacket, from Fleece Artist, if anybody wants to look up the pattern!

The body is in garter stitch and the sleeves are in stockinette.  It is a fairly easy sweater and only involves some provisional cast-ons for picking up later to do the sleeves.  Otherwise, it's all just knit and purl (and counting).  I think I might make one for myself!

Celebrate
Marc and I celebrated our holiday with visits to my parents, to his father and stepmom, and we will be visiting Marc's mom sometime soon.  We're also hoping to see his brother's family soon but we haven't got a date for that yet.  Our time with my parents was lovely, as always.  We are a quiet family and Christmas is also quiet - which is just how I like it!  We spend time doing jigsaw puzzles and collaborating on a large crossword puzzle that is annually published by the Globe and Mail newspaper here in Canada.  Here's a picture of it - it's a full-size newspaper spread and the clues are on the front and back of another separate page.  It still needs to be finished since we didn't have time to get to it all.

In our family, we have wonderful meals together and just enjoy time to chat and relax. I've had experiences in the past with other families where Christmas is extremely busy and loud and there are so many people in the house, with the noise of TV and/or music and/or children and/or pets all at the same time, and all these conversations going on...well...it made me want to go and hide somewhere! I am definitely a quiet celebrator!  Maybe it would be different if I had grown up in a large family, but for me, Christmas is for quiet relaxation and reflection!  We wish you a wonderful new year ahead...