history mysteries

(Sorry for republish...had to fix the video links!)

Really cold, but not much snow.  We did had a mini blizzard blow in last week!  I hastily shot a video (sound on!), but unfortunately, this only lasted for about ten minutes.  What a bluster, though!

Extremely low morning temperatures (7 degrees anticipated tomorrow) mean that Pepita isn't getting her regular walks...and she's become a little monster!  She has quite a lot of energy and spends a lot of time pestering the cats and invading their space...

"WHY is she HERE?!"

...and playing loudly with her toys.  She has a habit of dropping her toys off the couch and generally being too lazy to retrieve them, so she flops and grunts/howls until one of us obliges her, or she finally gives in and gets it herself.  This is a MINOR episode...she's usually much louder!

Meanwhile, the cats are being their usual rambunctious selves...

So these quiet winter days can actually be quite noisy!  Well...sometimes they're peaceful.

It's been so cold that I've been fretting about our outdoor animals.  We're keeping cat food in multiple locations outside for not just cats, but raccoons and other friends.

Bird feeders are full, drawing the usual crowd, including an unusual amount of cardinals!  A nice bit of color on grey days.

In my free time, I finished a puzzle this week...another one by Charley Harper.  I really enjoyed it and plan to get the whole series...eventually!  Right now, this is my only one.

I finished that embroidery project from a couple of years ago.  Regrettably, it is a little bit rough, but I'm pleased to have it finished and move on to something else.  Practice makes perfect!

I've been knitting again, slowly working on a sweater sleeve, and doing quite a bit of reading.  With Todd being sick/work flow interrupted, I've had so much more free time and have actually finished eight books so far this year!  The best has been I, Medusa, but my current book (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter) is pretty promising too (two thumbs down for the much-ballyhooed Theo of Golden).  I'm busting through podcasts and feeling very productive in general in 2026!

The old photo of Ruth last week reminded me of some other photos that I received in that batch of unwanted things from her son after her death.  Photos like this one, of my great grandparents, displaying their well-known love of animals and flowers.  I spent a lot of my childhood at their house and well remember the rose arch, the weeping willow, the hundreds of irises that my great grandma cultivated, and the big backyard, plowed up into rows for vegetables and flowers.

I have this letter from their son, who was my grandpa's brother.  He was a crew chief on a B-17 and a technical sergeant.  Many of his letters and telegrams were in this box.  Really evocative.  "I've toured England - seen all the things I studied in history etc. - and I've seen the horrors of war.  Death, destruction beyond comprehension, evacuees by the thousands, poor homeless kids and hundreds of things I never wanted to see hear or think again as long as life goes on."

I've read a lot about World War II and this is interesting on a broader level, but more specifically, it made me curious about family dynamics.  I was raised by my grandparents, with my great-grandparents just down the street, but my grandpa's brother Lawrence - "Lonnie" - was never around.  A rift had developed between the two brothers and Lonnie moved to Florida, never to return to Indiana.  I wondered at this letter.  Lonnie, the beloved older brother, had a rather glamorous role in World War II, living in England for years and working with war planes.  My grandpa joined the Navy as soon as he was old enough, but he was mustered out after basic training.  He had a heart murmur from a childhood illness, and he was deemed unfit, medically, to continue.  It must have been a crushing blow to the little brother who wanted to be a war hero.  Surely he was jealous.  Could this have led to the rift?  It's too late to find out...but I love these little clues.  This box of old family documents and photos is a real gift!  

I feel that even in these quiet months with many fewer wild creatures moving around, you can still be a bit of a "historian" about their past movements, just by seeing what was left behind.  Poking around the back barn while feeding the feral cats, I noticed a few interesting things.  Old wasp nests...

...and groundhog holes, although they weren't very visible this year.

Old barn swallow nests...

...and remnants of a hornet nest.

This was a pretty lively place last summer.  I'll have to pay more attention to it this year.

Have a great week!  

snug as a bug in a [quilt]

Against all odds, I didn't catch Todd's flu this week!  Still, he was weak and tired after being so sick, so not much hiking.  Just a couple of days, enough to see our formerly snowy path...

...completely clear out.

A brief warm spell was enough to prompt our daffodil bulbs to stir...

