A New Year And A New Start

It's been a while again, hasn't it? It's come to the point where the vast majority of updates on the blog are additions to my Books Read list in the sidebar - 137 during 2012 thanks to the Orion Township Library's link to the Midwest Collaborative For Library Services and all the e-books available there for my Nook. In the entire year, I only borrowed two hardbounds from the Library itself and Max chewed the corner off a page of the second one. The Nook is much safer - at least he hasn't tried to eat it yet.

The big news of the summer was that my eldest daughter, grandson & grand-daughter came for a visit. Before that, I cleaned out what I've been calling the Yarn Room - where I hide out to watch tv, knit, crochet & store yarn - both mine & what I'm working on for our K4 group. Believe me - it didn't look this neat previously! Picture wall to wall bags & totes of yarn and you'll get a pretty good idea. Anyway, while daughter & grandson proceeded to Chicago for Godzilla-Con, grand-daughter stayed with us. A trip to the DIA and a couple library runs for books in a series she's been reading kept her semi-occupied. Lordy, I wish I had that much ENERGY!!!!

I spent a lot of time using up yarn scraps during the summer crocheting Snuggles for the animal shelters. Here is the stack of ones that I made plus ones that other members made that I took to the Oakland County Pet Adoption Center in July. Since then, there has been a delivery to MARL and a second one to OCPAC. Most of the ones I made were crocheted with two strands of yarn and a size P hook.

After the weather cooled down a bit, I started in on making toddler sweaters for the United Methodist Church's annual trip to the Redbird Mission in KY. This first one is difficult to see as the top & sleeves are knit is a blue tweed that almost matches the carpeting.

Max found a nest in another stack of Snuggles before they were delivered. Looks comfy doesn't he.

That clears out most of the photos I took in the summer & fall. Finally located the gadget I needed to pull them off the camera's card and onto the computer. In other news, the garden on the deck turned out so-so. The bags required watering every day & sometimes twice a day. Will have to rethink the concept. The IQ has almost 1000 miles on it - mostly driving to the Sr. Center & back. The cats are healthy - and BIG, when they were weighted at the vet's in November, the combined weight of the three came in at 50#s. Will try to be a better blogger in 2013, but can't promise because retirement is a tad bit dull. Oh, and my genealogy site - Dunham - Wilcox - Trott - Kirk - received an award from Family Tree Magazine as one of the best 75 sites on line!