WEEK 43

 Summer is showing it's head here in Arizona.  Our temps are flirting with 100F!  I finally had to turn on our A/C this week. *sigh*  My shorts have appeared in my daily wear.  I have put my sweaters, long pants and long sleeved shirts into hibernation for the next 6 months. 

My knitting took a bit of a hit this week.  I was busy with helping family and friends out.  That means I was away from home quite a bit and even though my knitting traveled with me, it was not picked up as often as it would have been if I had been at home.

Here is what progress I have made on the Wrap Me Easy shawl.

The progress keeper shows where I was.  The third skein of yarn is in use and that will be the last skein for this project.  The rows are super long now so that skein is getting used rapidly.  I am hoping to be completed with this by next week.

The Gnome MKAL started on Thursday with clue one.  My knitting of the first clue did not commence until yesterday.  I still have part of clue one to do and clue 2 came out yesterday also.  It is printed and waiting for me.  The last part of clue one is casting on with a crochet provisional cast on.  So, most of you are thinking 'no big deal'.  Well it is for me.  I crochet left handed and knit right handed!  Trying to hold a crochet hook in my right hand and make it move is not going well at all.  Since my house is quiet this morning, I am going to sit infront of my computer and try it again in slow motion.  I will accomplish this task yet.  Not to mention it will add to another knitting skill to my repertoire. 

Here are the colors I am using for this MKAL.  I will not be showing the gnome in progress as it is a mystery and I do not want to give anything away in case someone making it is not to the point I am.  I will say, the first 2 pieces I made do not make any sense to me......yet.  

So that wraps up my crafting this week.

Yesterday, I reorganized my baking shelf in my pantry.

Since I bake bread weekly I need my ingredients handy.  I also got back into making our ice cream and working with my sourdough.  Everyone in my family knows this shelf is for nothing other than baking supplies.  I trained them well. There were a few items that ended up in the trash can and other things I found where I had more than one container of them.  That all got decluttered and put together.

I also got out into our backroom (the work room) and got 2 of our wire racks organized and decluttered.  Gosh, it feels good to accomplish that.  

Today I am finishing up some laundry that didn't get done because of other commitments this past week. There will also be a loaf of bread baked. I also finished up vacuum sealing the meat we bought at the grocery on Friday.  We have a stand alone ice make and we have that going today too.  With the temperatures going up, we are using more ice in our beverages to keep them cool. The indoor plants need some water too.  Hopefully, with doing all these little mundane things today, I will be able to just kick back tomorrow and work on the shawl and Gnome.

I made ice cream yesterday which we will have for desert tonight.  I have a Ninja Creami and it makes just enough ice cream for two people to share.  Love it!  

While taking care of my BFF's dogs, I saw this in her front yard as I was leaving.

Hopefully mom and her ducklings are all ok.  The reason I was taking care of dogs is, there was a coyote walking down her street as she was leaving for work.  So, she locked up her doggy door so they couldn't get out.  Me, being the good friend I am, went to give them a potty break.  But, the ducks were the highlight of my day!

Oh, when we went grocery shopping, they were giving out samples of wine!  I am always on the look out for a tasty wine to sip in the evenings.  Well, there was one there I fell in love with.

What a funny name for a wine brand.  This is a Pinot Noir.  I am not a big red fan but this one was so smooth and ended with a little sweet flavor.  I am all about sweet!

That my friends is all I can think of right now.  We have not started on the backyard yet.  Hubby tried to slice the end of his finger off last weekend, so we are letting it heal before we dive into it.

Here is your chuckle for the day................

Until Next Time.....................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 42

 

Here I am again.  Not much in the way of crafting this week

Still working on the Wrap Me Up shawl.  The blue dots are where I was last week.  I have used one skein of yarn and am half way through the second skein.  I have one more skein to use to complete this shawl.  So, plan on seeing it again next week and possibly again the week after that.

That is all I did.  Our weather has been gorgeous this week so hubby and I have been out and about getting our backyard ready for pool season.  We found a cantilever umbrella to use for shade so I can cook outdoors in the summertime.

This should offer plenty of shade and since I can tilt it all sorts of directions, will make it darn near perfect.  It was delivered yesterday.  We still need to put it together.  That should happen this week.  We have pathway lights to install in the front yard too.  We did manage to get our outdoor rolling cart put together.  It holds our Ninja Woodfire Grill and Ninja Woodfire Oven.  So, no all our outdoor cooking appliances are on wheels.  I am so looking forward to cooking outdoors more this year.  Helps keep our house cool inside when the heat gets up to 100+F.

And, that is all of the news from Arizona.  Here are photos of our great grandchildren.

