Happy New Year!

Doesn't that look lovely? And nasty? I'm sure that it is not the hardest puzzle going but thanks to mom and dad and Christine for doing most of it. Somehow, I wasn't particularly in a puzzle making mood this year.

One thing that we were in the mood for was food! We had a few people over for New Years Eve and Bill went all out with the food preparation! Starting in the upper left near the green CD case, mushrooms in puff pastry, chicken samosas both hot and not, coriander hot sauce, potatoes in garlic mayonnaise, sour dough olive bread, spinach and feta filo triangles, chicken tikka, black bean dip both hot and not, and corn chips for dipping. What is not seen is the flan that was going to be for desert. Seriously way too much food, but I didn't have to cook a single thing yesterday.
Sarah brought over a game that her brother bought her for Christmas called "Dirty Minds" if memory serves me correctly. It features rather risque clues to mundane things that you have to guess, IF you can get your mind out of the gutter. Some were easy, some rather hard. No pun intended. We laughed and laughed and Bill has said many times that he really like the game.

I have found that lately it has been getting increasingly hard to write blog posts. The lead up to the Christmas season was particularly brutal this year and I took a while to recover. I didn't feel like doing much of anything beyond the usual things that need to be done at home as well as what needed to be done at work. That left me with little to post about and no energy to try and be entertaining. Typical post from December would have probably gone something like.....

Work today, cleaned dye kitchen, again, fixed the Clement, vacuumed under looms, put new warp on for media class. Couldn't think about supper so left it up to Bill, again. Did laundry. Homework with kids. Fun fun. Read for a while, went to bed.

Not riveting reading.

But I have had a break from many of the usual routines and I am feeling a little refreshed. I hope that this will lead into a new surge of creativity. I started a new felt vessel last night so I think that the year has started off on the right foot. I also plied the yarn that I spun at the spinning retreat two months ago. I have had both Bill and Mira asking to be taught how to spin and so my excuse is that I needed to clear my bobbins. The real reason is that I needed to feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing some of the UFO's that are sitting around. But more on that later.
Happy New Year everyone!