New Year's Treat to Please Dear One

 We have already talked about Chex Mix...a very favorite treat.  We got a box of Crispix which had a recipe for "People Chow" which I think I also showed you.  The same box had a recipe for Chex Mix but using Crispix and Cheez-its.  Since there were multiple little bags of Cheez-its left over from Halloween, Dear One decided this was the time for it!

Cheez-Its Chex Mix the way I made it...

6 cups Cheez-its
2 cups Cheerios
2 cups dry roasted peanuts
2 cups Wheat Chex
2 cups Rice Chex
2 cups Corn Chex
3 - 4 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (maybe more since Dear One saw me with the bottle and said to put in lots since that is what gives the flavor...so I did.)
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

In a large roaster pan I placed all the cereal, crackers, and nuts. In a 2-cup Pyrex measure I melted the butter in the microwave. It took about a minute.  After dumping all the flavorings in, I stirred well then drizzled on top of the crunchy stuff that I had previously mixed well.  With a long-handled wooden spoon I stirred and stirred and STIRRED until every morsel was covered with the "sauce".  

Next I placed it in the pre-heated oven...250 degrees F.  Roasted for 30 minutes then brought out and stirred well.  Back into the oven for another 30 minutes.  I will continue this process until the mix is sort of dry then will let cool until ready to eat...which might not be very cool, and not long at all, depending on if Dear One returns to the kitchen any time soon!

Wednesday Wonderings...

 Forty-three years ago (when I was very young!!) I became dissatisfied with my body.  I had just given birth to our third child, and only daughter, and I did not like what I looked like.  Of course, I only had the mirror in the medicine cabinet, so my view may have been somewhat skewed.  Nevertheless I decided to do something about it.

THIS IS WHAT I DID:

1. At every meal I served my family then measured out my food onto my plate. 

2.  I wrote down the foods and the quantities in a little notebook.

3. Next I looked up the calorie content on my plate from a book of calories and nutrients.

4. After that I wrote the calories next to the foods.  If the calories worked with my plan, then...

5. I ate the meal.

6.  Every so often, not every day, I walked down to the medical clinic in our town, a 3-mile walk, and weighed myself then walked 3 miles home.  This was only on good sunny  days, you understand, and often the walking was very early in the morning since someone had to be around to watch over the three children!

After nine months of these practices I had lost 60 pounds.

WELL, I am back to the place where I am dissatisfied with my body again.  I had been doing very well, slowly making progress, when the holidays struck!! So many wonderful people gave us treats. I did not feel like turning my back on them since the givers went to a lot of work to please us. So I ate.  And ate. And ate.  Now I am back to dissatisfied, as I mentioned!  

So, I am wondering if that successful program I did back when I was young and vibrant and healthy can work now that I am....not.  Not planning to wait until the new year, I did start yesterday.  Even in one day there was progress made.  I will be interested to see how long it takes to get back to my pre-holiday weight.

Part of the reason I had been wondering, and deciding to get on the wagon in great shape is that I had an appointment at a particular doctor's office this week and had to get weighed.  Why do they do that?!!  The "scales" were actually a 3 by 3 platform scales in the floor.  Yikes!  I am glad I did not have such a bad reading.  How humiliating it would be to actually NEED those platform scales.  My heart went out to the large people who visit that office and step on those scales because it is the only kind they CAN step on.

So, today I made breakfast, but as I am driving the sister missionaries to a service appointment on my way to yet another (the 4th this week!) doctor appointment, I am bringing breakfast with me. I have weighed, measured, and recorded in MyFitness Pal the food.  I am showing you a picture but will not enumerate what is in the container so you won't lose your own breakfast.  Just know that it all will taste fine to me!

The only glitch in this meal is that it has fresh raw sweet onions, so I will need to wait to eat until I drop I drop off the sisters...

Merry Christmas One and All!

 This is the Christmas card we sent this year to our family and a very few friends.  Each card was an original print but there was a Nativity Star and the same quote on each one.

