Molly Bee's Attic

I haven't done the past few  many Diva Challenges; life getting in the way and all that, so I really wanted to do this week's!  It was to divide the tile into 8ths (like the old fold up fortune tellers we used to make in grade school) and tangle each section.  Oooo! I had plans. I'd blur the lines!  I'd morph one pattern into the other! I'd create a tangle the likes of which the world had never seen! Not. so. much.  Seeing my time draining and the things I have to do between now and the weekend deadline, I realized I was going to have to 'phone' this one in . I divided my tile and put some of the new patterns I haven't tried out yet in each section. The result? Meh. Not earth shattering, but at least I have a working tool of pattern documentation for my stash.  I'll do better next week, I promise!

March 10th was my Grammie Mildred's 100th birthday! This factoid kinda blows my mind....a little over a month after she was born, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. But I'm pretty sure it was just a coincidence.  Grammie fell in November.   She has taken a lot of spills in the past few years but usually 'bounces' so aside from some soreness and bruising...she is a world champion bruiser....she usually emerges pretty much unscathed.  Not this time. She broke her hip.  They patched her up with some bionic parts and sent her to rehab at a nursing home about 30 minutes from where my Mum lives. They didn't feel like she'd recover enough to go back to the apartment where she has lived alone for the last 9 years. There was even some question as to whether she would walk again, but by January, they said that she COULD go home... if she wanted to. She had rehabbed herself back to walking with her walker! She mulled the idea over for a while and was kin...

I've been out of town for a couple of weeks, taking a much needed spring break, so I haven't been to the barn in what seemed like forever. I missed the barn babies almost as much as I missed my Bentley while I was gone.... ALMOST !    Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of feathered and furred babies on my trip.  Including this papa trying to get his duck babies to the safety of a stream at Disney.... ( AND I got to hand feed a full-grown, black, rhinoceros while we were taking a backstage safari there which was SO AWESOME I can't even put it into words!!! No photos because I was covered with rhino drool half way to my elbow!) And there were kitties...   And monkeys... And the herd of deer that winters on Mum's back lawn.  This one sucked the seeds out of the tube bird feeder every afternoon in broad daylight, the bandit! But I really wanted to catch up with Toby and the gang at the barn, so I went in this morning just in time to m...

 Make a graham cracker cookie crust and squish half of it in the bottom of an 8x8 pan. Top with chocolate   And marshmallow fluff (Tip: smooth the fluff out with a spoon you've heated in hot water). The other half of the cookie crust and sprinkle with graham cracker crumbs I regret that I forgot to take pictures of it after it was baked (the marshmallow poofs up) and before I gave it away.  I didn't try one but they looked great and smelled heavenly! A shout out to Kasee over at The Apron Gal blog .  I found this recipe on Pinterest linked to her blog. Click here the complete recipe.  Happy Baking!

I'm getting the mid winter blahs even though we haven't had a winter to speak of. I really need a change of pace around here. Still working on my last Fiddlehead mitten. Still working on my cable sweater. Still reading my brains out. Sigh. I did find a neat outlet for my doodling habit. I got a half size sketchbook and wrote an uplifting or inspirational quote on each page. Now I'm tangling around them. There are fifty pages so it ought to take me a while. I've only done 4 so far....and as per paragraph one, it's not working to lift my spirits yet, but it's fun. Kind of like my own personal coloring book. The one really bright spot of the week is going out to the farm. This last Sunday there was a little box of fresh raspberries in the produce bin. Esme-the-turkey LOVES her fruit, so I sat down in the middle of the barn floor and opened the little hinged plastic box and held it out to her. I thought she would gobble them down, but she was such a little lady....

I didn't have any more animal pictures for today...so I had to make my own.

The mitten on the right was from the first pair I made. The grey was the background and the colors were the 'fiddleheads'. If you saw my previous post on the matter, you say that I only had a tweensy little smidge of the gray left over, but I had scads of the other five colors left over. So I changed things up a bit and started a second pair. Now the 'fiddleheads' are a cream color and the other five colors are the background colors.  I did have to switch the colors to the opposite order because in the first mitten I had to do the icord cast on in dark blue and it ate a lot of yarn, but the green tip of the mitten was losts of decreases so it didn't use hardly any yarn.  Reversing them prevented a yarn shortage panic like I had last time.  I hope. I've only got the first few rows done on the second mitten of the second pair, so we'll see. Which version do you like best?

