Molly Bee's Attic

Winter at the farm is difficult. Travel to and from is more difficult. The work is more difficult. Most of all, it's more difficult on the animals. Their water freezes, their produce freezes, the size of their pasture gets smaller, they have to huddle for warmth.  But despite all of these inconveniences, there is really no place more beautiful than a frosty morning at Heartland: (click to biggify)  Beautiful snowy fields at 12°. Phil sees his breath when he crows! Did you SEE that??! Why it's cold enough for chickens to stick together and make one big chicken with two bodies and one head!  Frances and Amy are thankful that we put hay out. Grazing through the snow is hard! Gracie nestles down in a patch of sun to enjoy the morning. Pretty girl! Mischievious Beatrice and Maxine dare you to put your tongue on the fence! Happy New Year!

Had a wonderful Christmas in Maine. We had a couple of storms along with some adventures in power outages and alternate heating, but aside from the glitches, it was so nice to spend time with Mum, Grammie and many dear friends. Marilyn stopped by one day to visit. We had a spaghetti and meatball supper one night with Elinor, Gail, and John and went to Art and Reneva's open house on Christmas Eve.  Gail and John went to church with us afterward and I read a part of the Christmas story during the service. It was different this year; read part of the story and then sing a related Christmas carol.  Silent Night by candlelight at the end. It was beautiful. Flying home was an adventure with the big storm that hit the East Coast the day after Christmas. Bangor was beautiful, LaGuardia was dicey, but Detroit was a disaster. I met up with Steve at the airport. He was coming from Christmas with his family in Boston.  Our flight got cancelled and we ended up getting a room overnig...

Hmmm...I register that I have been under a fair amount of stress lately; what with the goings on at work, the food poisoning incident, the damaged shoulder, getting Christmas boxes out, and everything together so I can leave for a week etc., but I just had a very telling conversation with a couple of co-workers that brought home how it is truly affecting my state of mind. I was expressing my woe at an annoying penchant that folks have of emailing me, 10 minutes after a meeting with them is supposed to start, to reschedule said meeting to a later time or another day entirely. As  many times as this has happened, I'm still not quick enough to catch on, so I loiter around the appointed meeting room for 15-20 minutes, waiting for the erstwhile person, before I think to check around to see where they are. Rude!  Rude! Rude! My coworkers' were having equally disrespectful annoyances hinder their day and so we were trading peeves. Then one...

When I first saw Donna Hornsby's 'Keenies' pattern I thought of this....and then...well...life happened and I didn't get around to doing anything about it until today.  I was reminded again when The Diva asked us to use Keenie's in the challenge this week.  A little backstory... When I was young, there was no computer, barely any TV (we lived in the wilds of Northern Maine where nothing much would come in except PBS out of Bangor and CBC out of Nova Scotia) and lots of quiet time. My friends and I would draw 'Guess What' pictures for each other. Often ones we had seen in the newspaper's weekend comic section.  They were REALLY STUPID but our pre-teen selves thought they were amazingly funny and scoured the paper and our imaginations for new ones to amaze and amuse each other.  Here are some fine examples: Told ya. Not exactly rocket surgery but it was a way to pass some time. So when I saw Keenees, I had a 'Guess What' flashback to ...

This week's Diva Challenge is to use "Keenees" pattern in a tangle. It's the round balls with the triangle inside at the bottom of the the tangle.  If I remember correctly, it was named because the triangles look like bikini underwear. *Blush* Anyway, here is my attempt, I thank The Diva for this challenge. I really needed a 20 minute break from the work of the evening.  Keep 'em coming Diva! You rock!