October

Remember how I was complaning last month about it being September and still being over 100 degress outside.  Well, same gripe only now it is October!  But at least the swimming pool is still in use longer than normal.  Then I hear the other night that we are entering a La Nina season and that we will have a milder than normal winter.  GREAT!  This means we will have bugs up the kazoo next year.  I already have ants all over my back yard and we can not find out where they are coming from.  Now I will have crickets, spiders and goodness knows what other little critters to go with them.  All I pray for now is a lot of those cute little geckos that we have sometimes that eats all our bugs.

Ok, so much for my complaining.  Now on to the crafting front.

I got the scarf done this past weekend and now am working on the hat.  I should have that done this weekend and then the mittens will ensue.  The hat would have been done about Wednesday but I had to rip it out 4 times as I was not happy with the size of it.  I even swatched the yarn before I started and it still came out big enough for 2 small children to wear it at the same time.  It is now perfect and I am on the decreasing rows so it will be done shortly.

I have not done anymore beading for the craft sale and really want to get back to that but not until the "winter" wear is done and boxed up and sent to it's owner.  Then I can bead without and feelings of guilt.

Than my Grand Daughter found a lonely skein of light green yarn and decided she wanted me to make a blanket for her baby. (I am not sure which baby as she has LOTS of them).  So when she is there I do a couple of rows on it to appease her little self.  Otherwise it is tucked neatly away in my WIP (works in progress) area. 

We have not decided on flooring yet either.  I need to go to one of the flooring stores that my DH went to but have not had the time to do that yet.  Their hours are not very condusive to the working class folk. 

In a couple of weeks we are going to be heading to Las Vegas for our 35th wedding anniversary.  Our best friends are suppose to be going with us but that is up in the air right now since their house caught on fire and they are a bit displaced and waiting for the work to be done on it so they can move back in.  One of our sons and his wife are going also.  We are looking forward to getting away for a few days to relax and just totally enjoy ourselves.

Did I tell you that our youngest son made Chief in the US Navy? He was pinned on the 18th of September. We are so proud of him and his family. He deserved it too. We were not able to make the pinning but got lots of pictures from them of the ceremony. Here are just a few of them.

So that is my life up to the moment.  It may not sound exciting to you but to me it is wonderful and full of love, family and friends.

Until later..............................

Finally September!

It is finally September and we are still in the 100's.  I am so looking foward to some cooler weather.  This is the time of year when I get really tired of all the heat.  But as I well know we will probably have another month of really "warm" weather before it truly cools off for about 6 months.

I made my kercheif that I told you about last time.  I love it.  Infact I love it so much I have made 3 more of them.  One of them will be given to my young God Daughter.  She is an altar server and likes to veil but is afraid of wearing too long of veil because of the candles she carries.  She saw me wear my kercheif on Saturday evening and loved it so I promised I would make one for her too.  I have plenty of lace left to make many more of them in lots of different colors.

I have put my socks on hold while I work on a lovely scarf for a very special person.  I can not tell you who it is as I know that person reads my blog and I kind of want to surprise that person!  I am working like crazy to get it done so I can work on some more items for this same person.  Oh I just love mysteries, don't you?

I have not worked on any beading or other knitting/crocheting either.  Since our Daughter moved out we have been looking at our house and decided that we are going to be getting rid of bunches of "stuff".  We have too many "things" and it is nothing other than a bunch of clutters.  So we have been cleaning it out bit by bit.  I took a bunch of it over to our neighbor for her garage sale and a lot of it sold.  We don't take any money for it as she buys food for our church food pantry with the $$ and that works for us.  We still have LOTS more to clean out but it is a start.

