Tha' Shiz-Knit

Moving & etc.

2012-01-07T09:56:00.001-06:00

So, we will be moving out of state on Monday 1.16.12. We're going to Michigan, where PJ is originally from and where we're currently in the process of buying a 2nd house. It's a short sale, so some of y'all have heard me talk about it since late summer. We're still in the process with the bank (they're taking their sweet time) but we're going to go ahead on up there now anyway & rent from the seller until the bank gets off its arse & lets us buy it outright. Here is a picture of it! We didn't get inside pics because the owner was still in it when we went through originally. She just moved out so you'll have to wait to see the rest until next week sometime. Maybe later if my internet connection doesn't get set-up right away.

That's my big news. In other news, my lovely DH bought me the Addi Lace Clicks set for Christmas along with a gift certificate for yarn and I purchased 6 skeins of Berroco Vintage DK in a color called Breezeway - which is a robins egg blue but with a little more grey in it. Kind of a stormy robin, if you will. Absolutely lovely color! I'm going to knit this cardigan. Isn't it beautiful? In between packing, I have a knit hat to deliver to my ex-MIL down the street (I am going to miss her SO MUCH) and I have to make my cables-swatch in this beautiful yarn.

Most of our "extra" stuff has been packed-up already and I'm going through the other stuff now to determine what will need to be packed last onto the truck, to be used first when we get there. All the important daily-living stuff. There is barely a walking path through my home now with all the boxes!

We're having a going-away party on Saturday the 14th. I haven't sent out any invites yet because we just decided to have one two days ago - but I will send info via FB and some text messages for those of y'all I know. I know it's last minute, but we just got the go-ahead to move in and we're taking it before the snow up there is 6 feet deep. We've been waiting SO long and really didn't want to move in the middle of winter but sometimes that's just how the cookie crumbles.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas, full of love, family, friends, and great food. This year will be awesome, you can count on it! I'm off to do more packing & get ready for my knitting-day to begin. Woohoo!

I'm Not the First! WOOHOO!

2011-10-26T23:43:00.004-05:00

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I'm NOT the first in my high school friend group to become a grandparent! In fact, my children remain un-reproduced. My friend Heather just found out her oldest daughter is pregnant. Great time to brush up her knitting skills so she can make stuff for grandbaby to come home from the hospital in! I'm pouncing on that one quick, and will have updates with pictures from our knitting lesson.

Update-a-Thon

2011-09-08T08:17:00.000-05:00

I've been knitting! I made a Nessie toy & several wash clothes out of the rest of the cotton yarn. This is made for a friend's 1st baby whom they named Nettie. (I haven't gotten the gift to them yet, but it's finished & in the bag waiting for me to do so now that I'm back in town.)

This is the hooded cape I made for baby Regan. It's actually finished now, but this is one of my favorite pictures of it. The beads really do look luminescent like that all the time, it's not just a trick of the lighting. I've got to do some finishing touches on it, so my sister will still be surprised when she gets it - but the knitting & beading portions are over now.

I finished this beautiful pink scarf for my friend Jill in Michigan. It's beaded with beautiful silver-lined clear beads and she loves it. This is her favorite color. You should see her beautiful flower gardens, so many lovely pinks that you just can't help but be happy! Unfortunately, we didn't remember to get any pictures of HER with the scarf while we were up there, but I will do so the next time we go up.

I am making a beautiful Estonian Lace scarf for myself out of some lovely alpaca that was in my stash for a sweater. This scarf is flying off my needles at a reckless speed! I have to knit it fast, because people keep trying to steal the yarn. It is really soft and fuzzy, like knitting with a baby bunny. I can't wait until this scarf is done, it's gonna be so warm and comforting around my neck. I expect to be snuggly-warm all winter because of this baby!

My darling just went to Las Vegas for his yearly work pilgrimage. Generally he brings me back souvenirs like shirts, key chains, pretty sparkly Vegas-themed items. This year he must have had a really good time (and was REALLY bad!!!) because he brought me back this gorgeous necklace. I haven't really had it off since he gave it to me.

Also, we are finally getting the downstairs room finished after all the flood damage. This is Kieffer, who was helping out the crew by rolling something on the concrete floor. Please note the new ceiling pattern! You can't really tell what it is in this picture, but that's kinda the point. It's a fan pattern texture... but the important thing is that it's NOT POPCORN! The person who originally finished my downstairs room thought popcorn was a great ceiling texture. They also thought 70's era fake wood paneling was great too. Thank goodness for the flood that made us have to get rid of that crap because the NEW room is going to be spectacular!

Right now, my crew is downstairs putting the finishing touches on the new flooring, and the trim around the doors. I will be getting pictures as soon as it's finished. It's SO BEAUTIFUL!

I've Had The "Itis"

2011-05-13T23:20:00.002-05:00

That's what I've heard it called anyway. Pure, unadulterated laziness. I haven't read, I haven't knitted, I haven't done housework, and I'm completely unrepentant!

What I -have- done is a LOT of automotive work. I purchased a new (used) truck with the entirety of my insurance claim $ from the Explorer's wreck. Yeah, as you can imagine that didn't leave me a lot to work with. What I didn't want was another payment for a while. I got a old truck, I'm happy with it, but I've been doing a lot of work on it & our other vehicles

In between working a lot of hours, and automotive work, I've been staring at my yarn stash & attempting to knit. Nothing feels good, feels RIGHT with anything I've tried. My yarns are beautiful but the patterns aren't clicking together with them. I stare at Ravelry at least once a day, trying to figure out what I need to knit next & getting more and more frustrated. Damn this Knitter's Block!

In a happy twist of fate, today I saw a picture of someone's completed project and I knew (suspected?) it would be perfect for my Malabrigo sock yarn that's been sitting around since last Fall waiting for me to use it. I took the yarn & pattern to work with me today, knowing that I would never have a chance to get to it... but my Friday-the-13th luck was phenomenal and the phones went dead for hours at the beginning of my shift! I piddled around with the CO. It felt good. I knitted the first few rows of pattern & it felt good. I realized I'd messed up & both sides are supposed to be patterned & ripped back 4 rows & restarted and it STILL felt good! That's when I knew I was on the right track. That's also when I knew it'd been too long since I've knitted anything if something that simple escaped me right off the bat.

I'm not going to share pictures now. I'm going to make you wait for it. But within the next couple of days I'm going to give you a peek at everything; new truck, new knitting project, and everything in between.

By the way, I miss y'all! I've been holed-up doing my own thing for a while now. I think it may be time to socialize again before too long.

First Garden Update of 2011

2011-05-05T23:55:00.006-05:00

I decided over this past Winter to not do a vegetable garden this year. Instead, I wanted to focus on my flowers. I've purchased & planted a few pretty perennials and on occasion a house plant that's caught my fancy. Somehow those few sporadic flowers I've planted outside have not only survived but thrived, and my yard is... pretty!

Of course I still have no idea what I'm doing. There's no master plan, no great schematic for the whole yard that I'm devoting all my creative energy into creating. It's more an eclectic hodgepodge of things that I haven't been able to walk past at the store. I get them home, and sit the pots here and there in the yard trying to envision how the plant will look when it's mature then I change my mind and move them around again then it gets dark and I leave them until the next day or week until I finally decide on a spot that'll "work". Who knows what it'll develop into. Maybe something beautiful, or maybe something that looks like a clown's makeup box got drunk and exploded in my front yard.

Above is my "Red Headed Irishman" cactus that I got from Lowes. It had a gaudy strawflower stuck to its top with an epic gob of hot glue. I brought it home & used tweezers and foul language to rip all traces of the hot glue & fake flower (and numerous patches of thorns) off it. I set it in a dish on my back patio table to let it recover outside. It started blooming immediately and hasn't stopped in over a month! Each of those pretty fuchsia flowers will last about 48 hours before it dries up & another opens up near it. I've never known a cactus to bloom so long or so profusely before. I can only assume it's grateful for the removal of the strawflower.

Above is that $2 Knockout Rose I got from Home Depot. It had fallen off the raised display, the pot had cracked, and it was wilted and nearly completely dead. I brought it home and managed to get it immediately into the ground. It started blooming right away and bloomed until Winter froze off every one of its buds & leaves.

This Spring it was the very first of my plants to leaf-out and I swear it had buds & blossoms on it before it was even fully leafed! It has some savage thorns on it. This is not the plant you want to stumble into barefoot. It's also so covered in blooms right now that you can barely see the leaves at all. It's competing with my azaleas for wow-factor. Actually, the azaleas are already done blooming and from all appearances the Knockout is just getting geared-up. This is a picture from earlier this Spring.

This is the first yellow rose of the year. I didn't think this girl would make it. She was so small last year when I got her into the ground and I didn't think she'd had a chance to get her roots really dug in and happy before the frost hit. It's my Julia Child rose, and not only is it stunningly beautiful but it smells like a dream. I hope this one gets big & bushy, because it's so small now and I'm really having trouble getting down in the yard low enough to whuffle it on a regular basis.

All the Daffodils I transplanted last year over onto the sunnier side of the walkway & out from under the bushes. This was early Spring and they got a LOT larger and there were a bunch of blooms. Again, I was surprised because they really didn't get an optimum planting there. The soil was terrible. I dug down as far as I could, put a little new soil in there around the bulbs and covered with a little more soil & a thick layer of mulch. I didn't think they got planted deep enough, but apparently they were just fine & liked their new sunny spot a lot. I should have gotten a good picture when they were in full bloom but missed my opportunity. I'm sure next year will be even more spectacular.

Does anyone remember my mystery-flower? My Mom gave it to me last Spring, it had pretty strawberry-shaped leaves (we originally thought the little plant might be some kind of strawberry, that's how similar they were). My Mom planted hers in a bright sunny location and hers bloomed that first year but mine didn't get enough light and while they grew just fine they didn't bloom.

I transplanted them in early Fall into a new planter in the front yard where they will get a lot more direct sunlight and even more bright indirect light through the gentle shade of the little Dogwood tree behind it. It worked. Not only did they survive the transplant, they are now in bloom. Plus, I was going into a grocery store the other day & walked right past a plant with similar flowers / leaves. Turns out this plant above with the pretty coral pink flowers is a type of Geum!

I called my Mum right away. We've been searching for the particular exact type this is but no luck and really I think it's enough that we figured out just what it is.

There's much more waiting to bloom. I can't wait to show you everything as it emerges! And boy, am I glad to have my computer back too.

Hope everyone has come thru the storms ok. Chris, did your garden make it thru the near-frost we had last night? I got up early but didn't see any actual frost & none of my more sensitive flowers seem impacted. There's a LOT more to show of my yard soon. And this will be the third time I've had to mow already this year.

First Barefoot Day of the Year! (re-released with pictures)

2011-04-14T07:44:00.002-05:00

PJ & I had a day off together yesterday. We ran some errands in the morning & then we raced off on a spur-of-the-moment geocaching adventure in a local Old Hickory park. We found a beaver-ravaged tree by the lake!

I was not so brilliant; I forgot to put on "real" shoes. I actually had forgotten I was wearing my high-heeled converse sneakers until I was trudging around in the underbrush looking for a tiny hiden prize.

I made it through that first (unsuccessful) search but my feet were killing me! I gave in to my need for comfort & took my shoes & socks off... and mmm, the grass was so soft and cool and the moss was thick and spongy under my abused feet. This time of year, the grass is at its softest best.

We searched for 6 caches and found four, including our first micro. Woohoo! I am really psyched about it. Plus, we got to see guys from the AMA flying their jewel-toned model airplanes in a field reserved just for them. Those guys were flying tricks and their planes were like huge yellow and red dragonflies.

Oh, and we found a precious baby turtle. We bothered him just long enough for some pictures then put him back where we found him. He promptly disappeared as soon as our backs were turned. We also found a huge rock slab of fossilized shells. PJ called it a fossil bed & said it's part of an old sea bed that petrified.

All together a fabulous and fulfilling day!

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Mmm, Spinning!

2011-01-30T23:04:00.004-06:00

We had the most fabulous, beautiful, sunshiney Spring-like weekend ever. I have to tell you, I really tried my hardest to enjoy every second of it! All the rain and snow and cold weather that's been keeping me holed-up in my FREEEEEZING house was chased away by the sunshine on Saturday. I dragged my spinning wheel out onto the back porch and sat in the glorious sun and spun all my cares away!

Look at me in my short sleeves OUTSIDE!

So since I rarely do any spinning (too many other things need my attention on a regular basis), I haven't felt comfortable enough to bust into my "good" fiber stash. Unfortunately, fiber waits for no woman and I was becoming more worried that my unprocessed (dirty) fleece was going to disintegrate long before I had a chance to mess it up.

I got this fleece from Three Creeks Farm out in Charlotte. For those of you with kids and fiber addictions, there is NO BETTER PLACE to take your kids -and- stock up on fibery goodness! She has a literal petting zoo of animals. Sheep and goats and ponies and a lovely garden full of flowers. She sells fleeces in every stage of processing, plus rovings both dyed and natural and spinning wheels and WHEW I'm running out of steam. Lets just say, the place is a little piece of Heaven.

I believe this fleece cost me a whopping $10. It's not a processed fleece, it's pretty much straight off his little warm sheepy back. The fella this came off was named Duncan, and it was his first (baby) shearing so it's his utmost softest fleece EVER. I saw him in the pasture and attempted to kiss his sweet sheepy snout but he was having none of that. I did have the opportunity though! I think that's the important thing anyway.

I soaked it in small batches in my kitchen sink, but no soap because I wanted more of a lanolin-ey spinning experience with it. It soaked and rinsed and I plan on washing the finished skein(s) of yarn when they're wound up and dying them whatever color(s) are appropriate once a finished piece is chosen. The water was very muddy! Fortunately, the soak water only smelled like mud, no strange sheep poo odors and the fleece has never smelled of anything but sunshine and faintly sheepy - it's a warm good happy smell!

I set the few rinsed bundles on my deck chairs to dry in the beautiful sun, only took a few hours since there was a lovely breeze.

This is the first little bit of carded fleece, spun up into oatmeal colored yarn. I'm wasting a good deal of it while carding, but it's my first fleece, my hands feel AMAZING, and the bits I'm not using are going outside for the wild birds to hopefully use in their nest building projects this Spring. Can you imagine the happy warm little chicks?

For the record, I always put pet and people hair clippings outside for my wild birds. I haven't seen evidence of much being used, but it's out there if they want it. I figure at best they'll use a little and at worst it decomposes in my salad patch where I strew it around for them.

Above, is another of my spinning endeavors this weekend. It's a beautiful pre-painted roving my DH bought from Haus of (HellBitches) Yarn a couple of years ago when he got me a beginning spindlers kit. He picked two painted rovings, one in pinks & blues and the other in yellows / blues. I saved this one because I wanted it to be usable (the other one really wasn't). I don't know how much closer I'm getting to making a really nice & consistent yarn but what I'm spinning up these days does knit up pretty and sturdy so I'm on the right track now.

Really, the first yarn I ever spun up on this wheel, I've made into a part of a mitten and it feels just wonderful. The thick & thin-ness of the yarn really looks spectacular knitted-up. Maybe I'll go dig it out and finish it since I've got some more of the same yarn skeined up after my spin-a-thon!

A Creative Weekend

2011-01-17T19:09:00.000-06:00

We got to see Bonny's latest artistic creation this Sunday at Knitting. Y'all might not know that she's a painter! I love when she gets into her creative painting moods, and this happens to be one of my favorite things that she's ever painted. It's her version of Starry Night, but I think I like her creation much better than the original - it's so bright and happy!

Unfortunately, I was unable to talk her out of it. (I REALLY tried!) I don't blame her, if I'd painted that, I would want it on my own wall at home too. So in lieu of getting hers I went out and got a couple of canvases from Hobby Lobby and Keegan and I went home and made our own art.

His is the Transformer, which he free-handed completely himself. Mine isn't finished yet but I am trying to get some of the swirly air current clouds that I love so much in Bonny's. Maybe I'll get a chance to do some more work on it this week around my work schedule.

If you've never painted before, might I suggest that you give it a try? Hobby Lobby is running a GREAT sale this week, but their low prices make this an affordable thing to try any time. This week, their canvases and paints are 30% off and I think Bonny said their brushes were 50% off. I had brushes already, a nice set I got at Michael's years ago. I did purchase two 2-packs of canvases that were priced at 5.99 before discount. Bonny got two larger canvases (also a two-pack) for 7.99 before discount. The paint set you see in front of Keegan cost $14.99 before discount too. It's acrylics, which I really love because they are water soluble and will act like both oils and watercolors. So you can have dreamy colorwashes or you can build up texture. They dry fast and don't require any special oils or chemicals as the brushes just wash off in water.

You can see from our fancy setup that we don't need any specialized equipment or training to have a good time painting together. Go grab your kids & get to Hobby Lobby while this great sale is going on! I spent around $20 for the paints and four canvases and we had a whole afternoon of fun and creativity right on the kitchen counter. Not to mention, I get more original art for my walls!

Good Morning, World!

