Fiber Fool

Sure, the cold and slop can be annoying, but I like winter. I can’t quite imagine living anywhere that doesn’t have a distinct winter season.

1. Baking! When it is cold outside it is so nice to heat up the house by running the oven. We’ve been doing baked breakfasts a lot and I tried my hand recently at my first whole grain cinnamon rolls and DH has been making a whole wheat French bread regularly. We’ve also been talking about dusting off the Semla recipe here before Fat Tuesday.
2. Citrus season! I love starting my day with warm lemon water and I adore fresh grapefruit and the little clementines are such handy little serving sizes so I love when citrus is in season.
3. Hibernation days! When it is super cold or the roads are particularly bad I just hunker down at home and work there. It is so nice to be snug in the house and get to look out at the cold world and laugh at the dogs go nuts in the snow.



4. It seems to bring people together more. Neighbors help shovel walks or push cars out etc.



5. Great photographic opportunities, though I had to admit to not dusting off the camera at all this year really other than for work. Some of my most favorite shots are winter ones.



6. Cuddling in bed with DH and/or the dogs!
7. Snowshoeing! If I had known we’d have so many snows this winter I would have been tempted to pick up a pair at the end of last season, but I didn’t so I haven’t been snowshoeing this year, but I still enjoy it.



8. Getting to wear plenty of my handknits - cowls, shawls, hats, socks, sweaters!
9. Soaks in a warm bath! Nothing warms you up or loosens tight muscles better!
10. My knitting sock monkey flannel PJs :-)

Can you come up with 10 things you like about winter?

Well, here we are already at the 4th Monday of 2014. Kind of hard to believe. This week I’m especially grateful for technology!

• My Wacom tablet has been my closest friend these past six weeks as I’ve been doing TONS of vector illustration/design work in Illustrator. I’ve been creating intricate infographics that required tons of icons. Since I have no budget to purchase licenses for such things I’ve had to create them from scratch. I’ve had the tablet for several years thanks to a birthday gift from my parents, but never really ended up using it much. Now that I’ve really dug into vector work and gotten comfortable with it I suspect I’ll find it more helpful with photo editing. Shoot, I’ve even using it to surf and do general low-typing computing. It is so much more ergonomic!
• Related to the above, I’m very grateful for those who have shared their knowledge and experience of these complex graphics programs (most especially Illustrator) on YouTube/Vimeo videos. It has been a life-saver and now I’m at the point that I’m solving my own problems more and more often and not having to look up how-tos. I’ve learned so many new things about working with vectors, which is so different from photo editing!
• DH’s old iPad is also an indispensable tool as I make edits to 70+ page documents without access to a work printer.

What are you grateful for this week? What tech gadgets do you find integral to your day?

I ran across a post sometime during this past week about gratitude journaling and they highlighted that appreciating people is more beneficial. So, this week I’m being grateful for people! Who are you grateful for?

• My little sister! She always knows just what I need. I haven’t been home since January 2010 when I used to get home twice a year. It just isn’t in the budget. If the money isn’t too tight I have no paid vacation so it is anyway. For Christmas she gave me a very limited edition keepsake cup and saucer. It is a vintage one from the church I grew up in, though we don’t know when it was originally purchased. Just that my dad thinks he remembers them from when he was a kid. It is super thick and sturdy and it makes me think of home every morning when I drink my coffee from it.
• Obviously DH - bread baker, chief dish and laundry washer, awesome sous chef, bed warmer-upper, curling bout watching enabler (this past weekend was the Continental Cup in Vegas and there were several draws steamed live on YouTube), back massager, walking encyclopedia of miscellanea, handyman, resident mathematician who can tell me if my ideas on calculating various things need dusting off (you’d be surprised how much math my current job has employed), and many other things that aren’t coming to mind just this minute but not any less appreciated.
• Mom and Dad of course. I pretty much always feel helpful and useful after talking to them, whether I helped mom learn how to use a new ingredient in the kitchen or shared a tip on using voiceover on her iPhone, or talked gardening techniques with Dad I always feel like I’ve at least provided something to think about or look into even if I didn’t have the exact answer. And, well, it feels nice to feel needed.
• Friends - I’ve been blessed with too many to start naming names without surely accidentally leaving one out and offending. But they no doubt know who they are, whether they are near or far!

