Easter Weekend 2025

Hello all, I hope you are well, and that if you are having nice and sunny days, you are able to enjoy them.

Our Easter weekend here in Philadelphia was truly lovely. Saturday was a bit warm for my taste - especially for April! - but we had a great time with my niece Amanda and her husband Pat, who arrived shortly after noon. I took everyone on a little "architecture" tour of our neighborhood, to show them some of the interesting houses and buildings I've come across on my walks. Then we headed to dinner at an Irish pub, came home and set about working on our Inappropriate Easter Eggs. 

Sunday morning, we met them for brunch at a restaurant that they have always wanted to try here in Philadelphia (Parc Rittenhouse), but is always booked, especially for Easter brunch. But I was on the ball this year, and called the first day you could for reservations. Then we walked around a bit, since it was an Open Streets day, and listened to some of the live music before they headed back to Baltimore. 

It was so much fun, and the rest of Easter we just hung out with the kitties and relaxed. 

As usual, the Easter Bunny showed up with goodies for the kitties. Everyone had to investigate their baskets, and all of them passed muster (phew!).

On Friday, I'd baked a coconut cake, which turned out not only to be yummy, but came out of the Bundt pan perfectly - that's a first for me! (Needless to say, it is now gone. I also sent a couple of pieces home with Pat and Amanda to enjoy.) 

Our Inappropriate Easter Egg session was a success as usual. Here are some of the highlights.

This egg shows the Blue Origin spacecraft, along with "G. King, K. Perry," and "Why come back?"

The egg on the left says, "Elon, what did you do last week?"

The egg on the right is my contribution, and I'm very proud of it. It's an undyed WHITE egg, illustrating the end of DEI in the current administration's climate.

The next three eggs included one that was sadly prescient. They are shown with the front side and the back side.

The one on the left says, "RIP Pope Francis"**; the next says "Too expensive to be me, with a dollar sign," and, the third says, "First, they came for the lawyers."

On the reverse of these, the left side one says, "Give it a few weeks," while the middle one shows a chart with the price of eggs since 2024, and the third one says, "Thank God." (The Tim loves to tease both of them about being lawyers.)

**Now, before we go any further, I have to tell you that The Tim made the Pope egg; he thought Pope Francis had died when he was last in the hospital (yeah, I know). When we pointed out that he was still alive, he "amended" his egg to say what it did on the back. And then of course, Pope Francis died on Monday. It's a sad coincidence, but The Tim wants to make it clear that he did not kill the Pope. 

So although Monday turned out to be very sad (I was a big fan of Pope Francis), we did have a fun time making these eggs, and giving The Tim a hard time for not being up on current events. (It's like the time he asked a friend how his father was doing, since he had been hospitalized for a while, and the friend said, "Well, you were at his funeral." Sigh.)

So far this week has been one where I feel like I am spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. And last week felt so productive! But I have plans to accomplish something today - a small something, but it still counts! 

I also want to give some thought to my next knitting and/or stitching projects. I've been doing absolutely nothing since I finished my sweater, but I have some ideas so I want to decide what would make the most sense at the moment. And I'm hoping to start a stitching project, since I've been thinking about that for the past couple of weeks as well. I'll keep you posted.

So that's it for today. I hope all of you had a good holiday, Easter, Passover, whatever you may have been celebrating. And even if you weren't celebrating any holidays, I hope spring so far is being kind to you. 

Good Friday FO: Birthday Socks

Well, OK it just so happens that I am writing this post on Good Friday. But I had these socks finished weeks ago, I'm just finally getting around to sharing the FO. 

With thanks of course to Alfie, who made it all possible ... 😂

Project: Birthday Socks

Yarn: Freckled Whimsy Serendipity Sock, Colorway Pisces

Needles: US size 0/ 2mm

Pattern: my own vanilla sock pattern

Notes: I have had this yarn for a couple of years, but every year would forget about it until well after my birthday. This year, I made sure that I put the sock set where I would see it, and finally, I could knit myself a pair of birthday socks! 