2010-10-30T07:41:00.001-05:00

There is a new app for Blogger on Android phones. This is my test with it! I took a picture this morning of the phenomenal sunrise outside my hotel window here in Winnie, TX. This is by far rhe prettiest view I've ever had in any room so far. I love this town!

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"Torque"-Up Your Workout!

2010-09-10T16:58:00.003-05:00

Lets start with something warm & fuzzy. Here is a picture of my beautiful, sweet little horse. He's new, he's the first horse I've wanted since my angel (Negrita) died about 5 years ago. Neggy was my horse from the time I was 13 till age 31. This fella is my new guy, and the one I expect to last the rest of our lives together. He's 9 now, still a youngling and off the racetrack. He's an ex-racer! Beautiful story, you'll have to hear it later though. On to the story of my torture!

Now then, on to the reason for this post. As many of you may know, I have been out of employment for about a month now. I went through another layoff. Unemployment benefits wouldn't feed a small animal, and so I've been looking for a new job - but I want something new, something DIFFERENT! (Don't we all?) Well I think I have found it, and I'm going for it with both barrels loaded for bear (so to speak... no real guns or ammo were or ever will be involved in this analogy).

However, this job (which shall remain nameless at this present time) will require a great physical commitment from me. There is not a traditional office setting, there is a lot of outdoor work and hazardous conditions, and a LOT of strenuous physical labor. Perhaps this is not the best job for someone having my particular set of health problems, but it's a job I've always fantasized about having nonetheless and I am over the moon at the opportunity to finally achieve this goal.

So upon finding the LOCAL job opening, I applied for it and was subsequently called in for an interview. Apparently not a lot of women (in their words, none) have ever applied for the position. As soon as my initial interview was completed, I called my sister-in-law Kay and asked her for immediate help with a workout plan that would help me pass the physical part of the testing without looking too much like an ass. I need endurance & stretching help ASAP! Kay is the queen of the body builders, by the way, and is dreaming of becoming a personal trainer some day soon.

Luckily she let me come over right away & she put together a plan of action. Starting with cardio - ten minutes of activity (jumping rope) to get my heart pumping, then followed-up with several printed pages worth of stretches to be done without weights until after the test is completed next week. After I pass the test (hopefully) then I can start doing the stretches with weights for optimal results.

On paper, these stretches have the most delightful names! Frog Stretch, Ham Stretch (I love ham!), Snow Shovel, Tricep Dips, and Russian Twists. As you can see, several of these names are familiar from the pastry counter at your local bakery. I was in HEAVEN! No one knows you like family; Kay has really come through for me & combined my favorite activity (eating) with the Hell of working out, in order to make it easier for me to assimilate.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Turns out "Tricep Dips" are not a tasty ice cream flavor, it's Lucifer's Favorite Scoop (those are her words). Russian Twists, those are named after the machine Tomas de Torquemada used in the Crusades... I'm sure of it. So when Kay tells you she'll "Torque-up" a workout for you, she's f-ing serious!!!!! RUUUUUN!

I'm so sore I can't even cry today. My tear ducts are still bruised from last night. Keep your fingers crossed. I promise I will let everyone know about the true nature of the job should I manage to score it. Until then, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag & put a hex on it or anything.

Carpe Crustulum!
(Seize the Cookie)
-Regan-

How to be Alone

2010-08-21T21:22:00.003-05:00

This was just shared on one of my online forum groups. It transported me, it reminded me so beautifully why my life -works- now, and why my relationship works. I love my alone time. My husband just lets me "be" whenever I need it (which is most of the time). To all my friends out there who have a little of the hermit in them, you will understand this immediately. To my beloveds who haven't discovered the marvelous "Alone"... investigate it; it's beyond compare.

Comic Relief - Catherine Tate & David Tennant

2010-08-17T22:02:00.000-05:00

Scot, this one is for you!

And btw - I hate, despise, and abhor the "new" doctor. He's not even growing on me like you said... in fact, not even the totally-hottest new companion makes up for the loathing I feel for him. :( Not even companion porn makes up for him. Although I -am- going to brave the next episode just to find out if his new companion manages to kill him. That would be a good episode.

Gingered Spam Salad, anyone?

2010-08-17T10:17:00.008-05:00

So... this morning I had a great harvest of my little tiny Thai Hot Peppers. I've just got the one little plant but it's beautiful and it makes me very happy. Usually I pop one or two of these red hot babies into my pickle brine but I've got a metric goat-ton (considering how many we can actually consume) of them after this harvest and I was looking online for a good recipe to put them in.

Above is the plant in question. See the bell pepper peeking out behind it? Almost ready!

Nevermind that no one in my family can stomach eating something that hot. Minor details.

The recipe that came up over and over and OVER again was "Gingered Spam Salad".

Ok, so I'll just go ahead and be the first to admit it out loud: I like spam. I don't eat it often and I try to secret it into the cart when I do splurge on my guilty pleasure, but there is nothing so fine as a thinly sliced and crispy-fried spam sandwich with a fresh garden tomato in the summer. Mmmm! It's like a BLT but better because I have to sneak and eat it so no one will catch me. You know it's better if it's naughty!

I'm not so sure I want to try a Gingered Spam Salad, but because it was so persistent and because it somehow delights me that someone would "waste" good ingredients on spam, I'm going to include the recipe here for all to gawk at.

Gingered Spam Salad

1 can Spam, julienned.
1/4 c  Finely chopped ginger root
1 ea Small red onion, finely
     Chopped
1/2 ts Garlic powder
1/4 c  Freshly squeezed lime juice
     Zest of 1 lime
1/2 ts Oriental dried chili powder
1/4 c  Chopped cilantro leaves
8 ea Cherry tomatoes
     Thai bird peppers and
     Cilantro sprigs to garnish

Combine all ingredients in a sealed glass or plastic container to
marinate. Refrigerate at least two hours or preferably overnight.
Stir or shake occasionally to evenly coat.  One hour before serving,
stir in cilantro. Serve on a bed of torn salad greens of your choice.
Garnish with quartered cherry tomatoes, Thai bird peppers and
cilantro sprigs.

Also, if anyone would like some of my super-tasty (and extremely hot) Thai peppers, let me know. They're great if you wanna drop a couple into your pickle brine. They add a pop of color and it's fun to watch the consumers' eyes as their mouth lights-up like Disney World. For my gardening friends, these are heirloom seeds - you save the seeds the same way you do tomatoes - by fermenting them & saving the sinkers. Ask me if you have questions on the process!

Enjoy the pictures of this morning's harvest of Thai peppers and cherry tomatoes. Life is good in the garden today.

-R-



My garlic chives are blooming.  Aren't these the most beautiful little flowers?



Above are the little volunteer mushrooms growing under my rosemary bush.

Witness-Protection Keegan, Does it Again!

2010-08-13T21:13:00.007-05:00

The kid found mustaches here in town - at the Sav-a-Lot down from Knit Happy, this time. He asked me for some quarters for a treat and I am powerless against his big blue eyes so I gave him all I had. I do not know how much these silly disguises cost, but it's probably around 50 cents. Please go and get your kids some! These have really earned their price over and over again. Plus, they are great fun to leave in special places for Mom & Dad to find (unexpectedly) later. Like, stuck to the light switch in the bathroom before 6am when your eyes don't really open until the adrenaline hits your system when you think you've just touched the biggest hairiest spider in all the world...

He's still laughing over that one.

He found the awesome hat below at Wal Mart, after insisting that he needed vampire teeth. I was pretty impressed. I think he needs a gangster hat now. It certainly seems like a unique look he's coming up with for himself.

Ooh! Look what we found on the door at Ross'! This is without a doubt the largest Praying Mantis I've ever seen in person. She was exquisite and fearsome and I am -SO- glad I had the camera with us. She was just watching us as intently as we were watching her, but she wasn't moving and we weren't messing with her. I hope she had a successful hunt... but what does something that large hunt for? Toddlers? Birds? She was literally the size of my forearm. You can see our reflections in the picture below the close-up and kind-of tell how large she was.

ETA: I did a search online, and couldn't find the exact species this is, but I was able to confirm that at this size, their prey IS birds! I can't believe it's true, but it is! I was even able to find the following picture on a bird watching forum - it's part of a series where the mantis just grabbed the hummingbird out of the air; hooked its chest and ate it! Keep your toddlers back, ladies - this predator is no joke!

And finally, an update on my Krokus. I've got another set of "ladybirds" done - that's what the first chart translates to. "Mariehons pa blade" means "Ladybirds on Leaves". For some reason I find that especially enchanting and romantic. I'm extremely happy with this shawl. It's delicate and vibrant, it's challenging and simple at the same time! It is definitely one of the most unique lace shawls I have ever fallen in love with and I am beyond happy to be knitting it. I can't wait to show my girls on knit night.

That, and I wish I had about 5000 more yards of this yarn, it's very happy-making. I'm glad I had the foresight to get two skeins of it, I've got about 2200 yards total (I believe) so I should be able to make several smaller lace projects out of it if I'm careful.

Happy Knitting. Blessed be.
-Regan-

Out with the Old, In with the New!

2010-08-06T06:12:00.004-05:00

I finished the "Green Blob", blocked it night before last and took my victory picture yesterday morning. To be exact, Keegan took the picture and he was half asleep and grumbly and then claimed to have no knowledge of it later that day. I think he may have a future in politics.

Of course you can't see the beads in the picture, but in PERSON it's sparkly and magnificent! And in honor of it blocking out and looking like a shawl and not a wrinkly green blob (oh, the magic of blocking!) I gave it a new name.

Dryads Dance in the Dewy Spring Canopy.

And then minutes after taking my victory picture, I CO for my next lace project. NOT because I'm addicted! If I were so inclined, I could quit knitting lace any time... Thank all the powers that I'm not so inclined.

This is Krokus (Crocus) and it's being knit on 100% bamboo 2/24 ~~thread~~ yarn and of course it's not going to be a difficult or confusing pattern at all. In fact, as you may have noticed from the picture, it's also got beaded nupps - which only add to the simplicity of the pattern. Ok, I'll stop being sarcastic now.

Do you see the little crocus flowers in the middle? ::SQUEE::

That's all for now, I'm going to go get ready for work and try to muddle through my day with this beautiful thing singing its siren song to me from the knitting bag.

I hope you all have something equally as delicious and happy-making on the needles. I'm in complete bliss right now! Of course it could only be better if I were wealthy enough to stay home and ~~knit~~ clean all day.

(my DH reads the blog...)

OMG, KNITTING!

2010-07-22T06:23:00.004-05:00

I am getting ready to finish the baby cardigan I've been working on for the past week; the Helena for my boss' grandneice Holly to wear this fall. I've actually done the collar and the little ties in the front closure too but I don't have a picture handy of them yet.

I've also finished my Bottom-Up Birch! Below, is yesterday morning - stretched across my patio table so you can see what a nondescript lump lace looks like before the magic of blocking!

Below is my soak water after about 30 minutes of the project just sitting in it. If you're using this yarn, be careful washing it! It's a superwash, so the unwarned may toss it in with a load of laundry (I don't think I know people who would do something so terrible... right?) The yarn is Dream in Color's new Knitosophy in the "Laugh" colorway. It looks like opals to me, and while the colors are terribly busy, they are also bright and all my favorites so I should be able to wear this with a lot of my outfits to have some pop-colors. I can't wait for fall! Maybe I'll wear it to work today.

Below is it on me. Nevermind the hutch to my right that needs me to pick one of the four colors on it and repaint it! See how the lace pattern is actually visible now? The blocking faeries did a great job, as per usual.

I blocked it on my son Kieffer's bed yesterday morning. Before work. Yes, I woke him up, asked him to walk the dogs for me, then proceeded to pin out the shawl on his bed. Ha ha, I had to bribe him when he came back in and realized he'd been duped!

Also, I have no pictures, but I went to dance class last night and it was great. I went with a willing Kieffer, too! I'm really liking him at 14, I hope this doesn't change for the worse when he gets a little bit older. We've been to two dance classes so far (I've been to three, one without him because I didn't know how much fun they would be) and I think I have found the one that I want to join. It was a riot, and there were plenty of men to dance with. Of course, they were all old retired VFW men but I'm thinking after the fun night we had that's more of a plus too!

They have a website if you want to google them, they are the Nashville Dance Club at the VFW. Back room is for dancing and the front room is for drinking! What more could you ask for? Unlike a lot of other dance places, there are tons of men for practicing with! Dance lessons are Wednesdays (sorry, knit group) and they are $7 for non-members and $5 for members. This is ballroom-style dance stuff, so there is NO lower price anywhere in town! We are in the middle of a series of Swing lessons there now - I stepped-in on #3 beginner class and next month is intermediate.

If you just want to try out a free dance class, go this Saturday to Centennial Park, down by the locomotive (not the Parthenon, farther down) and they will have a live band and a free dance lesson sometime around 7pm. This week they will be doing the waltz. Next week they will be filming for the show "So you think you can dance"! Bring your a-game!

Next post: Garden update! (teaser: I've got tomatoes & peppers *squee*)

Piano Bench Refinish

2010-07-12T12:37:00.000-05:00

Look below! That's my beautiful piano bench... albeit, somewhat ruined. That's my exquisite Kara-dog behind it too, making sure the picture is aesthetically pleasing since the bench is so ugly. That appears to be some kind of super glue spots (not dog snot!) and scrapes and other unmentionable things on it. What paint or stain was on it is now abandoning ship. You can kindof see the pretty legs on it though. It's a very fancy ornate little bench.

I went to Home Depot and got some felt pads for the bottom of the legs (haven't put them on yet) and then decided... well, refinishing a piano is a BIG job and I don't want to get 1/3 of the way through it and give up. Lets see how difficult it will be to refinish a piano BENCH instead! Oh, and look, I have one handy that needs it! How convenient is that? So I did a little research into how I would theoretically want to refinish the piano should I ever undertake that particular endeavor. Looks like French Polish / Shellac is the way to go. Yup, no easy way to do it, lots of hard work and elbow grease, and time. PERFECT! I'll just do the top of the bench, so I have a nice place to sit and if I hate the work or if I suck at it, at least I have a nice bench (top) out of the deal.

I sanded (and sanded, and slept and then sanded some more the next day), and I stained it ebony black. Then I sat back and said, "GAWD, if this was a whole piano I'd move away!" Not really, I was feeling rather proud of myself at that point. The top of the bench felt like satin! Anyway, sanding and staining and sanding some more and staining some more and rubbing and buffing and dang my arms hurt!

I got my shellac supplies and put the first coat on. Look how pretty it is! Now only 15-20 more coats and it should look great. There's some of my supplies below. Not really that interesting, but shared anyway.

Here (below) is the picture of it as of yesterday afternoon when I quit working on it out of necessity. I had a billion other things to do. But look, this is somewhere around 8-10 coats of shellac. It's getting there! You can see my reflection, fairly clearly!

Now, I have already learned some things. First: get a paint stripper, because sanding paint off sucks. Buy a nice expensive paint stripper too, don't go the cheap route. (My Mom says you -always- have to spend the big bucks to get a good stripper! ha ha ha) You will have so much sanding to do anyway that you'll still get your exercise and then some.

Second: I sanded and was very careful about getting everything glass-smooth with an extremely fine grade of wet/dry sandpaper... but I still have areas that absorbed the shellac & show grain. Next time I will use something called pummice to fill the grain after my first coat of shellac. I didn't read about that until I was already past the first coat.

Third: Shellac is extremely forgiving and easy to repair. Not just if you mess up while doing it but also if you or a kid or dog does something to it in the future. That is one of the main reasons I chose to French Polish rather than doing something easier. That, and I am completely infatuated with "old fashioned" things! Plus, shellac is a renewable resource. Just can't beat all that!

I'm going to get some paint stripper in the next few days. It seems I have a lot of projects that I can use it on. My outdoor metal chair is coming along quite nicely, and I've got a cabinet/hutch that's all different colors that desperately needs me to choose one and run with it! And the rest of this bench needs to be finished too, of course. Now, I used an ebony stain and an amber colored shellac, but the jury is still out on whether or not I like the color it has become. I was hoping for more of a warm black than a warm orange... but it's still not too late to re-do it. Even though I have a bazillion "coats" of the stuff on it already, it's really only a very thin layer that can be easily removed.

Look What I Bought!

2010-07-12T12:08:00.000-05:00

I found this amazing place online, http://nashvillepianorescue.com , while looking for a piano tuner. Yes, sometimes the cart DOES come before the horse. Ok, ok, full story; I found a similar piano at Habitat for Humanity Homestore for $150 and I wanted to get a tuner out to look at it ASAP. Looking for the tuner brought me to the website where I could get a guarantee and a free delivery on a piano of my choice for around the same price! Of course I ran right out there, met Jerrold who runs the place, and selected a couple of pianos that tickled my fancy. Jerrold had the tuner-guy take a look at them both and I came back with a check after he said they would both hold a tune.

