Sunday Puzzles

I'm not a puzzle fan.  At all.  I find jigsaws to be the most boring thing in the universe, I dislike them extremely.  In fact, I'd probably eat broken glass before I'd willingly work on a jigsaw puzzle!

Today at church, Pastor Dave was talking about puzzles and how much he hates them.  He said that he just hopes that jigsaw puzzles are not in God's plan for him, and he spent most of the snowed in days trying to convince his wife (who loves puzzles) that they really didn't have time to do any.

He also talked about puzzles in another way.  Finding the pieces to the puzzles of what God wants for our lives.  In a way, life is like a puzzle.  Made perfect sense, the way he explained it.

Just not a jigsaw puzzle!  Pastor Dave agreed with me, by the way, about the broken glass/jigsaw puzzle situation.  He said that he can put a puzzle together quickly - it involves a hammer and a saw to make the pieces fit, but that it would probably not be recognizable when he got finished with it.

I think that Mom liked them, I remember her putting them together at different times.  Froggy, didn't you used to work on them with her and possibly Aunt Jessie?  I've just never had any interest in them.

We've been working on stuff around the house the last few days.  Among other things, I've been making inroads in the de-stashing.  I used up most of a small ball of blue yarn on a scarf and have another larger ball  of that same yarn that's enough to make a hat to go with the scarf.  They are part of my donation crochet projects.  I'm also about 1/3 of the way through another scarf which will also probably get a matching hat, and it's also going to be donated.  I had a few smaller things I crocheted as well.  Getting there, slowly.  I don't want to use up all my yarn, I just want to reduce the amount of yarn I have because it doesn't do anybody any good if it's just sitting there.

I've also got another hat project planned for Otter.  I had to buy some yarn for this one, the main color is grey and I had just about everything else besides grey.  I'm not sure when I'll get started on it, Otter likes hats and has several.  She wears them all year long.  This one will probably be one that gets frequent wear.  It's a sock monkey hat!  If the pattern works, I'll probably make a couple of them.  She's requested a few other things, which will also help me to de-stash.  The grey yarn is something that I'll use in other projects, I have a few things in mind for it besides the monkey hats.

We got another UFO finished!  This one is the quilt I started when Otter was in kindergarten.  Now that she's about to graduate, it's done.  This one was actually a family effort, Bill's contribution was to sew the backing & side seams on, which he finished up about 15 minutes ago.  When Otter gets home later today, she'll find her new quilt on her bed waiting for her.  I'll get pictures up on the craft blog, but not in the next couple of hours.  Otter's got the camera!

I've been doing some cleaning out lately.  I've gone through my books and have several that Otter will trade in at the used book place she likes and we also have some to donate.

It's really windy today.  I was out in the back yard for about 5 minutes, picking up trash that had blown in, and that was enough to trigger my allergies.  Otter was also sneezy and even Bill's affected.  I talked to someone on the phone this morning, they were sneezing.  The lady who waited on us at Subway (lunch!) today was also having sneezing spells - took a long time to get our lunch, by the way because she kept having to go sneeze and then go wash her hands again.  I guess that whatever is in the wind is bothering a lot of people.  No serious issues from it yet, but I have felt the beginnings of an asthma flare.  However, I've stayed inside as much as I can today and it's not getting any worse.  I don't think it will actually flare up, I think that the wind is just aggravating it slightly.  All in all, I'd prefer not to have to deal with asthma at all.  Either as someone who has it OR as the parent of someone who has it!

Everytime the beagle goes out in the yard, I expect to see her flying by the window.  Those long ears of hers would probably make good wings.  I hope that Frasier would at least try to keep her in the yard and not let her sail off over the fence!  But you know how big brother are about their little sisters...