No Tricks Here

Happy Halloween everyone.  Do you remember the days when you could hardly wait for darkness to set in so you could go around your neighborhood to collect all that wonderful candy?  Some of those memories seem like it just happened instead of 50 plus years ago.

My morning started pretty early..............5AM to be exact.  Seeing I didn't go to bed until after 11, it makes for a short night.  Hubby is out of town and I do not sleep well while he is away.  I do, however get quite a bit of crafting done during that time.

Five Santa Hats down and at least three more to go.  I am enjoying them as they are a quick knit.  I did 3 yesterday.  I am hoping to get the other three done today.  I do have a couple of appointments today so may only get 1 or 2 done.

This past weekend our town hosted their annual Dias De Muerto. (Day of the Dead)  I did not attend but the local Grand went with her friend's family.  She came home with this:

It is supposed to be a fairy but she feels it looks more like a butterfly.  I really admire face painters.  Trying to paint on a moving target can not be easy.  She said the festival was fun even though she didn't get to watch any Folklorico dancing or Mariachi's playing and singing.  She enjoyed it but said it was pretty crowded.

Today we  have once again cooled off enough to  open up our doors and window in the mornings and evenings.  

For us, these are wonderful temperatures.  Loving the night time temps.  Hopefully we have seen the last of the 90's for the remainder of this year.

Time to get ready for the day.  Hubby just called and is coming home a day early!  He will be on the road in about and hour.  WOOHOO!  I will get some sleep tonight.

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

YEAR 8 WEEK 18

Happy day to all of you readers.  It is a gorgeous morning here in the desert of Arizona.  We are still creeping up towards the 90's each day but the mornings are nice and cool in the 60's.   Perfect for doing yard work or walking the dogs.  I think it is time for me to dust off my rocking chairs and do some morning meditation and knitting out on the front porch.

My main focus this week was blocking and photographing Drops of Jupiter shawl.  Here are a few photos of my work.

I want to thank my local Grand Daughter for being such a patient model.  We do realize her school uniform does nothing to enhance the colors of the shawl.  I am looking forward to having a chance to wear this when it gets a wee bit cooler throughout the day.

Since that was all done I started back working on my socks and scarf.  I did not do enough on any of them to warrant another photo.  I did, however, decide to make Santa Hats for the grands Christmas ornaments this year.  

I still need to add either a pom pom or a jingle bell to the top of it.  It is done with I Love This Yarn sparkle red and Yarn Bee Snuggle Soft white.  The white yarn is a royal pain to work with but..........I really wanted a furry bottom on the hat.  I only have 7 more to make by Thanksgiving so I can get them mailed.

On the Wonder Woman blanket front................I got an excellent idea from Ella.  Make a pillow for her this year with a blanket to follow next year.  I have plenty of time to make a pillow cover (once the hats are done).  Now I just need to find the graphics for it.  I am not a designer by any means!

This past week was very busy for me.  Our son was out of town on business so we had lots of after school pick ups for the local Grand.  She had a volleyball tournament on Monday evening.  I took her and two of her teammates to that.  It was an exciting game and they almost won the second set.  They were not at all disappointed about the loss though. 

Tuesday was a late pick up day as she had play practice after school.  They are performing Mary Poppins Jr in a few weeks.  The Grand is going to be Mrs Brill, the house keeper.  She has that British accent down pretty good too!  We took the Grand and her mom out to dinner for Taco Tuesday.  It was really fun too.

Wednesday I picked her up from school, got her home, got her to do the majority of her homework before she gulped down some soup and then took her to her cheer leading class.  Her mom picked her up from there and she did the remainder of her homework before bedtime.

Thursday I was going to go to Prayer Shawl but ended up scurrying around getting errands run and laundry completed.  Hubby got a call about his mom and he was not sure when he was going to need to leave for Vegas so I wanted to be sure everything was ready for his departure whenever it was to be.  (He leaves on the 29th for 4 days)  They are working on discharging his mom back to home.  We do not think she should go home and neither do the people at the facility, but she is insisting on it.  I picked up the grand from school and after a visit to my house we went and fed my BFF's dogs dinner.  THEN I took the grand home.  I stopped at the store for some needed veggies and then came home to make dinner only to find hubby had purchased chicken thighs instead of breasts!  Back to the store I went.  Dinner was served around 8pm that night.  Exhaustion was my name by that time.

Friday was Grandparent's day at school.  We went to Mass with her, perused the book fare and bought her some books, took her to lunch and then back to school for her play practice.  I picked her up a few hour later and took her home and then we waited until her mom arrived.  I fed my BFF's dogs on the way back to my house.  Luckily there were leftovers from Thursday and also from our lunch so I did not have to cook.

Saturday we lazed around the house most of the day.  We went to Mass and then out to eat with our son and his wife.  The Grand spent the night at her friends house.  It was so nice to be lazy for a day.

