And when the weather is cold...

I take up blog tweaking. With definite mixed results. No offense die-hard blogger folks, but I truly miss the good old Homesteader Blogger days. :sigh: 

If you visit more than once now, you will find me continually playing with my blog look here. I made changes and didn't bother to back up my template first. 

Yeah, I'm sort of a free spirit like that.

So, what I did have set up here is long gone. I'm totally not liking the selections I'm throwing out there so far. And that means y'all get to play musical blog with me until I settle with something.  I wish you long suffering patience. I tend to be naturally discontent in these sorts of areas. Really. Follow me on Facebook. See how often I mention rearranging furniture. It's an illness.

What else happens when the weather turns cold? The pipes take on a bit of ice. Last cold snap, it was 4 days with marginal cold water and nothing resembling hot. This time, as I loaded the woodstove during the night, I ran water wide open for several minutes in every tap. Good plan, right? Not so much. Even leaving a dedicated fast drip running in the problem areas of the longest water run, we were solid this morning. The bright spot this time is the real cold was one night, and the pipes let themselves loose by mid-morning. This is Mississippi you know, the Deep South they tell me. Freezing isn't regular around here. They have a saying around my area....The Good Lord giveth, and The Good Lord taketh away.  Ice may come, but it will tend to itself in short order, you just have to wait it out. Patience.

Cold weather also means my yarn basket is full, and I'm working on various projects. I have a dishcloth swap between some friends getting ready to mail off so I was busy hunting up something fun to put together. I settled on a chicken, some bright colored cloths, and a couple of dish scrubbers. Hopefully the recipient will enjoy them :-) I'm really happy with the scrubber attached to the wooden spoon as a scrubber. Turned out much better than I expected it to. And the chicken...just perfect for a country kitchen, don't you think?

And a break from hats and slipper booties brought me starting another afghan. No real plan, just some cranberry, dark turquoise, robin's egg, charcoal, and a light heather gray. I decided to go with Tunisian Stitch, and found a nice textured variation called the Bias Stitch.  Except my Bias Stitch isn't really very, ahem, bias.  Mine looks more like a type of cross stitch ribbing almost. I like it, but it sure isn't what I started aiming for. Oh well. Let's just call it creative license.

The idea will be blocks of color, randomly stitched, in strips that I will seam together when finished. If I get bored, it will just be a great scarf. 

Outside we have wood being split, our 20ft trailer is still over half full of oak bits and pieces waiting to be sorted for project use (most boards are 4in up to some 8in widths and all are 16-20ft long), and cut down to cookstove size for kindling and such. It was a great blessing to get the bundles! 

What's going on in your craft basket as winter keeps rolling along?