1/28/2016

Hello All,  January is almost gone.  We have had another very mild winter.   The good news this year is that there is snow in the mountains and on sunny days those mountains are so beautiful.   We have spent a lot of time enjoying friends and family this month.  We have gone to listen to music with friends and we have gone to listen to friends play music.    We finally saw the last Hunger Games, Star Wars and also the Revanant, which was beyond amazing.


Social:

Bill got together with some old friends from high school. The picture below was taken at Dan Pedersen's house on Whidbey Island. From left to right are Bill, Autumn Scott, Chuck Easton, Norm Gustavson and Dan Pedersen.  Chuck is Bill's oldest friend from the 1st grade. They lived down the street from each other in Mt Vernon growing up. Autumn is Chuck's wife. Norm is a high school friend who now lives in Afghanistan. Dan lives in Langley on Whidbey Island. We had our 50th reunion last August. it brought up feelings in Bill of wanting to reconnect more deeply with classmates from 50 years ago. Norm and Bill had know each other from grade school. Norm now works with his wife at an NGO Afghanistan. He was fortunate to survive a heart problems at his home and then to return to the US for recovery. Bill didn't know Dan well in high school but looked forward to getting to know him better. They started the day with lunch at a Langley cafe and then visited Dan's home nearby where this picture was taken. Each person told a little about their lives. The stories were varied and very interesting. Norm explained how the homes in Afghanistan are very different by existed in a walled enclosures. Autumn described a brush with death while doing a  landscaping job. The upshot of the conversation was to continue this at another time and location with others from the class.

Knitting:

I finally finished a cardigan sweater I have been working on since 2012.  This sweater challenged some of my knitting skills, especially learning to read a pattern and follow multiple directions "at the same time".   I kept putting the poor thing in "time out" because I was frustrated then I would get it out again and work on it until it attacked me again.   This went on for years.   My January goal was to get that thing off the needles and I am so proud of myself and this sweater.  

A real photo of the finished project next time. 

Ahead:   This weekend we are expecting 16 house guests for Saturday night.   We are excited about this reunion and connecting with some special friends.   

Until Next Time: 

There are going to be a lot of changes in our neck of the woods over the next few years and I thought that I would challenge myself to blog again.    Bill has been retired from a long career as a power engineer at Puget Sound Energy and I am semi-retired dental hygienist.   I love my work as a hygienist still but I don’t have the energy for it for two or three days in a row so now it is usually 2 or 3 days a month.  Instead we are both project oriented and having lots of fun in a variety of areas.  

Some of the changes around here will be going on outside and around us.   Below are two photos of the front of our house.  One taken from our neighbor’s driveway looking at our house and the other is taken from our driveway looking at our house and with a view of a bit of the woods behind us.  

There is a new housing development scheduled to start this spring that will be all around us.  Some say that we were the hold-outs to this development but really the developer never made us any kind of an offer to move.    We like our house and have made a lot of changes to it over the years to make it work better for us.  We love the location near Redmond, Kirkland and it is easy to get to Seattle.   This house is all on one level which is a good choice moving ahead.  I used to say it was a starter home but after 35 years of living here we are thinking it will be our finishing home as well.  

We have watched our parents and parents of our friends’ age and seen the need of individuals change and we are hoping to make changes around here that will help up live successfully in this home until we need extra help.  Just for fun here is one more photo of the house sometime before 1990 and I know that because that is the year we redid the roof and added and attic. 

I am going to work my way into this blogging gently and I don’t really have an outline yet but you can guess there will be knitting and I already have a finished project for 2016 .

This project started as a purple scarf in the gift box in the attic.  I had originally made if for my mom but it was too heavy for her in Texas so I traded her a lighter weight one and brought that home  and put it in the ‘future gifts box’ .  Today I took rescued the scarf from the gift box,  took out both ends of the scarf,  attached one end to the ball winder and unraveled about half of the scarf onto a nice little 'cake' then I put each of the ends on a needle and with a third needle I did a 3 needle bind-off.  Magic, a lovely little cowl all finished and ready to wear.   How fun to have such a cool accomplishment of creativity especially today when I have such a cold and don’t feel my best.

            

                

                           

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