Rollins Hills, How to Burn Calories During Covid 19

This was step 1 of the afghan I named Rolling Hills.  These strips were donated, to me through my charity, Bridge and Beyond, intended to be scarves, but weren't sized appropriately, so I am re-purposing them into an afghan.   I tucked these strips aside until I could work with them.  

Here's the completed afghan as it's being blocked and drying after being laundered.  The colors in the first picture are more accurate.  So weird how differently light affects these pictures...even though I tried to edit it.  It was pretty narrow, but I was able to add several inches to each side to make it a nice size.

Little different view.  Now, what to work on next?

Tried a new recipe.  

1. 6 thin sliced chicken breasts
2. 1 container green onion cream cheese
3. 1/4 cup olive oil
4. 1/2 cup chicken broth
5. 1 Large package sliced mushrooms
6. 1 small bag fresh baby spinach
7. 1 dash Weber Herb and Garlic Seasoning
8. 1 dash pepper
9. 8 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
10. Mix seasonings and liquids into the cream cheese. 
11.  Place chicken breast in dish, cover with lots of
12. spinach and mushrooms, poor liquid over.
13.   Cook on 375 covered for 20 minutes, uncover, add
14. Italian cheese, cook another 10-20.    I served it over Polenta to keep it low carb.

Hubby and I were able to vote early...right before the Covid 19 restrictions.  Glad we were able to vote in the primary with things being on hold for so many areas.  I hope many of you were able to take advantage of early voting in your areas.

A graphic I thought was very powerful during these times of social distancing and staying at home orders.  I hope you and yours are safe and healthy.  Stay home, wash your hands.

And because we must not lose humor, it helps to keep us sane.  Burning calories with bad weather is difficult, so I've been in a lot.  I caught a cold, so even before the stay at home orders, I wasn't going out.  Gym's of course are closed.  My Echo Dot (Alexa) is helping a bit with 5 minute plank routines, and 7 minute work outs.  You can find them in the skills section of the Alexa app.  Exercise also helps us stay sane and healthy.

Crocheting for Charity, Yoga and Wash your Hands!

This is one of my current projects.  Like the strips turned into an afghan in my previous post, these are strips that were donated as scarves, but weren't suitable given size etc.  I've titled this soon to be Afghan, Rolling Hills.  Brown and green, earthy.....so that seemed appropriate.  As you can see they aren't the same size, so will need work before they can be joined.

The colors in the first picture are a bit more accurate than this picture, but you can see headway has been made.  4 strips have been edged and joined and so I'm not quite half way there.  It will still be too narrow and will need some extra work on the sides once it's all put together to make it an appropriate size.  I'm using both tan and green for sizing, edging, and joining.  This will also be donated through my charity, Bridge and Beyond.

Last week I shared the funny woman with a Martini glass sitting at the gym......so I'm kinda on a roll here.  I think I also shared I was trying to do yoga via a skill on my Echo Dot (Alexa).  So seeing this made me laugh.  Yarn yoga.

And then............some of you know how I LOVE my wine.

After reading today's news.......and it's still early in the day, the numbers for The Corona Virus are causing concern to almost everyone.  In a matter of a view days the US death toll has jumped to 17 (2 days ago was 10), the number of states with active cases has jumped to 28 (doubled what it was yesterday), and only a handful of days ago there were about 100 cases in the US, that count is now 330.  So, please do wash your hands for the full 20 seconds multiple times a day.  Try to keep your hands away from your face.........I know I'm really struggling with that.

I recently shared a photo of my Valentine's Day table decorations.  So thought I'd share my current Spring placemats.  I intended to buy flowers for the center of the table, but somehow never got around to that.  We're still having cold, gray ugly days here in Central Ohio........but I do have hopes of some colorful flowers.....hopefully soon.

Busy Hands are Happy Hands!

OMG!  Spotted this the other day on Facebook and just had to share it with you all.  It's been YEARS since I've gone camping...pup tent, sleeping bag etc.  My card is fully punched on that with no desire to do it again; but this.....what can I say!