We got new furniture for our family room last week.  Our Daughter took our old stuff (we were glad to give it to her) and I have been wanting a sectional for a long time and that is what we got.  I love it.  So now we are looking at flooring for that room too.  We have been living with bare concrete floors for about 7 years.  So it is time  now to finally decide what we want to do with the floor.  We went to 2 flooring stores this weekend and have two other flooring places coming to our house in the next couple of weeks to bring sample.  My DH is going to go to another flooring store sometime this week and look there too.  It is hard to decide what we want as there are so many possiblities and this will be the last floor we put in.  We have agreed on no carpeting.  With the animals and all the dust from our desert it is just too nasty to have carpeting all thru the house.  When we pulled up the old carpeting it was totally disgusting what was underneath it.  Nope, no more carpeting (other than our master bedroom)

So that is how my life is rolling right now.  Busy as usual and hoping someday to get back to "normal".  (what ever that is)

Still here

I am still here but just haven't gotten around to posting on my blog.  Always seems there is something going on when I think about it.

Anyway, I am knitting, crocheting and beading away the summer.  I have finished one prayer shawl since last I wrote.  I didn't get pictures of it as I know our Cancer Ministry at church was in dire need of it and finished it while in my hour of prayer so just left it in the office for them.  I now have a pair of socks on the needles and I promise these are going to be for me because I picked out the yarn with me in mind.  I also have the alpaca prayer shawl on the crochet hook and have not touched it in a long time.  It is just too darn hot to work on right now.  I will have the LaLa's simple shawl on the needles and have done a few rows on that this week.  Then I also have a survivor shawl on the crochet hook and love doing it as it goes pretty fast.

In the world of beading I have finished 5 necklaces, 2 bracelets and 5 earrings that will be sold at a craft sale where my mom lives.  That will take place in November and I would like to get several more sets done for it.  Mom is also working on sets to sell too.

I have also completed 3 snoods to wear to Mass instead of the chapel veils.  The veils are so warm and the snood is off the neck so they are a bit cooler.  I am also going to try and make a mimkhatah which is Hebrew for kercheif.  It is not like your normal kercheif but is really nice looking and ties under the back of your head and does not require bobby pins or clips to keep it on.  It will also be cool as it will be made out of light weight lace and only to to the bottom of my hair line.  So the neck will be exposed. YEA!

Our daughter is moving out this week.  She found a really adorable one bedroom apartment int he historical section of our town.  It was built in the 60's and you can tell that as soon as you walk in and see the turquoise range top and oven.  It has just been a year since she moved back home and I think she has done really well getting her life back together and it is time for her to venture out on her own.  She has never lived by herself so this will be really good for her.  She is only about 5 minutes from our house so that is nice too.

Other than that is has just been crazy busy with our daily lives.  Seems like we don't get much down time anymore and if I do manage to find some I am at my crafts which make me so happy!

Have a great week and I will get some pictures of the jewelry and post them.  I might even take some pictures of works in progress too.

We are home.

We are back from Texas and I would like to show you some pictures of our trip.    Above we have a picture from the Fort Worth Stock Yards.  It is a fascinating place with lots of restaurants and shops of all kinds.

We had to laugh when we saw this sign at the restaurant we ate at with some old friends of ours.  We were wondering if this was the Micro Brewed Beer of Texas!

No trip to the Stockyards would be complete unless you went to Billy Bob's and spent some time in there.  We met my brother and his wife there for lunch one day.  They do not have a mechanical bull.  Instead they have REAL bull riding every Friday and Saturday night.  You must have your bull riding card to participate but all are welcome to watch.  (we left long before bull riding began)

From left to right is:  Susan (my sister in law), Stan ( my brother ), me and Joe my wonderful husband.  I am still wondering when my brother went country.

We celebrated Bryson's 7th birthday while in Texas.  He sure looks funny here.  We were all singing to him and I think he was worried about all the wax getting on the cake.

I am not a proponent of giving children guns to play with but.........his daddy does work with aviation ordanence for the Navy and is a fire arms instructor too.  He had wanted this cap gun since Christmas.  It uses the old fashioned rolled caps.  I know they are old fashioned because they were around when I was a child. (and that was some time ago)

I had to have a picture of their 7 month old puppy Kiowa.  She is a real character and this is one of the few times we saw her actually relaxing.  She is a very busy lady wanting everyone to play with her toys.  She was a Christmas/houswarming gift from us to the family when they moved into their house this past December.  Just think, she has another 17 months to grow.  I think she is going to be a rather large GS!

