WEEK 47 OF YEAR 11

 

Hey there!  How y'all doing today?  It's that time again to see what happened during the past week.

The Vixynn is the main item I worked on.  That being said, it did not see any love until Wednesday this past week and then again on Thursday.  

The 5 hour road trip on Thursday gave me the most time to put on these 12 rows.  I am happy to say I am now down to this much of the 'frogged' yarn.

When I started the rework, I had two of these cakes to put back in.  This means I am half way done with the reworking.  This will be my main focus until it is completed.  Everything else can just wait.

Here is one of the things that is going to wait.

I started this half sock just before we left last Sunday morning.  It won't take long to complete but the sweater is #1 right now.

I have been asked if the half socks stay on my feet.  Yes they do.  They go past the ball of the foot and with your body weight on your feet when you walk, they do not move.  At least, mine don't when I wear them in my crocs.  When I take my crocs off, the socks come off with them though.  Otherwise, I have no issue with them staying on my feet.

Also, when I make these, I make the cuff 8 stitches smaller than the main part of the sock.  This also gives them a bit more snug fit.

That is all for knitting this week.  Let's take a look at my new hydroponic garden I planted 3 weeks ago.

The 2 plants on the left are jalapeno peppers and the 2 on the right are cherry tomatoes.  There is also a cilantro behind one of the peppers but it is a little short and I am not sure it is going to make it.  It is a bit 'stringy'.  These are the only plants that sprouted out of the 8 I planted.  Since these get to be pretty large, I will stick with them until they stop producing and then decide what to plant next.  My other garden of basil and cherry tomatoes are still growing.  The tomato is just about done so will be taking those out and will remove the basil at the same time.  Lettuce will be planted in it once it is all cleaned and ready for new pods.

While we were gone, Josie took care of our dogs for us.  She left a little reminder behind.

Her happy frog hat.  Just looking at it makes me smile.  Also, while we were gone, I gave her family my car to use incase the dad needed to go anywhere while the girls were at school and work.  Good thing too.  The batteries in both of their cars died that week, just days apart.  

As for our trip.............we had a great time away.  The bingo tournament was exciting even though we didn't win.  But one of the ladies at our table won the first $10,000 game.  Yes, that is $10K!  My luck came later in the day at the slot machines.

Let's just say, I managed to pay for our trip just from playing slots!  The other excitement we had was getting stuck in an elevator for an hour.  Yup, that is not something I care to repeat anytime soon!  Luckily we were on the first floor when the elevator decided not to work anymore.  I am claustrophobic, so this was not the greatest experience for me.  The other lucky thing is the doors would open about 4 inches every couple of minutes so I could see out. That helped quite a bit.  There were only 3 of us on the elevator at the time which was a blessing too.  The hotel was so nice and even gave us a complimentary dinner at their steak house for the next time we go there.

Anything fun and exciting happening in your world?

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

WEEK 46 OF YEAR 11

 

Hey there.  This is going to be short and sweet.  I am actually writing it Saturday evening.  By the time you read this, I will be half way to Las Vegas.

Here is what I did this past week.

Made some more 1/2 socks to wear in my crocs.  Yes, I know one of them is bigger than the others.  I forgot how many rows I had done on the earlier ones and didn't bother to go and get one to check.  Oops.  Oh well, it still is hidden when I wear my crocs with it.

I did not even touch my sweater.  It is in the car with me and I will work on it while gone.  I am also taking the yarn for more 1/2 socks so I have a choice of what I want to work on.

We finally got our floors laid in the backroom and 2 bathrooms. That happened on Wednesday and Thursday.  We spent Monday and Tuesday clearing out our backroom.  It is the room where all hubby's tools are as well where we store all our pool chemicals and surplus paper products as well as other sundry things. (trust me, it is a lot of 'stuff' in a 15 x 25 foot room!) 

This is sitting in our family room.  This is only about 1/4 of what was back in that room.  We have agreed to go through every single item when we put it all back.  Things are going to be leaving our house!  This is on the schedule for when we come back from our mini vacation.

I also had dog duty on Thursday and Friday.  This time I took care of my BFF's dogs.  They are such loves.  They mind and just want to be petted and be near a human.  

Let me just make one negative comment here.  Since I have made comments go in a pop up window, I no longer can reply to your comments!  So, I may decide to put it back to embedded comments so I can reply to questions you may have.  So far, I have had to go to your blogs to answer questions and that seems a bit redundant.  I will spend my time away to make a decision as to what I am going to do.  Also, remember, I moderate all comments.  So if you do not see your comment post immediately, it is because I have not moderated it yet.  Please be patient with me.