I didn't plan for this to be my birthday cast-on, rather I wanted to be able to wear them on my birthday. I started them in early February, so that I'd have plenty of time to finish them. Which turned out to be a good idea, since for a few weeks I lost my mojo, and I was also working on other projects, so my knitting time was divided among three different types of knitting.

The first sock was finished pretty quickly - that was before I lost my mojo. But the second sock suffered a bit, but I was still determined to get them ready for my birthday. And I did, finishing them a little bit more than a week ahead of time. I happily wore them on my birthday, and can attest to them being very comfortable, even though it was an unusually warm day for March. 

I really love the finished pair. The sock set came with the bright turquoise blue yarn for the cuffs, heels, and toes (I just did cuffs and toes). They are a closely related pair, but not identical, which is always fine with me. 

*****

As I mentioned above, today is Good Friday for Christians who observe the Easter season, with Easter itself on Sunday. My niece Amanda and her husband Pat are coming tomorrow to spend an overnight with us. We are looking forward to it, since they were not able to be here last year, and we really missed seeing them! This also means the return of the Inappropriate Easter Egg Contest, and it seems there are an overabundance of possible themes for this year! I have a really great idea (if a highly rude and inappropriate one) for an egg, but my challenge is also the drawing of my idea, so we'll see if I have any luck with that. I've considered a couple of ways it might work out, but the plan in my head doesn't always translate to the work of my hands, LOL. So we'll see.

If you celebrate, I wish you a very Happy Easter! If you do not celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful last weekend of March, doing what you like. 

I'll see you next week!

A Closer-to-Normal Easter

I hope that all of you had a good weekend, whether you celebrated a holiday or not. Our weekend was great, as for the first time in 2+ years, we had the chance to have our usual guests and do some of the things that make Easter extra fun.

My niece Amanda and her husband Pat came up for the weekend from Baltimore, and it marked the return of a fan favorite - Inappropriate Easter Eggs!  So without further ado, I present our work.

First up, Celebrity Eggs - at the top, RIP Bob Saget; in the middle, Britney Spears now that she has been freed from her conservatorship; and, Madeleine Albright, wearing one of her brooches.

Next up, Current Events and Statement Eggs - top row, from left to right, Vladomoyr Zelenskyy egg; Slava Ukraini egg; America egg, with the bald eagle crossed out and a gun in its place; January 6 insurrection.  Bottom row, pandemic masked egg; Russian warship egg (on the back it says, "You sunk my battleship!"); and, an Elon Musk tries to buy Twitter egg, which was created by Pat who also had to take it home with him because we didn't want it in our house any longer than necessary!

As Amanda pointed out, we didn't/couldn't cover as much as we would have liked to, because we only had 18 eggs to work with, we had to make some name/family eggs, and there was more than 2 years' of people and activity! ("The celebrity death eggs alone would need a couple of dozen.")

As you can imagine, there was a lot of hilarity, stories, and overall ridiculousness.  Pip and Milo thought it was the best, since Amanda always brings them tons of treats, and she and Pat pay them so much attention, the level of purring is just out of control.

They headed home after brunch yesterday, and we just had a relaxing rest of the day.

Best of all, the Easter Bunny showed up to leave goodies for everyone!

The weather was cool but sunny all weekend, and it rained a bit on Saturday night, but mostly overnight, so that worked out nicely.  It was so nice to feel like things were normal-ish again, and to have some company.

So Easter 2022 was a happy success. Hopefully, things will continue in that direction. Though today in Philadelphia, we are back to mask mandates indoors, since Covid cases are on the upswing. Since we have not stopped wearing masks indoors, it's not that big of a deal for us, but as you can imagine, a lot of people are extremely unhappy about all of it.  

But at least our holiday weekend was a happy one.