But it's cold again, down to 25 F tonight.  Unusually grey, too...not really conducive to outdoor activities.  I've been playing in the kitchen a bit.  As much as I love Trader Joe's Everything But the Bagel crackers, we don't have a Trader Joe's within an hour of our house.  So, I decided to make my own, with Everything Bagel seasoning and this recipe.  They turned out great!

Ditto for my homemade Fig Newtons.  So much better than the thin, chalky, store-bought ones! The figs really shine in these bars.  

The real superstar, though, was my discovery of this Depression-era chocolate cake recipe.  No eggs, no oil, no butter...but somehow soft, with an amazing taste?!?  I cobbled together a few recipes to come up with this one:

I use a monkfruit sugar substitute to make it sugar free.  Even with frosting, a whole quarter of this cake is about 175 calories!  We eat this every...single...day.  I truly can't tell the difference between this and "real" chocolate cake, although Todd claims that he can (although he loves this cake!).  It's so dreamy.

Now that I've trader my junky iPhone for a new model, I can actually take decent interior photos without pixilation!  So many more photos of the pets.  

Calliope, demanding attention...

...and helping me with a puzzle.

Barnabas, laying on my stomach in bed.

Pepita and the usual antics...

Ditto Frances.

It's nice being able to catch those little moments!  

I've been picking up old crafts, too.  An old embroidery project, just a couple of hours from completion...two years ago.  My goal is to be done with it by the weekend!  I also found a sweater, almost completely knitted (minus the arms).  Starting again!  I've also started eyeing some quilting projects.  It's been so long since I've used my sewing machine that I'll have to re-learn how to thread it, the proper thread tension to use for various projects, etc., etc.  This fact alone has kept me from starting something new, because I loathe reading manuals.  But when I get around to it, I have an interesting project to start with...

Moths.

This quilt block is probably about two feet by two feet and is part of a larger insect series:

There is also a full-size quilt pattern featuring moths that I've got my eye on:

Of course, you can make basically any shape/image with paper piecing...but the smaller the pieces, the more fiddly and time-consuming the project.  I'm not usually interested in this, although it's fun to see what others have made!

Some fun things for the future.  Oh, and something really cool this week!  My great aunt Ruth died a few years ago at the ripe old age of 106.  I looked up her address on Google this week to check something out and saw that the Google Maps car had caught her in the yard!

No doubt getting ready to do some yard work...something she did right up 'til the end!  Nice to have this photo of her.  Although this one is still my favorite!

This one is nice too.  :)

It's funny...no one in my family is interested in old family photos.  After Ruth died, her son sent me a huge box of family photos, including old marriage paperwork and other things that I would've thought he'd be interested in keeping.  His children aren't interested, and that's pretty much the end of the family line.  Well, I'll keep them safe!  I love old photos and family history.  

Anyway, we'll see what the next few weeks brings around here...hopefully more sunrises like the one we had a few days ago!  Completely unedited...it was insanely pink.

Have a great week!

zero cynicism about pointillism!

Recent events:  I made a vintage cake for a friend's daughter's birthday!  I'm absolutely terrible at cake decorating, but I found a method that's perfect for someone like me:  cake pointillism.  

First, bake cake and lay out your template...in my case, large stickers with the backing still on.

Next, dust on some powdered sugar and remove template...now you can easily see the contrast area that needs to be filled in.

Get your dots going!

It took about 20 minutes or so to fill in the entire cake.

I am definitely going to be doing this a lot more in the future.  

It's been quiet around here.  The Christmas tree is finally out, having shed every single needle before reaching its temporary outdoor resting place.  I've never had a tree (well-watered and bought fresh!) that shed so much!  It is absolutely bare.

Todd has been sick with the flu for nearly a week, so it's been especially quiet.  Pepita has been in charge of both patient care...

...and guard duty...

...leaving her completely exhausted.

Like Todd's flu, it's contagious (I am fully expecting to get sick soon)!

So just staying close to home, enjoying beautiful sunrises...

...and night skies.

When not working on the business, working on puzzles....

Books and puppies!  Puppies and books!

...reading, having nice quiet time...one of the reasons that I love winter.  It's so nice to just be.  No guilt, just a nice slow recharge.  

Pepita agrees.

Have a great week!