Found!

I seem to forget to write anything here for months.  Really -- I'm fine -- not lost or anything!

It's been a busy few months, or a boring few months -- I live in the midwest and it's winter so not a lot of outside activities and I tend to get caught up in doing a lot of nothing - sort of hibernating in the winter.  It finally is getting close to spring -- well, it's sunny today even though the temp is only in the 30's!
I've been cleaning house and getting rid of stuff in anticipation of putting the house on the market again, but now I'm re-thinking that.  My daughter thinks I'm a waffle -- can't ever make up my mind! But I've spent a lot of time thinking this winter -- the plan was to move to the big city to a condo -- have someone else do the mowing and the snowplowing and do some downsizing of course.

But, I really do like my house -- Bill and I designed it ourselves and had it built.  We have a beautiful piece of wooded property here -- I saw 8 deer out beyond the woods this morning.  In the city you won't be seeing that.  Plus, with a condo you still have to maintain it yourself -- so I might as well stay here and pay someone to plow my drive and mow my yard.  I won't have to give up my beautiful sewing room, and I doubt any of the condo's have a fireplace in the kitchen -- which is where I've spent the past few days -- just knitting in front of the fireplace.  We used to love to have a fire there every morning -- our days always started a little later just because we were enjoying the fire.  I still have plenty of firewood in the shed, so I might as well enjoy it.

The upshot is that I'm not ready to move yet and hopefully I'll know when I am!
In the meantime, I've been learning new things. Last year I made it a point to learn to make laundry detergent and soap.  It's been kind of fun and I just finished a batch of soap -- I leave it for 6 weeks to cure and that was up on Thursday.  I ordered a couple of new molds so I'll make a new batch next week or the week after.  Another reason to stay here -- I have a huge kitchen and it's very convenient to make soap in it.
This year my goal is to learn to knit socks.  I've been following Judy and Mary's blogs for years and been so envious of their sock knitting!  I taught myself to crochet years ago, but never learned to knit.  I tried to make dish cloths last year, but it was super boring!  And I love the idea of making two socks at a time, so I bought all the books and the circular needles and the yarn -- the whole kit and caboodle.  I was bound and determined to learn that way, but when I finally got around to sitting down with it I discovered it looks easier than it is!  So I went back to Judy's blog and she just happened to post a month or so ago what book and what yarn she made her first pair with.  I did a search and found the book and the exact yarn was on sale at that site (I can't remember which one it was), so I bought both and some double pointed needles and set about teaching myself to knit socks!
I have ripped it out and started over about 3 times, and this is very far from perfect, but I'm going to continue on and hope the second sock is better and the next pair will be good!  I'm loving knitting on dpns -- I love knitting with smaller needles and I love watching a recognizable item hanging from my needles!  I've even been looking at other things to knit -- but I'm not going to start anything else until I've got socks down pat!

So that's what I've been doing in front of the fire in the kitchen this weekend.  I really need to put it away and clean house tomorrow though.  And, hopefully it won't be 3 months before I write again.