A bit of progress on LHN Bee pin keep design from A Gift of
Stitching. I've been working on this mostly at work because
time at home is being spent on Christmas preparations. So
much to do and so little time.

I spent much of yesterday in the kitchen doing some of my
baking. I made 3 and a half dozen gingerbread/butterscotch
cookies, 2 dozen small and 1 dozen large raspberry tarts,
and 4 small loaves and 1 large pumpkin loaf. I also had to
walk down to the corner store because, as is traditional
every Christmas season, I started baking and realized that
I was almost out of something vital. Many times it's
raspberry jam, but this year it was eggs. Sorta important,
eggs.
And the rest of the day Saturday was spent watching the
weather channel and tracking the progress of this lovely
winter storm that we're currently enjoying. In some
areas of southern Ontario they'll be getting about 40
centimeters of snow from this system. I expect we'll see
about 20 - 25 centimeters here. We had 5 cm yesterday
too but that was lake effect, not related to this storm.

The news stations are advising people to stay home
and off the roads unless absolutely necessary. Thank-
fully it's the weekend so going to work vs staying at
home is not an issue. However, this afternoon is the
family Christmas dinner at the residence where my
Mom lives. Every year they go all out, and serve
about 300 people with a full turkey dinner and all the
trimmings. Since we have roast beef for our Christmas
dinner it's our chance to enjoy a wee bit of turkey
without the leftovers. Not that there's anything wrong
with turkey sandwiches....mmmm!

Probably a lot of the people who'd signed up to attend
the dinner will not be able to make it, which will be
a shame because the residence owner and his staff
have been working hard all week to put this event
together. We will probably go, since we just live a
seven minute drive away, but the final decision will
be DH's. He's gone to church, after shoveling the
driveway earlier this morning, so he'll be able to
gage the driving conditions. He picks up a lady from
the residence to drive to church, so he'll be making
a trial run, so to speak.

Our main concern is that the residence is
surrounded by steep hills. Well, this is the region
of Halton Hills after all. So getting down, and most
especially back up these hills can be tricky. DH is
a most skillful driver, so it's not us that I'm
worried about. It's the other ... hmm... less
capable drivers that I'm leery of. Well, we'll just
have to see what happens.


Meanwhile, here are a few pictures taken from our upstairs
windows to show the snowfall so far. These are dedicated to
Karen in Scotland who was wishing for a nice deep snowfall
for her Christmas. Hey Karen, we're willing to share!!

This week's read was back to Kim Harrison and the next
book in her Hallows series. I really loved this one.

Rachel has a problem. She's agreed to become the alpha
in a werewolf pack with David, a were and her insurance
adjuster. David is a loner who doesn't want to be forced
to join a pack or take on the responsibilities of a full pack
of his own. So he asks witch Rachel to be his alpha, on
paper only, to avoid trouble with the other weres. In
exchange Rachel will get a good discount on her insurance
premiums.

But Rachel finds herself having to defend her roll as an
alpha against a were who wants the position for herself.
After barely managing to walk away from that confront-
ation Rachel realizes that she's got to make plans on how
to handle future challenges and avoid being killed in the
process.

And then things become complicated. A call for help from
the young son of Rachel's pixie business partner Jenks
alerts Rachel to the fate of her former human lover Nick
who'd abandoned and betrayed her.

Nick, along with the young pixie Jax, went up north to
steal a werewolf artifact from a Vampire. And had then
tried to double cross the werewolf faction that had hired
him to steal the artifact. The artifact was hidden, but Nick
had been taken by the werewolves and was being held a
prisoner and being tortured for information to allow them
to find the artifact.

Unable to leave Nick to his fate, and also to retrieve Jax,
Rachel and Jax head north on a rescue run. And then
things really get complicated.

Kim Harrison continues to write books that are fast paced,
humorous, and richly detailed. We learn more about were
wolf society and it's hierarchy and history. The relation-
ships between Rachel and her friends/business partners
Ivy and Jenks continue to develop and evolve, and Rachel
herself must make decisions and choices that affect her life,
her future and her soul.

I've ordered the next book in this series, but will
probably choose another book to read in the meanwhile.
Something light, since this isn't the time of year I can afford
to focus my attention or time to a more intense book.

Thanks for all the kind words regarding the mittens that
I stitched for Dani, and also for the stash that I received
last week. I'm thinking of emailing Bobbie at Stitching
Bits n Bobs about those two skeins of peachy thread that,
to me, look identical even though the names on tags are
different. I've checked online to see pictures of how
each of those colours is suppose to look and I suspect
that a goof has been made somewhere. Don't want to
mess up a project with the wrong colour.

It's been awhile since I posted a picture of the fur babies.
Here they are, under the lamp and on the desk next to
my computer. We're a little cramped for space, and
someone is laying on my mouse pad, but somehow we
manage.

Hope everyone who's receiving attention from this storm
is home safe and is warm and snug and stitching. Take
care all. Cheers.