Here is a picture of the Texas family.  It was so hard to leave today.  In the back row is Jamie (my daugher in law), Jay (our son) in the front row is Bryson and Jadin (10 yrs old).  They have 2 other boys (Neiko 17 and Skylar 22)  but  Neiko was not home and Skylar is in college in Philadelphia and couldn't make it home.

This was my favorite time today.  It was just before we left and I got to hold the boys and love them a lot.  They are wonderful children and I wish we were closer so we could see them more often but that is the Navy for you.  There isn't a base here in Arizona so Texas was the next best place for them to pick.  It is only a 3 hour flight or a 14 hour drive (ugh!)

While on this trip I finished my Multnomah prayer shawl and started back working on my La La's simple shawl.  I still have Eva's shawl to finish after this.  But I did manage to get the socks done for Jamie before we left and she loved them.  I have a request from Jadin for convertible mittens for this winter.  I am going to have fun making them as I never got a chance to make an outline of his hand before I left.  I did hold his hand to mine and it is quite a bit smaller than mine so will just have to punt.

I need to go to bed now.  It is back to work tomorrow and I am sure there is plenty for me to do there since I have been gone for 7 work days.  (sigh) Only 9 more years and I can retire.  (big big BIG sigh)

So what do you do when you don't have a swiffer to help you wind your yarn into a nice neat cake?  You go up to the dear unsuspecting spouse who is watching his baseball game and ask him to hold his arms out about so wide.  Then you plop a hank of beautiful yarn on his arms and tell him to hold that for just a few minutes while you manually roll it into a nice ball of yarn.

I think he did a great job!  After I finished this hank he actually asked me "how many more of these do you have to do".  I told him that not to worry about it as I was not going to do them all tonight. 

I have 3 more of these to do so I think I had better spread it out a bit.  Of course if I do them all one right after the other I might find a swiffer in my mail box someday soon.



I finished up my magic loop beanie class tonight.  I really liked the way it turned out and now am looking foward to doing many more hats this way.  In fact the yarn that DH helped me with tonight is going to become one of them but I will alter the pattern a bit as I am making it for a woman and want it to be a bit more femine than the one we did for class.

I finished the socks for my Daughter In Law and will be taking them with me to TX.  I tried to do the stretchy bindoff and could not get it.  So tonight while in class I asked my instructor to explain it to me as the instructions were really hard for me to grasp.  He explained it to me and told me to take out the binding and to attach the yarn back to the place where I started the bind of and do the bind off that way and then I would just weave in the ends.  So I am going to do that so the socks will go over her heels.  Otherwise they are really really a tight fit.

I am still working on the 3 prayer shawls and hopefully will be completing one of them soon.  The other two are kind of on hold until this first one is completed.  I was starting to get a bit confused as 2 of them are very close in their patterns.

We leave this Saturday for our 10 day trip to TX.  I am really looking forward to seeing the grandkids there and of course their parents too.  I am not looking forward to the weather there as it has been raining almost everyday for the past month it seems.  So the humidity will be really heavy.  Whereas here in AZ we are still around 11% humidity.  Ok,so I have already decided: no makeup, no fancy hair style, cotton clothes only, drink tons of ice water while there.

Better close this post up for the night.  I still have 3 more days of work before I can get on that big jet plane.

Looky

Looky who got her haircut!  Josie finished her dance recital on Saturday the 19th and on Tuesday the 22nd she got to get her haircut.  She has been asking for short hair for about 6 months but because of dance she needed to have it long.  She is so excited about the new do.

Today is my Grandson, Jadin's, 10th birthday.  Doesn't seem like it was that long ago.  I got to have the priviledge of being in the room when he was born.  What a miracle birth is. 

On the crafting front...................I started a new knitting class on Tuesday.  I am doing a beanie with the magic loop method.  I have not decided if I like it or not yet.  Jury is out but next tuesday is the final class so will let you know after that.

