The weather has been all over the map this week with snow, sleet, rain and sunshine within hours on some days.
It's been mostly cold and uninviting and I'm still not walking on that toe that I might have broken or not 3 weeks ago, so I stayed inside for most of the week.

I've done a lot of reading and currently I'm halfway through 'The reading list' by Sara Nisha Adams.
It's is a heartwarming book about people connecting with others as they share their ideas about books. The story is about grief, loneliness, mental health issues, family dynamics, and friendship.

I've actually read quite a few books from 'the list' myself and I'm learning a few things about them that I didn't realize or picked up on when reading them myself. I like it very much!

When I'm not reading I'm puzzling:

My current puzzle is another very difficult one, a painting of Degas 'girls at the piano', it will keep me busy for a while for sure!

                                                    

I'm also always working on my blog, selecting pictures, making notes of what's happening as the week's progressing ...

Or, I'm knitting or spinning ..
I just realized that for some reason I never mentioned I got another spinning wheel. Another charkha to be precise, an Indian cotton spinning wheel.
Several years ago I bought this charkha on e-bay, an 'attache' charkha as it was called. As charkhas go, it was a fairly big, and also a very old, one.

I was thrilled to have scored an authentic, made in India, cotton spinning-wheel and happily got into the 'art' of spinning cotton on it.
Just like Ghandi wanted the Indian people to do, to peacefully protest against the English monopoly of producing Inian cotton in English mills and selling the cloth for high prices back to the Indian people who grew and cared for the plants to begin with.

Any-who, after some time I started to realize that this 'wheel', although authentic and wonderfully historic, was not the easiest and smoothest contraption to work with and I started to look for newer and more 'up to date' charka's ..
So, bring in .. the Book Charka de-Luxe, sold by stores for $299.99. Too much for my frugal mind of-course, so I started to watch E-bay and Ravelry, an art web-site, and finally found this one .. for $110!

This charkha is much smaller than the 'attache' and is based on the traditional Book Charkha, but the manufacturer has made some great improvements over the traditional models. 

It is a smooth finished book-shaped wooden box that opens up to reveal an accelerated Charkha that uses rubber O-rings in place of the traditional cotton drive bands, stainless steel and coated steel fittings and a self contained skein winder and it comes with 3 spindles.

The seller included a whole bag of cotton sliver (brushed cotton) in various colors and even added some cotton seeds so I could try to grow some of my own.

This winter I finally got to 'set it up' and spend some time getting familiar with this pretty little machine. It takes quite some time to get the hang of it, and I know a lot of people that have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat, but I stuck with it and lo-and-behold, I'm starting to 'get it'!

(I did sell my 'old' charkha by the way, for $65, which is $15 more than I bought it for!)

James is still studying .. I know, it's getting old, but he's still waiting for the State to approve the appraisals he's send in to be approved, after which he can sign up to take the final exam.
He's taking practice test after practice test, and is now passing pretty much every single one so it seems like he's ready!

We have a little pool going on when he will get the go-ahead; I'm thinking late March or more specifically the 21st, Doug and Brenda are predicting April and James himself thinks May. We'll see!

For a little break he drove to Portland last Sunday to attend the Portland Golf Show in the Expo center.

                                     

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very big 'show' and he called it quits after an hour and a half of walking past a lot of uninteresting stuff like trying to sign him up for expensive golf get-a ways and equally expensive golf-clubs or clothing.

I've hobbled (courtesy of that #$@%$! toe) outside for a little in between the snow and the rain and noticed the buds of the blueberries starting to 'shift' as we say in Holland, meaning they start to swell and open up ..

                         

There's some growth at the Rhubarb as well ..

           

The daffodils are finally starting to form flowers:

                                                                                     


And despite the frost of lately it looks like the Camellia in Doug's yard came through OK and buds are starting to open up:
                                                     
           

I was sorely tempted to buy some herbs and sugar snaps at Bi-mart this week but I talked myself down from that ledge by remembering what happened last year when I planted this early .. nothing really grew ..
This year seems just as cold and especially just as wet, which causes root-rot and seedlings to grow stunted or die altogether.

                                        

Also, what do I do with a Jumbo Pack? It's just the 2 of us ..

Going to the grocery store was about my only outing of the week and on the way home I grabbed a take-out dinner at the Panda Express.
It's been ages we went there, it's a very uninviting, cold and usually very noisy kind of take-out chain but we really like the food so I thought 'why not bring some home'?

Because of the cold, dark winter days we've not been going out for dinner every Wednesday-evening like we did last summer but I'm usually picking something up on my shopping days instead.
I still don't have to cook and there's no dishes. It's cheaper too .. no tip!

I have been cooking some more 'stick-to-your-ribs' food on these snowy days, like 'stampot boerenkool', a dutch dish best translated as 'mashed potatoes with kale' .. with (polish) smoked sausage .. and bacon bits .. and a good moat of gravy .. what's not to like?

I also went back to baking bread again .. it makes the house smell soooo good! It tastes pretty good as well of course.
I baked an 'artisan', 'no knead' bread with a nice crispy crust, and a basic, more traditional sandwich bread, although with a short rise, which had a weird shape coming out but tasted just fine!

Well, I think that's about it for this week. I guess it's just 'all quiet on the Western front'!
Everybody is waiting for Spring it seems like ... but I hope it will take a little while longer, I'm perfectly fine with how it is right now!