Here above is my baby in the warehouse, dusty and hidden like a treasure waiting to be found. The picture looks nice and bright but the spot where she was really wasn't. I was surprised when I got home & saw the pictures. Below is a detail of the scrollwork on the front. That beautiful cherry color was definitely not evident to me at the time. In fact, even now that it's home it's still a little darker than that to the naked eye.

Here she is (below) in my living room. I had to move book cases to get her in, now I have even MORE stuff I don't have room for upstairs. Thank GOD the rebuild on the downstairs room is going really really well.

Below is what she looks like with her "clothes" off. This was minutes after the delivery happened and Jerrold had left. I was cleaning, and considering how difficult it would be to re-do her finish, and I just started unscrewing things to find out what could & couldn't be done! I'm like that though... Jerrold said it was definitely within a beginner's grasp to re-do the finish on their own piano. It's not like it's really worth a bundle of $ or anything, my love and $250 is all!

He also let me pick out a bench to go with it. I selected a lovely one with ornate legs and a terrible ruined finish. My next post will be of that project. It's really a great piano, only slightly out of tune - and not too painfully at that. I've been very happy already. Toward the end of the month, the tuner will come out to my home for my first tuning (which was included in the purchase price, along with delivery). I'm so excited, I could do the dance all over again just thinking about my good fortune!

Some Random Pictures to Share

2010-07-01T20:20:00.000-05:00

Driving home from work the other day, after what I thought was a very normal rain shower, I noticed this. Several trees down in front of Andrew Jackson Elementary School on Shute Ln. This one was down by the corner near OHB, but farther down where there's a chain link fence around the kids' park area there was another tree down right over the fence and there was a lot of wood debris in piles along the entrance way like someone had already cleared a lot of it out. Strangeness!

This past Saturday I bought the kids a frosty cool drink after they helped me haul some stuff off to the dump. When we got back home, one of the boys left their drink to condensate on the rock wall near my garden. When I was walking past I noticed that a beautiful dragonfly had landed on the straw for a sip of water. It let me get close enough to take this picture then it flew off.

Shannie & I went to a dinner at a local winery recently. We had delish crawfish foods and a wine tasting & I brought home a tasty bottle of wine as a souvenir. The place was really magical, beautiful, and the people delightful and friendly. It's out in Columbia, TN - Amber Falls Winery. If anyone likes wine, please please please make the trip out to see this place. The wine is great, the scenery is amazing and the whole place is without compare.

Speaking of magical, PJ and I attended his friend Phillip's wedding, and it was magnificent. I will have to find a picture or two to share of it here. You just wouldn't believe! I also managed to dress in her colors and looked vaguely like a decoration. One of our friends snapped this picture of us. We don't get a lot of pics together, this one is extra-special.

Finally, Kieffer graduated from Middle School. Next school year he will be in High School. He's halfway there! PJ, Keegan and I drove up to KY to see him graduate. After the ceremony & festivities at the school, we took my Mom with us out to eat at the only buffet in town, a chinese restaurant. It was great. On the way out, the boys asked for 50 cents for the gumball/toy machines. Strangely, the one machine they picked had disguise mustaches in it! I guess it's a KY thing... Kieffer got the Hitler, and Keegan got the Pancho Villa. These kids never fail to delight me. Can life get much better?

Michael on the Farm

2010-06-29T23:24:00.000-05:00

My Mom, getting hay for the horses - one of her chickens supervising.

Michael playing with Harry-the-raccoon.

All of us at the swimming hole! Michael, Kieffer, Keegan, Me, Andie, & my niece Ally. We only saw two snakes that day, it was a success.

The boys found an egg hiding in the hay pile.

They egg-hiding hay pile in question...

Michael riding his very first horse, this is "Shadow", the cornerstone stallion in my Dad's breeding program.

Shadow again.

Shadow looks like a model horse, he's just stunning. Look how calm Michael looks too!

Michael & Kieffer getting ready to help my Mother give the horses hay.

The barn we saw along the way decorated on two sides with KY license plates. Very creative.

New Project!

2010-06-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

No, not knitting... I'm stripping the paint off some old metal chairs my brother gave me a couple years ago. They will be repainted a wonderful color & they will become part of my outdoor set once they're refurbished. We are using his power drill and some wire wheels. I started the chair Sunday night and Keegan has put a few hours in Monday & today. We're not making a lot of progress but I have to admit that it's more than a little addictive using the power drill to remove the FOUR layers of thick paint on these chairs. From the outside, down to metal, the layers are black, white, robin's egg blue, & teal blue. There is also some small degree of rust which I thought would be a LOT worse once I got going but it's not worse than surface discoloration so far.

I was pretty sure the rust was the cause of most of the bubbles and disfigured patterning, but it turns out it's the layers of misbegotten paint forming warped bumps. Once you get down to the metal there's no rust pockets and the design is very delineated. I think once we get this tedious paint removal done with, the chairs will turn out lovely. Above is the before picture of one. Below is the one Keegan is working on now.

That's Sunday evening when he started. Now most of the bottom is done and we're getting ready to move onto a new part of the chair. It's very slow going, but it's addictive work. I'm worried about Scot's drill overheating or breaking from the hours of constant use. I hope he's in a forgiving mood if it happens. :)

Here's the seat bottom as of tonight, at bedtime. I really want to work on it some more myself, but I only got a few minutes in before we had to do other stuff. I'm eager to go to a local hardware store & see if I can't find some more wire wheels too. Something to get into the little crevices and corners.

I'm getting excited about the color possibilities now too. I think I've settled on a yellowy-cream color for them, with details hand-painted in corals & greens but I'm not 100% sure. If you've got any ideas, be sure to share them with me. I personally love how they remind me of Dresden Plate quilts and a white and blue color scheme isn't entirely ruled-out either!

-Regan-

(By the way, the set I have is a bounce-chair and a rocker. Both appear to be in fantastic condition now that I've started removing the paint. This is a set that was made sometime between the 1930's - 1950's and it's in a very rare "Piecrust" pattern. That's an FYI in case you're interested in old stuff like I am.)

First Rebuild Project, COMPLETED!

2010-06-19T15:49:00.000-05:00

So today I dragged PJ & Kieffer to both the Habitat Homestores to look at what was there. We found a perfect man-room door! Our fabulous neighbor Carl gave us advice on measuring & damned if he wasn't right! We finagled and improvised and managed to get it hung so now we can keep raccoons and stray dogs out of our downstairs! I feel like proper-folk now. Not to mention, I think this is a much prettier door than the one we originally had.

Unfortunately, my darling DH hasn't yet considered that the man-cave needs to be dark and dungeonish to facilitate the playing of video games & watching of movies during the daytime. I haven't offered that little fact up to him, either. I think this is a beautiful door and it's the one I would have picked for sure. It'll let the dogs look outside without having to stand up on the door!

Next step, we'll have to get a prettier door knob & bolt lock for it.

Also, I have a product endorsement! I have these lovely laminate floors in my home. But I'm not the most attentive housekeeper, I'm not going to sweep twice a day and I have dogs that run across my floor & scratch it up & we wear shoes inside and very soon your floors start looking scratched & worn & nothing really makes them SHINE again even when they're perfectly clean.

It's been driving me crazy! I've tried all kinds of cleaning products, from vinegar water of all temps (on a damp mop) to specialized wood floor cleaners - all with the same results. Nothing made them shiny again!

So my last trip to Wal-Mart I picked up an inexpensive green bottle of something called "Weiman Floor Polish". It was around $5 and is self-touted as eco-friendly and safe for wood, laminate, and tile floors.

It freaking worked!!!!!!!!!!! Look at the before picture below. Clean but dingy.

Then the area I slicked-down with the polish... do you know how hard it is to get a picture of a shiny surface? Too many tries, let me tell you.

The shine is what it looks like wet AND dry! Look, my toes are on it and it's perfectly dry and it looks like glass! I'm so freaking happy I could do the dance. I am going to run back to Wal-Mart and buy all they have of this stuff. A lifetime supply!

Hope y'all have a great weekend, I'm off to go to a friend's wedding in Bowling Green.

Playing Catch-Up!

2010-06-17T08:49:00.000-05:00

First-off, I have done a lot of planting in my yard lately. I try to get some stuff done every year with the ultimate goal of having one of those pretty yards that you drive past just a little slower on your way through the neighborhood.

There are several of those around my block, I'll try to get some pictures of my favorites to show y'all! I wanna be in that club.

Bonny got me 3 blueberry bushes and my Mom gave me one too. With help from the husbeast and the Kieffer I got them all planted! (Before they died in the pots waiting for me to decide where to put them) Now, I had all four of these before the flood hit so they've all been waiting a VERY long time for their forever-homes! There are four different kinds, all will berry-out in different months so in a few years when the bushes are huge I will have a metric goat-ton of blueberries that I'll be desperately trying to give away before they rot.

Then I took a quick trip around town to all my favorite nurseries & home superstore garden centers & picked up a few great deals. Below is a planter with a yellow-flowered climber that will grow up (hopefully) my back porch hand rail. It's called Thumbergia and the dark centers of its flowers are really deep purple that looks almost brown. It's planted with purple salvia and purple petunias from my Mom and a purple iris-thing from my neighbor Carl which actually may be a pink gladiolus - his are blooming now and they're magnificent. I'll transplant it somewhere more permanent this fall so it doesn't die in the freeze.

Below are some more of my lucky purchases. I got two beautiful asiatic lilies; a coral & cream color & a bright yellow, a silver mounding artemisia (sp?) and a knock-out rose that I got for TWO DOLLARS! Yup, it had fallen out of its pot and they were going to throw it away. I bought it instead. They normally run somewhere between $15 - $25 for this size bush.

I've also been knitting. I haven't quite got the knitting mojo back, but I'm trudging along & trying to keep interested. Y'know, it's hard for me to knit in spring when the gardening bug takes over what's left of my mind & compels me to do crazy things like spend money we don't have on plants we can't eat...

Below are two socks from one ball of yarn knitted toe-up on one long addi lace needle. Yes, the socks don't look like they come from one ball but it's a watermelon-colored yarn with really long color bands and very soon they will start looking like they're related! I'll post more pictures as the garden and the knitting grow.

Just for updates & giggles, we did finally receive (yesterday) 1/2 our flood insurance check from Bank of America. They only held onto it for a month, collecting interest, prior to kindly giving us half. So we'll be starting to rebuild soon! And as an added benefit I'll also be able to do laundry again too.

I hate Bank of America, I hate them so much it's like a dark physical pain in my soul. I hope someone goes postal and kills every BoA executive in some kind of slow fiery conflaguration that's so horrendous I will barely be able to concieve of the carnage when watching it later on the news. If you're considering it, have faith that I will come to your trial and support you with signs and sincere love. BoA is the devil. Only barely more evil than Regions and only because Regions hides their evilness behind a very thin veil of civility. VERY thin!

The rest of you, have a wonderful & happy day. And keep blogging! I love to read about what's going on in your lives.

The Great Flood of 2010

2010-05-03T14:11:00.000-05:00

It's been a great weekend, y'all! I started out Saturday with my kid playing fetch with his puppy in the rain flood waters. Nothing flooded in our courtyard or house, this was all out in the yard safe away from our stuff. It regularly "floods" like that here. Our sump pump keeps us safe and we had just cleaned-out the pump & its little sunken nook three weeks ago so we were feeling safe.

Sunday morning came around and I guess our little overworked pump was giving up the ghost. It would work for a while and then stop for a break then kick back on then stop again. It was 7:30am and I woke PJ up & we left @ 8 to go get another pump from one of the chain home stores. By 9am when we had found one & returned home, water was already up to PJ's doors on his car (it's acting now like it's got electrical damage, how great is THAT?). He had to splash out into the courtyard and get his car out of there ASAP! We began evacuating the electronics upstairs but weren't able to salvage any of our furniture or the small things before the water was unmanageable. We didn't even think about the garage items like all the laundry we'd piled down there for laundry-weekend. Yup, clothes are toast.

The constant flow of water did our original sump pump in. It's not functioning at all now. The sheer quantity of water also put a hurt on the 2nd one we bought yesterday. We have some improvised pumps now (off of above-ground pool systems) and that seems to be working well to lower the water levels. It's finally out of the man-room and we're working hard to get the remaining water swept & vacuumed out of the room. We're about to start gutting it once the water isn't part of the picture any more.

It smells TERRIBLE now that it's warmed-up outside & sunny! My house smells like rotten fish tank water. Ugh!

To top it off, we have flood insurance but they are hedging around with us. They are sending an adjuster out tomorrow but they say that if it didn't reach the top story of our home they are probably not going to cover anything. Not structural damage, not reimbursements for the extra pumps we bought, nothing. I swear, I will punch a baby!

To add salt to the wounds, my doctor's office just called me with my diagnosis: It's definitely Lupus. I'm back to the Rheumatologist as soon as their office is re-opened from the flood stuff.

They say that you are never given more than you can bear. I guess someone thinks I'm pretty damn strong. I'm just going to keep looking at it that way. We're alive, albeit poorer and with way less usable "stuff" than we had a few days ago. Our home is standing, not listing or drooping or creaking or swaying, and we didn't have to evacuate. Plus all our totally-fabulous neighbors are still alive and in their homes too!

I'm off to sweep & clean water & try to make a dent in the giant mess that used to be the bottom half of our home. I hope that the rest of my friends & family also came through the floods unscathed. No matter how devastating the financial aspects of this are, at least we are alive and in relatively good health. It's a blessing when there are others' whose homes were completely engulfed or who lost loved ones. I honestly was feeling pretty sorry for myself until we turned the news on last night and then I just cried over how bad it could have been! My heart goes out to everyone who is suffering from this flood, and I hope that you have a good support system to get through it.

Friends & neighbors who want to do something for someone who is flood-ravaged: My sister sent food hot from her oven. She sent warm dry clothes. The combination of dry socks & warm filling food made me break down with gratitude. Today my brother Scot took the day off and is helping us again try to clear out some of this water. We didn't know where to turn, and he's no flood expert, but having someone come around who is willing to throw ideas out there has made a big difference in our confidence. We may be screwed by insurance & circumstance, but we are NOT helpless... and our feet are dry and our bellies are full! Amen!

Blessed be,
-Regan-

Recipe for Disaster?

2010-01-29T14:32:00.000-06:00

One stops big thirsts, one stops hard shifts... just be careful to not get them confused when you're driving, because they're not interchangeable. I nearly took a big gulp of transmission fluid the other day after work. Then I felt so stupid I figured it needed immortalization forever in Bloglandia.

Note to self: Keep transmission fluid in the back of the truck, not in the cup holder near your beverage.

Did'ja Know?

2010-01-16T16:55:00.001-06:00

This is awesome, my darling found it online and I remorselessly snagged it from him!

These are a Few of My Favorite Things!

2009-12-17T16:39:00.000-06:00

Actually, this is what I was doing all Summer/Fall while I wasn't blogging.

Below is the most vile and manipulative creature in the entire house. It doesn't LOOK vile and manipulative, and it doesn't FEEL vile or manipulative, but let me reassure you that it has powers - beastly powers of mind control. We call her the Snugubus. If she catches you relaxing on the couch knitting, she will sneak up and stretch out next to you and within minutes she's taken control of your mind. Your hands are no longer under your own control, they are winding through her neck fur and stroking her and then if she so desires it she will make you fall asleep and before you know it you have wasted an ENTIRE day snuggled up on the couch napping and loving on her. Sometimes you don't even get to the petting part, you just wake up on the couch when she gets done with you and moves away and you wonder what happened - the last thing you remember is knitting or reading and then poof, gone. Like a Nixon file.

Below, is one of the two quilts I've made for my soon to be neices or nephews. My brother-in-law Bobby is newly married last December and they are now expecting their first children. TWINS! We won't know until January sometime if they're girls or boys but I'm too excited to wait to make something.

I've done a lot of reading too. See the crystal bowl of yarn in the background? That's not just decorative, that's my yarn ends, waiting to become a pretty project but patiently waiting until then as a decoration. Next to it is my London Fog, a huge mug of Earl Grey tea with cream! Mmmm, so good with a fresh book and a warm dog on the...couch... *snore*

I managed to get a Christmas tree up. This is the very first REAL tree I've had as an adult. We've always had fake trees. Well, we as in me since I became an adult. When I was a kid we always cut our own tree down. I'm excited about this one, my girlfriend bought it for me as a surprise and I'm so happy I can't stand it.

And below is the best dessert wine in the whole world. Love it! Go grab you some & enjoy the holidays.

BSG "Toaster" Toaster (be prepared to envy me)

2009-12-17T13:32:00.000-06:00

This is for all those BSG nerds out there! My darling hubby, upon hearing that our beloved home toaster bit the big one, decided we needed a snazzy new one to replace it. His internet search turned this gem up. I couldn't be happier, although I do feel like I'm using a precious item like casual everyday household goods.

This is SO COOL!!!!!!!

It's Beginning to Feel a lot like Winter!