Dear Loved Ones,

It has been truly a wonderful year.  We woke up every morning.  The sun shone so many days. We had food for our bodies, mostly healthy. The electricity worked almost always. Clean safe drinking water was available every day. Our eyes worked so we could enjoy God's beautiful creations around us. Our legs got us where we needed to go.  Our hands could manage all the was required of them. We had opportunities to serve, both at home and around us. Technology was a blessing as it made it possible to reach out when we wanted to.  Almost always.  We had the funds necessary to care for our basic needs.  Best of all, we had the joy of worshiping our Savior regularly through scriptures, Conferences, home Sacrament meetings, and finally at the meetinghouse and via streaming on Facebook.  Our Father in Heaven has watched over and blessed us and helped us along every single day.  For all these gifts we are truly grateful.  We pray these same blessings, and more, for each of you this Season and in the coming year.

(These two notes had different authors. It is easy to guess which is which....!)

Hi again from South Carolina,

The enclosed photograph was taken on a windy day in November.  The colorful objects in Pattie's lap are gnomes for each of our grandchildren which she knitted.  It was a lot of work!  Just behind her is a wind chime that lights up at night which Megan gave us.  Behind all this is a pond where our resident alligator, "Ripples", lives.  He shows up every so often, but we enjoy the excitement of having him around.

We have worked hard to steer clear of the Corona Virus.  Since February we have had Sacrament in our home. A little later we were able to have one of our fellow Temple Workers join us for the Sacrament. We were not able to attend Church since we were all over 65 years old.  This fall we were able to attend a one-hour Sacrament meeting with social distancing.  We were invited to serve in the Temple at the end of December - the Temple is only open for individual ordinances.

This fall Pattie was called to be the Relief Society President for the Sumter Ward.  It is challenging since we only got to attend the ward for six months due to the Corona Virus and we did not get to know many of the members.

We have had a variety of health challenges for both of us.  Bob struggled with knee pain but has been able to ride his bike for 4.5 miles each morning. Pattie has had trouble with eczema and vertigo recently.

Merry Christmas from Bob and Pattie Crossett

A Wonderful Day Begins!

 A month ago one of the assistants to the Matron at the temple called to ask if we could come serve again. YES, YES, YES!!!!  It has been so long.  What a joy it is to serve in the Lord's house and bless a few of His children.  

In the meantime, our daughter sent us the link to a talk called "Spiritual Thriving".  I thought it was very good so I thought I would share it with you.  I enjoyed it.

Munchie Monday: Last Minute Holiday Treat-Sweet!

 We love the Chex Mix we have for Christmas every year.  Another favorite is "People Chow".  I am told it resembles Puppy Chow. (It is so long ago that we had a puppy that I don't remember...almost 48 years! This puppy, Abinadi, was a wedding gift from my father, but by the end of that summer that dear little dog of my heart was run over.  Never had another.  We moved on to cats...) This recipe is quick and easy to make and tastes okay.

People Chow

6 Cups Crispix dry cereal (or better yet: Cheerios)
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
6 ounces chocolate chips (about 1 cup, but weigh to make sure...)
2 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar

In a medium-sized saucepan over low heat, melt the butter, peanut butter, and chocolates, stirring constantly, until the chocolate is all melted and smooth. If you absolutely cannot wait as long as it takes to melt the chocolate safely on low heat, turn the heat up to medium but DO NOT leave the stove and stirring.  Be ready to yank the pan off the stove at a moment's notice when you think it might be starting to burn. It is better to have the melted chocolate be a little chunky/unmelted than to let it burn. I know.

In a large bowl place the cereal.  Pour the chocolate mixture over the cereal and stir until all the cereal is well coated.

In a 2 gallon plastic zipper bag, or even a brown grocery bag, pour the confectioner's sugar.  Dump in the coated cereal, close the top, then shake until all the sugar is covering the outside of the chocolate-covered cereal pieces.  Pour into a large pan to let dry.  

Store in a closed container.

This is likely to be a hit at parties.  It certainly is a hit among the small fry.

Food Friday: Instant Pot Grits!

 Remember the story I told the other day about grits and the ants?  Well, today I am telling a story about grits to eat.  And the Instant Pot.  Cooking grits on the stove is a stand-over-the-pot job.  I thought I would see if grits would work in the Instant Pot.  They DO!!!