A Whole Lot of Not Much and I Am Easily Amused

Seems like it's been a long time since I've participated in Unraveled Wednesday with Kat and everyone.  The main reason is that although I've been reading, it's been slightly less than usual, and though I have been knitting, it's been way less than usual.  I've been having a flare up of arthritis in my right elbow, which was always annoying but now happens more frequently every since I broke my wrist a couple of years ago.  It gets to the point where it even keeps me awake if I move too much when I sleep.  It doesn't necessarily hurt more when I do knit, but it hurts more *to* knit when it's doing its thing.  So all of my projects are the same, with only very small progress on each one.

In any case, I decided to post anyway, because I am close to finishing a book that I have found to be really interesting, and I saw a freebie pattern yesterday that I thought was really amusing and worth sharing.

First up, I'm nearly finished with this book:

This has been a good read, both in the premise (the narrator is the wife of Jesus), and in the depictions of life and society at the time it is supposed to be happening.  Admittedly, I'm also imagining some people starting to read it and then getting to a certain point and thinking "WHAAAATTT???" and being shocked, dismayed, or whatever, and frankly that amuses me.  

As for the freebie pattern, someone shared this on Twitter yesterday, and not only is it free, but it's very timely:

Meet Jabby the Friendly Syringe!

This is a free pattern from Mochimochi Land, and it just cracks me up.  Not only because it's stupid cute, but because when else but in the current climate would it be considered appropriate to knit a friendly syringe??  Think about it - say, two years ago, people would have been saying it promoted opioid abuse or something, right?  

I can hear the sanctimonious outrage in my head: "Disgusting! She's reading a book about Jesus having a wife, AND sharing a pattern to promote drug use!" 

As you can see from everything here, I do a good job of finding things funny for all the wrong reasons.  Good times.

******

We had a lovely Easter, if another quiet one since our partners in crime couldn't visit to undertake the decoration of Inappropriate Easter Eggs.  Hopefully next year we can get the band back together.

The weather here in Philadelphia was beautiful, and we had a leisurely day just relaxing and hanging out with Pip, Milo, and Hamlet.  The Tim fixed a really yummy Easter dinner, and we did what we could as far as consuming chocolate in honor of the day.  If only life could be as pleasant all of the time, right?

Easter Enjoyment

As I mentioned before, my niece Amanda and her husband Patrick made their usual trip from Baltimore to our house last weekend for Easter.  We have done this for so many years, I've lost track - Amanda used to come when she was in college in Baltimore, and it just kind of kept being a tradition.  Which we love, since it is really the only holiday that we get to share with anyone at our house.

This year was filled with good food, good drinks, a ton of laughs, and just an overall good time, as usual.  (The cats and Hamlet are still recovering from all of the excitement.  :-) )  And, as is our now annual tradition, we dyed Easter eggs, which of course also means the annual Inappropriate Egg Decorating.  Just so you know, we do actually do "regular" Easter eggs, but about 20 years ago, we started taking some of the eggs and doing ridiculous designs and stupid themes, and that has now become as much of Easter as anything else is.

Since I had three selections to share with you, I decided to save them for today, and participate in Three on Thursday.

1.  These eggs were the ones for Hamlet and the kitties and were put into their baskets by the Easter Bunny.  Each of these has an "illustration" on the back (that word is in quotes because I am only the one who can decipher what I drew) that applies to that individual.

Milo's egg has a tape cassette on the back - since he likes to pee on everything, it's his very own pee tape!  Hamlet's has an ice cube tray, since ice cubes are his favorite treat.  Jack's egg has a bird on the back, because he loves to watch the birds on the deck.  And Pip has a megaphone on the back of his egg, because he likes to announce things to everyone.

2.  The RIP eggs.  This year, we had Anthony Bourdain, Carol Channing, and The Captain (of The Captain and Tennille).

A friend was disappointed that there was not a Luke Perry RIP egg, but clearly none of us were big "90210" or "Riverdale" fans.  Whoops.

3.  The Topical Eggs.  These are often the most inappropriate, and this year's batch was no exception.  Here are the top four.