Ok, ranting is over.

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

WEEK 45 OF YEAR 11

 

Happy Mother's Day to all you U.S. moms, stepmoms, foster moms, grandmoms, God moms, and critter moms.  May your day be filled with love and laughter.

Now, on to the news of this past week.

This past week, I only worked on the Vixynn sweater.

It doesn't look like a lot of rows but there are over 330 stitches in each row.  I had three days this past week where there was no knitting done what so ever.  WHAT???  One day was because of my RA and the other 2 days were when the house painters were here and I was busy with things related to that. (You can see the finished paint job here) This week looks to be a slow knit week too.  We have the floor guys coming on Tuesday so Monday we will be cleaning out the rooms where the flooring will be laid and then putting it back after they are completed.  UGH!  But at least we will be done for a while with remodeling!

I did get a couple of treasures in the mail this week.

Just one skein of yarn LOL.  This is going to become half socks to wear in my Crocs.  It is close to my skin tone.  I wanted something very neutral and absorbent.  This being mostly cotton fits the bill.  I think this will be my travel project next week.

My other treasure is:

A new bread machine!  This is the Zojirushi Virtuoso plus home bakery machine.  It is a big guy too.  I have made one loaf of bread in it and am already in love.  It is so quiet when on.  This is not a cheap machine though.  I was lucky enough to have gotten coupons and percentages off from Kohl's which made it more affordable.  My biggest joy is it has a sourdough setting on it.  It also has where you can customize settings too.  There will be a learning curve for me but I am looking forward to working and learning.

The only other fun thing this week was going to  Fine Arts night at Josie's high school.

Sorry for the dark photo but it was the best I could do.  She and 8 other people were in a chorus.  They sang and danced 4 different numbers.  I will say, those 9 teens were excellent.  Four of the teens are graduating this year so it was kind of bitter sweet for all of them.

Last night, our daughter and her husband took us out for dinner to celebrate Mother's day.  They surprised me with this:

This sign will go on my front door.  I think this is just the cutest.

Hubby also did something special for me:

Yellow carnations and tulips.  Since our first date, he has remembered my favorite flower color is yellow.  That first date was 47 years ago!  He's a keeper.

We are heading over to Josie's house this afternoon for some games and dinner.  I am taking fresh strawberries, angel food cake and whipped cream.  YUM!  

After many complaints about people not being able to comment on blogger posts, I have changed my comments from embedded to pop-up window.  Hopefully this will help those who do not use google or blogger to be able to comment all the time.  We had this issue a few years ago.  It got resolved but now it seems to be happening again.  This time, it makes those without google or blogger to comment as anonymous.  This requires that person to sign their name at the end of their comment in order for me to know who wrote it.  Hopefully the pop up window will eliminated this step.  I would go to Word Press but I have tried 3 times and still do not understand the ins and outs of it.  Until I get someone to help me, I will stay with blogger.  After all, I have been here for 12 years.

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

It Is Done

 

Mr Squirrel shows just how happy I am to have the exterior of our house painted.  Here are some photos of the finished product.

Well we did have one wall and door painted on the inside.  It saved hubs and I a lot of time to have them do it for us.

Another gorgeous blue sky day here.  The brown on the front is what was painted.  It is just a bit deeper and richer than the last color we had.  

They even painted our shed for us to match. Pardon the trash bins but this is real life and not a magazine photo shoot. 

The back is the biggest difference.  This is only half of the back of the house.  But, this is where the difference is the biggest.  Having the door and window trim accented and getting the back door painted made a huge difference. Not to mention painting the wall and guttering too.

In a year year we have had our gutters replaced, pool reconditioned, the house painted, two bathrooms updated and next week new flooring installed in the bathrooms and the backroom.  That should do us for a few years.  

By next weekend, I will be more than ready to take off on our trip to Las Vegas!  I am amazed at how much stress getting ready for all of this has been.  Then to top it all off, Luna (the old lady dog) got out yesterday and ran and ran and ran around.  Being hard of hearing, she did not hear us call her.  She finally came near me when I crouched down like I had a treat and I was able to grab her collar.  Very scary.  We are lucky our street does not have much traffic on it.  For being 16, she sure had a lot of energy and spunk!

Until next time....................................................

WEEK 44 OF YEAR 11

 

How I wish I could come up with a clever opening line.  You know, the kind that when you start a book it grabs you from the very beginning and you can not wait to turn to the next page and continue on with the story.  But, I seem to lack in clever and catchy opening lines.  Therefore, I will just continue on with my normal YOP update along with photos from this past week.