For this recipe I used the 3-quart IP.  In the liner bowl I put:

1 cup stoneground white grits (gift from a wonderful friend!)
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cup plain soy milk
1 1/2 teaspoon Pink Himalayan salt
2 Tablespoons  butter
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

I turned the pot on to the Sauté feature and stirred until the butter had melted.  At that point I set the IP to HIGH pressure for 15 minutes and walked away to do other things.  I finally got back after the pressure had released naturally and was all the way up to 53 minutes on the timer.  There is no need to wait that long!. 

When I opened the pot, I found a few clumps that I stirred in well to break them up then served in bowls.  Dear One wolfed his down.  No, sorry, that was me who wolfed it down!  Dear One ate his and maybe had another spoonful but I had moved on to a ministering interview and was not paying attention.

Later on Dear One asked, "So, grits are just cornmeal?"  I said, "Yes, more or less."

In fact, my mother used to make us cornmeal mush to vary the tedium of cooked oatmeal.  We had it with brown sugar and butter on it.  We did not mind that.  Having said that, I myself MUCH prefer grits with salt and pepper.  And now, nutritional yeast.  I was really impressed with this recipe.

You might like it, too!

Next time I will melt the butter in the liner bowl on the Sauté feature while stirring in the grits. AFTER that is done and the grains all seem to be coated, then add in everything else.

NOTE: I made a second batch and did it right.  So good!  PLUS--some devil asked me if I had ever had fried grits, which I had not.  The person then told me how to make them. THEY SOUND SO GOOD...but I am not going to make them.  Instead,  I took the cooled grits from the bowl, chopped them up and put them on a baking sheet.  Popped them in the oven at 400 degrees F for 45 minutes.  They are truly wonderful.  I hope I don't eat them all before taking them upstairs for Dear One to have a chance at them!

Look What Came In The Mail!

 One of my favorite things is to hear the doorbell ring.  I wish it would ring because people come to visit, but this is not the time for that to happen.  Instead, when the doorbell rings, it is a carrier dropping a parcel of some kind on our front step.  In the past week we have had two unexpected calls to the door.

The plant on the left arrived first.  It is in a beautiful ceramic pot and, while I cannot report its name because I have forgotten, I do remember that Dear One looked it up and said it can grow to seven feet tall!  I like that idea.  The possibility that it will do this makes me smile.  The probability that I will kill it within the year makes me sad. I hope not to do that!

The cheese cutter on the right really makes me smile, too.  There was no note in the box to tell me who sent it, but I suspect my sister.  She is so wonderful in every way.  I think we may have been slicing cheese when we were at her house and I mentioned that I could not find the cheese slicer we had had while we were in Vermont.  For all I know I left it there on purpose since at that time we were off dairy.  Well, SOME of us were off dairy.  No, we were both off dairy at that time, but that has sort of gone by the board for some of us. (I wish we could actually see inside our bodies the results of not eating dairy and then the results of going back on dairy.  It might make it easier to stick to this resolution.)

Anyway, you can probably see that the cheese slicer was put to IMMEDIATE use!!!  And continues to be uses regularly.  If the giver was not my sister, many thanks.  Even if it was my sister, I am so grateful. It works perfectly and makes me smile at your thoughtfulness.  Makes me want to go and do likewise...

My Parents Show Me How To Light The World

 As far as I am concerned, my siblings and I have the best parents in the world.  They were so wonderful to us.  They taught us so many good things...such as never hit your sisters, work hard, be generous and so much more.  All the things they taught us by word and by deed.  They set a wonderful example.  Both of them were readers...constantly reading to us and to themselves.  They were storytellers about their childhood and family before them. How I wish I had written down those stories.  Snippets of them come to me from time to time.

One time they took out the old kitchen table and put in a pool table with a sheet of plywood on top and a large sheet of heavy plastic so we could use it as our dining table.  Then, at a moment's notice, we could  take off the plywood and turn it into a pool tournament.

This is a picture of our parents on a Sunday evening in their home at Riverbow.  I know it was a Sunday night because A. the windows show that it is dark outside and B. the large stainless steel popcorn bowl is on the table in front of my father. I have no idea who took the photograph.  This was WAY before the days of selfies and cell phones.  