2009-12-17T11:25:00.000-06:00

This was the scene from my new vehicle's windshield the other morning. I knew it was going to freeze, but we rarely get these beautiful frozen crystals on the windows! When I was a little little girl, my Grandmother would tell me that Jack Frost had visited in the night & we would put our hands on the window & melt our palm prints out. I loved winter for that, it was the very first season I fell in love with. I haven't had a visit from Jack Frost in decades. This delighted me in ways I am unable to express. I hope their beauty in the pictures can delight y'all too.

We forgot to take our hose inside. Silly us. Apparently there was a small leak. I have no idea if the hose is ruined or not, but I thought it was very pretty the way the icicles formed and the icicle stalagmite next to the hose too. The weeds lived though!

WTF for the Day, Hopefully

2009-12-17T10:15:00.000-06:00

So on the way to work this morning, I saw a big WTF. Thankfully, I had my camera with me at the ready AND I was stopped right by this thing at a red light that went on and on and on.

Look, guys! I know y'all have been wanting a new van. This one's only had 1 oner! At first, I thought that might be a Southernism for owner, but I started second-guessing myself.

I mean, I don't know a LOT about cars and their mystical components. I'm relatively mechanical and I can follow instructions to do simple things like fill my gas, replace spark plugs & brake pads, but that's about it. What if an "oner" is one of those mystical engine pieces you have to have special training to identify? I mean, this big ole' van only has 70k miles on it!

Right?

I bet the following picture is what your engine compartment looks like when there's only one "oner". Which would also explain the low low mileage!

Then again, that 70k might not be mileage. That might be the asking price. I mean, how else are they going to be able to afford a window-writer that can spell gud?

Gournay Potatoes & The Boy in the Box

2009-12-16T16:55:00.000-06:00

I took some potatoes from my Mom's garden, a delicious red onion, and some herbs from my garden. Sliced thin & baked with cream and butter and Gournay, cheddar, and mozzarella cheeses until everything was tender & bubbly.

That is my recipe, above. I have no idea what quantities were used, just "enough". It was so good I could have married it. Unfortunately, everyone else felt the same way about it so there wasn't much left. I'll make it again someday.

Keegan is my little kitchen helper. He scrapes dinner dishes & pans for me, pre-dishwasher, and he unloads the dishwasher after it's run. I know, it's a hard life for a little boy. Well I asked him to scrape out a pan and he came from his room to do it... wearing a box over his head. No eye-holes cut out or anything. He says (muffled from inside the box, facing in the wrong direction from me because he can't quite tell where he is) "Mom, why don't you make me wear more boxes on my head?"

I think about this for a minute, trying to figure out if there is a correct answer or even possibly something he might want to hear, but I get nothing. The sound of the tumbleweeds in my sound-processor. So I did what I'd like to believe any good mother would do and I said rather gruffly, "I don't know, Mister, but you'll wear that box the rest of the night or you're grounded!".

His Dad helped him cut eye holes & a nose/mouth vent because the box was also a bit too narrow for his face & was pooched out strangely toward the bottom.

Apparently the boy has scraped dishes wearing a box before, it's messier than the normal procedure and the dogs are congregated. Look how attentively they are watching the pan. It's like a magic show just for them! "C'mon, box-boy, scrape faster" they're saying.

The Wily Kiefalope

2009-12-16T16:11:00.000-06:00

Once known as my mild-mannered baby son, it has now grown to gargantuan proportions and nearly unbelievably is taller than me by more than an inch! I sent him off to his Grandparents' and a mere two months later he comes back to me OVER TWO INCHES TALLER!

I tried to explain to my Mother that it was completely unacceptable that she transformed my baby into a burly-voiced giant in under a sixth of a year but she completely ignored my complaint. I'm afraid to send the little one up there next summer. No good can come of it.

Here's a picture of Kieffer and me standing side by side. He now uses me as a comfortable armrest, towers over me, checks my hair to make sure the part is straight. All the horrible things we kids used to do to our tiny little Granny and we thought it was so funny (I'm sorry, Granny. If I'd known how terrible and traitorous we were back then I never would have adjusted your hair from above... I now know I deserved that elbow to the bladder). I KNEW I should have gotten Kieffer started on coffee earlier.

Fish

2009-10-09T19:40:00.001-05:00

I'm Alive, if Barely Counts.

2009-09-09T19:15:00.000-05:00

I've been cooking, have some good recipes to share. I've been knitting, have a crappy pic of my FO (Icarus) but nothing really good yet because my hubby is a slacker just like me and he's my designated photographer.

Instead of a proper post, I'm just going to post these crappy pictures that have been building up in my "Post About This" folder. Then I'm going to go knit some more on my Traveling Woman, because the sooner I can finish it the sooner I can start on my Aeolian. By the by, I only started the TW so I would have some beading experience before starting the Aeolian. That and I needed a project to be finished in under a month so I could feel like I actually do accomplish some things in a reasonable amount of time...

My brother, Scot, got suckered into going into the attic-from-Hell and installing a fan in my spare room. I took some pics. I call this his "Attic Bandit" look. The fan looks & works very well, by the way. I haven't told him yet but we're in the process of picking out fans for every room. He's going to be so excited!

This is a great ride I took with my best friend Scott. Normally I ride my bike & follow him, but I felt like taking pictures so I rode with him for a change. We didn't go far, because his back seat is about the size of a chestnut but he assures me (ASSures?ha ha ha) that there is a great product on the market that extends the sides of the seat for a more comfortable passenger ride. In other words, the big-ass-girlfriend seat extender kit. We had a great time despite me being a big-ass sissy.

Below is the great recipe I got from a friend. I hate exact recipes, so this is an approximation. Two cans of croissants, unrolled flat on foil. Squeeze or roll all scored edges together. Make a mix of about 2 cups shredded chicken, 1 cups chopped broccoli, 1 cup chopped red peppers & mushrooms if you so desire, a half cup mayo (I used ranch dressing) 1 cup shredded cheese, 2 cloves of garlic (pressed) and 1 teaspoon of dill weed. It's a rather dry mixture, add salt & pepper to taste. Spread it out along the center of the croissant panel. Cut your edges in about 3 inches to make strips you can twist & pinch over the top. The twist looks really neat when it's done. Brush bread with beaten egg whites & bake @ 350 for 25-28 minutes.

If you do it right it will be beautiful. If you're sloppy it should look like mine below.
No matter what it looks like, it tastes magnificent and it's really easy to do. Looks great, tastes great, not a lot of work. That's my favorite kind of recipe! By the way, I have an actual recipe if anyone really needs it. Most of my friends are cooks like I am, you get a general idea then go make it your way at home so that's what I've given here.

Now, ANOTHER kind of recipe is the one below. I have several tomato plants as some of you may already know. These plants have produced some fifteen THOUSAND tomatoes and are all over 9 feet in length! I have friends and neighbors avoiding me because I keep trying to give them tomatoes. That is pretty bad! They are delicious though, so I thought I would use some of them up in a homemade tomato paste. This pot is what I started with in the morning.

This is what I wound up with after it was all cooked down that evening. This equals one can of tomato paste as far as I am able to tell. I cooked it all day. Not so efficient, but definitely more tasty than the store bought stuff and I managed to not waste precious produce. I won't be doing it again, but for a learning experience it rocked.

I have been cooking a lot more, but I want to knit now that my duty is done. See? I'm still alive!

Got Some Gardening Done

2009-07-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

(I just threw pictures in randomly, I'm exhausted, the next post will be more cohesive)

Between the lovely weather, my lovely job, and going to KY just about every single weekend - I haven't really had time to do anything I need to do. Like knitting, blogging, house cleaning. See how I snuck that cleaning one in there? Ha ha ha, as if THAT really ever happens. I clean less often thanks to my new lower standards! I recommend that to anyone who's stressed over a messy home. ;)

This past weekend I went to my Parents' place for the holidays. Mom fed us, Mmmmm! I got to shoot my new shotgun and subsequently severely hurt my shoulder. Turns out I'm a muffin, and when you don't really have fat shoulders/armpits, muscle definition, or sufficient padding you can really bruise yourself shooting something with a moderate "kick".

A lot of wonderful things happened this weekend, like Mom's cooking (just have to mention it again, it was THAT good), getting an animal-love "fix" from their herd of critters, seeing my Dad and harassing him, getting to play with the kids, seeing my best buddy Scott, & spending the night @ his house watching old movies & hangin' out just the three of us (hubby too). Mom loaned me her extra espresso machine! That's been keeping me wide awake since I got home. I'll have to post pics of it later, I think it needs a name - I love it THAT much. I also -finally- got the opportunity to bring back some plants since we drove up in PJ's car.

My Mom and I really really love our family heirlooms. We've got some neat stuff that's been in our family for generations. We've got a deerskin-bound lesson book/journal from a great-great-great+ somebodyorother that's just full of old math and calligraphic handwriting lessons. Apparently books were so precious back then you got one and made it last throughout your lifetime because he grew up writing school lessons in the book and used it when he was grown and working as well. We've got family bibles that helped my great-grandparents trace our geneology back many generations, from when we first came to this country. We've got some furniture from many other generations. And perhaps most tangible these days - we have flowers and vegetables from my great-grandmother's old home place gardens. A home that all of us remember living in at one time or another, five generations of us, that is now no longer in the family.

My Mom's garden at her home is all that's left now of what once was the old home place gardens created by my Gran. I got to take a huge clump of phlox and another of poppies. I didn't have room for asparagus, but will get some of that as soon as I've prepared a safe place to put it at my home.

So since arriving back home Sunday evening - in a torrential deluge, I might add, I've been pruning and weeding and trying to prepare my yard for the special things I've brought home. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy, pruning and digging in the rain. And for sure the mosquitoes thought I was a delicious snack no matter what the weather. But I got things under control and got about half the stuff planted. The important heirloom stuff definitely.

I got a butterfly bush, and a bunch of black-eyed-Susans from the horse fields while I was home too.

I don't know where I'm going to put everything, but I do know I'm very happy with the possibilities and I hope the cool weather stays long enough for me to at least get the yard mowed!

I'll post pictures as the yard progresses. Tomorrow night I'm having a friend over for espresso (which IS a good idea, no matter WHAT you say!) so I'll be neglecting yard and knitting again, but I'll try to post a espresso pic.

We May Have a New Puppy...

2009-06-26T06:59:00.001-05:00

For now we're dogsitting a friend's found-puppy. He wandered in her neighborhood for days before she broke down and fed him, then he stayed at her house on the front porch protecting her property from everything for the next few days. She's going out of town for a week today and she was frantically trying to find someone to make sure he was ok while she was gone.

But truthfully she doesn't want a dog anyway, she's scared of anything that looks like a pit bull and said the only reason she could be near this one without being in a full blown panic attack is that he's so young.

We're trial-ing him at our house. He's a very good boy. Her son named him Luke, so that's what we're calling him. He will either return to her when she gets back, or stay with us, or we'll speak to the lady at the Mt. Juliet shelter who does pit-type rescues (Jill Hart). I'm not sure we can handle another dog - Kara is already more than a handful!

But last night they played until they collapsed, then got up and did it again. It was like outsourcing all the attacking of us she normally does for attention! Some nights I don't even get a chance to knit because Kara pounces me repeatedly. She does the same thing to DH who says its like a tank rolling over him out of the blue when he's playing video games. She WILL get your attention, and then you WILL play with her, there's no other option.

But now there's Luke, who did the same thing to Kara all night long. He wanted to pounce, he wanted to play tug, he wanted to run & chase her, then be chased by her. They didn't bother us at all! If they hadn't been so damn entertaining, we might have been able to knit and play video games but instead we were laughing ourselves silly and taking pictures of the critters playing.

Looks like, if we can work on his housebreaking, we might have ourselves another puppy. Only one question remains: I think he's a boxer, pure and simple. Hubby thinks he's a pit bull, all the way. We'll wait until after our friend gets back from vacation and if she doesn't take him back we'll take him to the vet and get his opinion on what we have.

Truthfully, I really love puppies. OTHER PEOPLE'S PUPPIES! Kara, who is well on her way to being two years old, is just about the youngest animal I really wanted to adopt. Kara loves PJ though, she's adopted my husband even though she adores all of us. So we'll see. Keegan has been lamenting not having a dog of his own so Luke might fit that bill. Of course you don't really "give" any animal to a 10-year-old - before anyone snaps my head off! But my dog Pixie, the mini-schnauzer, is madly in love with my 13 year old Kieffer and is unofficially "his" dog. Has been for years now. We joke that he's her boy, she's raised him, she's his fur-mother. Even though he'd never be allowed to take her with him when he moved out and the burden of her care is still mine.

By the way, she's in KY with the boys for the summer. This is tradition, she loves getting to be a "real" dog once a year. She's not dog aggressive and she basically leaves the other animals alone so that's a privelege we allow her to have. Kara isn't allowed on the farm because she IS dog-aggressive and she would kill cats/chickens/bunnies/wild animals and potentially even horses. She's just not the kind of dog we could trust to be out there. At least not now. Perhaps sometime in the future.

Don't you love the playdate pictures? Please excuse the condition of the "man room" where we were. That's PJ's domain as he keeps telling me, and he doesn't want me interfering with its cleaning or decorating. Not much happening in either category there if you ask me, but it's his so I let him do what he wants with it.

A Knitting Update

2009-06-22T07:14:00.000-05:00

First part of the tablecloth finished last night! Now I can get back to my Icarus, because I know this yarn and needle size will work. This is a over-flashed close up.

A farther away shot of the whole thing. You can sorta see the pattern here. I couldn't hold it stretched-out enough and still take a picture. Drat, I miss my minions.

I was trying here, to hold out the corner a little bit. Doesn't really improve the visibility of the lace though, unfortunately.

I've got five more to make, potentially more if I have enough time and yarn. This was a 12-row lace pattern around the edge of a store bought hemstitch napkin. Each napkin will have this lace edge around it, and will be kitchenered together on their edges to make a nice wide lace panel in between them. There's an additional 5 rows of lace that will go around the perimeter when it's completed, to give it a picot edge. It only took me a few hours of actual knitting to make this edge around one napkin, so I have hope I can accomplish this before the end of summer for gifting purposes.

Final Post of the Day

2009-06-21T17:33:00.000-05:00

I've gotta start posting during the week!

This is what's on my needles right now. More pictures tomorrow, when the 1st one should be completely done! It's going to be a beautiful lace tablecloth. Hard to imagine from this one little picture, eh?

This is my first open tomato flower! I've been waiting for this for weeks now. My tomatoes just took off when I planted them in that wonderful compost and now they're covered-up with flowers. I really need to reposition some of my plants, but I haven't yet because I'm worried all those beautiful flowers will drop if I do! There's always next year to do it differently if this doesn't work so well.

Here's my sunflower. Apparently it is a flower and not a new bunch of leaves. I'm just waiting for this one to open. I've got a bunch of them with these buds on them, but this is the largest one. In a few weeks, the bird-planted-garden underneath my seed dispenser is going to be in full bloom and it will be magnificent!

This is my beans, my first bean plants are already on their 2nd bloom after the first harvest. I don't think there's enough nitrogen in their soil though, they're turning yellow. I'm going to put a few handsful of compost on top of their soil just to get them through. I think these I'm going to let the beans mature and dry so I have some for planting next year. If I can keep myself from eating them all, that is.

Presenting Baby Regan!

2009-06-21T16:45:00.000-05:00

This is Ayla Regan, that I knitted the two blankets for earlier this year. She's two months old now & she came to visit me just the other day for the very first time. She's precious.

She loves to knit already.

Jeremy and I with her, doesn't he look formal? He felt more comfortable with me between him and the baby!

This is how he feels when he actually holds the baby. Terrified man, ha ha ha. We couldn't stop laughing at him.

This is Gwennie-Gwen, me and baby Regan.

I didn't want to put her down, let alone say goodbye. I was really glad they got a chance to come visit though, it was so nice. I wished they were closer, rather than in North Carolina.

Birthday Travesty Pictures

2009-06-21T16:26:00.000-05:00

Sometimes we make children do things... horrible things... in the name of "fun". Here are pictures, to document for all time, the joy of parenting. We're bigger, so we can make them wear birthday present ribbons & bows in their hair. It's like being a bully but legal! See the joy in his little face? Yep, this will come up in counseling later.

I had a great birthday party at my Mom's. Keegan eventually smiled and got into the spirit of the beribboning. And my Mommy bought me makeup! Yay!

Critters on the Farm

2009-06-21T16:03:00.000-05:00

These pics were taken the day we dropped the kids off at my Parents' farm - the same day I rode in the rain on the motorcycle in the last post. :) Been saving these, but had too much knitting going on & didn't post about them in a timely manner.

Look at this beautiful frog! She was sitting on top of the chicken's fence. There's no more chickens, and my Mom had folded an old pair of painters jeans over the top for some reason. Couldn't move them later because this critter was on top of them.

Below is a little froglet on top of the dog's pen fence. Both of these fences are really tall. How did these guys get up there? I'd have loved to see them climbing.

First frog kept yawning. We apparently bore little froglets.

