YEAR VII WEEK 6

I am happy to be here today talking to all of my friends and family.  I have had a very busy week but have managed to get some knitting done on the Log Cabin square.

Purple is completed and I am ready to start on the next 2 sides of black again. As you can see, it is getting bigger quite quickly.  There are 60 stitches on the last purple side I knit. Because it grows by 10 stitches on each side, it is getting harder and harder for me to put the live stitches on just one stitch holder.  It will even get a bit more difficult to use two of them as I get to the last color.  Therefore, I ordered more stitch holders yesterday.  I love these stitch holders

They will be here on Monday.  I am only half done and it is already 12 inches on each side.  Once the square is completed, the lives stitches will be placed on waste yarn until I join all of the squares together and then add the border.

I worked on my Grainne shawl on Thursday morning but only got 1 more repeat of the lace pattern done on it.  I am obsessed on getting the Log Cabin done and out of my house.  I mean, come on.................it has been living here since 2011 and it is time for it to move on.

My local grand daughter's maternal grandma (Grammie) is still in town and we have been having so much fun.  We have gone to lunch twice, been school shopping twice which led me into temptation.  You see.................on the second school shopping trip, the child needed oil pastels for her art masterpiece class.  The only place you can get those is a craft store. Since Hobby Lobby is directly across the street from Wal Mart,  Grammie and I sucked it up and said we would take her there since she HAD to have those pastels right NOW.

Wouldn't you know it.....................Grand child found a clearance aisle full of discounted yarn.  Grammie found enough to make an afghan for her family room.  Now remember, I put on my YOP list, I am working through my stash this year.  So of course I had that going through my mind as I was loading my cart up with 15 skeins of Soft Secret yarn.  But you have to understand.................it was $2 off each skein.  I do have a project planned for all of it too.  It is not like it is just in my stash because it was on sale.  Nope, I am learning that is a very bad idea.  Let's take a look at what I have.

I have put the skeins together for each project they will be used for.  Actually, each bundle is going to be used for a prayer shawl.  The yarn is so darn soft and cuddly, it will be perfect for someone going through cancer treatments.  Take a look at these lovely colors.

I even managed to get some manly colors.  That is the one area our shawl closet is usually short of.  I am trying to be more and more mindful of that too.

I was also gifted some yarn by Grammie.  She also has quite a stash in her home in Washington State.  She brought down quite a bit of yarn and gave it to our prayer shawl stash closet.  Before she handed it to them, she allowed me to go through it and this is what I picked out.

 The color in this photo does not do this justice.  It is a very pretty blue and much brighter than what it shows here.  It is an unusual cotton yarn and I think I will make a dishcloth with it  There is 109 yards (100 meters) in it and I doubt that would be enough to do a dish towel. The fact that it has little knobbies on it makes me think it would be a good scrubbing cloth.  It is a German yarn and I am very excited to use it.

I also grabbed this Bernat Pipsqueak:

 Once again the blue is not showing up well.  It is a true baby blue.  I have 6 skeins total of these two colors.  Three skeins of each one.  This will become a lovely baby blanket for Hannah's House.  

Hannah's House is another part of Maggie's Place.  There are 5 homes here in the Phoenix Metro area and they all have different names but they are all part of the same ministry. One of them is attached to our parish.  If you would like to read a bit more about them, here is a link.  It is a home for unwed mothers to go to when they have no where else to go.  While there, they are given parenting classes.  The girls/ ladies continue in their education.  If they have completed High School and have no job skills, they are helped with job training so they can support themselves and their child.  Once their child is born they can stay at the home for 6 to 9 months while they find a job and get on their feet.  If you would like to donate any handmade items, please let me know in the comments and leave me your email address.  I will then email you my address where the items can be sent to and I will deliver them to Hannah's House.  We accept;newborn booties, newborn hats, blankets, pacifier holders, and wash cloths.  If you want to include a little card with the item, that would be super sweet too.  


Grammie made a blanket for them.  I will be delivering it this week to them.





Hubby is still in Las Vegas but will be home Wednesday.  He left on Thursday and I had grand plans of doing a bunch or organizing while he was gone.  So far all I have managed to organize is the deep freeze and the freezer attached to my fridge.  I have also organized my list of what I want to organize.  LOL I plan on being home all day today and on Tuesday also. Hopefully, I will get something done during those days.

I did finally make a loaf of Gluten Free bread.  It was made in my new bread machine.  It is OK.  Next time, I will cut the kneading time down on it as it is still a little too dense.  Gluten free does not need the kneading that other breads do.  It tastes good though.  I got the recipe from our nutritionist.  I was most concerned with the taste as the first loaf I made tasted like saw dust.  This one is much much better.  I put a bit of butter on it and it was quite yummy.  Hopefully, this will satisfy hubby's bread craving.