Every time I see this picture, it makes me smile.  It also makes me long for the day we will be together again.  I hope we can carry on the popcorn-Sunday-night-supper tradition that is at least four generations long.

#LightTheWorld today (or maybe yesterday) was to  contact our parents.  Since that is not conventionally possible, I am sharing about them.  For all I know, they are smiling down on me as I type. I like to think so anyway.

The Ants are Marching. Again.

 Last week we had ants on the island in our kitchen.  Actually, we have had ants off and on ever since before the exterminator came three months ago.  We had to have a special appointment since not all their exterminators are allowed to go inside houses for some reason.  Well, those prior ants never totally disappeared.

Now last week we had MORE ants.  They were a different brand of ants.  Actually, they were very similar in appearance to the nasty fire ants that got my goat at harvest time.  Not quite, but about the same size and dark two-toned-bodies ants.

When I was swimming on Friday, Ruby told me to use grits to get rid of them.  So I sprinkled a few grits on the counter when I got home from the YMCA pool.  Then next morning one whole section of the counter was empty of the grits and there were only 2 or 3 ants there. I was just plain thrilled!  I was so thrilled that I thought I would put more grits out in case there were a few more ants to kill, which I did Saturday night before going to bed.

Sunday morning I went downstairs and found a HIGHWAY of ants coming and going!  I almost threw up.  The one good thing was that finally I discovered where they were entering the kitchen.  At least, I learned ONE PLACE they were entering the kitchen.  

On Sunday morning, later, after the ant interstate discovery, Dear One and I were to speak in Church.  We were to speak on Gratitude.  He did a wonderful job.  I gave an okay talk.  I had practiced it and timed it and found it took 8 minutes to give. I figured it would be a little longer when I was actually at the podium.  Since Dear One said his talk would be short, I decided to write up a list of things for which I was grateful to use if I had time to share a few of them before the meeting needed to end.  There was time.

The final thing I mentioned being grateful for was grits.  Those same grits that Ruby had told me about.  I mentioned the army of ants that came to pick up the newly scattered grits.  Because we stream our meetings on Facebook, several kind people who watched from home sent me condolences as well as more ant-extermination suggestions. I am so grateful for all of them.  

One Monday morning there were no ants so I figured they were gone.  Not so.  I was passing the island after supper (and I use the term "supper" loosely...we just munched out on the Chex Mix I had just made...) I saw there were a few ants again.  THAT WAS IT!!!  I got in the car and drove to Dollar General in the dark (something I am not fond of doing-driving in the dark in the city) where I purchased the last bottle of ant killer that sweet Sister C. mentioned. She also sent a picture so I would get the right thing.

 It was as if someone knew I was coming for this killing powder because it was right at the front of the shelf apart from all the other bottles of killers.  It was the only one of its kind there.

When I got home I immediately shook up the bottle then sprayed it out at the entrance and exit to the island.

You can see that I might have been a little on the "over-kill" side of the project but I WANT THOSE ANTS GONE!!  For good.

Now I am going to call the exterminator and get him to come and do a complete-house ant-killing application...

This is a very small problem on the spectrum of problems.  We are fortunate to have a house to live in, after all.  But I don't want to share it with ants.  Or any other bugs.  Not a bug fan.  So glad some of our grandchildren love bugs.  It gives them hours of pleasure observing. Not me.

Munchie Monday: Chex Mix Time of Year!

 Chex Mix has been a family-favorite treat at Christmas time every year. Dear One's mother made a big batch each year which we all enjoyed.  Today was the day I decided to make some.  Dear One asked for "a small batch".  What a joker!

The way we did it is not precisely like the original recipe, but Dear One is eating it out of the oven before it is done toasting so I guess it is okay!

The recipe the way I made it:

In a large roasting pan that a sweet friend gave me prior to leaving the area I placed:
3 cups Corn Chex
3 cups Rice Chex
3 cups Wheat Chex
2 cups elderly Spanish peanuts (I don't think they are actually rancid but we purchased them sometime in the summer...)
1 cup mixed nuts

In a small saucepan put

7 Tablespoons softened butter
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons Pink Himalayan salt
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1 teaspoon granulated garlic

 Melt and mix together until the salt is dissolved then pour over the cereal and stir very well.