Now THIS thing is freaky! First of all, it's about as long as a big person's hand - from pincher tip to wing tip. It was extremely aggressive. And it FLEW AWAY after we'd snapped a bunch of pictures of it. It was the size of a hummingbird! Freaky.

The Worst Day on the Bike is Better than the Best Day at Work

2009-06-14T22:27:00.000-05:00

We dropped the kids off at my parents' farm this afternoon. It was a little overcast here in TN but when we called my Mom she was planning a combined birthday picnic for PJ and I and said she'd double-checked but there was no rain in the forecast at all. Then we called my best friend Scott who lives up there near her and he said he might not be coming around after all because it was just too pretty a day to miss riding.

DAMNIT! I want to ride too! So after checking the forecast for up there, PJ says "Why don't we take my much smaller car, you can take the motorcycle and we'll each haul one kid so there will be enough room".

And that's what we did. We headed out of our house & went to IHOP for our last family breakfast together for the next month or so. We had a great time, the kids are HILARIOUS! Then we headed out to the farm.

It got darker and darker. More and more ominous. I can feel PJ behind me in the car shaking his head because he'd said that it looked a little overcast even though the forecast was good. It's a two-hour drive to their farm, first hour by interstate and the 2nd hour by extreme backroad. It started sprinkling a -little- bit when we got off the interstate. By the time we were 5 miles from their house it let loose on us. I was a drowned rat by the time we got there & Kieffer, behind me, wasn't much better. We whipped the bike into the barn which was the only covered spot we could get into at the time and breathed a sigh of relief.

It stopped raining after about an hour & we proceeded with our picnic as planned. It was fabulous! My Uncle Marc cooked the steaks, my Mom (coincidentally, her name's only one letter away from Mmm!) cooked everything else and we all ate until we thought we might need medical intervention. Then we wandered around in her garden & took tons of pictures of awesome critter-bugs and frogs that I'll share later-on this week.

Then we had to leave because the storms were sweeping back in toward us with a vengeance. My Mom, in a psychic act that I can't begin to thank her for now, stuffed a big bulky smelly rain coat into my saddlebag on the bike at the last minute - "just in case" the rain caught us.

Thank God she did it too, because just 5 short miles from her house the sky turned upside down on us. I don't think there's any way I could have made it without her barn coat. Below is me stopped at the end of their road putting on that jacket and the kids' helmet that's too small for me but has a visor.

These are two pictures PJ took along the way. He said there was a halo around me when it was raining really hard, from the raindrops hitting me & splattering @ 55+ mph & creating a splatter-aura. He said it looked really eerie and he wished he'd been able to catch a picture of it.

I was soaked to the bone within the first minute, but my choices were slim. I could try to wait out the rain somewhere & continue driving home in absolute darkness with road water spraying up on me from every vehicle in front or passing, or I could tough out the painful numbing rain and try to utilize the last of the evening light.

There's no windshield wipers on a motorcycle or a helmet, so I chose to persevere. Unfortunately, the kids' helmet with the visor cut off my circulation painfully after 30 or 40 miles and I couldn't take it any more. The little "brain bucket" I'm strapping on here was my Aunt Sundown's - I don't actually have a helmet of my own. Hers isn't quite legal in Tennessee either... and it's less than warm. I briefly tried to wear my jacket hood under it but that failed dismally. I had to make the last hour of the trip in the whipping rain with no visor... on the interstate.

Even with all the rain, and my entire body going numb from the cold and wind (except where the icy rain pelted me like buckshot at highway speeds on my hands face & neck - that didn't quite get numb...) it was still an adventure and it still beats the HELL outta even the best day at work. I found myself smiling repeatedly all the way home.

It's great to be alive and riding a motorcycle, even if it is in a torrential freezing downpour on the interstate.

Live free, drive fast, and make your own happiness.

Great Blooming Cactus(es), Batman!

2009-06-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

I've had this little cactus for a few years now. I've just been happy that I've not killed it. I think everyone's gone to Ye Olde Home Improvement Supermarte and purchased a little wonky cactus with a glued-on straw flower, right?

Well this little fella is named Petey, he's one of the first plants that my hubby purchased for me. He didn't have any glued-on straw flower, thankfully, but today while sitting on my happy deck I noticed that there was a little something on him! Keep in mind that little Petey is a tiny nub of a cactus, even after these past three years of me loving him dearly and praying for him to grow and repotting him in the optimist-pot with lots of growing room and a special blend of soil mixed myself. Nope, nothing. He's just a midget. This bloom is probably his last grasp at reproduction before he kicks the bucket. I WILL have a funeral, should that happen! Petey is precious just for being one of the first.

What a pretty little flower though, huh? And if it hadn't been for the kids I might have missed the window of photographic opportunity for it! Who knows how long this tiny little beauty will be with us. It was completely by chance that I saw it in the first place, as you'll see below.

I went to WWKIP day this morning at Panera Bread on Old Hickory Blvd. I rode the motorcycle & took my older son Kieffer. They had free coffee/cokes and snacks for the knitters. For that, Kieffer knitted in public. I noticed a friend's little girl take several pictures of Kieffer "CrazySkillet" knitting, so there will be an opportunity later to get proof, because I didn't remember to take my own camera. :(

When we got home, I did the kids' hair for them. It's been our long-standing family tradition to let them do whatever they want with their hair when they're out of school on Summer break. When they were littler, they wanted mohawks and spikes and things, as they've gotten older they have wanted different colors.

First I had to bleach their hair out. I used a generic bleach kit that they picked out from WalMart. After I got it into their hair I made them go outside onto the porch to wait because PHEW it's ammonia-ey! They each also got one of the application gloves I'd used when putting it in, because it makes your head itchy. It allowed them to fiddle & scratch while they waited.

After we washed the bleach out, we went back outside for pictures. It's kinda orangey, isn't it? But it still opens up the hair strands to allow the crazy dyes to soak in & show up better. So out we came to take pics & let their hair dry a hot minute before the colors go on.

I had both boys bend over to get better pictures of their "blonde" hair, and THAT is when I noticed little Petey's flower! Look at him! Right down there under Keegan's head. Soon as I saw Petey, I rushed to the door & yelled for Jeremy: "PJ, COME QUICK, IT'S PETEY!!!!!" Of course, he doesn't remember that the stupid cactus' name is Petey, he comes flying upstairs in a panic from my tone of voice, thinking some neighborhood child has been injured. I wish I had a picture of the expression (glare) I got when he realized that he'd run upstairs at warp speed for a flower. Ha ha ha ha!

Soon as the excitement of the flower ran down a little, I put the dyes in their hair. Blue for Keegan, Violet for Kieffer. Then back onto the porch. Not because the dyes stink, they really didn't have a scent, but because they immediately and permanently stain every surface they come in contact with and I didn't want to be angry at the boys for any "accidents".

This is the final result! Within a few days they will need to re-apply because they'll be faded pastel. Then it'll be my Mom's problem, since I'm dropping both boys (and their respective dyes) off at her house tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully they'll be there for the majority of the Summer. I'm sure the first few days will be nice... but after that I'll be missing them too much to really enjoy myself. I guess I'll make a lot of time for knitting & see what I can accomplish.

Bill, Dancing with the Devil

2009-06-12T23:09:00.000-05:00

This is one corner of my lovely desk, you can see I have a compelling view of the back of a warehouse and a street. Yep, it's a winner! I actually do like it, it's one of the best views in the entire office.

This is my co-worker, Bill DiLuigi. He's a musician, a songwriter to be more precise, and will be hitting the bigtime any day now and taking us away to be his roadies. That's Trisha behind him, my other teammate. Bill, Trisha, & I make up the accounting department along with our boss Cyndi.

Bill came back from lunch today with a birthday treat for me. A delicious bag of pork rinds! I'm somewhat of a pork addict and the entire department (Nay, the entire OFFICE!) teases me about it all the time. Bill, however, is a vegetarian so it's all the more special when he brings me a pork treat.

Since it was my birthday, he agreed to eat a pork rind in celebration with me.

And because he's all three shades of awesome, he also willingly let me take photographic evidence of it!

Bill is the guy who wrote "Psycho Knitter" for us, and who also leaves me the clever anti-knitting post-it notes.

You know what he looks like, you know what to do!

Garden Visitors & Tomato Blossoms

2009-06-12T22:50:00.000-05:00

I found a lot of new friends in my garden this afternoon. I don't know what half of them are, or whether some of them are pest or friend, but they're all beautiful and I wish I had more time to watch them & see what they're all up to.

The little guy below had vivid, electric colors. I've had fish that looked like him!

Startled this wolf spider out while I was weeding. I love wolf spiders, they're so beautiful. When I find them inside the house I always gently take them outside again. Probably to their consternation, since they just seem to turn around & come back in right away!

This also was a NEAT looking spider. Loads of green & yellow on it's belly but he moved fast & I couldn't get a good pic of the exciting parts.

I have a special fondness for the Praying Mantis, I'm always excited to find one in my garden. This little girl was in my Chinese Red Noodle beans, which I have moved as of this afternoon to a more suitable place in my garden. I hope they will appreciate the move with loads of growth and beans!

And finally, these are my tomato blossoms I told you about yesterday. Any day now, they're going to open up and I'll take pictures and then we'll have baby tomatoes!

Kieffer "CrazySkillet" Hall, Saves the Day!

2009-06-12T22:28:00.000-05:00

Kieffer, or as he prefers to be called now "CrazySkillet", cooked dinner for my birthday tonight. I showed him a quick fried chicken recipe & teased him through his brief episode of unmanly terror at the hissing of frying things in oil and then he made a fabulous dinner!

He cooks most nights, actually. His leftovers are always getting me compliments at work because they smell so good when I warm them up. No one believes my 13 year old son is making them all by himself.

But really, I sat at the kitchen counter & knitted two rows of my Icarus and took pictures of him while he did everything. Usually I don't sit with him, but boiling oil... well... he IS just 13! So he hacked apart the first few thighs to make sure they were done inside.

This is him hacking.

And him when he thought I wasn't taking pictures.

He says he wouldn't mind if he married a woman who didn't know how to cook. He genuinely likes it! Which is a good thing because since he got in trouble at school, his job has been housewife stuff. We don't tolerate freeloaders in our family... even he agrees. Since he likes it, it's not really a punishment. So I try to teach him how to make different things all the time. Fried chicken is my birthday treat, since it's so unhealthy we can't cook it regularly.

What makes me the most proud? He's already the type of cook who uses a pinch of this and a dash of that according to what he likes in the spice cabinet. He's only got to use something a couple of times before he's got a good idea of how he likes to use it. And he's CREATIVE!

I'm proud of my son, even though he totally botched school last year.

Let There be Knitting

2009-06-11T18:36:00.000-05:00

My glorious Icarus, of which I am 7 rows into the "feather" lace at the end (chart two). I did the math today and I am 80% done! When you stretch this bad boy out it's HUGE! I'm about to go upstairs to my happy deck and knit some more - watching the evening birds at the feeder and daydreaming about all the delicious vegetables in my salad patch right now.

Any guesses what this might be? I'm betting it's my first volunteer-sunflower, about to bloom! Of course it could be just a tight knot of more leaves. We'll know in a few more days.

Here's my purple basil in the actual daylight, looking fetching.

Tonight my new batch of Soleil beans are a week old. This is a blurry shot, but they are about two inches tall! You can't really tell without my finger in there to gauge against.

See how little they look in their field setting? Hard to believe they're only a week old tonight, eh? Last week I planted them in just a few minutes before dashing out the door for a much-anticipated knit-night with my favorite people. In a few more weeks I'll be harvesting beans!

Also, I didn't get a picture of them but my Purple Russian tomatoes have blossoms! Not opened blossoms, but buds I should say. It won't be long now, though.

I'm going to go knit before it's too late to get any evening sunshine. It's one of my favorite times of day. Second only to early morning when everyone else is asleep. I creep outside with a warm cup of tea and my knitting and watch the birds wake up and begin coming to the feeder. They sing songs to the sunrise before they begin their day, I love it like nothing else.

These Beans Just Keep Rockin' My World!

2009-06-09T20:27:00.000-05:00

These below, are my volunteer sunflowers. The birds have planted them for me. They are growing directly underneath my bird feeder. There's nothing better than volunteer flowers. I try to keep them weeded and they are happy as clams. The squirrels forage underneath them, and I frequently sneak up and startle two or even three squirrels out from the copse of sunflowers here. They're maybe 2 - 3 feet tall. No flower heads yet but my volunteer sunflowers last year stayed about that tall & bloomed all summer long - even throughout our move into this house (they were potted).

Below is my first Jalapeno. I bought this mild Jalapeno plant from Home Depot a month or so ago and planted it in my garden, in one of the Breeko block holes along the side. It seems to be very happy, leaves are dark green and it's got tons of flowers about to open on it. I'm excited, thinking about all the delicious fried cheese-stuffed jalapenos we'll be having because of this beauty.

Look at how big my Purple Russian tomatoes are getting! Still no flowers on them, but I started them from seed and they seem to be thriving. Happiness is tomato plants, let me assure you. The thought of these deep purple plum tomatoes and their rich wonderful flavor keeps me sighing in bliss every time I water or weed them. They smell DIVINE too! The next time you're near a tomato plant, gently rub a leaf and take a sniff. There's nothing like it.

Here's my Purple Basil. This was one of my Aero Garden treats from this winter. I conveniently ran out of fertilizer tablets around the time we finished this garden but the thought of murdering this beautiful basil broke my heart. So I brutally ripped it out of the hydroponic bucket it was growing it (losing a vast amount of its rootlets in the process) and plopped it down into the soil in my garden. It's growing now like there's no tomorrow. It was NEVER this happy inside. I'm thinking I need a small forest of this stuff. It's magnificent and a happy grower. I may be imagining it, but I see it smiling at me every day like it's thanking me for giving it real soil and sunshine and compost.

You're welcome, Beautiful!

And below - well, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Thursday night, 6/4/09, about 7:30 pm before I headed out to knit club, I pushed about 20 more Soleil Bush Bean seeds into a spot in my garden. I have enjoyed my 7 plants SO MUCH, they are so far my favorite in the whole garden. I have harvested handfulls of beans from these plants. My kids eat them raw, they pinch off a little bean on the way by and pop it into their mouths. Know how good that makes a Mom feel? WAY good! So since they've been so very productive and so happy-making for me to grow, I decided I needed to fill a remaining spot in my garden with them.

I pushed them an entire finger length into the soil, MUCH deeper than I planted my first ones (remember the egg cartons?) to see if they would grow sturdier stems and I sat back to wait. It took my 1st set of beans exactly 5 days to sprout. These popped their heads up Monday. That's a full day sooner than last time!

And look what a beautiful deep green shade the leaves are, too. This is just Tuesday evening, day 5, and they've already gotten this big.

The picture below is darker (stupid flash) but you can see the field of them if you look closely. This is day 5, they're already growing like there's no tomorrow! Originally they were planted in Miracle Grow potting soil I got from Big Lots near my house. They must really like the compost more. I'll keep my eyes on them & see how their color & performance compare to the original set.

And believe it or not, I do have knitting. Just not pictures to show. I'm about to start the feather lace part on my Icarus shawl as soon as I'm done posting this new blog. That's right, no more spines repeats, I'm on to lace pattern every row for the next sixty-something rows and then we're DONE. I'll make a special effort to post nothing but yarning pictures tomorrow. Right now if I don't get some knitting time in, I'm going to snap.

An Accomplished Saturday

2009-05-30T22:40:00.000-05:00

Today, I put over 100 miles on my motorcycle, riding both boys around town and then buying parts to rebuild the fuel system on one of my new free weed eaters. Yes, free! My friend gave me his two, neither of them in working order. I've spent about $13 on this one so far. I had to replace all the fuel lines and the primer bulb, clean out the fuel tank, and purchase new string for this one. Right now it's outside where the remainder of the leaked fuel can dry off it before morning when I will attempt to start it if it's made it through the night and is still leak proof. The dirt that's on it is new, from when I tipped it up to attach the rewound string head. I've also cleaned the air filter & spark plug, and regapped the spark plug. So if it doesn't work at least I'm only out $13.

Outside of using a weed eater a couple times over the years, I have no knowledge of how they work or are put together. I checked online for the spark plug gap information for this model but everything else has been guesswork. I am going to feel SO GOOD if this thing runs tomorrow!

Look below. This is a little tiny mushroom I found growing in my tomato pot yesterday! Isn't it beautiful?

My tomato plants are getting big, I should probably put them out tomorrow in their forever home. If it's not good motorcycle riding weather, I probably will. If it's pretty outside though, I will more than likely grab one of my kids & head out to Bowling Green to meet my riding buddy.

Useful gardening time is easy to squeeze out of a busy schedule, you can even do that in the rain. Motorcycle weather isn't as easy to come by!

And finally, these are my grandbeans! Look how eensy beensy they are! All my bean plants are covered-up with them, too. I could just eat them up with a spoon. Actually, I probably will be eating them up soon, as fast as they're growing. My others, the red 18" long climbing beans, aren't growing as quickly as I'd hoped & they don't have any flowers yet either. I think they're not getting the optimum amount of sunlight that they need. I will have to move them around tomorrow to see if they become happier growing somewhere else.

