Roller Coaster

I just spent 30 minutes writing a blog post.  After I completed it, I re-read it and deleted the whole thing.  It was depressing.  VERY Depressing.  So let me just do a little bullet post for you.

1.  Hubby is going to be going to a GI specialist in 2 weeks because of his report we got 

      Monday.

2.  Our PA , Nutritionist and Cardiologist have been cut from our clinics staff (downsizing)

3.  I miss my mom horribly.

4.  Spent some lovely time with the Grand at the library.

5.  Got my nails done and felt slightly pampered afterward.

6.  I have been stress eating and it shows.

7.  My blood pressure is slightly higher than normal.

8.  My house smells wonderful with my bread baking.

9.  I am blessed beyond measure with good friends and family.

10. My pool is calling my name for some water aerobics.

Until next time...................happy crafting!!

WEEK 51 UPDATE

It is the next to last week of this year's YOP.  I have not even begun to think about next years ideas yet.  I am sure there will be a light bulb go off soon enough to inspire me for year 8.  The most amazing thing this year is, I have posted every week!  That has never happened for me before.

I do have a finish this week.

Rising Tide scarf is completed.  It still needs a nice soak and a bit of blocking to open it up a bit more.  I only used one skein of yarn instead of the intended two skeins.  I see no reason for a 9" wide scarf.  This is perfect at about 4" and daughter agreed with me.  She has asked me to make another scarf with the second skein and she will give it as a gift this Christmas.  Since she bought the yarn, I have no problem being her laborer.  Keeps me busy.

Remember these?

They became these:

Which in turn has started to be these:

I have discovered I knit much looser on the 9" circulars so went down from a 1.5 to a US 1.  I am going to just go with a plain vanilla sock this time.  This is just to find out how much I like using these needles.  Now that the scarf is completed, I will be focusing on these until something else jumps up and begs to be knit.

That is all for crafting.  Here is a little look into my personal life.

When I had both Grand Daughters, they decided to make a lovely meat and cheese lunch for us one day.

After they were done they got a case of the giggles when they realized it looked like Mickey Mouse.  Love those girly giggles.

I have no idea why my dog does this.  He squeezes in beside me and then sticks his nose in between the cushions of the loveseat.  It looks so uncomfortable.

This happened yesterday:

Yup, that is rain.  We have not had any moisture for 3 months!  It was needed as we are still in drought conditions.  It rained off and on from late Friday night until late afternoon Saturday.  It really cooled off our temps too.  We went from 109 to 89 in 24 hours!  What a blessed relief.  We will be back to 109 by the end of the week though.

The past few days I have been visiting with these two lovelies.

The big guy is Magnum and the little guy is Bentley.  They are my BFF's dogs.  They headed to the mountains for her birthday weekend and asked me to feed the dogs and love on them.  They are love buttons and I enjoy spending a couple hours each day with them.

We had our Grand Daughter spend the night last night.  She and I worked on her Father's Day DIY project and watched Divergent last night.  It was pretty nice to spend that quality time with her.

Tomorrow hubby and I have an appointment with his Dr to go over some test results he had done last week.  I am a bit nervous as the Dr has already told me she thinks there may be some issues and we may be going to specialists soon.  Please say a prayer for us.  We would appreciate it greatly.

That is all for this week's update.  Time to put on my thinking cap and ponder next years list/ideas.

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

All Things

The hardest part of writing my blog is coming up with a title.  Anyone else have this issue?  I always can find things to write about but never know how to title the 'story'.

The past three days have been busy in a good way.  I have gotten quite a bit done around the house.  I had really let things slide while  our TX Grand was here.  I wanted to make her time here special and memorable.  So the cobwebs were left alone, the dust bunnies multiplied and dog hair was stuck to everything.  But, we had a great time and made great memories.

Sunday, I was so spent after only getting, barely 4 hours of sleep.  I did do a bit of fiber work.  I picked up the socks and decided to work on them since it was mindless knitting.  Here is how they looked after that attention.

Yup, frogged both socks.  I was not happy with myself for trying to combine 2 patterns.  It was not working for me.  The real kicker was, I knit looser in 9" circulars then DPN's.  I started over again.  This time I am doing a plain vanilla sock on size US 1's n the 9" circulars.