Put the roasting pan in a 250 degree F. preheated oven (yes, 250!) and let "roast" for one hour, checking every 15 minutes.  After the first 15 minutes when next to nothing seemed to have happened I upped the time to 20 minutes before checking and stirring.  After that one I changed the time again, this time to 25 minutes!  I wanted those morsels to be nicely toasted and ready to eat.  Dear One is at the oven again!!!  He really does like Chex Mix.

Here they are, still in the oven.  Dear One has just had a third handful since I started writing this post.  I guess the altered recipe was not bad.  He does not like pretzels for some reason so we never add those.  He suggested I could have but in Cheerios.  I have done that in the past and find them tasty. I forgot about them when I was shopping...

#LightTheWorld Today! Shop Local.

 Heirloom Child Quilts is a fabric and idea shop!  I love going there.  I always find what I want.  When I don't know what I want, one of the great ladies there helps me figure it out.

Today #LightTheWorld reminded us that Jesus Christ ministered in a relatively small geographic area...more or less in the community.  We follow his example when we patronize local businesses.

This is a blanket I made from the beautiful fabrics at Heirloom Child.  Thank you, Ladies!

Food Friday

 Dear One brought me home two big fat heads of cauliflower last week.  I steamed one and ate it.  The other was getting a little elderly so I took off the bottom leaves, sprinkled it with a little olive oil (I know added oils are not good for us but I wanted the seasoning to stick. I used about a tablespoon and rubbed it all over the head).  After rubbing in the oil I made a mixture of about a teaspoonful of Herbes de Provence, one-half teaspoon granulated garlic and another half teaspoon of granulated onion, then some salt and pepper and sprinkled it on top of the cauliflower and rubbed it in the same way I imagine meat-eaters rub seasonings onto cuts of meat.

At this point I already had the oven heating to 400 degrees F. and had a big piece of aluminum foil sitting in our largest cast-iron frying pan.  I put the cauliflower into the foil, wrapped it up tight, then set the whole thing into the oven to "roast" for 45 minutes.

There it is, ready to eat!  I did eat several florets.  So luscious.  I could eat cauliflower every day.  Usually I eat it steamed because I can just steam it, leave it in the pot then every time I walk by, I pick out a floret and pop it into my mouth.  Very good eating.  Also a VERY good way to lose weight quickly!  There are next to no calories in steamed cauliflower and a lot of nutrition.

Thursday Thoughts! Plus #LightTheWorld for Today

 Today has been another very hectic day filled with so many different types of activities, all of which added up to a real desire to crawl between the sheets as soon as the sun went down.  Sadly, the day was not over when the sun dipped behind the trees.  Dear One went out to see if he could glimpse the International Space Station passing overhead.  We were able to watch it for a few moments several times when we were still in Vermont.  It gave me a sweet feeling of awe to know there were people up there circling the earth.  Of course, I was VERY happy it was not me!  I like my feet firmly on the ground... (And he did not see it this evening...)

So as the days have become more and more busy, I have realized that daily life is a full time job.  And then some.  I was thinking I might mention some of those activities but then thought it might sound like complaining and I hate to hear complaining and I would truly abhor being a complainer myself.  Just let me say that there is no more time in my days for fritzing around or kicking back and letting the world go by.  Those days are gone.  Probably just as well because I was getting pretty comfy in the life we were living...everything mostly predictable and fine.

One thing I will say is that today one of the variety of projects was that I went to see a chiropractor/functional medicine doctor for the first time here in our city.  He is such a nice Christian man and his assistant and his office people are great.  After he did all his tests and sent me on my way for a few days I was thinking that he brought up more concerns than I had gone in with!  I just wanted him to  quickly cure the vertigo and send me on my way.  He was not into that!  He wants to find out why I have the vertigo and then fix that.  He did say that based on several 'findings' that the night when I tripped over the stool and feel crashing down flat on my back and clunked my head, that it probably was a concussion.  Isn't that a funny thing?  Not funny ha-ha, either.  Oh well.  If he says so, I will believe him until something sounds wrong.

Today on #LightTheWorld we are to tell a story about an ancestor (and share it on social media, I think).  So I will do that.