KNITTING

The Mehujaa shawl consumed all my time and talent this past week.  I finally bound off on Thursday evening.  Once it was off the needles, I discovered I had dropped a stitch on each side of the stockinette!  I quickly did a double knit fix on the inside and am praying that will hold it.  If not, I will make a design decision of adding a cute button to the outside of the shawl to hold the stitch in place.  Anyway.................Here it is blocking.

Excuse the toys in the background.  This is being blocked on the bed in the room Josie has used since she was an infant.  Anyway........The yarn is Scheepjes Whirl in the colorway Night Time Bubbles.  It is knit on size US 4 (3.5 mm) needles.  I started it on April 1 and bound off on April 28.  This is the second time I have made this shawl and I am already wanting to make it again.  It is the perfect size for warmth or you can bunch it up and wear it around your neck.  The pattern actually calls for the Scheepjes Whirl and uses almost the entire skein of 1094 yards. The cost of the yarn is under $30 so it is very reasonable.  The best part for me is it is 60% cotton and 40% acrylic.  Perfect for the desert climate I live in.  I would like to do one in all white or cream colored next.  This is the shawl I grab when heading out to the movies, church, a restaurant, the casino, etc.  

Once the shawl was done, I was putting away the supplies I used and discovered a UFO that really needed to be worked on.  Vixynn!  It is the sweater I made to wear when we went to my Mother in Laws celebration of life.  It was too big and the empire waist hit me almost at my waist.  I had ripped it back to the empire waist and was working on it when I got distracted by the shawl.  (Imagine that!)  I picked it back up on Friday and here is where I am at now.

The little saint marker is where I started on Friday.  I have a looooong ways to go before this will be completed.  So, now I have a decision to make................again.  Today is May 1 and I really wanted to do Stitch Maynia this year.  Ya know, where I work on my cross stitch projects for the entire month.  However, there is going to be a week in this month we will be traveling.  I am not thinking cross stitch makes too great of a road project.  But, this sweater is the perfect project for TV, road trips, dog sitting etc.  It is just knitting round and round and round until I get to the bottom.  Then it will have the same design as the empire waist does.  So, after all that, I have decided my sweater really needs my love more than my cross stitch does.  In all actuality, I could still consider this stitch maynia.  After all............I am still doing stitches............lots of stitches! LOL

TREASURES

The past couple of weeks, I have gotten a few items that have thrilled me.  First up:

I got a new Portuguese knitting pin from WittyStyle on Etsy.  It is magnetic, of course, as I do not like holes in my clothing.  This one is quite different from my others as the hook for the yarn is stationary and faces forward.  I love it!  The fact it has a vintage look makes it even better.

Next up are these:

Annie's Attic cozy mystery series.  These are the first 4 books in the series.  I got hooked on the cozy mysteries a while back thanks to Sam of Self Sufficient Sam fame.  She introduced me to Joanna Fluke and from there it was a downward spiral into the land of cozy mysteries.  Most of the time I get them from my Overdrive app.  Alas, these are not available that way so, I bit the bullet and bought them from Thriftbooks.  I really like these as they talk about crochet, cross stitch and knitting in them.

GARDENING  

The next item I bought over a week ago but keep forgetting to tell you about it.

It is my new hydroponic garden.  This time I bought a Diivoo brand garden.  It is quite a bit larger than my Aero-Garden and quite a bit less expensive.  It is also wifi controlled through my phone.  This one does not come with ready made seed pods.  You purchase regular seeds and then plant them in the pod sponges it comes with.  This time I have jalapenos, rosemary, cilantro and cherry tomatoes.  The tomatoes are some I had left from the aero-garden order.  As you can see, I have not filled every growing spot.  If I did, the plants would be way too crowded.  This way, I will be able to harvest easier too.

As for my original Aero-Garden:

It is still growing basil and cherry tomatoes.  Once the tomatoes finish producing, I will use this garden for lettuce.  We so enjoyed the lettuce we got from it and really hate spending $4 for the same thing at the grocery.

And yes:

The tomatoes are still producing.  There are 3 or 4 bunches like this spread throughout the two plants.  There are quite a few blossoms also.  Looks like this will continue for a while yet.