Hope everyone had a great Saturday too!

Happy Memorial Day!

2009-05-25T21:20:00.000-05:00

My husband is an ANGRY man! There's finally proof, look at how menacing & scary he looks, threatening me with grill tongs. *shiver* Ok, so -maybe- I'd just taken a terrible picture of him that may have portrayed him in a less than flattering way... or maybe he really is a mean ogre who would threaten his precious wife with grill equipment. You can decide.

Here are my Chinese Red Noodle beans, looking fetching and growing like weeds. I'm actually a little worried that they may not be getting enough light where they are now. I might move them before they get really attached to where they are now & put something else at the bottom of the pole. No flowers yet on them, I'm keeping my eyes out for them though!

Tomatoes below. Look how big they've gotten just in the couple of weeks since I blogged last! They're ready to transplant in the next few days.

These are my Soleil bush beans, THEY'VE ALREADY GOT FLOWERS! I'm about to be a bean gramma! My little bean babies are about to have beans of their own. My husband says that's a ridiculous thought, but these beans ARE my babies. I wonder why one of the blooms is cream colored and the other is white.

Here's Kara and Pixie fighting over a rawhide chew. Aren't they precious? My little dog-babies. Kara is my shelter hound that we just got in January. We've had Pixie since before Kieffer was in school. They each got a rawhide chew for the holiday today, but you know the best one is the one someone else has so they've been bickering over them.

And this is the CAKE that my fabulous hubby bought us as a surprise. It came from Publix. We saw it when we made a trip in for charcoal and I thought it was adorable; a cake that looks like a hamburger! He snuck back out there & bought it for me because I'd loved it so much. I guess he's really not such an ogre after all. Possibly the most fantastic husband in the whole entire universe and he's all mine!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I'll have knitting pictures next post. I'm in the home stretch with my Icarus, it's HUGE!

Sit & Spin, if that's how you feel about it.

2009-05-14T21:20:00.000-05:00

There's been a great deal of flooding this year. Not sweeping people's houses away flooding, but we're at least out of the drought we were having last year. The picture below is a bench that normally isn't in the water - overlooking Percy Priest Dam. As of two days ago, this bench is now completely submerged and more rain is in our forecast!

Pretty flower after the rain, taken at the Nashville Zoo.

Saturday, 5/9/09, I managed to get my lazy butt up and at the zoo by 9am to see some sheep get sheared. I took both boys, who were fascinated for a fraction of a sheep and then disappeared at the speed of light toward "fun" stuff. I found them later soaked to the bone and thoroughly exhausted.

Devon is the shearer's name, if I remember correctly. Not a zoo employee, but hired by them the past 7 years to shear their babies. This is the fattest sheep in the bunch, he called her "Rotunda" but she didn't seem to appreciate the fat jokes. See how ROUND she is though?

Look at all that beautiful fleece! I want it I want it I want it!!!

Apparently my sheeping made a big impression on my family because my Mother's Day present from them was two batts of hand painted roving, a drop spindle, and a hour-long private spinning lesson that I redeemed after work this evening. Look what I made! My teacher said I was doing a remarkable job for a noob & she didn't believe I had never done this before. I think she was jerking my chain, but flattery sure does whet the addiction stone!

I can't wait to make something with this yarn. I'm not going to ply it, I'm going to make something lacy with it just like it is. Something I can keep forever. My other roving is yellows & greens and there's a flat ton of both of them. Plenty to make something special, I'm sure.

I'm off to spin some more!

We Dig It

2009-05-02T18:00:00.001-05:00

This is our beautiful new raised garden bed! At Home Depot today the boys and I bought two landscape timbers for $3.94 apiece and four HUGE nails that looked like baby railroad spikes for $1.95 apiece and came home & built this. Built is a word used loosely in this scenario.

We also purchased a mild jalapeno pepper plant, a stevia which has the sweetest leaves in the whole world and taste nothing like that horrible sweetener that carries their name, and a cilantro.

We'll have to go back tomorrow for another landscape timber and some more nails but this is very exciting stuff. We had a rough time getting rid of the grass. It's a very small planter and in my mind the grass shoveled up very easily with our flat edge shovel but in reality it was hours of hard work with shovel and hoe and two very tired boys helping me.

I didn't get a picture, but we found a record breaking earth worm that was easily two feet long and was VERY snake-like. Since our hands were coated with loads of clay dirt, he didn't squirm to get away from us when we picked him up like they normally do. I'll show pics tomorrow if we get another rain-free spell and can finish our creation. It's about 2 feet wide and 8 feet long.

Today the Spring Monsoon Began

2009-05-01T19:40:00.000-05:00

I got a call at work from my hubby, in a panic, because as he walked out the door to leave today he realized that our courtyard was flooded nearly into our house. He would have had to swim to his car to leave. We have a sump pump set in a hole in the corner of our courtyard because flooding happens frequently; we have a big creek just a few feet from the back of our house, it's inevitable. Unfortunately the sump pump wasn't getting the water out as fast as it was coming in. In the picture below, you can see my hubby standing over the sump pump corner, on top of our wall, with a rental pump to supplement our own in the hopes that we wouldn't have to file our first flood claim within a year of living in our new home. Joy!

Below you can see him, standing fetlock-deep in our "pool" (as the kids are calling it) and plugging in the new pump. The most hilarious part of this picture, besides the electric shock potential, is the yellow kitchen glove he was wearing a la Michael Jackson.

Thankfully the rented pump worked just fine, if a little slowly, and we were able to get our own pump unclogged when the water drained down far enough for us to reach it without diving equipment. Among other things, there were pieces of plastic bag wrapped around it! As of right now the rain has resumed its deluge and there's no standing water in our courtyard. Much to our children's dismay.

I looked for my pictures of my crape myrtle from this past summer. I've been telling you how much I cut off it. Well I couldn't find anything except this one picture (below) of it from this winter. You really can't tell how bushy & overgrown it is from this picture so that's disappointing. It looks to me like whomever lived here in the past like crape myrtle shrubs and they must have trimmed them as such every year. They were so bushy & thick they were a hazard. You couldn't see around this one when you were pulling out of the driveway.

Well I love them, they are the prettiest TREES! I hate to see them trimmed like shrubs, it breaks my heart. They have this magnificent mottled bark and they grow in elegant shapes with arching plumes of leaves & flowers. So I pruned the Hell outta' them in early March before they had any leaf buds. We only trimmed two of my three, in case I accidentally killed them with the drastic cutting. But apparently they're just fine! Next year they will be thinned out even more, now that I know they won't croak from it. This one here by the mailbox is a bright vibrant pink when it blooms. It's like a fluorescent pink torch at the end of my driveway. I adore it. The other one (that's not shown) is a muted dusky pink that's not nearly as flamboyant.

I love my yard! I am hoping there's a few times this weekend when the rain dries up so I can try to get some more gardening done. Other than that, and making cookies @ Gramma's house sometime tomorrow, we've got no plans - and that feels GOOD!

Glorious Icarus!

2009-04-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

I finally got it on the needles! I've been drooling over this pattern now ever since I learned how to knit, a little over two years ago. Well I finally CO for it this past Friday and it's going famously. I love how boring the spines are, and how I can take the pattern anywhere and know where I am when I pick it up.

My funny co-worker Bill DiLuigi likes to leave notes on my knitting when I walk away from my desk. They're hilarious! Things like, "We're your friends, we can help you through this" and "This is the Devil's handiwork". Well, attached to my knitting ziploc in the picture is the most recent one from yesterday. If you can't see it, it says "This should have been quarantined in Mexico".

Bill is the extra-special musician in my department, who modified the song "Psycho Killer" into "Psycho Knitter" just for me. I requested he make it more generic so all my knitting friends could enjoy it and he's in the process of recording it for us now. I'll be sure to share it when he finally gives me a copy.

In gardening news, I transplanted my egg-carton seedlings into pots of wonderful potting soil last night after work. Yes, in lieu of knitting I gardened. Sometimes it's a tough call, and the knitting doesn't always win. I've got pictures of my pots to share, but right now my knitting is calling my name and it's winning over blogging. Tomorrow will be rainy, I'm interested to see how the transplants do in their new (temporary) homes.

Next, I start my Charentais melons! Three for my Mum and three for me. In exchange she's giving me seedless grape suckers she started off her established vines and some yellow (crookneck & straightneck) squash. Only problem is - I have no place whatsoever for any of these plants... and thanks to the beautiful motorcycle-riding weather I am way behind in my garden construction. Here's a pic of my youngest son & my best friend Scott getting ready to ride. We stopped in Dickson at the Perfect Pig BBQ joint for lunch Sunday. Great BBQ! My bike is the one with the flames.

And here are three pictures of what's preexisting in my garden. My rhododendron which I would have SWORN was going to be pink but instead is the most gorgeous purple I have ever seen.

And my two azaleas that I was considering killing because I didn't like where they were growing until they bloomed and now it's not even an option. The white one has a carpenter bee feeding in it (I love those guys!) and the coral one is tiny but really packs a punch with those beautiful flowers!

I'm glad I waited to see what was already here before doing anything drastic. I love my yard, now I can plant all the flower seeds I ordered with a happy heart. I don't have to remove any azaleas!

Coming soon, pics of my pruned crape myrtles. I really chopped these guys and was worried they wouldn't survive it, but they've got leaves! Next year I'll have to prune the one on the side of the house. I was scared to do it lest the pruning be too much for the others to survive. I didn't want them all to die.

What a Beautiful Saturday!

2009-04-18T08:52:00.000-05:00

Look! This is the pretty sock I've been working on since last Sunday. The colors look much more vibrant in the picture than they do in person. I'm about to turn the heel sometime this afternoon.

Below is my 1st tomato sprout, this is a Purple Russian. It's an heirloom tomato with a supposedly superb taste and small roma-style fruits.

Below are my beans. See how much they've grown since I first posted their picture? These are two bean types, Soleil a yellow wax, french style bush bean and Red Noodle which is a climbing pole bean that produces 18" long red beans. I thought the kids would love growing them.

Today we mow our lawn. Or, Kieffer mows our lawn - since he's trying to earn enough $ to take himself & his "girlfriend" Hope to a matinee tomorrow. I had plans to do yard things too but am feeling crappy today so that might not happen in quite the quantity I had originally planned. Keegan has been EXTEMELY sick lately, has Dr.'s orders to be out of school from last Tuesday until this coming Monday. Jeremy started getting sick yesterday & went to the Dr. too and so two of my guys are down. It's just me & Kieffer holding down the fort.

At least I've got knitting and gardening to keep me happy, and this magnificent morning too. I hope everyone gets to enjoy it doing happy things with the ones they love most.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2009-04-16T17:52:00.000-05:00

Above, are my Canary Climbers, that seemed to sprout overnight. They are a climbing yellow-flowering vine and they will be growing up the side of my porch as soon as the weather is just a little bit warmer. YAY!

Above is one of the two kinds of beans I have started. This one is a french style yellow wax bush bean. They just started peeking out of the dirt yesterday afternoon but they just came out so fast that you could practically watch them grow! I'm so impressed.

Last but not least, these are my beets. You either love 'em or hate 'em, but they sure are beautiful and even if you don't like the actual beets - their greens are some of the most scrumptious and nutritious salad fixins you can have. These grow like WEEDS, they sprouted nearly overnight and I'm just DYING to have them in the actual ground instead of my egg carton starters.

Anyone else growing anything? If Summer doesn't hurry up and get here soon I'm going to EXPLODE!

Finished the Hexagon Blanket

2009-04-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

Hubby stole it this morning to add to his blanket pile so he could comfortably play video games in the "man cave" where it was very cold. He wouldn't let me TAKE the blanket from him so I could take a proper picture but he kindly compromised and let me take one of him using it. Apparently it's nice and warm and comfy. If Gwennie doesn't have a little girl, I'll keep it and make her a boy-colored one and make this one large enough for adult sized people to snuggle under it. If her baby is a girl, I'll make me a different colored one to snuggle under. I love this pattern, it's taken me two weekends to make. Talk about instant gratification! This is 22 hexagons big.

The Bitch that Stole My Husband

2009-04-02T22:09:00.000-05:00

This picture is from yesterday, hubby took Kara out for a ride on his day off.

Here she's gazing adoringly at him (holding the camera) and ignoring me completely (standing behind her).

Yesterday was such a beautiful day, sunny and cool and yellow-green from all the grass and trees that are beginning to sprout to life again. It was Heaven-on-Earth. I went home on my lunch break and traded my car out for my motorcycle. Wish I had a picture of it but no one was home to take one. I rode it back to work and then left an hour early to pick my son up from school & talk to his new math teacher.

Things in the kid and school front are looking up. Still rocky but looking up nonetheless. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

My blanket is coming along more slowly, I haven't really had a chance to work on it this week. A little here and a little more there but not really a big chunk of time until knit night (tonight). I played hookey from work, came home & slept because I wasn't feeling well. My Mom stopped-by in the early evening, which is unheard of, and she brought me a whole truck load of compost for my new garden and some plastic coated chicken wire for my garden-in-progress. I had to shovel all the dirt out of her truck because her back is out (my dad loaded it with the front end loader on their farm in KY) and it was starting to rain. Then she was gone, just like that.

Hope everyone came through the storms ok. We missed you all at knit night. Maybe we can get together this Saturday instead?

Hexagon Blanket Update

2009-03-29T21:16:00.000-05:00

Look how pretty it is already, and this is just day two! I really needed an instant-gratification project because the 10-stitch blanket is knitting up soooo sloooow.

Tomorrow at work I will get to crochet more circles to attach to the blanket when I get home. This may end up being much bigger than I thought I would make it originally. I still have plenty of yarn, so we're good to go until Sherry opens back up on Tuesday.

Hope everyone had a good weekend, despite it turning cold again.

Guess What!

2009-03-29T09:03:00.000-05:00

I got CLEAR SNEAKS!!!!!!

I went to the Goodwill yesterday evening to look for some Summer clothes for the kids. Got nothing in that area, but I found FOUR pairs of shoes (under $10 each) for me and a skirt and top (under $5 each) and two books and a big dry erase board for the kids. Whoopee! One of the pairs of shoes is CLEAR SNEAKS and they were $6.00!!!!! Look how awesome these are! They are about half a size too large for me, but I have long toenails so they're just perfectly comfortable.

That's right, those are little red HEARTS on the bottom!!!!!!

Ok, well that's enough of THAT.

Here are some more pics from our Florida vacation. My laptop got terminally injured while we were out there so I couldn't blog any more, and I've been too lazy since I got back to catch up. Below is all of us in the Everglades. Some nice passer-by offered to take one of us. Doesn't it look like an African plain behind us? But no, all marshlands. It was one of the most amazing places I have ever been in my life.

Below is some of my beach knitting, the Ten-Stitch baby blanket that never ends. How pretty is that though? The day was perfectly sunny and warm but there was a cool relaxing breeze coming off the ocean. I slept (and sunburned) but it's all good today. That's also Keegan and PJ snorkeling. The water was absolutely stunning, clear and cool and beautiful.

And finally, below is the green thing we found in the water. It was huge, as you can see, and softer than a grape. It felt like it was filled with skooshy liquid insead of being firm like a grape is, but the skin (shell?) was the same as a grape would have been. It was softer than a grape and you could see light through it so I don't think it was any kind of egg because we couldn't see any THING reflected inside. There wasn't any kind of a stem though, so maybe it was an egg? If you know what it is, please leave a comment.

We found the thing & figured it didn't belong in the water so we brought it out. But after just a few minutes it looked like it was beginning to shrivel and dehydrate so we decided to toss it back into the water. PJ chucked it back in and within minutes, the kids had found the beautiful silver leaf ring also pictured down there! That's a moonstone set in the ring, moonstone is also known as "Opal of the Sea". So our new theory is that the green globe really WAS something's egg and we got treasure for giving it back.

There are more pictures, they'll have to wait for another day though because today I'm working on this:

It's the Hexagon blanket, you can find instructions on Ravelry. I'm making all the hexagons in the same color, because it's going to be a warm "real" blanket for my neice. Well, we THINK she's a girl. The ultrasound shows what they believe to be a girl but her heartbeat says she's a boy. So I guess I'm not sending it until I know for sure that she's a girl. I'm planning on lightly felting it and then lining it with either flannel or polar fleece. If she turns out to be a boy, I'll make her one in primary colors & either keep this for myself or give it to someone else who's having a girl. She's due the end of next month, so she won't really need a warm blanket until this winter. Her receiving blanket (the 10-stitch above) should be fine until then.

Florida Vacation, part 2 (Saturday the 14th)

2009-03-18T21:12:00.000-05:00

We had a good time Saturday, the kids immediately went swimming in Gramma's lake behind the condo. Actually, they were losing their nerve on the end of the diving board and so I took action and shoved Kieffer in. You can't tell from the picture, but he was making an unearthly squeal of fright because there were little baby turtles swimming around... and you KNOW how many turtles kill people in Florida every year.