The oldest relative that I personally knew was Julia Emily Burbank McIntosh.  She was my great-grandmother and was married to Lisle Dwight McIntosh.  She was born in 1864.  That always tickled me as a child because she was born during the Civil War.  Very exciting to learn when I was in elementary school and just learning a little bit of history.  She was a tiny lady who sat in a beautiful wingback chair. I think that is where I gained my love of wingback chairs.  Sadly, there are no wingback chairs in our current home.  Oh well. Into every life a little rain must fall.  There is actually no room for one...well, I say that. Of course there is room for one, but we have gotten fairly comfortable with less stuff filling up the spaces.  Empty spaces mean less likelihood of tripping and once again falling. I am REALLy into not falling again.  One time I won't be as lucky as I have been the last few falls.

Anyway, Nannie McIntosh was a prodigious worker.  I think I have already written about her here but it has been a while.  She made literally tons of mincemeat in her summer kitchen and peddled it throughout New England, driving it herself until her very latest years.  She was still making mincemeat well into her 80's.  Her mincemeat recipe was a highly secured secret.  A secret that may have gone with her to the grave because family members who might have had it cannot seem to locate it.  You might not think mincemeat was a treat, but it really was.  I remember those mincemeat pies.  Delicious.  (I was going to say "Heaven", but that would be an exaggeration!)

Here you can see her gravestone.  You can also see that she was very elderly when she died.  I remember talking with one of my cousins about her when I was eight or nine years old.  My cousin and I were both born in 1950.  We had been learning to count by five's.  Nannie was 95 years old at the time so my math above may not be correct...and my cousin insisted that on her next birthday Nannie would bee 100 years old.  Not knowing any better, I went along with that idea.  You never know what is in a kid's head!!!

If you look at the picture of Nannie again, you will see where I got my cowlicks!

The Christmas Knitting Project: 2020. Now Completed and Shipped!

 Late last week I went to the post office with two bags of boxed Christmas knitting.  It made me smile all day to have completed them and put them in the mail. I know at least three recipients have received their boxes.  This makes me happy.

So this is the big reveal!  We had gnomes for Christmas again this year.  These gnomes were very different.  This is the first gnome ornament I made for the grandchildren:

My thought was that it was very cute.  However the arms seemed rather weird to have on a Christmas tree ornament so I removed these arms (took a bit, too, since I had REALLY attached them well!) and did not knit any more arms.  UNTIL...the family gnomes!

May I say I am so sorry to be such a poor photographer?  You don't get a very good view of them.  (As I wrote this last I was thinking about what makes my pictures so poorly set up.  I decided on the instant that it is the fat.  It is hard to squat down or throw myself on the floor for a better angle.  BUT this is changing!  I was able to cut my toenails last week, something that I had hired out for some months.  It really makes me happy to report that eating whole plants and next to no fat is having a very salubrious effect on my body and my spirit!)

This is a rocking chair full of the Christmas gnome ornaments ready to pack up and send.

Each gnome was different and was colored at the request of the grandchild who told me their two favorite colors.

This project is now complete.  On to the next!  (and there is quite a queue of "nexts"!)

Final 2020 Garden Harvest!

 Last week was pretty busy.  I decided it was time to pick the basil from all the plants and put them into the dehydrator.  I waited one day too long!  The next day when I was ready to do the picking  this is what I saw:

As you see, not only was the delicate basil deader than a doornail, so were all the tomato plants.  (The only plant that did not die was the deadly nightshade which you can see over the left shoulder of the deck chair.  You could have knocked me down with a feather the day I saw, and recognized, the deadly nightshade growing up beside the tomato plant.  I guess it is true that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, though why a deadly nightshade plant came up in a potted tomato I purchased at Simpson's Hardware from the Bonnie Plants people, I do not know!) A week before I had found a bird pecking at the nicely ripening tomatoes so I flapped my own wings at him and sent him on his way, brought in all the tomatoes with any color (four of them!) and thought no more about it.

The day the killing frost came was the day when I harvested the last of the green tomatoes.  There were more hidden in the lush foliage than I had realized.

Here they are sitting on the kitchen counter, hopefully to ripen comfortably.  If those beauties begin to look a little iffy, I will turn them into fried green tomatoes, and eat them all myself!  Dear One would not eat a fried green tomato on a bet. 

