Apparently pledging No Yarn for Lent is like sending out a homing beacon for yarn temptation - the Patternworks catalog, the Wool Connection Catalog, the Elann newsletter, even Mary Maxim (from which I have never ordered, but they faithfully send me catalogs anyway) appeared this week. I will be strong, but this doesn't mean I can't mark pages for Easter Sunday afternoon shopping. I'm really intrigued by the recycled silk yarns - I love the colors and texture. I'm going to have to play with them this summer. I haven't bought from Patternworks since they changed ownership and their customer service tanked, but perhaps they've recovered by now.

So it's almost March and it's really freaking cold and windy out there again. I said this would happen, didn't I? 84 one day, 44 with a wind chill in the 30s the next, that's our winter. I really need to get my knitting calendar in order - when it's 90 degrees out there in July I need to push the A/C down and pull out the wool to be ready for next winter, because as we all see, I'm not the fastest knitter in the world these days. My projects tend to linger. And linger.

But on that note, today Miss Bardot will get a lovely damp towel wrap, in preparation for a blocking board massage. If I get my act together I can sew her together over the coming week, pick up the collar stitches, and I can cross one long-delayed project off the guilt list.

I soaked in the tub last night, thinking not for the first time that my tub is too damn small for a good soak. My house was built in the very early 80s before the Big Sexy Bathroom craze, so the bathrooms are small and functional. I'm on a concrete slab, as is standard in FL, so replumbing a bathroom to move the fixtures around is a huge undertaking not for the faint of heart. Changing the master bath in any substantive way, to put in something like a bigger, deeper bathtub, is not in the cards, but now I'm wondering if it would be possible to put a better tub into the hall bath, and take out the master tub entirely and build a nice big shower instead. I don't think that would require reworking the plumbing too much, the shower drain would be the only issue. It'd be easier to move to a newer house with a sexy bathroom, but I love my neighborhood and especially my modest mortgage payment. I'm realizing how I could afford a home equity line of credit and do this place up to the hilt a lot cheaper than moving to a new place. I'm going to back-burner that idea until the kitchen and backyard are done, but now that the idea is brewing, I'm picturing a whirlpool tub in the hall bath. I think it can be done.

Speaking of fixing things up, I really need to give this blog an overhaul. I finally added some new names to the blogs I read list, which is by NO means definitive. I just added names until I got tired. I have only the most rudimentary HTML skills - yet another thing I'd like to change. But today is for housework, not detours into blog decor. The sun finally came out after a solid week of heavy gray gloom (most unusual for Florida) and the warm glow of the sun is cheerfully glinting off the disgusting layer of dust and cat hair on every surface in this house, not to mention the snarky cat noseprints on the windows. I MUST clean today. I want to go shopping and ogle bathtubs, now that the idea is in my brain I can't get rid of it, but that's how my brain works - it recoils from the thought of housework and frantically tries to suggest alternatives. I Must Clean. I will take knitting pictures later when the sun reaches the former office in the back of the house. The former office may be the office once again - Boss is considering buying my husband's big computer cabinet from me, if it would work for him. I'd love to see it go to a good home. I've been using it a few months now and I'm not that crazy about it - I miss my nice open Pottery Barn desk and my sunny office. This cabinet is beautiful but somehow makes me feel claustrophobic.

Okay, enough killing time, time to break out the cleaning products.