After dusk, we went on a walk with Gramma and her new dog Lizzie (Pronounced more like Leesie in Gramma's heavy Colombian accent) and there was a car show two blocks away on Main Street. Here's a picture of my favorite custom paint job. Unfortunately our camera died before I could get a picture of my all time favorite vehicle, the VW Van!

Gramma Marta has NEVER had a pet before in her whole life, so she's really silly about Lizzie. I wish I could post videos of her singing silly Colombian love songs to the dog!

Florida Vacation, part 1

2009-03-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

We left Nashville a little after 12 in the afternoon on Friday the 13th. We drove until about midnight, reaching Florida and then getting the first overpriced motel we found with a vacancy. It was awful, but we were thankfully only there long enough to nap. Here's the only two pictures I can share from that night. Nothing naughty to hide, just a LOT of internet problems since we got here and I don't want to spend the entire rest of my vacation coaxing pictures onto photobucket.

Here's a random shot we took into the backseat, and we caught Kieffer with his mouth open. I am fond of this one, it makes me smile every time I see it. :)

Here's a nifty one PJ took of the road on the way down. He kept the lens open for a long time and set the camera on the dash of the car so the vibrations from the road make the lights look really spectacular!

I love my husband...

2009-03-11T18:51:00.000-05:00

So I'm checking-out this awesome new book I've found because of Ravelry, and I'm telling my DH about the neat projects in it and I tell him the title, "New Style of Heirloom Knitting" and he says; "Sure, but do you already have an air loom?"

*sigh*

They did... WHAT?

2008-12-10T20:43:00.000-06:00

My DH had to spend this past weekend in the hospital, some kind of horrible stomach thing. That was bad enough. He's feeling better now, but we were really worried for a while there. He called me at work and I had to take him to the ER where we languished for hours while any number of tests were done to him. The truly terrible part of it, though, was the audacity of TWO hospital employees while we were there.

My DH is a manager of a local video game store. He loves his job, guys, I won't lie. But when a man is writhing in pain in a hospital bed, barely able to speak his own name, its NOT the time to ask him if he carries that game you've been wanting. It's NOT the time to ask him how much that PS3 or X-Box 360 you've been wanting costs. It's NOT the time to talk about your kids' wish lists or ask if you can get a discount if he lives!!!!!

We didn't go to some backwoods, lantern-toting McHospital in the middle of a goat field, we went to shiny new Summit! We get admitted into the ER and someone came back to check him in & get verifiable info on his insurance & employment. That's where it started. The young lady who was taking his info was nearly ecstatic upon finding out where he worked and proceeded to joke and talk about games, even commenting on how inappropriate it was for her to be talking like that! I can be a evil bitch from Hell at the drop of a hat but even I know better than to rip this woman's skin off her face BEFORE they've fixed my husband! So I have to choke back my instincts and get through it. But then as we're leaving we're cornered again. "So YOU'RE the Game-store guy! We've been talkin' 'bout you, up here. Y'all got any Wii systems?"

Y'know those little round holes cut into the plexiglass at banks, well there was nearly a hospital employee jerked through one of those at the hospital Sunday evening.

Logically, I know they are emotionally distant from the ER stuff that goes on around them every night... but I want to physically harm them nonetheless. You wanna smalltalk about game systems, do it when you're not at work. A really good time would be AFTER YOU FIX MY HUSBAND AND HE GETS BACK TO WORK!

Obviously there are rules against what happened to us, or the one lady wouldn't have joked about breaking them. But wouldn't someone wonder WHY those rules were in place? Is there an entire generation of people in this country who are missing their empathy gene? Their common sense? I'm just disgusted. I hope I'm there to see one of those two show up at his store, I will pee in their cars.

As a happy note to end this blog on, here is a marigold-eating piglet whom I had the pleasure of pig-sitting for several days before my Dad was able to pick him up & take him to my Mom. His name is Malcolm and he's just 3 months old in this pig-ture!

There's No Place Like Home

2008-11-29T23:37:00.000-06:00

We had a lovely holiday. I'm thankful for so many things, but mostly I'd say for my family and the abundant love they bring into my life. And by family, I mean the ones I was blessed with by blood AND the ones I've been blessed with by choice in the way of friends.

And a special "THANK YOU!" to Grant, who gifted us with a new (to us) computer when he got his new-new computer. Thanks, Dude. You don't know what it means to me to not have to rely on Sluggy, my old laptop, any more. I'm going to have the kids come into your store and do special interpretive dances for you to show our appreciation and gratitude. Did you realize how awesome this machine was when you just GAVE it to us? Wow, you blow me away.

Both my pregnant sisters, by the way, are having girls. The good sister is naming hers Regan and she will be rewarded with many hand-knit treasures. The bad sister is getting coal. Good sister is due April 20th. Bad sister? Who knows for sure, she's sure not sharing with ME! Coal, I tell 'ya! I might THROW the coal at her too! Good sister is VERY good this year! Bad sister is working on some kind of new record for badness. :(

I'm off to knit more on my Monkeys. Mom will be in town tomorrow to spend the night. I'm not doing anything to the house, if it's clean enough for my babies and my friends it's clean enough for Mom too. More time for knitting!

Oh, and one more thing. We've got this GREAT Buck Stove wood heater in the "man room" basement of our house. We've maybe spent $30 on wood so far this year, but one burn will keep our whole house at about 74 degrees Fahrenheit for between four and six hours. It took us a little playing to get the hang of it but this stove has got to be the most kick-ass part of our already totally awesome house. I'm SO thankful that we get to live here with our kids. There's no place like home...

Adolescent-Male Yarn Snobbery

2008-11-19T18:45:00.000-06:00

Monday night, I taught three pre-teen boys to knit. Actually, to purl. Their request, I assure you this wasn't a method of emotional terrorism on my part. One wanted to learn and it snowballed from there. Monday night they didn't want to stop knitting to go to bed. Tuesday morning they ALL got up & ready for school in record time so they'd have time to knit before the bus came. Keep in mind, they all get up at separate times, never see each other in the mornings. All three independently complained about the way the acrylic felt on their needles.

After I got off work, we went & got needles & 100% wool yarn for each of them and they started their first projects, scarves! Thankfully, I have the BEST LYS in the whole world, because she stayed open for me after I explained about the yarn snobs I've accidentally raised.

Above is the youngest with his scarf in Cascade 220, that's about an hour's work done Tuesday night after dinner. He just turned 10.

Below is my first lace sock, Monkey. I started this last Thursday, the 13th, at Knit Club. I love this pattern! Unfortunately, the sock is too large around the ankles and I didn't realize this until I got nearly TO the ankle part so I've got to rip it all back. A week's worth of stolen knitting minutes and lost sleep. See below, it looks relatively normal along my leg and the cuff fits just the way I like it, not tight but just enough to stay up.

But when you pull it down just a little bit, you realize that it's made for cankles. My ankle gets slimmer and the sock stays calf-width. I know I'm a slack-knitter, but this is WAY too large to be able to "fudge" it and keep going. See what I mean below?

This has become my sock of broken dreams. I've got a couple of sweaters waiting for minor adjustments, so it seems wrong to rip the socks back first when they've been languishing for so long. I'm going to compromise by ripping & re-starting these socks tonight, and then taking my Tangled Yoke sweater to knit night tomorrow night and working on my button band. Peer pressure, don't fail me now!

This ripping is going to require some wine... and some whine...

Proof I DO Finish... what was I saying?

2008-11-12T21:12:00.000-06:00

So really, I HAVE been busy. Knitting, anyway. I have actually finished some projects for myself and my children in time for us to get some use out of them this winter. Unfortunately, my Tangled Yoke Cardigan is just a buttonband away from being one of those finished projects.

I finished a hat for Keegan. It's bright red so there's a slim possibility that he won't lose it as quickly as he does other items of clothing he takes outside when he's playing. Cascade 220. He loves it, says it doesn't make his head itchy to wear at all. It's lovely & I've squeezed it to death while making it. Something about the K2 P2 rib makes it so puffy and satisfying to cuddle. I love Cascade! Plus, he snuggled me the whole time I was knitting it, asking questions and being really interested.

I've also made myself a lovely hat out of an entire skein of Noro Kureyon. I feel like a gay sunset wearing it. Hubby says it's colorful and it suits me. I love it madly! I love him madly too!!

I have 4 squares (makes one block when assembled) done of my sister Gwen's baby blanket. I'll need 4 blocks to make the baby blanket. These really go quickly, once you get to making them. I can turn one out a weekday (knitting on my breaks & before bed) but I've had to divert my attentions to making warm things for the family since winter is upon us.

The blanket squares are made of Berroco Comfort, worsted weight, and they're a pale buttery yellow. I've said it before, perhaps not on this blog, but this yarn is so delightful I just can't begin to explain it with mere words. I made my neice a pinwheel cardigan out of it and it took all my strength to turn it over to her when I was done. She's two... it's not like I was going to wear it. It's just THAT soft and wonderful. Just go buy yourself a skein and make something, you won't regret it.

The Cherry Tart hat below is also for Gwen's baby and also in Berroco Comfort, worsted weight. I haven't tacked-up the "crust" edges or you'd be able to see the bottom of the hat. Gawd, but it's cute! It's small too, so hopefully the little nibbler will be born without her Father's fat head & she'll be able to wear it for a few days. (I love you, Lua! You know I'm just kidding about the fat head. I haven't been able to tease you in SO long!)

Below are three of my wash cloths. I've got an addiction, I'm just admitting it right up front. A friend made me a dish cloth just like it. I refused to use it for the LONGEST time because it was just so beautiful (and you're NOT supposed to do that with precious handknits!) but she got mad at me so I decided it would be more of a travesty to use it than to alienate the giver of knitted goodness.

Turns out the damned thing is the best at everything. I've used it until it's nearly colorless. I've machine washed & dried it umpteen times. It's what I reach for no matter what I need to do in the kitchen. Ok, so she sold me on it there. Then another friend made me a face cloth in pinks in a different pattern. Hubby came down with a fever and insisted that he liked her wash cloth the best for over his forehead. Since then it's become the coveted wash cloth and no matter where I hide it, it disappears. The dratted kids won't even use the other wash cloths, they'll go hunting for that one. *mutter*

I've tried a few different patterns, but it seems I prefer to make the one shown below because of all the nifty little holes along the sides. And maybe a LITTLE bit because it's mindless knitting that can go anywhere without having to worry about a pattern. It's easy to hang on hooks in the kitchen if you're using it as a dish rag. It's easy to hang on the shower rack hooks in the bathroom, it's easy to hang EVERYWHERE. They are indestructible, those little ridges are amazing for scrubbing glass, pots and pans, and delicate faces. Don't ask me how that works, just go try one for yourself. Super-simple to make & perfect for every occasion. I've got two miles of cotton yarn in all my favorite colors. Both my pregnant sisters are getting a pile of these in with their baby-goodies.

There are other things I've made, but can't get pictures of right now due to them being in an inaccessible location (school locker) at the moment when my camera gear & computer are both at hand & cooperating with one another. Hopefully I'll get the chance to blog with more pictures of knitted goodies before this time next year.

Wow, where have I been?

2008-02-01T06:57:00.000-06:00

I've been lurking everywhere since my last post, more interested in my knitting projects than in writing about them or being social. Och, I'm a bad girl! Loads of family stuff has been going on. I get too complacent in my happy life and I don't wanna write or even be anywhere near the computer!

Since I last blogged, we've had all the good winter holidays! I managed to make my Mom (the Knitting Enabler) a pair of slipper-socks to match her Smitten Mittens. I made my beautiful little sister a scarf in her specifications (peach and looooooong!). She can wrap it once around her neck and it nearly touches the ground on both sides anyway. She was delighted but I barely finished it in time and never got a picture of it. Mom promised to get one, but hasn't come through with it yet. I also made little sister the Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet and Dad a pair of black & red elf-toe slippers to wear around the house. I was going to make him a lap blanket but didn't have time with all the other stuff I was making.

My Gramma Anne sent a care package with eight balls of BEAUTIFUL yarn for me. I have been in yarn heaven since then. With one of the sets of yarn I'm making my very first custom pattern! I'm excited about it, too. I'm making a dog sweater for my schnauzer, Pixie. I haven't had a terribly lot of knitting time this January, unfortunately, but I'm trying to squeeze some in here and there. I would love to be able to send my Gramma some pictures of what I'm making with the yarns she sent. I'm also trying to squeeze-in reading time because I bought myself some great new books too. Oh, if only the hubby was rich and I could stay at home & knit all the time instead of having to work. :) Don't we all wish that though?

I will come back here & post pictures of the slippers I made for Mom & the socks I made for Dad. Maybe even the capelet I made for little sister too. I need to fuss at Mom for not sending me pictures since it's been months since they got their items! Bad Mommy!!

My sock is still on-hold. My first lace scarf is still on hold. And my cardigan remains one-armed & without it's finishing crochet trim along the bottom hem. Sadly, for all of those... I am not going to pick them up again until I have this dog sweater completed! I'm hoping I have enough of the beautiful yarn left to make myself some arm warming fingerless gloves and maybe a hat. We'll have to see. I don't want my Gramma to think I didn't like the yarn and wasted it all on the dog. I don't know if she would think that, but I fear she might be slightly insulted. :(

That's all for now, gotta go to work & make my stash-fund for the day. Next weekend Hubby & I are going to Hopkinsville for a day-trip. We're going to a museum that has a display on Edgar Cayce and we might get to see his grave too, but the point of the trip is - we're going to donate a brand new X-box 360 and a brand new television set (and maybe a rolling cart too) to a hospital in the area - for the kids who are staying there. We haven't decided on which hospital yet, but that's the plan. I'll post pictures & info when we know more ourselves. My hubby was in the hospital a couple of times when he was a kid (for some pretty serious things) and he remembers sharing their game system with the other kids who were there. I have a fabulous husband, even though I like to tease him about being yarn-cheap.

Aargh!

2007-10-30T06:50:00.001-05:00

Found a mistake that requires ripping out a whole row to repair or my pattern count will be incorrect. Discovered it at work at the end of my lunch break so there was no way to correct it. Needless to say, I was discouraged and distracted the rest of the day. Hubby called me toward the end of the day & noticed I was distracted. He intuitively knew it was knitting-related and not work-related and teased me mercilessly. Wretched hubby!

After work I had to get out a cloak I started years ago and figure out where I'd stopped. He's got to have it for tomorrow, so it looks like TWO days in a row I won't have time for knitting. Thankfully all I have to do is attach two (already cut) sleeves to the existing finished cloak and let out the hem to fit him and viola! Simple enough, maybe if I hurry through it I'll have knitting time. In theory, anyway.

This has to constitute spousal abuse, right? I'm pretty sure of it.

How am I supposed to concentrate on my JOB when my knitting has a found-error in it?

GAH!

In happier news: The baby blanket was received warmly at the baby shower. My girlfriend says it was the only hand-made item that her friend had ever gotten for any of her children and she absolutely loved it. Girlfriend said the lady was actually teary-eyed over it! And what's more, it happened to be the exact color pink of the car seat that she picked out and so it matched perfectly. I suppose that makes it easier to give up the blanket. Not that I needed it or anything since I'm not having any more kids and I don't have girls and it would have been completely useless to me in any other application... but I treasured it and it was snuggly and warm and beautiful and I couldn't keep my own hands off it. I was sad to see it go, but very glad that it appears it will be cherished by its' recipient. I hope it keeps her little girl very warm and wrapped in love this winter.

Knitted and Lined Baby Blanket

2007-10-26T06:53:00.000-05:00

My friend from work requested a baby blanket for a baby shower that's coming-up this Sunday. She picked a lovely soft acrylic yarn from Hobby Lobby with loads of soft girly pastel colors in it. In my opinion it is much too hairy a yarn for a baby, even though it's so soft to the touch that it's like a whisper. I quickly completed the knitting and decided to line it with flannel both for extra warmth this winter and to keep the little one away from all that nasty "hair". I got a really good deal on the flannel from JoAnn's in two colors of pink with tons of little hearts all over it!

Unfortunately, the floofy hairy yarn won't work under my sewing machine so I had to blind-stitch the backing on and then I had to hand sew a seam around the border to keep it in the proper shape. That's TWO hand sewn seams! I am a great embroiderer but a terrible seam maker so I wasn't too pleased with the way the second seam turned-out (although my first one, the blind stitched seam, turned-out flawlessly if I do say so myself).

The blanket is so wonderful and warm, I'm sure that it'll be treasured and used often. In fact, I wish I had a larger one for myself. Hubby is a large fella so he doesn't like warm things on the bed even in the middle of the frostiest weather. I, on the other hand, don't like when the temp drops below 70F. *sigh*

I think I will make a double knitted lap blanket for my Dad for Yule and line it with either flannel or fleece, and make him a pocket at the bottom for his feet to slip into. That way he can snuggle-up in his recliner in front of the tv in the evenings and keep toasty warm no matter how cold their old farm house gets. I don't make many things for my Dad, so that might be a nice way to show him that I haven't forgotten about him this holiday. Everything I make usually is for myself or my Mum, like the mittens & socks I just knitted for her birthday on the 12th.