Today, hubby has already watered our plants, sprayed the weeds and cleaned up the dogs backyard bathroom.  He wanted to have everything done before he leaves tomorrow.  We are going to BBQ at our son's house tonight and I am going to cut my DIL's hair.  Should be interesting LOL.

Until next time.................Happy Crafting!!!!!

UPDATE WEEK 17

Hola, Hallo, Bonjour, Hujambo, Hej, Hello!  Now that you have had your foreign language lesson for today, let's talk about some crafting, reading and life.

I am excited to present to you my finished but unblocked shawl.

The way the colors graduated has made me very happy.  This yarn was wonderful to work with too.  There is enough left over for a pair of short socks too.  So, for under $30 I get a shawl and socks.  Not too bad a deal.

Here is a closer look at the bead integrated into the 'lace' sections.  I plan on soaking and blocking it today while hubby is engrossed in football.  There will be photos next week of that process.

Since this is completed, I will be turning my attention to my Rising Tide scarf and my Snoqualmie Socks.  Hopefully both will be completed before the end of November.  There needs to be some Christmas ornaments made for the Grands yet.  I am leaning towards the Santa Hat ornaments.  They should take no time at all to make and I already have the materials needed to make them.  Those also need to be completed by the end of November so I can get them mailed.

I am also thinking about crocheting a special blanket for my Texas DIL.  She has had a pretty rough few months health wise, and I feel she deserves something very special.  

 

I love this blanket for her but don't know if I could get it completed in time even if I started now.  She is a BIG Wonder Woman fan.  Then there is this:



A Wonder Woman Shawl.  If done in crochet, I know I would have this completed in record time but....................I doubt she would ever wear it.  At least with the blanket she could throw it over a chair or bed and look at it.  HELP!!!!!   Opinions needed here.  Tell me what you would do.  PLEASE!

OK, Now onto my reading the past couple of weeks.  I finished a book and I loved it.

There has been one of the other YOPers that keeps talking about this author.  So, I decided to go ahead and try her out.  Loved it.  Thank you Sam for the recommendation.  I will be reading more of her writings.

Since the last few books I got from the library were returned after reading the first 100 pages, I decided to pick up a tried and true author when I grabbed the above book.

Debbie Macomber is one of my favorite writers.  I have been reading her books for years and have never been disappointed in any of them.  Her Blossom Street series is my favorite and I have all of them!  This book is cute and an easy read.  It is about a young lady who is a blogger (gotta love those bloggers) and her neighbor who is a Scrooge.  Easy reading and lets me have a good chuckle now and then.

Busy week coming up.   Looking at my calendar, I have something happening each day and most days have more than one event.  WOW!  Things will slow down after the first of December.......I hope LOL.

The local Grand has another volleyball tournament game on Monday night.  They are playing on the west side of town and it is a royal pain to get there.  Watching the game is a lot of fun though.  The girls really play hard and have a great camaraderie among themselves.  

Time to get a shawl in for a soak.

Until next time.....................Happy Crafting!!!!!

WEEK 16 UPDATE

Hello everyone.  It is that time of week, for those of us participating in YOP, to do an update of how our week of crafting went.

I was quite monogamous this week.  I worked on my Drops Of Jupiter shawl.  I worked on it a lot.  Any time I sat down, I picked it up and worked on it.  I spent HOURS doing nothing but working on this shawl.  Last week I had said I thought I would have it off the needles and ready to block by today.  I don't know where I got that idea from.  Did I forget how much time it takes to add beads to a project?  Here is my shawl as of this morning.

The third repeat of the pattern has just been started.  It has a total of four repeats.  Here is where I was last week.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of progress happening.  There are 371 stitches on my needles as this time.  I am still loving the pattern though.  The gradient yarn has made this project extra fun for me too.  The yarn is Scheepjes Whirl, in the colorway Lavendarlicious.  I will gladly use this yarn again.  Me thinks I need to find another shawl pattern for this yarn.

My goal is to finish the shawl this week and get it blocked or at least ready to block.  Our weather has turned quite cool and this shawl would be a welcomed addition to my wardrobe.

I started back to the Prayer Shawl group AGAIN this week.  Since I got the all clear from my had Dr, I decided it was time to get back to this lovely group of ladies.  Forest Path shawl got attention for 2 hours that day.  That is the only other knitting that I did besides 'the shawl'.

We got some more rain this week.  In fact, it rained for over 12 hours yesterday.  We got over 2 inches of rain at our house.  This was the scene in our backyard.

Yup, once again it was flooded.  When we left for Mass the main cross roads by our house were completely under water.  The water was up to the running boards even on trucks.  We managed to get through it OK, and by the time we had dinner, after church, it had all drained away.  Our backyard is back to normal this morning too.