It was so nice during my last farm shift that I spent a half and hour after the chores were done, and just sat out in the back pasture with the goats and sucked up the nice weather. Anna and Cherish were on the other side of the fence....  The goats were loving the sun and the company.  And Bert was happy to get his big old head skritched. I spent a lot of time out with the goats last summer and fall. They are really social and come to visit you when you sit out there with them. I spent a little time with them in their inside pen this winter, but it was so cold that we didn't get any quality time in. I think they were as happy about the social time as I was on Sunday. I spent entire 15 minutes talking to Bert and scratching his head, up and down his nose and around his horn buds. He just stood still, rocking slightly with the motion of the scratches, closing his eyes off and on. Such a sweetie. I wish I could begin to explain, the feeling of well-being I had, sitting in th...

I haven't done a Diva Challenge for a while now, but couldn't resist this week. The only instructions were to make a tangle that was reminiscent of Mardi Gras. Here is my attempt: Happy Shrove Tuesday Everyone!

It was so gorgeous at the farm the other morning; sun, warm, no wind. The animals were all just sucking up the nice weather and lazing around in the sun beams. When it came to lazing though, Thor took it to the extreme. He decided to lay down and eat his breakfast.  Breakfast in bed.  The funniest part was when he finished the hay in his little area, he'd scoot on his belly, commando style, until his face met up with some more serious eatin'.  Breakfast makes him smile. He was one happy llama. Sunny-the-rooster watched him for a while and then dug himself a hole in straw in the goat stall, stretched out and tried the breakfast in bed thing himself. What a goof. Sonny is Mr. Personality. He is such a character and so social. He runs 40 miles a shift following us around from chore to chore,  'supervising' and 'talking' the whole way. He had surgery on Friday to remove an infected area of his waddle and comb. We have to rub some healing ointment on his stitches. W...

It's not difficult to take an adorable picture of Toby when he's across the stall and doesn't realize you're there. But the minute he sees you, he heads in your direction out of curiosity and an intense desire to kiss you and be snuggled. Here he comes. "Hi Whatchoogutder?  Camera?  Come close! I geeve you good close up". (Seriously! That's how he talks! With a cheesy French accent!) " Ha! Fool you! I keese you camera! Smooch! Smooch!" " I also keese you hand, you face...whatever you got...Give it here!' In the end, a good picture is not the best part of the Toby experience. You'll walk away a little soggy, but you'll feel like a rock star!

It's difficult to believe that it's still winter around here. We haven't had much of a winter to begin with, but with the warm weather of the last couple of days, the animals even think it's spring. Click on the pics to bring up bigger versions, you won't be sorry!  The tree out front has started to bud under the bright blue sky.  It's branches are filled with birds singing the songs or courtship and spring.  This handsome guy has found his mate.  When I first saw this guy, he was sound asleep in the sun.  He wasn't grumpy at being woken though. Look at that smile!  Mama muskrat and her babies poked a hole up through the ice on the pond.  She spent the afternoon giving them swimming and diving lessons...  With occasional breaks to munch on last autumn's cattails. Neighbor, Rob, says that there are seven.  I got at least four! Too cute! Any signs of spring where you are yet?

I hear a lot of folks grousing about how Valentine's Day is a commercial holiday or how they are alone and the holiday just 'rubs it in', but I LOVE Valentine's Day. What better time to tell EVERYONE in your life, not just a significant other, how much you appreciate them, cherish your connection with them and love them for who they are?  People don't do that enough as far as I'm concerned. We get busy. We take each other for granted. We lose sight of what's important. Here's a whole DAY to remind you of that. Take advantage! I made some Valentine's treats last night. They were uber easy.  Put a round waffle pretzel on the bottom. Top with a Hershey Hug. Bake at 200° about 4 minutes until shiny and soft-but not all the way melted. Squish the chocolate down into the holes with a holiday colored M&M.  Cool. They were gone in 60 seconds once I put them on the treat table!  You can use the red and green M&Ms at Christmas, the pastel ones at Ea...