We have Amanda and Patrick's kitty named Clancy, getting into USC as part of the crew team; at the top of the next egg, Timmy and Squi are holding mugs and saying "We like beer!" while on the bottom, Brett Kavanaugh is in his judicial robes, saying "I like rape"; next, we have a certain individual when he learned of the Mueller Report; and finally, Julian Assange's kitty.

What we lack in artistic ability we make up for in enthusiasm.  And as The Tim says, "Every year, we make sure that our suites in hell are even more nicely decorated."

Six Months Later, an FO Post!

Oh 2019, you will be the year of so few projects!  But that's OK, I'm not in a contest to get a certain number of things finished to win a prize.  But I have two recent FOs and after so long, it's a nice feeling to have things FINISHED.

First up is my Sweet Tart Shawl. 

Not difficult - it just takes a long time when you can't knit due to a broken wrist!

Project:  Sweet Tart Shawl

Pattern:  Drea's Shawl by Craig Rosenfeld

Yarn:  MadelineTosh Sock, colorway Tart; and Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino (no colorway listed)

Needles:  US 5

Modifications:  None

Notes:  This was an enjoyable knit.  Once I got the hang of things and remembered where to start the alternating yarn for the stripes, it was something that was easily able to done while watching TV, or talking to someone at a knitting group.  The stripes make it fun to watch grow, and by the time you get to the solid part, there's not that much more to go.  Now I just have to decide if it's for me, or if it will be a gift for someone.  The photo above shows the truest version of the colors, but the photo below of it being modeled by the Molly hanger, shows how nice it looks when you wear it.

This was my first time using Koigu yarn, and it was lovely to work with.  And I know that currently MadelineTosh yarn is controversial, but I have had this in my stash for a while, and it is my favorite colorway of that line.  When I worked at Rosie's Yarn Cellar, I was able to add a bit of MadelineTosh yarn to my stash because I got an employee discount.  Come to think of it, that's how I was able to accumulate most of my stash ... it was lovely yarn to use, and I am looking forward to using what is in my stash for other projects.  

I think I'll put this shawl away with the gifts, since I'd be putting my other shawls away until fall anyway, and if I am not inspired to think of it as the perfect gift for anyone, I'll keep it.  

If you enjoy making something that has some interest during the knitting, but is also an easy project, this pattern is for you - and it's free!  It's a win-win situation.  :-)

*****

We had a wonderful Easter weekend, and enjoyed our usual visit from my niece Amanda and her husband Patrick.  As is our tradition, we made our Inappropriate Easter Eggs, which I will share in another post.  But it made for a lot of laughs, and along with good food and drink, as well as perfect weather, we couldn't have wanted anything more.  I hope your holiday weekend was a good one as well.  I have to say that Hamlet and the cats were completely worn out today, as they had quite a good time, eating the treats that were brought for them, and getting all kinds of extra attention.  Apparently, being popular and good hosts can wear one out ...

And a Good Time Was Had by All

Hi there!  I thought I'd post before today, but apparently I didn't get to it - I lead such an exciting life.  As in, cleaning for company, having company, cleaning up AFTER company, and having dr appts.  You know you are jealous ...

I hope you had a lovely Easter/Passover weekend.  We had a good one (the reason for the cleaning).  My niece Amanda and her husband Pat came for the weekend as they usually do on Easter weekend.  We always have so much fun, and fear not, the Inappropriate Easter Eggs were included.  I present 2018's offering:

This year, we have:  Carrie Fisher dying on a plane, Debbie Reynolds memoriam, #NeverAgain, Stormy Daniels duo, Trump, Stephen Hawking's wheelchair, Stephen Hawking being swallowed into a black hole, Eagles Super Bowl, and Hugh Hefner memoriam.  I was criticized for not boiling enough eggs for all of the ideas that were ready this year, but hindsight is always 20/20, right???  Needless to say, there was a great deal of hilarity related to this and just hanging out in general.  