 Finished my potato chip scarf yesterday.  Love the colors and the way the yarn drapes, but not the way it looks on me...even if the picture weren't blurry and I knew how to take a decent selfie, which I don't.  The color is more accurate in the first picture, not the one with me wearing it.

Believe this is going to be donated to Bridge and Beyond, think a teen might enjoy it.

Finished another afghan.  This one is called Pippy Longstocking.  It too will be donated through my charity, Bridge and Beyond.  It was assembled from strips that were donated.  Had to do a fair amount of over stitching...as the person who donated it did the dreaded cut the yarn right after the knot and left no tail.  I shored the edges up as best as I could, but you can see in some places it's not super straight...due to the over stitching and extra stitches to fortify it.  But...I put it in the wash with fingers crossed.  Here it is being blocked....it made it fine through the wash, so I think all is well.  I named it Pippy Longstocking because it's so mixed, wild, un-tamed...a mish mosh.  When I designed it, looking through lots of different colored strips, thought it would be fun and funky.

LOL!  Anyone relate?  I've been doing a 5 minute plank routine, a 6 minute full body stretch, and a 7 minute work out daily here at home, so haven't actually made it to the gym....but what can I say.  Actually I had tried out several different apps, but din't find one that fit my need as a senior.  Did you know you can exercise with Alexa?  If you have an Echo Dot, or other Alexa model check it out.  In the menu area find skills.  I really like it and am finding it motivating.  

Continuing to work on this jewel toned scarf, it's grown a couple of inches, but is slow going with this very thin yarn.  My needles were a 4 wooden knit pics, but they kept coming apart, so I switched to my turbo's which are a 5, doesn't seem much different to me size wise.  But, it's easier to see without the green cord and dark needles.  The silver needles is an improvement.

Valentines Day, Finished Project, AND Amazon Prime and Netflix

 Happy Belated Happy Valentines to all.  I don't tend to do lots of decorating for the various holidays, but do like to have the dining room table festive.  I've had the placemats and napkins for a good number of years, but thought this year I needed something in the middle of the table and found these cute little hearts at CVS.

Do you decorate for the holidays?  Did you celebrate the holiday?  We went to dinner Sat night (not Friday the 14th), using a gift card our darling daughter got us for Christmas.  Meal was excellent.

Coffee Latte Afghan is now done!  Yippee, another project completed.  This ghan has 206 stitches per row.  I considered counting the rows to determine how stitches there were but didn't.  Let's just say ALOT!  Coffee Latte is here drying after being laundered.  Smoothed it out, no real blocking was necessary.  It's being donated to Bridge and Beyond (my charity that benefits the homeless).

Still working on jewel tone scarf (scroll to previous post), and potato chip scarf, (2 posts ago), but not enough difference to take another photo to share with you.

Not that I think there's anything funny about our current hot mess in White House; but this did at least make me smile.  I do love my glasses!

I've tried to watch Monarch of the Glen, but haven't found it on Amazon Prime or Netflix, even though a google search says it's available.

I watched Season One of My Mother and Other Strangers, which I LOVED!

 But, it ends with a real cliff hanger, and it's not clear if there will ever be a season 2.  OMG!

Hated where it ended in season 1.  I stayed up late to watch, as I couldn't force myself to go to bed. 

I watched Season 1 of Virgin River, which also ended up in a bad spot cliff hanger.  Geesh, when will season 2 be out?  I hate getting involved in one of these series and then having to wait for the next season.

AND I watched Aristocrats

I would recommend all these though Aristocrats would be at the bottom of the list.  This list is over the last month or so.  Have you seen them?  What did you think?