I've been trying to get back in the swing of things at work and at home this week. It took two full days to clean up the mess that being off for a week and a half created at work but I finally got that done. Now I'm buckling down on some projects that need doing and anticipating spring cleaning. At home, I've gotten back in to the drawing thing big time. When I was sick, I didn't draw at all because it was just to uncomfortable to sit up at the table, so I read and knit mittens instead. Yet despite being sick, my housework got done. Now that I'm back at the drawing board so to speak, the nest is going to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks again.  Correlation? Hmmmm... I have two pieces done that I want to have printed on note cards, but need a third one. Do you think I can come up with one that I'm happy with? Not so much! But I'm having a wonderful time trying. On the knitting front, I am still working on the cable sweater and since I still have scads of the love...

I mentioned in my last post that I had read quite a few good books lately and several folks have asked me for a list . I'm a voracious reader and could list about 200 off the top of my head, but here are some of my recent favorites: The Bright and Distant Shore- Dominic Smith Dominic Smith is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. I read The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre last year and fell in love with it. I even wrote to Mr. Smith to tell him how much I enjoyed it and he wrote back to me!  Then a few weeks ago, I got another email from him letting me know that his new book was out.  I scurried to get it and it was WONDERFUL.  There are so many layers to this book; the World Expo in Chicago, the building of the Field Museum, a sea adventure to collect artifacts, human rights issues with island natives all drizzled like awesome sauce over an underlying love story.  Sigh...it was like the best box of chocolates ever-little nibbles of so many delicious treats...

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been out of commission for the last week or so (8 days now, but who's counting) and believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to hear what I had to say about those last eight days, let alone see photographic evidence!  I'm starting to come around now so I whipped up a recipe for supper that has been floating around 'Pinterest'  for a while now; Sweet and  Spicy chicken. This is the second time I've made it. It's wicked simple and uber tasty and holds lots of possibilities; salad topper,  in a taco shell with all the usual taco stuff, with rice and veggie as an Asian style meal or with potato and veggies and a weekday supper.  I put the recipe with pictures over on my recipe site- Molly Bee's Kitchen . I did get a bit of knitting done during my confinement. I finished one Finorkin' FiddleHead Mitten. Be kind... it will look better after it's blocked. and am on the thumb of the second. See the proble...

It's bad, People. It's very, very bad. As you recall, I knit half a Fiddlehead Mitten (heretofore known as 'The Finorkin Fiddlehead Mittens') and decided that I needed to go up a needle size. I did and was very pleased with the results.  I knit the blue. Groovy. I even started to like the icord cast on. Then I knit the teal...Oooo! Nice transition.  Then I got to the sea glass green and the thumb and all of that jazz.  Still going really well... I switched to the purple heather....hmmmm, not wild about that but I'll keep going....Then I got to the fifth color, a darker purple, and knit all the way to the top decrease and look what happened. #1.  There are two colors of purple there and even though they don't look like it on the skein, they are too close in color to tell apart when knit side by side. #2.  All the blues together and then the purples looks ok when I laid the skeins out, but clearly it is too dorky to live in reality. So....sigh....look away,...

So Miss Nancy and I started our Fiddlehead Mitten Knit Along on Saturday last. I had a devil of a time getting the i-cord cast on even enough for my liking and then I started to put the thumb gusset on BOTH sides of the palm before I stopped myself after five rows, but otherwise the pattern was pretty straight forward. I am almost through the gusset. In fact I'm this far: Don't know why that's upside down and I don't really care... because as of tonight... it's all coming out! We talked about it this morning and both of us feel that since our stranded knitting is pretty tight, we'd better frog the whole works and go up a needle size or too-particularly since there is a liner mitten that has to go in there too. The plan is to go up two needles sizes on the outer, stranded, mitten but drop back, either one or two sizes down, for the inner liner which isn't stranded and therefore should be knit a bit looser. It's a good plan, but after ripping out a huge ...