Liam age 6

Sophia age 7 months

My Joys!

Until Next Time.........................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 41

 

YOP UPDATE FOR WEEK 41 OF YEAR 13

The above photo was my phone screen saver for many moons.  It is a fiber enthusiast dream room.

Any who.......This week flew by for me.  I am finally off of antibiotics and feel so much better.  The cough is so minor now and my ribs are beginning to heal.  Well, they were until I tripped and fell over a parking lot stop block on Thursday night. I fell flat down on my face but managed to keep my head from hitting the pavement.

And, no, I was not at a bar, I was at church!  Luckily, I only got a nasty raspberry on my knee and a small one on my elbow. Hubby was right there\ to help me get up.  Note to self...........when dark outside, look down, periodically, when walking.  So, the fall did jar my ribs a bit but they really are feeling better.

Do you remember this from last week?

Well, it still looks like that.  I still have not decided if I will make it into a cowl or frog it.  So, it sits in time out in my WIP basket until further notice.

With that being out of my sight, I decided I needed to cast something else on.

This is Wrap Me Easy.  A free shawl pattern on Ravelry.  I like the way it will lay over the shoulders when worn.  I am making it in Knit Picks Brava Worsted in the colorway Alfalfa.  I am not a green person at all.  But, I do love this bright color and think it may cheer someone up who is feeling a bit punked.  It is also a super easy TV knit project.  I am about 1/3 of the way done with it.  It will become slower going from here on as it increases 7 stitches every other row.

That is all for crafting this past week.  Our grand daughter from Wyoming was in town so we spent some time with her.  It was so good to be with her.  

Hubby and I are working on getting a large shade item for our backyard that we can cook under.  We had found a gazebo we liked but neither of us liked how it needed to be anchored to our cool decking or our yard.  So now we are looking at cantilever umbrellas.  They seem a bit more feasible for our smallish backyard with our pool.  Without any shade in our backyard, it is impossible to cook outdoors in the middle of our summers.

Josh is doing ok.  He felt a bit unsteady last week.  He met with his Dr and was informed he is a bit dehydrated.  He was 'told' to get that water down and stay away from tea and coffee and all caffeinated beverages since they are diuretics.  His wife and I kind of rolled our eyes as we have been telling him that for months!  Hopefully he got the message this time.

I will leave you with a little 'dad joke'  humor I found.

Until Next Time.......................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!

WEEK 40 / EASTER MONDAY

 

Yes, I know I am a day late for my blog post.  Last week was Holy Week which goes into Easter so I was quite busy with church life and family time.  Today it is much quieter and has given me time to sit down at my laptop and type up an update.

I worked on the shawl this past week and managed to get another pattern repeat done.

I do not like it at all.  I like the pattern and I like the yarn but I do not like the two together.  The yarn has too much 'memory' in it and will not block out to the correct size.  So, now I am debating on whether to continue and make it into a cowl or just frog the whole thing and move on to something else.  I am leaning towards the latter.

I pulled out my cross stitch and did a bit of work on it.

The blue circle is where I put some stitches in.  It is hard to see since it was very pale gray on white fabric.  It took me several hours just to do those few stitches.

That is all for crafting this week.  I am feeling much better but the nasty cough is still hanging on.  I finally managed to bruise a couple of ribs from coughing.  Otherwise, I feel great.  The Dr did give me a consult this week and we will be spacing out my RA injections to every 3 weeks instead of weekly and hopefully this will give my immune system a chance to heal between shots.  If not, she will put me on something else.  

I bought a book!  Most of the books I read are on my kindle.  In fact, I am finishing up the last book of the  Garage Sale mystery series by Shelly Harris.  If you like cozy mysteries, this is a great series to read.  But, the book I bought, I have been trying to get through Libby for some time.  I finally gave up and ordered from ThriftBooks.

So many of you have already read it and loved it so I am going on those recommendations and will start it as soon as I finish the one on my Kindle.

I got a little gift from my daughter and her husband for Easter.

Two gnew gnomes!  They are so different from any other I own. There was also some yummy chocolates in the basket too. They are so thoughtful.

I also signed up for the Gnome News is Good News MKAL with Imagined Landscape that will start the middle of this month.  I am waiting for my yarn to arrive that I ordered for it.  Is anyone else going to do that MKAL?

Here is your chuckle for the day/week?

Until Next Time........................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 39

 

Hey guys.  Glad you took the time to drop by again.  This week was productive for me.  I finally got to the Dr and was diagnosed with bronchitis (oh yay!) which led me to being told to rest, stay home and take care of me.  Well, that means I need to do lots of knitting!  So I did.