It sure does make a difference going down from a 1.5 to a 1.  The ribbing alone took an extra 3 rows to make my inch!  I do believe the sock will fit better this time though.  It was quite large on the 1.5's.  I am going to let the pattern in the yarn speak for itself this time too.

Monday, I had the local Grand for a few hours.  We did a bit of Amazon shopping and also reading.  It was pretty much a chill day for us.  Hubby and I had cleaned the house in the morning so the afternoon was nice for us.

in the past 3 days I cooked up a bunch of bacon, cleaned out a freezer, polished up an ice chest, wound some yarn, did some knitting, cleaned a pantry and then headed outside to enjoy this.

My backyard oasis.  I did some laps, water aerobics and relaxed all in an hours time span.  I won't stay out more than that because of the UV index here.  It is at an 11 (the highest it can go) and since my Dad died from Melanoma, I really am cautious about my sun exposure.  See that doggy in the picture?  That is my old lady, Luna.  (Short for lunatic.....we didn't name her)  She turned 12 this year and is perking along just fine.  She and her brother got a bath yesterday by me.  They smell so nice now!

Today, I am making lots of phone calls for medical stuff.  I still am catching up on laundry and a few household chores.  My bullet journal keeps me on track.  If I didn't have it, my life would be quite chaotic.

Until next time.................happy crafting!

WEEK 50

Hello everyone.  Welcome to my weekly crafting update.  It is week 50 and with only 2 more weeks to go on this Year Of Projects..............I decided to take a look at my list I made the beginning of this years challenge.

YOP 2017 - 2018

This year ALL of my WIP's will be completed!  This is a priority this year.  Here they are:

WIP'S

Dive in Shawl...........................Started 7/6/15 FROGGED

Boxy Sweater...........................Started 11/17/15 HALF DONE

My Crochet Doll........................Started 7-1-16  FROGGED

Eva Shawl in Alpaca.................Started 7-10-11 OOPS.....HAVEN'T TOUCHED

Log Cabin Blanket.....................Started 7-17-11  COMPLETED

New Items To Work On

Socks............I have over 100 skeins of sock yarn and 98% of it is variegated.  It needs to be                       used up!  WORKING ON IT

Shawls..........I am in a prayer shawl ministry at church, so will have 1 shawl going at all                               times.  This also will help use up some of my stash yarns that are over flowing in all weights.  HAS REALLY THINNED OUT MY WORSTED WEIGHT STASH!

Test Knits......Will do just a couple as time allows this year.  As long as I have the yarn to go                       along with the test knit I will consider it.  ONLY DID 1 THIS YEAR.  

STASH:

My husband told a friend that I had enough yarn to open a small shop.  I though he was being funny until..........I went into my craft room and realized he was right.  I have well over 500 skeins of yarn that I own.  This year, there will be no purchasing of yarn other than to complete the WIP's I have going on.  There are 2 WIP's that I know will require additional yarn. (Log Cabin Blanket and My Crochet Doll)  THERE MAY HAVE BEEN A LITTLE BIT OF STASH ENHANCEMENT BUT..........I DONATED 2 13 GALLON BAGS OF YARN TO THE PRAYER SHAWL MINISTRY. I AM BELOW 500 SKEINS NOW.

NEW HELPING GOAL

I love to bullet journal.  This year I have made a bullet journal to help me stay on track with my projects.  I plan on using it for every fiber craft I do.  WHAT A BIG HELP THE JOURNAL HAS BEEN!

So........I have done pretty much what I set out to do.  I will do a total recap of projects on week 52.  This give me time to hopefully finish up at least one more item.

The only thing I worked on this week was the Rising Tide scarf.

This is laid flat.  See how it looks like it ripples?  That is how the pattern works up.  I wish we had chosen a longer color changing yarn. 

This is why.  The opposite ends of the scarf are totally different colors.  Daughter loves it though and that is all that matters.

That is it on crating today.  I have been awake since 3:30 this morning.   There was a VERY early airport run today.

Sweet Cheeks had a 6AM flight home today.  She was so tired.  We had been at a house warming party last night and didn't get to bed until after 11.  She will sleep on the plane for sure.

