Life is pretty good here in Iowa, I just wish it were a little warmer outside. I should not complain since now it is staying nice and warm inside my house. It will be even better when my windows get changed out. Even with the plastic sealed nice and tight on all the windows, on these cold days the glass itself gets all iced up which shows some of my heat is escaping.

Last night it went to -5 degrees and today the high will be 14 degree on my porch and my thermometer is in the sun!! Of course the sun at this time of years does not have a great deal of heat. Some days I wonder if the sun ran out of fuel but I guess it will get warmer as the year marches on. The forecast for the week end is in the low 30s and that will feel like a heat wave after this week of bitter cold. The only saving grace is there is almost no wind in the day time. It still blows hard at night but I low the sound as it howls past my window, it just puts me to sleep. It sounds just like the house I grew up in New Hampshire only here the curtains don’t blow out when the wind blows, on Peanut Row when that wind blew off the lake it made the curtains blow out like a flag in the wind. My mother used to nail blankets over the windows to keep the cold out and they did some good. That was cold! If I took a glass of water to bed with me it would be solid ice come morning so see how lucky I am now even with no storm windows on it is warmer than that.

I have just one more sleeve to finish and I will have sweaters for all of my children and their spouses. So now I am working on the grand children and their family’s plus a few very special people that are like my own children. I want to have a sweater for everyone of them before I die. I got a lot of them done before Christmas and now have the list all picked out to get done before my birthday in Sept. I have Maureen and her five grandchildren. She is my God Child so really like my own family. She has three grand daughters by her son Abe and they are just like my family. I had three girls all about 2 years apart so when Abe’s first child was born I noticed and was interested in watching the family grow. I followed them on Face Book and they didn’t even know it. When the second daughter was born I could identify even more with them and as I watch them grow it brought back very fond memories for me. And the third daughter was the finishing touch. It was history repeating it self. After all the pleasure they have given me by letting me watch their family grow I felt I owed them anything I could do to give them pleasure so I hope a new ski sweater next winter will give them a little pleasure.

Here is one of the sweaters I have done. They are all the Nordic style sweater and are from original patterns for the 1940s. I used to make these when I was in Hight School and still think they are the nicest ski sweater there is. The only differences between then and now we always used wool before and that is a pain to launder so now I use a machine washable and dribble yarn to make the sweater, easy to care for and wears much better.

This gives you an idea of what kind of sweater I am doing. Some have deer on them, some have the nordic design like these two. The small children get button down ones as the heavy sweater is hard to put over the head of a little one. The smallest I have a patten for is size 3 so for any one under three I use a smaller needle and they have to role up the sleeves. Then the child can grow into them. Never hand a sweater up in the closet. Fold it up and put it on a shelf or toss it in a corner but hanging it up will make it stretch out of shape. These sweater last for a long long time. I have a couple I made over 50 years ago and they are still good. Some of the life fades out of them after that long a time but I still have people stop me and comment of mine when I wear them.

The other thing I forgot to tell you about was my storage shed.

You may have noticed it in some of the other pictures. The front half we use as a work shop. The back half is a garage. You can see the garage door on the side of the house. The young man who lived here before was an auto mechanic and he needed a place to work on his cars and bikes and he put this in. We use the garage half for storage and it is full! There is no heat in here so we use it mostly in the summer months but a heater can be put in if we want to use it in the winter. We have to run a power cord out there for lights or we could hook up the generator for longer term use. Any ways I think it is a very nice addition to the house.

I think that is enough for today. The birds need more food so I will leave you and give them some attention. Have. a great day>.