I think I will live!

Here are Bandy and James communing. There's something about a nice warm cat in winter.
I finally think I'll live. First James got the nasty cold/flu and then I did and it sure takes its time to shake off.
Skeeter is such a nice round little cat, so very different from when she came to us, all scrawny and emaciated. Mind you, she is spoiled rotten! but such a good little hunter. She has been regularly bringing great big voles up to eat on the deck, or under it. She may be getting them under the chicken houses. She'd like to bring them inside but we draw the line at that!
Yesterday was lovely and sunny and so bright with the frozen snow. On a bright sunny day there actually is a lot of colour to be found. My big rose bush is quite attractive with its red arching vines.

A friend was bemoaning her lack of snowdrops yesterday. Obviously she's on another timetable than winter in the Kootenays. We can hope for them in March, I fear, this year as they are under that heavy frozen berm of snow where James shoveled off the porch roof.
But summer will come and in the next 2 weeks I need to make up and get the forms for ArtWalk printed and then we'll have a big day addressing envelopes to mail out the entries. Time also to mail out funding requests.
There was good news on the morning news! Another coffee study has found non-smoking nurses who drink 4 or more cups of coffee a day have a 43% lower risk of stroke. That's a good enough figure one could take it up, if they weren't already a coffee drinker!
I'm thawing a flat zip lock bag of tomato sauce from last summer's tomatoes. I find the flat bags more space efficient and if you have a large freezer, which we do, freezing tomatoes as they ripen, and then, at your leisure thawing and making them into sauce (to freeze again) is an easy way to go.
This morning on Martha Stewart she and her guests were talking about what one should have in one's pantry. Well, maybe city people live with nothing on hand but I can't imagine not having their list of foods on hand and then some! It was obvious things like pasta and rice and chick peas and canned tomatoes, mustard and olive olive oil and bread crumbs: the kind of things one needs every day if one cooks, but then many people don't cook from "scratch" or at all, so this is the new money saving tip - cook!
I've still been knitting touques on the round loom (more pictures next time) and this weekend and next am taking a class on "real" knitting.