Brrr… Winter has reared its ugly head here in Salt Lake City and given us a sneak peek of things to come, and it’s not a pretty sight. Last night I brought in my lemon and orange trees for the winter. Walking past them this morning, I noticed a new visitor in the house - a large praying mantis walking along the window sill. (Should have taken a picture!) I felt awful putting him outside in the cold today, especially since it will probably dip into the 30’s tonight. But c’est la vie. I put him on one of my tomato plants. If he’s smart enough to stay there, he might make it another night since I’ll be covering them tonight for warmth.

I haven’t been getting much knitting done lately since I’ve been recovering from having my “plumbing” rearranged, so to speak, so instead I’ll show you my new (old) toy. I had some personalized clothing labels made by Charm Woven. The labels are very nice and are quite reasonably priced. (You can see one peeking out from under the corner of the box.) But they come in one long strip that you have to cut apart. Having never owned a pair of pinking shears (I always used my mother’s when I was sewing), I took the labels over to my mother’s house to use hers to cut them apart. Since she has two nice pair, she let me “pre-inherit” one of them, so I now have my very own vintage set of Marks Pinking Shears, still in their original box. It’s a real pleasure to use a pair of quality scissors, instead of the kind I usually end up with. (Well, except for my good sewing scissors, which I keep hidden away so they’re never used on paper.)

I’m recovering well, and able to sit up without much discomfort now, so I’m anxious to get to some knitting projects this week.

Oh, wait… I did make some stitch markers, thanks to Eileen having found a site with some great instructions. Well, I must admit that DH helped a bit and did most of the wire bending, but I did do some myself. OK, let me go drag my camera out again. I made a few sets, here’s one of them:

I made this set “small”, but I did make some larger ones too.

Hmmm… Marks and Markers… I was wondering what title to use for this posting. I didn’t even plan that. Really.