I still have 2 prayer shawls on the needles and one prayer shawl on a hook.  I have a pair of socks on needles too.  So I am still busy switching between projects and love it.

We get to have Josie this weekend so we have decided to take her to her first circus.  Ringling brothers is in town so we are going Saturday morning.  We are going to take the new Lightrail into town and that should be exciting for her too.  So it will be a very adventurous day for all of us.  I am so excited and can not wait to see her face when she finds out where she is going.  Mom and Dad have been kind enough not to tell her for us.

Then on Monday Josie begins her swimming lessons.  We were going to do them last summer but time got away from us.  So this year we finally found a time that mom and dad would be able to go with her.  I hope she learns quickly as she only has 4 weeks of lessons and then they close them down to get the pools ready for the beginning of school.

We will be traveling to TX in a couple of weeks and I can hardly wait to see my grandsons.  I saw them at Christmas time but I really miss them a lot!  I don't know what we will be doing with them this time.  Each time we visit we try and take them to something that they really want to do or see.  So I told them to start thinking hard since we will be there soon.

Other than that life is normal for us.  (I love normal!)

Have a great crafty day/week.

WOW!

Can you believe it has been 2 weeks since I last posted?  Sure you can because you know my past history. HAHAHA!

So let me catch you up a bit.

I celebrated my birthday with out much fuss.  I managed to slip into another year and now I am getting closer and closer to my next decade mark.  How did that happen?  I don't feel my age, and I hope I don't act my age either.  I still feel like a 30 something person.  Well, most of the time I do.

I continue to knit and crochet away on my prayer shawls and socks.  I have not taken anymore pictures of the prayer shawls because the knitted ones are kind of all bunched up on the circulars so they are kind of hard to get any kind of idea of how they look.  The socks are coming along but I don't think they will be done real quick.  I just have too many projects going at once.   But I like having several things in progress at the same time.  That way I have a choice of what I work on.  If I get bored with one I can switch to another and so on. 

It was kind of sad this week.  My son and his wife here in town had to finally surrender their dog to the humane society.  She had severe separation anxiety and had done a lot of damage to their home and their possesions.  She was such a loving dog and so good with their child and cat but she just had this one little problem.  They had it set up where she could not get into the house by putting a crate infront of her doggie door.  That way she could go into the crate during the day to get out of the blistering Arizona heat and yet still go outside to relieve herself.  Seems like one evening she learned how to bounce the crate around so she could get it to move and she managed to get out of the crate and managed to "enjoy" her freedom in the house for several hours.  Needless to say that was the last straw.  They had tried just about everything other than medication and they refused to medicate her.  I don't blame them.  She needs a nice  farm to live on where she can run all day and sleep all night.  So we pray that she will find a wonderful family to live with.

Next week will be quite busy for us here.  Our son and one of my DH's brothers are coming in for a short visit on Wednesday and leaving again on Saturday.  They are coming down for the Iron Maiden concert and as a bonus they will get to go to our granddaughters dance recital.  We will be plenty busy with them here.  The house will be full but that is fine.  Next week is also my DH's birthday.  I plan on making sure his does not go by to quietly.  I have not decided what I am going to do to for him yet but will make it memorable.

This weekend I will be busy sewing about 6" of material into my son's "dance" costume.  He is performing a daddy/daughter dance and his costume is made for a 5'10" man and he is 6'1".  He said it kind of hurts to put his arms over his head.  You think?

Last week I also purchased a cone of black thread.  It is not real fine but not real course either.  I am going to try and crochet mantillas/chapel veils out of it.  I am looking like crazy for a pattern but so far have not seen anything that strikes me as Mass appropiate.  If you have any suggestions please leave them in the comment section.  I am looking at doily patterns that would be about 30" round or doily patterns that could be "cut" in half.  I would really appreciate any help you could give me.

That is it for this week and probably next.  So have a great couple of weeks and will check back after all the company leaves.