That is all for this week.  Tonight, our entire local family is heading to Seton Catholic Preparatory school to see Josie's performance in "Little Women".  She is playing Aunt March.  After the show, we will all go to a local restaurant and celebrate closing night with our 'star'.  Tomorrow the house painters will be here bright and early to power wash the house and prep it for painting on Tuesday.  The excitement never ends, huh!

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

WEEK 43 OF YEAR 11

 

Hello again.  I hope this past week has treated y'all well.  Most of my spare time was spent working on the Mehujaa shawl.

I knitted 34 rows on the shawl.  That leaves 36 rows to complete by the end of this week.  Then there is the soak and block.  My goal is still to have it 100% done by April 30th.  Since I have dog sitting duty again this week, I am sure it will happen.

May 1 I want to do 31 days of stitch maynia.  I have several cross stitch projects.  Two of them have been started and there are at least 2 more in which I have the cloth all prepped.  Two are BIG projects and 2 are smallish.  At the moment I have one big and one small started.  I am not sure how much I will accomplish in 31 days, but it will be fun to find out.  The biggest challenge is a road trip we are taking the middle of May.  We will be gone for 5 days.  Not sure cross stitch will be the best item to take on the trip.  Has anyone ever taken theirs on a trip?  How did it work out for you?  I do have a pair of socks on the needles that could go on the trip with me.  Any advice?

The rest of my week was spent doing normal household chores.  The only real extra item this week was making dog food for Luna.  It is an all day project. 

While handling the steam water from the dog food, my hand slipped and the hot water landed on my hand.  I didn't think it was too burnt until a few days later when this happened.

It is blistering and peeling daily.  It is still really tender to touch too.  This happened on Monday.  Now you know why my mom did not name me Grace!

I have been harvesting cherry tomatoes daily.  Each day nets 4-8 tomatoes.  Hubby eats them almost as fast as I pick them.  We are discussing getting another hydroponic set up so we can do all tomatoes in one and all herbs/lettuce in the other one.  Not sure if we will or not.  I loved the lettuce we grew and was sad when it finally gave out.  The basil is still going strong and I am cutting it weekly and using in cooking.  I am really enjoying growing our own herbs and veggies. The fact I am not relying on mother nature makes it even better.

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

Frustration and Glee

 

I don't know how many of you use Bloglovin' to help keep track of blogs you follow.  I have been using it for several years and have enjoyed being able to see when one of you bloggers posts a new update.  The past two weeks, Bloglovin' has been down more than it has been up.  After being down for over 5 days, when it came back online, I took screen shots of all the blogs I followed on it.  I then transferred all that information to the side bar of this blog.  Now, I no long need to rely on Bloglovin' to keep me up to date.  I am so glad I did this as Bloglovin' has been down again for over 2 days.  So frustrating. I have signed up with quite a few of the blogs to be notified by email when there is an update.  Unfortunately, not all blogs have this feature.  UGH!

But...................................I have some great news!

I harvested some of my home grown cherry tomatoes today.  They are so yummy.  There are still more on the vines and I noticed there are some brand new babies that just set on in the past couple of days.  I guess we will be having cherry tomatoes for a little while yet.  These babies took forever.  Not sure I will do more cherry tomatoes since it took over 120 days for first harvest.  Now, the herbs and lettuce.......................those babies are quick and produce for a long period of time.  

Today, I spent most of my morning making Luna's dog food.  Between the crockpot, instant pot and microwave I managed to get 23 days of food bagged up for her.  Most of it is in the freezer.  Yes, I love my old lady dog that much.  With the bird flu hitting the chickens, making her food is going to get much more expensive from here on.  She's worth it though.

If you would like to keep up with my blog posts, sign up for email notifications on the upper right hand side of my home page.

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

YOP 11 WEEK 42

Hey there!  Glad you could drop by again.  Want to see my progress for the week?

Mehujaa is still the only item I am working on.  As of today, there are 325 stitches on the needles.  It increases by 4 stitches every other row.  I still have 70 more rows to go before I begin the edging.  I have finally memorized the pattern.  That helps move this along a bit quicker.  I timed it yesterday and the knit rows are taking about 20 minutes to do and the purl rows about 15.  That means I still have over 40 hours or work to put into this.  My hopes of completing this by the end of the month are still there.

In other news.........................................

Today is Easter for our family.  Our contribution to Easter dinner is the ham and the bread.  So, yesterday, I made two loaves of bread.

 The loaf on the left is a copy cat recipe of King's Hawaiian Sweet bread.  (I will let you know if it really taste like it or not later).  The loaf on the right is just called Hawaiian sweet bread and is made using pineapple juice.  I did a test loaf of that one earlier this week and everyone agreed it needed to be a bit sweeter.  So I added more honey to it and some vanilla.  Hopefully it will be yummy.  (I will also let you know about that later too.)