Today, we are taking our daughter and her husband out for a lovely dinner.  Today is her birthday and yesterday was his birthday!  They asked if in lieu of gifts, we could go to a nice restaurant and have a really nice dinner.  We are going to a Brazilian Steakhouse.  We have heard great things about it.  

The rest of my week will be taken up with running the Grand around for her volleyball games.  Her team made the playoffs.  Unfortunately, the playoffs are in the BIG city and the drive there is not fun!  I won't be able to work on 'the shawl' during the game, but the prayer shawl or my scarf may be taking a road trip with me.

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

YOP UPDATE WEEK 15

This update is coming to you from a very rainy Arizona.  We have had more rain in the past week then we normally get in 6 months.  Our plants are loving it and so are we.  My dogs, however, are not a fan of all this moisture.  Today there is quite a bit of thunder to go along with it.  They especially dislike THAT noise.  So I am writing this with a dog glued to my side, shaking to the point I feel like I have a vibrating chair.

I made quite a bit of progress this week.  Let's start with the item that saw the least amount of love.

Rising Tide scarf.  The red on the right side is the what got added this week.  Not much but I have a good reason.

 Next up:

Snoqualmie Socks.  I got a second pattern repeat done on one sock only this week.  This pattern is working so  well with this yarn.  I am very happy with it.

The most love was given to:

Drops of Jupiter shawl.  Hubby and I decided to make a little trip to Vegas after Thanksgiving.  This shawl will be perfect to have in the casino.   The gradient yarn has me falling in love.  The pattern is fairly easy to do providing a person is not consuming an adult beverage while working the lacy effects.  I spent 3 hours yesterday morning tinking back 3 rows of boo-boos.  It only took 1 hour to put it all back in correctly.  I added 70 rows and 194 stitches since last Sunday.  I have 58 rows and 66 more stitches before I do the bind off.  I am hoping to be darn near done with it by the end of this week.  Adding the beads slows down the process a bit.  It is worth it though.  They will add some POP to the finished garment.  The fun part will be blocking it.  Supposedly it has a wing span of 90 inches and a drop of 30 inches.  Since the fabric is cotton AND acrylic, I am not sure how well it will block out for me.  Fingers crossed I am able to get some sort of shaping done on it.

This coming week looks pretty normal.  There should be plenty of time to work on my knitting.  Once the shawl is done, I really need to get going on this years Christmas ornaments for the grands.  I can not decide between little mittens or Santa hats.  

In other boring news...................I cleaned out our freezer this past week.  We had so much stuff in there that had to be thrown out.  I felt horrible doing it.  What a waste.  We had failed to vacuum seal quite a bit of meat and it was all freezer burnt and so nasty.  There was shrimp in there smelling up the whole freezer which tells me it had defrosted and refrozen at some point.  NASTY!  I did find a turkey breast in there and will be having the hubby smoke it soon.  I also found a spiral cut ham that had been buried.  That will be cooked up in the next month or so and we will have a nice little family/friend gathering for that meal.

Our pool has cooled off too much to swim in.  The rains we have been having have really dropped our temperatures down which makes the water cool off quite quickly.  We haven't even hit 90 degrees this past week.  This is unusual for us.  I can remember Halloweens where it is 85 when we start walking the neighborhoods with the kids.  For us to be in the 80's during the day and 50's - 60's at night already, is a real joy.  Just about time to open the doors and windows and let in some fresh air.  Just might do that today!

Since the pool is too cold to swim in, walking the neighborhood will begin to be my exercise.  Besides, my dogs could use a bit of walking too.  Will wait until the rains stop though lol.

Reading has also been happening here.  I am just about done with the Butternut Creek Series.  They were such good clean fun books to read.  No gore, sex, language or crimes.  Perfect bedtime books.

This is the last book in the series.  I have ordered another 2 book series from Thriftbooks.  Hopefully I will enjoy it as much.

My book I placed on hold at the library finally came in.

This one is not a light frivolous story.  It will be perfect to read while baseball playoffs are on.

That is all for today.  We went to Mass yesterday as we have a meeting at church this morning to go over our fall retreat.  I don't need to cook today as we have leftovers from last nights dinner out as well as leftovers from Friday nights dinner we cooked.  How luck could I get?

Until next time....................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!

Midweek

It has been such a lovely week so far.  We have had lots of rain which makes me want to be Suzy Homemaker.  I have been knitting quite a bit, doing lots of laundry and even tried a new bread recipe.

I am trying to make an artisan bread out of spelt flour.  My first attempt was ok, yet I feel I could do better.  We will eat the one I made and I will be trying it again with some modifications.

The free lilies I got from Sprouts, are making me happy.

This was them on Monday:

Here they are today:

Beautiful, right?  There are 2 more buds to open up.  I have no doubt they will open in the next day or 2.  The aroma is stunning.

Time to pick up my knitting and relax for a little while.

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