I Loved Having Whoopie For Breakfast

I had two big Wicked Whoopies for breakfast this morning; well actually, I shared them with DH since neither of us had ever partaken of Whoopie before. It was wonderful! The Wicked Whoopie were a hostess gifts from one of the ladies in my TNKG. She is originally from Main and still has family there that she visits often. WIcked Whoopies are made in Main http://www.wickedwhoopies.com/ and shipped all over America. Oprah Winfrey once featured them on her show thus stepping up their popularity. The cake is very tender and there's as much filling inside the two layers, as one side of the cake is thick however, it isn't overly sweet. The Whoopies we had were a deep dark chocolate and a banana, both delicious with me leaning toward the chocolate for a change. Normally I'm not a chocolate person and I love banana muffins and breads, but this chocolate reminds me of when I was a kid and more people baked with cocoa than with baking chocolate. I still prefer cocoa made fudge, pies, cakes, and icing over baking chocolate. Thank you, dear Glen, for this delicious treat.

Our holiday season has been full of joy, and touched by sadness. Amongst all the wonderful parties and gifts and visiting we've been a part of this year, I also lost my eldest sister (87 years old). She has been very ill for a long time and her death was not unexpected. Still, losing someone you love is always hard and I don't know that you are ever prepared for it. This now makes three of us ten siblings, no longer on this earth; each loss happening in December, near the Christmas holidays.

I've started the Just Enough Ruffles Scarf using some yarn from my stash given to me by my sister, Glyness, from her stash. It had no label on it so the yardage and fiber content are a guess. The fiber feels like a cotton and acrylic blend but that's just a guess. After winding it into balls, I think it would be over 400 yards. It is knitting up nicely and the colors are nice and bright. I'll have to make a photo for this blog next time I have it out and remember to do it.

With all the snow and cold weather throughout the US, we've had just the opposite. We had to turn the heat off completed several days recently, with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day being two of them. Can you imagine having Christmas without needing the heat on? Actually we had to open a couple of windows on Christmas Eve night in order to get to sleep and again on Christmas night. It doesn't seem right, it isn't seasonal, we don't live in Florida. What's going on?

Today I plan to clear out some more boxes of 'stuff'. I've been on a 'getting rid of stuff' kick these lasts couple of weeks. Its a job I hate tackling, but a necessary one. Never again do I want all the 'stuff' to accumulate that I had to deal with when we moved here. It's not easy discarding all those memories but it doesn't make sense to me to hold on to them. My children are making, their own memories and I've already given them the items they wanted from their childhood memories and family keepsakes. It isn't fair to leave all 'my stuff' for someone else to to deal with should something happened to me and/or DH. After our move ant then having to deal with helping my sister pack up and move, then watching my niece's deal with their mother's life-time accumulation of 'stuff', I will try to keep things gone through and discarded to prevent this from happening to my loved ones.

Yarn and knitting supplies seems to be a bit of a different story. I can't seem to bring myself to throw these things away. I'm going to try and persuade myself to give at least some of the stash away. I've suggested our TNKG work on squares for one another this next year and thought some of the yarn could be used for that. I have been more careful about buying yarn this past year and am pleased that I've done as well as I have. Still, once in awhile that little something in my brain seems to go haywire and I find myself with a bag of gorgeous yarn in my hand before I have thought about what can be knit with it. I'm trying to train myself to only buy yarn when I need it for a project. Actually I'm doing pretty good with this part, the bad part is, I'm buying the yarn for each project instead of using my stash. New Years resolution this year is going to be "to cut my stash".