In other news.............................................

This past week we had house painters come out and give us an estimate on painting the exterior of our home.  The painting will commence on May 3rd and 4th.  We also had a flooring person come and give us an estimate on the price of laying the last of our tile flooring in our home.  That will be happening the 12th and 13th of May.  I will be so happy when this is all completed and we can finally sit back and enjoy our home.  My dogs will be happy too, when no more strangers are traipsing through the house LOL.

What's new with you?

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

WEEK 41

 

It is that time again for my weekly YOP update.  

Ta-Da.......

The Mehujaa Shawl got all the love this past week.  The little progress keeper is where I was last Sunday.  I have added 108 rows and it has increased from 37 to 253 stitches in a week.  The shawl will increase to 481 stitches by the time I bind off.  My goal is to have this done by the end of April.

Here is the reason I was able to knit so much this past week.

I had Thor duty.  He is such a goof and I just adore him.  My duty with him was Monday through Thursday and then on Friday, I took care of my BFF's two doggos for the day.  It was a dog-gone good week.  It gave me lots of knitting time.

While traveling to my 'job' I had to stop and take some photos of our desert spring blooms.

Our Palo Verde trees are in full bloom.  In about a week those yellow blossoms will fall off and cover our ground to make it look like the yellow brick road.

Did you know bougainvillea's come in different colors?  This one had two colors on one bush.  Very unusual.

This is the color of most of our local bougainvillea's.  This baby is HUGE!  See the 6 trees behind it?  It gives you an idea of how large this bush is.  We will have some type of blooming happening for the next several months.  Even during the heat of our summer there will be certain plants that will bloom to add color to our landscapes.

And now for my final photo...........................................

Last night was Josie's first prom.  I just love this photo.  Her dad (our son) acted as the group's limo/uber driver and came up with this outfit to impress the kids.  They all loved it.  Josie looks all grown up in her formal.  Time has sure flown by while we have been watching this little girl become a gorgeous young lady.  Can you tell how proud her dad is of her?

Here is the whole group that went together.  The young man is Josie's beau.  The other girls are all besties with Josie.  The car belongs to Josie mom's boss who offered it to her for the evening.  Josie's mom was also responsible for the hair on Josie and the girl on the far left.  She is such a wonderful mother to Josie and all of her friends who need a little extra mom love.

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

PS:  Next Sunday is Easter so my update may be delayed until Monday.  We have a very hectic schedule for Holy Week.  May you all have a blessed week and Easter (if you celebrate it)  I would also like to say, 'Chag Pesach Sameach', to some very special people in my life.

PEACE!

Week 40 of YOP 11

 

Hello!  This past week was kind of a bust for me as far as any kind of crafting went.  Let me show you what I did.

The RCR socks.  If you think they look quite a bit like they did last week, look again.  I put a whole 5 rows on them.  LOL  At this rate, they should be completed by sometime in June.

There really was no great desire to do any crafting.  Must have been spring fever.  Mostly I worked on decluttering a bit.  On Friday, I finally decided I HAD to do something craft wise and I was not interested in the socks, or my sweater, or the blanket, or the cross stitch.  I cast on a new project instead.

This is Mehujaa.  I have made it before and it is the most used shawl I own.  I am not going to show you the yarn I am using as I want it to be a surprise as to what this yarn does as I go along.  This is a fun knit.  It has 3 patterned rows with a purl row between each one.  The Stockinette section increases every other round.

The is the one I made last year.  Even though it has a lot of 'lace' in it, the sides are all stockinette and keep my arms warm.  It's pretty big, huh!

That is all for crafting this past week.  Pathetic isn't it. 

During my decluttering, I attacked my closet.  In there, I found all of the shawls and shawlettes I had made for myself, over the past several years.  Of the 15 I found, only 4 of them are ones I ever actually wear.  There are 4 I am going to unravel and combine the yarns together to make a shawl I will wear.  The other 7 will find a home with our Prayer Shawl ministry at Church.  

I also worked in the kitchen this week to get rid of items not being used.  Surprisingly, there were only a few items that left the building.  This is a good sign.  I have finally gotten my kitchen down to where only used and loved items are there.

This coming week is dog sitting week.  Mr Thor does not like to be alone all day long.  I will go and keep him company for a few hours each day and give him lots of love and attention.

What are you working on?  Has spring sprung in you neighborhood?

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