We are settled in our new house and have been having a good time making it comfortable. We like the way the house works for us, lots of space but not too much, a good sized garden but again not too big. The dogs seem to love it too – we have a magnetic screen door on the back so they can come and go as they please. The picture at the top is our new orchid-ish plant tillandsia fasciculata. It is planted now in an old stump and I think will be happy in our garden.

So now that we’re settled I can finally get back into a lot of the things I love to do that I haven’t had the time or space for.

Finally, I finished a nice warm blanket – it was a mindless knit but is quite pretty and very warm. Perfect for snuggling under to read or watch a movie. I haven’t knit much but socks and hats for the last several years. I bought the yarn in Ajijic, it wasn’t too expensive and was nice to work with.

We haven’t really done much in our backyard but while Paul’s daughter Jess was here visiting we pitched into a project for growing veggies in tubs on the upstairs patio. The project is here. So far we have made three but I envision 10 or so tubs giving us lots of veggies! Peas, radishes, arugula, and tomatoes are up and I’m waiting on the zucchini.

One of the buy and sell pages here had a nearly new serger available and after looking up the details online I bought it. I’ve been working on making my sewing room more usable and this really helps! So far I have made covers for my machines and a Shirt No. 1 from 100 Acts of Sewing. I love these easy boxy styles (take a look at Susan Eastman’s work if you want to see why I like these boxy styles) Next up for me are Tunic No. 1 and the Wiksten Haori jacket. I bought all these patterns online and picked them up last summer in the US.

I love at year end how all the media outlets publish their best books of the previous year and most anticipated books of the coming year. I get lots of ideas of books to read – to me one of the biggest pleasures ever. I keep track of what I read in Goodreads, and their summary of my year in reading is here. (You can see all the books I read if you’re interested – 79 last year!) My top three books last year were A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Circe by Madeline Miller and Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami. You’ll see I read quite a few memoirs of people who quit drinking as I quit a year and a half ago as well as a number of health books as usual.

We are enjoying our new place and having fun going to live theater performances, playing trivia, and looking forward to “winter” being over here in the next few weeks. Happy (almost) spring!