Did you eat pancakes?

Today has been a good day.

We've been treated to a day of warm temperatures and soft winds. Even though it was grey and snowing I found myself smiling and realized part way through the afternoon that it was because the warm temperatures were making it feel a bit like spring and that is just the best feeling you can get in the cold dark months. As I walked home I had to loosen my scarf and the ties on my hat to keep from overheating. I'm sure I could have taken my mittens off too.

I had a parcel in the mailbox. Inside was some linen for my Dessert of the Month sampler and three skeins of hand dyed floss that I'd picked at random off the colour card while I was on the phone ordering the linen. It turns out they are Easter egg colours so there was some more spring in my day. The other colours I've got are all sort of earthy so they don't really go together but it is nice to expand my collection a bit.

When I was putting my new floss away I came across this tiny sampler I started years ago. I think it is from when I was at university. I didn't bother to check just now but I'm pretty sure this is 32 count linen and my goal was to see just how tiny I could make cross stitch. All those perfect, tiny exes make me smile. I pulled out my new lens to take some pictures of them.

I got a nice picture of Abby while I was playing with my camera.

Looking back at it I had a busy weekend.

It started off with a class at the gym at a quarter past nine in the morning. Most of the time I'd rather sleep late on Saturdays but I was awake in plenty of time to get to the class and it was really lovely to be out walking around on a cool and sunny fall morning. One great thing about going to the gym first thing is that it gives me a little push of energy for the rest of the day. I spent the early part of the afternoon doing things around the house, mostly outside. I moved stuff to the shed, cleaned the bird feeder, checked on plants and took pictures of squirrels. Instead of sitting at the feeder for long periods of time they are now staying just long enough to fill their cheeks and then running back to their houses to stash peanuts for the winter. Abby spent most of her time running from window to window to window inside the house trying to keep track of all the little furry visitors.

I made one small but important home improvement while I was puttering around: I put a hook next to the door to hang Abby's lead on. For almost three years we have been looping the lead over the outside door knob. It was a system that worked but was a nuisance when we went in or out the door (you had to step over the lead) and sometimes the lead would fall down when you closed the door (generally if it was wet or snowing, on special occasions it would freeze to the porch). I found the hook in a box of tools in the laundry room and realized it was just what we needed. Now we just have to remember to use it.

By the time I came inside I was ready to sit still for a while. I made myself a pot of tea, dragged the coffee table closer to my arm chair and settled in to work on my Gnarled Oakwoods Stole. Abby sat next to me on the scratching post and kept track of the neighbourhood. A little vase of flowers I'd cut before our frost last Monday night completed my space. I'm now a little past the half way point on the second repeat of chart No. 1 and happily ignoring the fact that there are two more repeats, a second chart and a whole other half to the stole. My yarn is pretty and I can see progress being made.

On Sunday I made pickles. I must have done other stuff but there is no photographic evidence and the pickles certainly took up the majority of the day. I used the Bernardin Dill Pickle mix because it is easy and we liked it last year. The big jar went directly into the fridge without being heat processed; the smaller jars were all destined for the cupboard but two of them didn't seal so they are in the fridge too. Most of them are mixed pickles but there are three jars of just carrots because I had that many carrots left over when I ran out of everything else. Now we just have to wait two weeks before we can eat them.