I also need to get on the ball now that cold weather is here and make mittens & hats & scarves for all my boys! In my head (despite the time constraints) I have planned to have a whole box full of warm things for the kids to grab before going outside this winter. But here it is winter and I haven't made anything for them yet!

If I can manage it, this weekend will be for finishing my cardigan and frogging the one toe-up sock that I know I'll NEVER make a mate to and preparing to get into some of my planned winter projects because the cold weather is definitely here already and I'm unprepared as per usual. *sigh* Added to that, I've got that fabulous Kingfisher cape that I've got to FINISH before I'm going to allow myself to get into all the new projects that are on my to-do list!

I carry my knitting everywhere with me, but I rarely get a free minute to work on anything with my hectic schedule and my internet addiction. I keep telling Hubby to get a more lucrative job so I can knit more, but he doesn't see the humor I'm afraid. :)

I'm off to work!

Knittervention

2007-10-22T22:56:00.000-05:00

WH (Wretched Hubby) has just informed me that if I don't watch out, he's going to have an knitting intervention for me. Our roommate agrees.

Anyone want to buy a husband? He's house-trained, he holds a job, he's very good looking... but he's a knitting-hater. I'll consider swapping him for some good stash yarns, send offers to Avversiera in Ravelry.

*sniffle*

He won't let me take my new Aktion (limited edition) sock yarn into our bedroom to stroke and daydream about on my way to slumberland. He says that's taking it TOO FAR.

He actually took my beloved new Aktion yarn hostage earlier today in order to secure dinner for himself! As if he didn't get dinner EVERY SINGLE night without taking my precious stash hostage!

He hid it from me in the cleaning supply closet, but I outsmarted him. I found it right away. Silly man. If he hadn't wanted me to find it he should have hid it in the washing machine or behind his XBox 360.

He won't let me knit when we go out to eat. He won't let me knit in movie theaters. He won't let me knit while riding in the car. He won't let me knit in the bedroom, even when he's not in it!

*sniffle sniffle*

Now the Evil Roommate (ER) is siding with the WH and the UC (Ungrateful Children).

Has any other knitter ever been so abused and mistreated?

This all began directly after my latest meeting of the Small Business Support Group (I hit a sale at my LYS). I have the meanest husband in the South.

Seams and Joining

2007-10-22T19:33:00.000-05:00

Am I the only knitter who truly loves the kitchener stitch and seaming my garments together when they're finished? I've heard a few people mention that they like the finishing process, or that they're not terribly opposed to it at least, but I love it. I mean, I REALLY LOVE it! Everything's done and you finally get to wear your masterpiece - or what you've finished at least. That is possibly the best part for me.

Granted, I'm not the most experienced kitchener-er in the world or anything. I've seamed together a little girl's A-line dress for my niece (I need to get pictures of it up on my Ravelry site already), I kitchenered a few sock toes and seamed half my cardi but I tell you, I loved that part best of all. Even better than the delightful blissful knitting that preceded it. In fact, I may possibly only knit so I get the chance to seam afterwards. How silly is that? I'll have to consider it more in-depth and get some more knitting under my belt before I decide to make that my official proclamation or anything.

I'm a third of the way through my potentially beautiful Kingfisher cape and there are no seams to look forward to. Already I'm dreaming of what I'll start on next, when this is done. I want to do some more socks, on eensy beensy little needles, but I also want something I can seam together when it's all said and done. I'm thinking of putting my cape on hold and working some more on the last sleeve of my cardi so I can wear it now that it's getting chilly and Fall-like weather-wise. Hubby is going to laugh at me because I can't decide what I'm doing from one day to the next, but I don't care.

Speaking of the wretched Hubby, he's taken my sock yarn hostage. That's right. I came home to a ransom note on the computer. It said something to the effect of "Bring the husband something good to eat at work or you'll never see your beloved sock yarn again." Sure enough, the empty bag was pinned to the top of the computer desk under our digi-cam. He's closing tonight, working until 9:45 or so. I'm debating whether I'll grease the front steps or actually take him something to eat... Maybe both. I can't risk debilitating him before I have my precious back in my hands. *mutter*

He goes out of town Wednesday morning, making the trek down to Ft. Benning in GA to see his brother Bobby graduate from boot camp or whatever military thing Bobby's been doing this time around. I've already made plans to meet my friend Bonny at the yarn store for emergency supplies Wednesday after work. :) By the time he comes home from his trip it'll be too late to return my purchases; they'll already be secreted away in a safe place. That'll teach him a lesson or two about holding my precious yarns hostage! Dirty thieving savage.

Never again

2007-10-22T19:30:00.001-05:00

I hate cub scouts. I hate being an assistant leader. I hate leading the pack when the leader is away. I will never EVER EVER repeat this evening again - not in my memories or in real life.

Never.

Ever.

Not for love or money.

That is all.

Body & Back done

2007-10-21T11:16:00.000-05:00

It doesn't look like much, I was expecting it to be a little larger by now, but I got through my first little ball of the cashmere blend and I finished the back & neck part of the cape.

My first impression of this yarn is - it's fantastic! I love the double-knit part of the selvage stitches on either side of the yoke, it's soft and cushy. I want a whole blanket of simple double-knit in this cashmere. Maybe the Knitting-Enabler will obtain some more of this luscious stuff for me in the future so I can make myself one. (hint hint)

In just a few minutes I'm going to start on the body & lace part. I wish I could throw this over my shoulders right now and try it on, but it's on a very short 24" circular so that's not working really well for me just yet.

I CAN'T WAIT!!!

If only DH would get a better job so we could afford a maid and I could just knit all weekend and not worry about laundry and cleaning. *sigh*

Cinderella's Kingfisher Cape

2007-10-20T14:11:00.000-05:00

Two days ago I re-CO for Cinderella's Kingfisher Cape, pattern by Huan-Hua Chye. The picture above was from the first CO which I subsequently frogged to re-CO in a more satisfying manner. Nothing but perfection will do, y'know! See my nifty Tamagochi stitch markers?

http://www.purlescence.co.uk/item--Cinderella-s-kingfisher-cape--patt_story_cind_cape.html

I found this pattern during a online search for some random thing I'd seen in the past but not favorited and was unable to find again. Providence, my friend, because I found this pattern instead and WOW it's more fantastic than the one I was looking for originally. What a beautiful story, what an amazing pattern. I definitely have designer's envy. Of course, I'm a new knitter - not even a designer at all - but I still have the envy. :)

Guess what? The designer is on Ravelry and she's totally sweet! We've talked several times and I tell you, I couldn't be more star-struck from meeting Hillary Clinton than I was to talk to this lady. Of course Hillary doesn't knit that I know of so I probably wouldn't be all that impressed with her anyway.

I showed my Mum (the knitting enabler) this pattern and told her what yarns I'd scoped-out for it online. How I was going to have to save-up for them. How I couldn't wait to have it on my needles. She said my colors were fantastic, then went out and got me some more random yarn that she fell in love with that had nothing to do with this pattern. Her yarns are a beautiful cashmere blend, ten balls in a dark charcoal grey and three or four in black as accents. Once again, my Mum is somewhat psychic. The yarn she chose is exactly the right weight/ texture/ size/ whatever to give me gauge in this capelet pattern! Plus, it has the added benefit of being a more useful color than what I'd chosen. In other words, it's perfect. I'll be able to wear this all the time and I'm thinking it will be just as beautiful in grey and black as it is in royal blue and gold. I'm going to look for some jet frog-buttons when I'm done knitting the masterpiece.

The Enabler is psychic. I've said it before (more often when I was young and trying to sneak out of the house) and I continue saying it to this day. Somehow the woman has the uncanny ability to provide me with EXACTLY what I need, when I need it.

All my other projects have been put on hold. Even the baby blanket that has to be done by next Monday for the baby shower. Even the cardigan with one sleeve missing that I've been working on for nearly a year now. Even the lovely socks I so desperately begged DH for the yarn for...

DH made a joke last night that for Samhain (Halloween) I should be a UFO and dress in all the things I haven't finished yet. The one-sleeved cardi, the one sock, the half a hat, the one mitten. I'll be WIP-girl.

I wonder how many men actually get maimed by knitting needles every year. Oh, but then again I treasure all my needles so I'd really have to use something else to harm him, like the Waterford crystal glasses we got for a wedding present that are completely useless for knitting. Yeah, I'll use those.

Now that I think about it, I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with that man knowing all the knitting lingo and using it to mock me! In fact, I think I'm mad! And to think, last night we went out to Chuck E. Cheese with our youngest son to celebrate his EXCELLENT report card and I only knitted for a few minutes. The rest of the time we played alien-shooting games. HOURS of precious knitting time wasted by flame-throwering innocent aliens and pumping grenades and ammo into them when I could be a third of the way closer to done with my precious cashmere cape instead! Only to have him mock me with my own slang later that evening. There has never been a more hateful or treacherous man alive.

That does it, for Christmas I'm going to knit him half a pair of socks.

Requiem

2007-10-07T22:12:00.000-05:00

This weekend was and wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I cried my eyes out, but I wasn't expecting the camaraderie and fellowship to be more powerful than the majority of the sadness. I have been to several funerals of people I have been close to and close family with, but they were all older people - not new babies. My niece was about to be six months old. It's not like losing Gramma at a ripe old age, it's indescribable pain and loss.

I'm known for my inappropriate humor at the worst of times. I'm one of those people who cope with pain by laughing when it's possible. I tried my best to STFU during the funeral but my mouth overcame my better judgement and I started cracking (small) jokes with my sister after the preacher stopped his blathering. If there was only one good outcome of me going into debt to get out there, it was that I was able to lighten Gwen's and Jonathan's load for a couple of days. I'm grateful I was given that opportunity. The whole story of me getting out there and back is... special. I'll share.

I took the Greyhound bus from Nashville to Knoxville, with no small amount of trepidation I might add. Prior to this trip the only experiences I'd had with them was from picking Lua up there a couple of times and those weren't pretty experiences. I was prepared for the worst the criminally-toothless had to offer. My boss dropped me off out there, in my work finery, and I miraculously wasn't accosted or mauled by the scary hobos there. In fact, I found one older lady who was a knitter and I spent my hour of waiting-time until departure talking-shop with her and her husband. DH told me the best spot was near the back of the bus so that's where I settled - about three rows up from the latrine. Later, I discovered that was a HORRIBLE idea and I vowed to ride in the front seat on the way back. Pheeeewwweeee!

I had an interesting seat-mate for the first leg of the journey. His name was Jimmy. He was wearing a lovely blue "scrubs" top and some new blue jeans. He had a scary scull tattoo on his arm and I naively commented on it after a couple of minutes. Turns out he got it in prison (gulp). Even more special, he had just gotten out of prison and was on his way to his parents'. His SECOND time in prison. First was a 10-year stint for murder, from which he was released early and the subsequent term was shortly thereafter for a parole violation from drugs that sent him back to serve the last three years of his sentence. I was a little frightened but since he seemed friendly I spoke freely with him for the remainder of the ride.

I learned a couple of interesting things. 1) Anal raping is more of a hollywood and news rumor than it is a reality. According to Jimmy, anyway. 2) Prison is much worse on the folks who miss you than it is on the inmates. He said it wasn't so bad being in even though it's not a storybook existence either. 3) Jimmy agreed with my opinion that it's not a real punishment for criminals or a deterrent for anyone who's committed to breaking the law. He assured me that jail is much more harsh than any of the prisons he was ever in. After lengthy discussion (we had nearly two hours) we decided that unless you're sentenced to die (and you should be killed quickly, not left to leech off the government teat for decades) then you should be sentenced to hard dangerous labor until such time as you die or are released. Like the salt or coal mines...

Upon reaching Knoxville, I wandered around getting my bearings and looking for Lua, who was NOT there to pick me up. I was disappointed and grouchy and not a little bit hungry. No food was close outside of the tiny and questionable establishment inside the station. More toothless and unfriendly people were waiting there than were in Nashville. I quickly found the smoking "hole" outside where it promptly began raining. I discovered that everyone was grouchy because Greyhound had overbooked and some of them had been there over 24 hours with no hope of leaving before that same time the next day. All of a sudden I understood the grouchiness and that made it much more bearable. Sure, I was potentially abandoned in Knoxville while my forgetful twin did other things, but I at least had a way out whereas most of those folks were just stuck - broke and hungry and uncomfortable. Ouch.

A nice man came and began a conversation with my glum self while I was in the smoking hole. His name was Don. He eeked the first smile out of me and it was uphill from there. He told me he had just graduated from Seminary school and was on his way somewhere when he got stuck here. He'd been without his heart medicines for going-on five days at that point and was completely broke and starving. My discomfort paled in the face of his misfortune and his good spirits despite everything that was happening to him.

I commented on a lovely turquoise ring he was wearing and he told me the story of how it came to be his. This led to him showing me something he had created himself and the amusing and interesting things he'd used for its construction. It's a jewelry box made from folded bits of small chips bags. It's absolutely amazingly constructed, but it's also obvious that he either learned the skill at camp or in prison. Lets not kid ourselves, I knew immediately it was a prison-skill. *sigh* He'd done seventeen years in Arizona for murder, where he'd subsequently developed his heart condition. He was Italian, Don something. I wish I remembered his name, because he was a lovely person. I gave him nearly all the food I had on me. Mostly granola bars and cheese & peanut butter crackers.

I hope he got where he was going without further strain on his heart. He gave me the jewelry box I admired so much. It will forever remain one of my most treasured possessions. Especially since it took him 50 hours to make and he gave it to me for nothing but a smile and some conversation. God and Goddess bless you, my friend, wherever you are tonight.

The funeral the next day was funerial. I stayed with Gwen afterward, much to Lua's dismay, because he wanted to take me around to show me all his friends. Gwen needed me though, so there wasn't any contest. She and Jonathan, her husband, drove me to the bus stop in Knoxville the next afternoon. Unfortunately, none of us remembered the time change so I missed my bus. They waited with me, afraid to leave me lest I get stuck there all night on an overbooked error like the people I'd originated with. I did make the midnight bus, so that was lovely, but I was savagely tired. The bus was overfull so I had another seat-mate. This one was named Juan and he was a Mexican seasonal laborer who'd been coming over here for years every fall to work tobacco. He gave me his pillow to use because my head kept knocking into the glass window and he felt sorry for me. I may have drooled on it once... I'm terribly sorry for that, Juan. And wherever you are now, I hope the God and Goddess are smiling favorably on you as well.

It's late and I'm tired from recounting all my shortcomings and my couple of brief successes. I'll post pictures when I've got some charity work done, and when I can add a picture of Don's beautiful jewelry box.

Smitten Mittens

2007-10-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

I have a funeral to attend in NC this weekend. Today, as a matter of fact. Tuesday evening I made an emergency stop at the Stitchin' Post in Nashville for a yarn project. Mrs. Pat who runs the store was out of town and had left her wonderful husband Mike there and he was kind enough to rush through the store with me (seconds before closing-time) helping me select yarns and needles for a knitting pattern I hadn't even decided on yet. Knitters will understand how that works but non-knitters just think we're screwy. Mr. Mike, as a well-conditioned longtime crafter's husband, was more than patient with me and I got some lovely Patons 100% Merino wool in a color called Peacock. I'm smitten with it, it's beyond beautiful.

I had originally thought it would end-up as slipper-socks for my Patient Mum (PM) but I couldn't find a project that suited me so it has become Peacock Smittens instead. I chose a simple pattern from my new Weekend Knitting book and have edited it slightly to be longer up the arms and convertible. I made them in the largest size because Mum's hands are a little bigger than mine but I'm using a smaller gauge yarn than recommended. I figure if the mittens are a bit too large then I'll lightly felt them which will make them even warmer for Mum.

I also got three skeins of yarn when only one would have sufficed, because KerstinGermany from Ravelry has a NIFTY hooded-scarf design that I'm anxious to try-out.

I knitted for an hour at the Greyhound bus station. I knitted for the four-hour bus trip. I even knitted after we got to my twin, Lua's, house. (Lua is a boy, it's his nickname, his real name is William. My nickname is Lahlah. We don't ask why in this family... we just answer to what we're called.) I've got the first Smitten nearly completed and took some pictures. After the funeral I'll knit some more and maybe I'll have one entire Smitten to go with my one sock and my cardigan that's all done except for the one sleeve...

Does this seem like an unfortunate theme I've got going on?

Anyway, the Smittens are for my Mum, who is blonde and is going to look exquisite in this color. I can't wait to give them to her for her birthday next week! I've got some serious knitting to do between now and then. Bless her heart, she asked for house slippers to keep her tootsies warm this winter and I've gone and deviated into mittens and a hooded scarf. I'm a bad daughter. I'll blame it on Lua and Greyhound! And Mrs. Pat at the Stitchin' Post who went on vacation when I needed her most!