The Sandcastle

Lately I have been working jigsaw puzzles again. I mostly do them online nowadays using this site:

http://jigsawexplorer.com

This puzzle site has a timer on each puzzle. It lets you change the background color and/or tell it to only show edge pieces to start with before the timer begins. The timer only starts when you grab the first puzzle piece.

Then it measure elapsed time since you began. It doesn’t care if you are working the puzzle or off doing something else it measures the time since you began until you finish. So taking a break can make it look like you took a LONG time to work that puzzle.

What I found interesting is that when I do stay and work the puzzle from beginning to end and check the timer at the end I am not necessarily asking how long it took to work that puzzle. Sometimes I am asking how much time I managed to kill.

TTYL,

Linda

 

 

 

 

We’ve been having brilliant sunshine here the last couple of days. Sunshine so bright I have to fight the urge to put on sunglasses in the house. You’d think the weather must be balmy, right?

Wrong. Sunshine like this at this time of year means there is no cloud cover to act as an insulating layer to keep earth’s warmth close to the ground. Instead the temperature is below zero with wind chill warnings.

And it will stay that way all though the three-day weekend.

It will start to warm up a bit Tuesday–finally getting temperatures above zero.

That means it will be warm enough on Wednesday to snow.

Bright sunshine here in winter does not mean what your instinct says it should. This is a case where experience outweighs instinct.

TTYL,

Linda

We got our second covid-19 vaccinations yesterday. Minor reaction but nothing serious. We’ve been told that waiting two weeks before venturing out would be good but after that we don’t have to quarantine even if exposed to the virus. That’s great news! We may survive this after all!

We received our first injections of the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19 yesterday. No side effects except for tender arms. Second injection due Feb 11th. I am so glad we live in this complex where our county health department sent nurses to do the injections since most of our residents are a lot older than Dave and me. It is weird being the youngsters in a group at age 73, though.

TTYL,

Linda

In these times of stay at home orders we all need something to do with our excess time. Some of us are starting new hobbies; some are returning to previous hobbies.

Many years ago, back in the early 1960s, my mother and I started doing Swedish weaving to make decorated tea towels.

I decided to try that again. So I bought some materials and picked a pattern and this is four examples of what they look like:

I bought one set of embroidery floss in a selection of browns and a huge hunk  of material that we cut into tea towel size pieaces. The material is called huck toweling and it is a specialty weave that has what is known a floats. Floats are pairs of threads that stand out from the background material. In Swedish weaving you run the floss through those lifted thread to make the patterns. From the back of the cloth you don’t see anything since the floss never actually penetrates the cloth.

Each towel uses two colors of thread so I sorted my collection into lights and darks and picked one each for each towel. The primary color get used up one one towel but the secondary color offers enough to do two towels.

Then I realized neither Dave nor I wanted to use these small tea towels for drying dishes. So, I am embroidering both ends of each towel instead of just one end then I will cut them in half and hem them to make place mats instead. We use place mats every day to protect our wood table so it will be nice to have several of these.

In some craft cultures you intentionally make an error in each piece because only God’s creations are perfect. I haven’t had to be intentional yet.

TTYL,

Linda