Starts and Finishes on the Road

 This scarf shawl........finally finished.  You might remember seeing it when I started it, then again after I ripped it out and started over........and finally it's finished.  It's unbelievable soft, probably more soft than anything I've made to date.  The yarn comes from 3 different yarn shops.  First purchased the lightest variegated (here in Columbus), then the darker version (Park City, Utah), then the yellow here in town, but a 2nd yarn shop, lol.  It's wide enough to be a shawl and covers shoulders nicely, but here I'm wearing it sorta more like a scarf.  I think in spring it will be worn more as a shawl/wrap/stoll and will be light, airy but helpful against air conditioning.  I used drop stitches with 2 yarn overs/wraps.  It's fingering weight yarn, size 5 needle.

 A few posts ago, I told you I had start-itis and really wanted to do something with some new yarn I had purchased.  After finishing the above yellow, I started this scarf.  It too is fingering weight yarn, but with this I'm using only a size 4 needle.  Simple 2 row repeat pattern which will produce a asymmetrical scarf.  LOVE LOVE these jewel tones.  The pattern was written for ww yarn and has you cast on 5, so I thought casting on doubling that (10) would make it wide enough to compensate for the difference is yarn weight.  I started this on the same trip but, believe it will take a while to finish.  Thinking if I were to do this again with this weight yarn I would cast on 15...so we'll see how it turns out.  I think the 10 would be perfect for maybe sport weight yarn.  But, I have enough yarn to make it long enough to wrap around at least twice so hoping it will be ok.

 This Afghan, Coffee Latte was started about a year ago and put away in the summer when I didn't want a heavy ghan on my lap.  Decided I needed to bring it along to see if I could get it finished.  I'm close.  The section at the bottom, closest to you is what's on the needles.  Need to finish that solid brown section, and then just have one more section of the variegated and it will be done.  Once finished it will donated through my charity, Bridge and Beyond.

 Worked on this scarf in the car on the way to Hilton Head and finished it the first week, so was able to wear it while there.  Love the bold color sections.  This is the same pattern that I'm using on the above jewel toned scarf.  This was very nice yarn to work with and went pretty fast since it's WW weight.  25% wool and 75% acrylic but didn't have the harsh feel that some acrylics do on your hands.  It's Plymouth Yarn Hot Cakes 404 yards and one skein made a nice size scarf.

Here you get a little better feel for the shape and size.  This is a king size bed.
**you see the yarn for jewel tone scarf and burgundy/black/gray scarf in the start-itis post.

What are you working on?  Do you like to knit or crochet when you travel?

Startitis, Un-knitting And Cocktail Hour

LOVE this color, teal and brown.  Forgot I had this yarn, but came across it the other day when cleaning out my office area (or at least partially).  Decided the startitis I've had lately that I've been trying ignore just kicked in when I spotted this yarn.  I wanted to use the multi-directional scarf pattern.  You start with a triangle (what you see at the top where you see more brownish.........then when it's the size you need you start doing short rows  (what you see on the  bottom) and up to the ridge.......which is the join of the 2 triangles.  You go back and forth.  This pattern recommends using shaded, self striping yarn, or variegated yarn; but.......I found this yarn just didn't seem to change color frequently enough to see the changes in direction?  Soooooooooo, after knitting several hours, I did the un-knitting.  Will put this yarn aside and use for something else, as I really wanted to do this pattern.

Potato Chip Scarf has grown quite a bit since the last picture.  It's now 38 inches.  So am chipping away, snarky pun.

Have mentioned I don't decorate a lot and I don't start early; but I do love cocktail hour, cocktail napkins........and well this seemed a good place to start.

The snow-flake napkin holder is on top of the wine rack in the dining room..so decorating did begin about 10 days ago.

 Before the cocktail napkins were switched out, a Manhattan and fancy nuts cocktail evening.

Then another night it was an Old Fashion and chips and guacamole night.  We do enjoy our cocktail hours.  We sit and talk without the tv on, tell each other about our days.  Then we move onto dinner.

On the Old Fashion, Chips and Guacamole night, we had chicken enchilada's.  First time I've made it, turned out yummy and will be repeated.  Found black beans with jalepeno's  and lime, very tasty.  Definitely a repeat.

And leaving you with a bit of humor.  I'm not a fan of winter so this had me nodding in agreement.