 UNLESS I did not turn them into fried green tomatoes but into Green Tomato Mincement!!!  That stuff is so good.  Well, not good FOR you, but rich and luscious and makes a great pie or bread of some kind.  We shall see.  Things are a bit hectic currently so...

#LightTheWorld Today!

 There is a calendar of wonderful events we can all to do to  #LightTheWorld this Christmas season.  Already I have participated this year, which makes me happy.  Maybe you would like to up your own joy in this season.  Doing this can help reduce the stress and strain that often accompanies Christmas.

Also, every year on the first Sunday of December there is a wonderful devotional hour of music and words to usher in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.  We have watched this as a family each year for decades.  It has blessed our lives.  It might do the same for you.

As we all celebrate the first coming of our Savior, may we reach out to others who may need a little special attention.  It is my experience that as we do this, we are richly blessed ourselves.

Love Knots Blanket Test Knit Progress!

 Another deadline for the Love Knots Blanket test knit has come and gone.  I did not meet the goal, but still have made a lot of progress.

Here is the progress as of that deadline.  The bottom border is now completed.  Also five of the six inner borders as well as three of the nine blocks.  There are two side borders and the top border to go along with the other six blocks.  Do you think I can finish knitting as well as sewing together by 24 December?!  I don't know.  With this new calling I have discovered a bunch of new activities popping up unexpectedly...!

It is all good.

A New Fast Test Knit: Christmas Angel

 As I was furiously knitting along the bottom border of the Love Knots Blanket test knit at my sister's house over Thanksgiving, I glanced at Yarn Pond and found another test knit that looked quick and easy.  It was a Christmas Angel ornament for the Christmas tree.  I applied and was accepted.

The angel was expected to be knit in #10 Crochet cotton on size 0 or size 1 double pointed needles.  I did not have them, and certainly did not have them in North Carolina with me,  so I ordered ChiaoGoo double points that would arrive the day the test knit was supposed to be completed.  Oh well.  At that point I had not yet been accepted into the knitting pool, so this purchase was totally "on spec".

The next day I checked and found that I HAD been accepted.  The only yarn I had with me at my sister's house was the worsted weight wool from Hilda Yates that I was using on the Love Knots Blanket.  I did have a circular needle free so I cast on and started.  The knitting was going a little slow because of the number of stitches being stretched over the needle. The next day after going with my sister to her hair appointment (where my hair was cut, too...think modified Dorothy Hamill haircut...looked great when he got done.  Not so great today, but...oh well.) I realized that I needed some of the right sized double points if I had a prayer of completing this project.

We went to Hobby Lobby where I found exactly the right needles with nice sharp points like the ChiaoGoo needles at one-third the cost!  We also found gray thread that I needed and a Christmas tree that Dear One hoped we would get but was reluctant to pay the price.  We got the tree.  As it turned out they were half-price.  Since it was Black Friday it turned out the trees were half the price of the half-price!!!  Dear One was really happy.  The tree is very skinny which is what we need for our front porch where we want it.  Yes, of course it it a fake tree, but that is fine down here. I don't want to bring any unexpected wildlife into the house down here!

Speaking of wildlife, when we returned from North Carolina on Saturday night we found that "someone" whose name will be excluded to protect the guilty, had left an open sleeve of Ritz crackers on the island.  It was CRAWLING with ants!  Just plain disgusting.  We had a hard time killing them.  I finally ended up spraying them with vinegar water.  I had hopes they would die out.  Not so.  We may have to get the exterminator...

This is the Christmas angel completed.  Instead of crocheting a string hanger for the top I knitted an I-cord ring.  This is natural colored yarn though it does not look like it.  There were a few issues with the knitting but I did manage to get it eventually.  It helps to actually read the pattern...and have the instructions sink into your brain clearly.  I will probably make another one.  If I had been using Number 10 crochet cotton and size 0 needles, I am afraid I would have been a quitter....  Now having been able to take out the thick wool yarn a dozen times (at least!) I think I might try with the itty bitty needles that came today...just not right away.  Still have a bit more Christmas knitting to do, and then the Love Knots Blanket test knit.