I have one more photo of my Grand Daughters for you

I did manage to do both of their hair dos and also makeup for the wedding we attended.

It will be very quiet at our house with the girls gone.  We will have the one on the right for a few days this week while her dad is out of town and her mom is at work.  That is fine with me.  There is a pool for us to have fun in and we can go to the library again and again and again.  

If you have some great recommendations on books, let me know.  I have plenty of books but the Grand is always looking for good books.  She prefers fantasy so let me know.  Right now she is reading "Divergent".

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

Girl Fun

It has been a busy week for me and the Grand Daughters.  We have been on the go every day this week.

Monday, I picked them up from my Son's house to go to the movies.

We saw Overboard and laughed our selves silly.  It is a remake of an old Goldie Hawn/Kirk Russell movie.  We all loved it.  After the movie I took them out to lunch and  they talked me into taking them to the Mall for a little retail therapy.  We spent 2 hours there and only visited 3 stores.  All of the stores were accessory stores as they were looking for things to wear to the wedding this week.  We did have a little fun while there too.

They had to squeeze their legs to get into the car.  Sometimes it is good to be a 'little' kid again.

They were supposed to go back to my Son's house for another couple of nights but voted to come to my house for the rest of the week.

Tuesday, we did laundry in the morning.  Not a lot of fun but necessary if you want clean clothes for the next few days.  Once that was done we had lunch and then they begged to go to the library to find books to read.  Who am I to stop anyone from reading?  Off we went and truly enjoyed the experience.  For dinner that night, I took them to a local place for $.99 street tacos.  After all, it was Taco Tuesday here.  We had fun and ate our fill of street tacos and had churros for desert.  The girls are not allowed to have their phones when eating so they took a sketch book and took turns drawing in it.

They were so proud of their drawings.  They even made a story to go along with the drawings.

Wednesday, hubby came home from his whirlwind trip to Nevada for a major meeting about his mom and her care and where we go from here.  The girls and I decided to let him rest and we headed off to the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM).  

It was fantastic.  Actually....fantastic doesn't even begin to describe it.  We spent 2 hours in there and I could have spent quite a bit more time but my body was giving out by then.  Here are just a few photos of what we saw.

They had instrument from all the different countries you could think of.  They even highlighted Memphis and Philadelphia and a couple other US cities.  You are given a headset as soon as you walk in.  Each exhibit has a TV screen and you can listen to the music of that area as well as learn about their style of music.  One room allowed you to try out different instruments.  Most of those were percussion but........our favorite was the HUGE gong.  It was just like the one from "The Gong Show".  Quite loud and very satisfying.  Since both girls are in band and love music, this was super great for them.  

I think they had a good time too.  I will be going back again.  Admission was not expensive at all and well worth every penny.

That evening, our daughter stopped by to see the girls and have dinner with us.  We BBQ'd up some burgers and had french fries with it.  Hubby had to eat quickly so he could make it to the wedding rehearsal. (He is reading the prayers)  The rest of us hung around the house and giggled a lot.

Our daughter is aware she is going to be out grown by these 2 shortly (no pun intended).  After the daughter left, the girls started searching for the hairstyle they would like me to do on them for the wedding.  They had some pretty crazy (elaborate) photos going.  The problem is...................I can not french braid hair.  I can braid, I can fish tail, I can curl, I can tease, I can do buns but no french braids.  Of course, they all loved stuff with those darn french braids.  I think we finally came to compromises on the hair styles.  I will be a busy MiMi today.  They also want me to do their makeup.  They think they are going to have a sultry smokey makeup done.  HEEHEE!  They are 12 and 13.  They will be having light natural flattering makeup that just accents their features and doesn't mask them.  

Tomorrow will be our 'kick back' day.  I will be doing laundry again to make sure our TX child's clothes are clean for her trip home. She also brought 2 pair of jeans for me to cut off and hem for her. There may be a bit of swimming involved in the day too.  Saturday, we will go to Mass and then the girls go back to my Son's house for a party and BOOM........Tx child goes home on Sunday.

It was a quick week.  We made some great memories though.

Until next time..................happy crafting!