Spring is...where?

Officially, it's spring.  Temperature wise, I think Ol' Man Winter's dragging his heels making way for Spring.

With milder temps, I love hanging clothes out on the line.  Not only does it cut down drastically on energy usage, but my energy bills go way down.  So...I carry out my first basket of clothes fresh from my cold water wash.  It's a little breezy, but not too bad.  My youngest daughter, however, has a habit of pulling off her clothes and leaving them inside out, and I have a hard time hanging them that way.  So, I turn them rightside out.  And before I finish hanging one load, my fingers are throbbing and stiff from the cold, making it a little tricky to use the clothespins.  After a brief defrost inside the house, I went out to finish, learning from my lesson, and determining with the next load to turn the clothes rightside out while still INSIDE the house...or grit my teeth and hang them inside out.

The good news is, that little breeze picked up a bit more, so as cool as it is outside (9 degrees celsius, about 48 fahrenheit--but they don't mention the wind chill!) they should be pretty dry by the time I pull them in.

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OKAY.  Left this partway through to hang my last load.  Two loads on the line, I was almost in my door, and heard a strange noise behind me.  Wondering what our little Westie had gotten into, I turned around, then almost laughed.  But I thought I would save the laughing till later, in case I wouldn't be able to stop myself.  There, no longer upright and proud but flat on the ground, was my clothesline.  With the clothes.  (Two loads, did I mention?)
I opened the door, called out to hubby that he just *had* to see this, he came to check out what I meant...and thankfully, he didn't laugh, but was kind of sympathetic.
The bright side:  (yes, there IS one) we've been putting off getting a new clothesline because it would be a pain in the keister to dig up a deep block of cement so chose instead to use this one as long as we could.  Turns out the previous homeowner was not exactly a great DIY'er, and instead of digging a deep hole, chose to dig one about 4-5" deep, lay some gravel, then a few INCHES of cement.  What with the weight of the clothes, the wind, and the excessive sogginess that comes with spring, that bit of cement pulled away from the earth.
Now, like a slightly better DIY'er, I did some research on clotheslines, now that we no longer have to worry about digging up a 2-3 foot deep block.  The smart thing to do, when living in areas that freeze, is to dig the hole below the frostline (they recommend about 3 feet), and to make the bottom of the hole slightly wider than the top.  Well, obviously this past hole was not dug even close to the frostline, and was bowl shaped, with the narrow part of the bowl at the bottom.

What did I do?  I DID laugh.  That's me.  Out in the windy cold (they don't give the wind chill when temps are above zero...figures), hanging cold wet clothes till my fingers hurt almost as bad as the headache part of a migraine, with a chest cold to boot...and all for nothing.
Well, at least the hydro company will be happy a little longer now that I have to continue to use my dryer.

My Website and Windows 7

Who knew?  I bought a laptop a month or so ago, with Windows 7 pre-installed.  After the horrific time we had with Vista, there was no way I was buying anything with Vista loaded on it.  At the same time, we had our desktop in for 'surgery':  Vista was removed, and Windows 7 installed.
Now, I had to download all the programs I'd been using before this surgery....one of which was Yahoo's Sitebuilder.  Download, install...check.
Open, edit...check.  Save...AAAAARGH.  Errors.  Wouldn't save a thing.
Tried a few times, thinking it was just a glitch, and each time sighed (okay, SWORE would be more like it) and closed the program.
I finally contacted Yahoo yesterday, and figured it had to be a compatibility issue, after all, Windows 7 is only 6 months released? and during the contact us process, when it asked for the operating system....Windows 7 was nowhere to be seen.
TODAY, I heard back.  Wow.  Only one day!  And yes, it was a compatibility issue, but the tech in his reply gave me step by step instructions.  I was almost afraid to try to edit and save, after all, I'm coming down with my first cold in ages and have a scratchy throat; I really did not feel up to yelling  four letter words at my laptop.  Thankfully, that was not necessary.

On a crochet note, I bought a pattern (yes, sometimes I do use someone else's patterns) from MsPremiseConclusion on Etsy.  She's also a member of Etsyhookers team, and during a promo thread on Etsy, I checked out her budgies.  They were so cute, and suddenly I had a picture in my mind of our tiny little tree out front with colourful budgies adorning its branches.  Wouldn't that make people look twice?  To see  a picture and check out the listing, just follow me...
I will have to post a picture when it's done.  Of course, I will have to put the birds in place when no one's home to stop me.  :)

Finally got around to it...somewhat!

I am emberrassed to say just how long I've been thinking of and talking about doing this, so I'll just say after a 'little bit' of time, I've finally gotten around to taking out some of the crochet and craft magazines I know I will no longer use, took pictures and listed them on Etsy as commercial supplies.
I do have more, but baby steps!  Put them together with my yarn and thread already in my destash section, and there's projects in them thar listings.  Check them out.
Now, I also have a bag full of Avon skin care products and 'with purchase' items that were sent as part of a seller's program, please, grant me the determination to break out my camera and take pictures and get them up on eBay.  And grant me the good fortune of having people want to save $$ to take them off my hands at cost or very little above!  In some cases, below cost!
Procrastination is my enemy.

Also, I did add a new handmade item, from my Easter Stuffies pattern set I'm re-working, and got a little creative with the main picture:

Clicking on the picture will take you to the listing.

Spring is coming! Spring is coming!

And although our winter so far has been relatively mild temperature wise and snow wise, I am still looking forward to spring.
Looking forward to hanging clothes on the line instead of paying astronomical hydro bills to keep my family in clean (and dry) clothes.  Looking forward to colour to replace the drab brown and white.  Looking forward to opening my windows and smelling my lilac tree in bloom!

I decided one day a few weeks ago to use one of my free square patterns to work on an afghan.  This helped use up some of my skeins of blue and purple, and some off white yarn I had--although I did have to buy more of that for the border.  The finished afghan turned out app. 48 x 64", I was quite happy with the way it looks.  In person.  I'm not overly happy with the way it looks in the photo!  I will have to re-take, but trying to figure out how without recreating the overall 'purple' tint that I couldn't get rid of even in editing.  (The wall is actually peach--not pink--peach!)
But, here it is.  And I'm sure I would never get the over $200 that some would say to charge based on charging an hourly rate, so decided on a price of $125.  (Clicking on the picture will take you to the listing)