This week has been crazy so I’m not so much greeting the week at this point. Though I swear I started composing this post on Monday. It has just taken this long to wrap it up. We’ve had the start of the school session once again which always shakes up the daily schedule and takes a bit to settle back into. We also had some opportunities to visit with friends we haven’t seen in months and in years so it has been a good week, but not much in the way of extra time to sit at the computer.

Ah, here we are, the second Monday of 2014 already. The first month is very nearly 1/2 over. Crazy how time flies!

What things are you grateful for this week? Mine are below! If you want to keep up during the week, when I think of it I’m tweeting my gratitude moments with the hahstag #greetgratitude.

1. This week I’m grateful for our public library. They have a great selection of both print and e-books and it is really pretty simple to get your hands on titles in print that they don’t have if needed.
2. A DH who is as capable in the kitchen as I. His french bread was especially enjoyed all week last week and his yummy yeast-raised pancakes over the weekend and this morning for breakfast.
3. Streaming TV/Movies and the ability to watch TV shows we previously missed when they originally aired.
4. The smart gals of my knitting group who I think solved my problem on my too big Diana Hat. Though I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet as my arm/shoulder had a bad week last week.
5. Intercession at CSU! Ah, nothing like a really quiet campus (and the ability to park on campus). I’ve kind of adopted an empty desk in DH’s grad student office as my office away from home.
6. Having a futon in the basement. When the howling wind wakes us up we can make up the futon and reclaim a bit of sleep.

Goodbye 2013, can’t say I’ll really miss you! But, 2014 - so far so good! In hopes of keeping it that way I’m going to try to greet every week with gratitude! Perhaps that will help me ease back into the routine of blogging as well as lift my spirits.

So, for this first week of 2014, I’m grateful for:

1. New adventures with DH! This last week we ventured to the NoCo Ice Center for a two hour Learn to Curl class and it was a blast. I have two really, really bruised knees - it is much harder to glide in a lunge position with a broom in one hand and a 42 pound stone in the other than I imagines. But, by the end of the two hours I was much more consistent in staying upright and starting to put more energy towards speed and aim on the stone during the release. Early on I spent a lot of time down on the ice though. I even made the local paper (see picture 6).



2. DH for braving the cold temps and walking to the grocery store to make sure I had food for SnB at our house tonight when the temps were too cold for the car to start.
3. Snowy Saturdays when I don’t have to go anywhere and can curl up with books, coffee and tea in comfy and warm flannel PJs covered in knitting sock monkeys.
4. Baked breakfasts! I banished cereals a few years ago which means breakfast is not the quick and easy meal that it once had been. In the winter I especially want a hot breakfast. Yogurt and fruit just won’t do. So we’ve taken lately to making baked egg stratas and baked oatmeals. It is so slick as we throw everything together before bed, pop stuff in the oven while we shower and boom it’s time to eat when we’re all dressed. We get a hot, filling breakfast with less stress than something that requires full morning prep!



5. I was so lucky this holiday season and got many of the items on my wishlist. One of which I’ve been enjoying a lot lately is Green Gables Knits. I cast on Diana’s Hat on Christmas Eve. I ended up using one size larger needle because it was handy and I had a lot of reasons to justify it (I tend to knit tight, my head is on the larger end of the spectrum for women, etc. etc.) and it is a tad too big after blocking. So, I took the time to locate the proper needle size and cast on another right away. Both are in Plain & Fancy Wool Co’s sportweight. The first was in Primary and Navy and the second is as written in one color, avocado. I’m loving the project as it is such easy knitting for all the holiday visiting and movie watching. Plus, I have a few bosom friends in mind I might like to surprise :-)

How is 2014 treating you so far? What are you grateful for this week?