Cleaning

I know, I know, it is the scourge of every woman. Sooner or later, the dust, and in my case, blowing tumbleweeds of dog hair, threaten to overtake us. And every single time I answer the siren call of "It is time to clean OR ELSE, SELF" I am out of Comet and I mean every time. It's a little game I play. I buy lots of it, deposit it smartly in each bathroom and feel very content that life is as it should be. Then Dobby the house elf who lives everywhere in the house, decides to houseclean his digs and the other elves' digs and there goes my Comet.

The feeling AFTER the cleaning is done, however, is second to none in terms of peace of mind and joyousness. Truly everything is right with the world!

I have a very long fuse about the need to clean, but definitely a shorter length of time than when I was much younger. Then I only liked to clean before my mother came to visit or we had people over for dinner. That little game resulted in usually two full days of exhausting work and a general hatred for entertaining. There had to be a change in the modus operendi and now we clean on a semi regular basis. And yes, I mean we! My teenage boys actually help and it is a wonderful thing! Just like in the movies, my youngest jams EVERYTHING in the closet but the rest of the room looks clean. One opens that door at one's peril but that's o.k. I just don't open it, rather sigh happily as I go past the door. I am, in short, a housekeeper of the school of "out of sight" out of mind. Works really well for me! Why this particular pic with this post you ask? I Love, love, LOVE peonies and this little picture tells me that Martha Stewart has just whizzed through the house, cleaning as she went and left behind this little vignette to delight my eyes. Sigh.....just lovely!!!

Ruffly Scarf

It is finally finished! I lovingly knit the body of the scarf about six months ago, but it needed something. I was browsing on my beloved website Etsy and "eureka" it came to me...it needed some sort of edging. Room to room, root, root, root, looking for crochet hook - nada. So in the car I got and over to Michaels, procuring the required crochet hooks and, of course, several new balls of yarn! My sister gave me a wonderful book last Christmas, a crochet and knitting bible with every kind of stitch known to man and I just began to leaf through it looking for inspiration. A visit to YouTube resulted in a new kind of ruffle stitch, created by, of all people, a gentleman crocheter! And here is the result. The book showed me how to do a crocheted shell edging and I put his ruffle on top. Think I'll wear it with my jean jacket - can't wait!