I finished my RCR socks.

I have worn them,  washed them and worn them a second time already.  The color is so cheerful and makes me happy.

Last week I had said I would probably head over to making prayer shawls next.  Normally I would have grabbed my crochet hook and whipped out a couple of To The Point shawls by this weekend.  Well, I did grab my crochet hook and tried to start that shawl but the cough syrup I was put on was making me fuzzy headed.  I could not comprehend how to start that shawl that I have made almost 40 times!  Well, phooey!  I headed to off to Ravelry to see if there was anything there that peaked my interest.

TA-DA!

 Introducing Rolling on the River.  A rectangular knit shawl done in fingering weight yarn.  This may take me a year to complete.  The pattern is fun to do too.  It is a 28 row pattern so I doubt I will ever memorize it.  It will be a great way to use up some of my self striping sock yarn that I seem to be over run with.  This should use up 3 of my 100 gm skeins of sock yarn.  The perfect thing is, it is very light weight so I shouldn't mind working on it as it gets warmer and warmer here.

With the weather warming up, I am getting the itch to pull out my cross stitch and start working on it again.  While decluttering my craftroom, I found 2 more cross stitch pieces waiting for me to work on them.  So, time to give the one I am currently working on a bit of love.  Ok, a LOT of love.

I received treasures this week too.  Most of them were just items to organize my kitchen pantry so not real exciting.  The one I am super excited about is this.

I have a very small, Cooking for Two, cookbook from America's Test Kitchen and have used it and love it so much.  So when I saw this one available on ThriftBooks, I grabbed it.  This makes it so easy for me to plan our menus and not have tons of leftovers.  Even after having an empty nest for over 20 years, I still have issues of cooking smaller amounts.  Might be because I cooked for 5-6 people, every meal, for over 20 years and my brain refuses to believe there are only 2 here now.  

That is all for me this week.  I am feeling so much better.  I still have a nasty deep cough but it is getting less and less each day.  Hopefully it will be all gone by the end of this week.  I have 13 people coming over for Easter dinner so need to be in tip top shape for that.

Until Next Time...............................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 38

 

Where did this past week go?  Feels like I just wrote a blog post yesterday.  It was a productive week though.  Not just in my crafting either.

Speaking of crafting............

I am nearing the toes of these.  I believe I need 20 more rows and then the toes.  They should be completed by my next update.  Then I need to decide what to make next.  I am leaning towards prayer shawl making.  When I went to Mass yesterday, one of the prayer shawl ladies asked me if I needed anymore supplies for the shawls.  I took that as a gentle hint they are in need.  I have plenty of yarn set aside for this endeavor so might as well get going on it.

I spent this past week decluttering my craft room.  Oh my goodness.  I actually got quite a bit out of it.  No yarn, this time though.  I got rid of sewing patterns, knitting books, crafts I will never do, Knick knacks I no longer find joy in, etc.  I also put batteries into the two clocks I have in there and wound up my antique mantle clock so I can hear it chime every hour.  I now, love going in there and working on projects.  I even found one I had started and never completed.  I have worked on it a few times this past week and will continue to work on it a bit at a time.  It is one of those felt applique project with lots of tiny pieces that turn into Christmas ornaments.  I had two of them but one is being decluttered to a new home as it was unopened.  I will keep the one that I had started and hopefully will finish it before Christmas this year.  I am using a combo of crafting glue and hand sewing.  No, that is not what the instructions call for but then, I am not great at following instructions.  LOL

I was also faithful to my menu list this week.  There was a warm home cooked meal on the table every night...............until last night.  We met up with family and friends at Mass and we all went out to eat afterwards.  But................I had the food prepped for dinner so will cook it for lunch today.  Tonight is corned beef and cabbage night.  Hubbys favorite!

There were the normal household chores (laundry, dusting, mopping etc) that was done this past week too.  It is about time to completely dismantle my kitchen and deep clean the granite counter tops.  It is on my to do list for next week.  Do any of you make to do lists?

I will leave you with a bit of humor.  If you 'get it' I think it means you are old like me.

Until Next Time.....................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 37........SUPER SHORT

 This update won't take you long to read.  This is the only item I worked on this week.

The RCR socks are my only item to be worked on.  I know, boring.  

I spent most of the past week coughing and blowing my nose.  What ever this virus is that I found, it does not want to leave. My voice decided to leave on Tuesday and I finally got some of it back on Saturday.  Today is day 12 of this thing!  My voice is almost 100% and my nose is no longer an issue.  The cough is still there but, oh so much better. Hopefully I am at the tail end of this darn thing!

I will leave you with this week's chuckle.

Until Next Time.................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!