I took yesterday off and had a nice day at home with The Tim and the kitties.  In the afternoon, I got the stitches removed from Part 1 of my dental implant procedure, but otherwise, it was a quiet and calm day of knitting and watching things we'd recorded.  I have a sinking feeling that a cold is looming, so it was nice to stay put.

I've fallen behind (so to speak) with my Box o' Socks efforts, since I was focusing on finishing the baby sweater in the previous post.  But now that it is on the way to its destination, I can get back to my other projects.  The socks I'm knitting are 70% finished, so I just need to get back to those, and my Big Blue Sweater is, I think, about 50% finished, so I'm not doing too bad.  And now that I have no real deadlines, I should be moving along at my usual pace.  I'm not in any big hurry for anything, but I don't want to let things sit for any length of time if I can help it.

There's not much else to report at the moment.  The snow that other places got yesterday was just rain here, so it's dried up by now, though it's supposed to rain today and tomorrow - April showers, right?  Everyone is enjoying Villanova's championship win last night in the NCAA March Madness, so that's fun.  It sounds like another parade is in the offing here!  And in the Women's NCAA championship, Notre Dame won, so that was exciting for us, as they are one of our faves.  To be honest, I was kinda afraid that the men's final would be Loyola vs. Villanova and that it would be way too stressful for me, as then it would have been the Jesuits vs. the Local team.  For better or for worse, that didn't occur, so I could concentrate on just cheering for the Wildcats.  :-)

I hope your week has started well, and that some kind of spring is finding it's way to you.  We have daffodils blooming in the front planter of our house!!!!

Easter 2016

Well, it's Easter Monday - overcast and misty rain here, and a little bit cooler than it has been.  Which is fine for a day at home (I always take Good Friday and Easter Monday off if I can).  Time to do some laundry, and get ready for the regular routine again.

We had a great Easter weekend.  As usual, my niece Amanda and her husband Patrick came from Baltimore to celebrate, and also as usual, we had a blast.  Saturday of course was spent creating our Inappropriate Easter Eggs.

We managed to do some personalized eggs for the kitties and Dug, but got carried away and forgot to make any for ourselves!  Oh well.

 Political eggs, from top: Sanders, Trump, the KKK (I didn't quite get that one, but I didn't make it), Sanders again, and Lyin' Ted Cruz (that's what it said above the picture)

Pop culture eggs, starting with the yellow one:  Caitlyn Jenner, the Pope, Pretty Little Liars, Richard Simmons being held prisoner by Paul Giamatti (I didn't understand the Giamatti part, even once explained), and Oscars So White.

The RIP eggs, from top to bottom:  Abe Vigoda, David Bowie (the other side had Alan Rickman), and the Supreme Court.

So as you can see, a fun and inappropriate time was had by all.

Yesterday morning, we all opened our Easter baskets (well, the ones for the kitties in Baltimore got packed away to go to them), and they were a success.

Things deteriorated pretty quickly after this shot.  They all got these little tea bag shaped toys with catnip inside.  That took care of the goodwill.  ;-)

Dug was tired from all of the excitement and the company, but still thought his basket smelled pretty good!

After we went out for a yummy brunch, Amanda and Pat headed home, and we took our annual walk to the bookstore with the Easter Doodle.

Dug loves this whole thing.  He knows the bunny ears get him lots of attention.  The Tim always promises the people who have to work on Easter that he will bring Dug to visit.  On the way there and back, people stop and ask if they can take a picture, little kids hug him, other dogs look appalled.  When we get to the bookstore, Dug is like a rockstar, and sucks up every single second of the adoration and love.  He always hates to head home because then it's just back to normal life ...

After a yummy Easter dinner, we just cleaned things up and took a breather, watching some TV shows that we had recorded and just hanging out.

Holidays are fun, but they can be exhausting.

I hope your Easter was wonderful as well!  And for those who don't celebrate, I hope you had a lovely weekend and had a chance to relax.