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

Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me?  It is 4:15am on Friday morning and my eyes are wide opened and my body feel totally rested.  Must mean I need to get up and start my day.  After all, there is always a possibility of a nap later on this afternoon, right?

Yesterday was a whirl wind day for me.  Hubby left for Las Vegas around 9am.  That is the same time I went and picked up Grand and her maternal Grandma.  We went to Prayer Shawl meeting where Grammie donated some lovely yarn to our cause.  I even picked up 6 skeins of it.  I know I am promised not to buy any yarn this year but.....................this was FREE!

After prayer shawl, we went and had a lovely BBQ lunch at one of my favorite BBQ spots. From there we went to pick up uniform skirts for the Grand as well as a belt for her uniforms. Then we skipped on over to Goodwill to see if we could find her any shorts or jeans to cut off into shorts.  No such luck.

I dropped my little crew off at their house and I went out to visit my mom.  I surprised her with a single serving of lemon pie.  She was so excited to see the pie.  She said she has not had any pie or anything lemon since she moved into her facility  I love making her happy and surprising her with little treats like that.  We worked on a puzzle for a couple of hours and then I needed to get back home.

I am so glad I came home when I did.  We got hit with a horrible storm about 30 minutes after I arrived home.  It POURED here for over an hour.  The thunder was so close to my house, it actually shook the house twice.  My poor two dogs were not brave at all.  Normally they will go to my hubby for comfort but...............with him gone, I was their pacifier.  

I know there are a lot of you out there that live in areas that get rain quite often.  That is not the case in my area.  I keep telling you I live in the desert and I am serious.  When we get over 1.5 inches of rain in an hour, flooding is a real thing for us.

This is a bit of a look at our backyard.  The rain was still coming down at this point, but since it was getting dark, I thought I would take a shot of how flooded it was before it got too dark.

As soon as it is light enough this morning, I need to go out back and survey our shed as the water was over the threshold.  Need to check for damage.

Here is another shot of the flooding last night.

This was at our airport.  The water was coming up through the manhole cover because the storm drains were filling up faster than they could handle.

This is what we call the monsoons here in Arizona.  They only last for 3 months, but they can be quite intense at times.  There were high winds that came along with this storm too. Quite a few trees were downed as well as power lines.  The worse part of rain in this area is...............Our streets have oil on them to keep them from cracking from our intense heat.  When it rains, that oil rises to the top of the roads and it is like driving on ice.  Stopping is hard to do as this photo will show.

This is my daughters car................or was.  It is a 2009 so not sure it will be worth fixing at this point.  Depends on the under carriage damage.  The guy behind her forgot how slippery the streets are when wet and slammed into her at a stop light.  He got a minor scrape on his front end and it did push my daughter into the car in front of her.  Not much damage to that car either.  Poor little Easter Egg car is all messed up.

My daughter is not hurt, but she will be sore today as it jarred her neck and back pretty good.  Nothing a nice massage won't take care of.

I am off today to go school supply shopping.  This is my favorite shopping to do.  I love office and school supplies.  I can spend hours in an office supply store.  But..............we will go to WalMart to start, then on to Target and if we still need 'stuff' we will go to Staples and finish up.  After that, Grand, Grammie an I will have another lovely lunch together and then we will go to our respective homes.

I very much enjoy spending time with Grammie.  She and I have many similar interests and she is a FANTASTIC knitter.  We are two people that could just sit and knit together all day and be the happiest grandmas in the world.  LOL  I will be sad when she heads home on Wednesday.  It has been nice to have someone to hang around with.  She and her hubby will be back December 1st and will be snow birds this year.  They will be staying about 1/2 mile from my house.  So excited!

I got my new bread machine yesterday.  I am going to try the gluten free bread in it this afternoon.  I will update you all how it turns out on my Sunday update.  I figured I have several days to play with it before hubby returns and I should be able to get it all worked out by the time he is back.

Need to get my dogs fed, feed me and get ready for my day.  

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

I love reading too

I love to read.  I try to read some everyday.  It is a wonderful way to escape into another world or into someone else's life.  I have been doing more reading of late.  I have finished 2 books and have started a third.  Let's take a look at what I have read.

This was my bed time reading for the past bit.(Kindle edition)  It was a grand book and I really loved getting to know the characters.  This was about a group of totally unmatched people taking a bus tour through Ireland.  The tour guide/ bus driver was a fantastic man and made me chuckle on more than one occasion.  You really need to pay attention to the beginning of the book, when all the characters are introduced.  Otherwise, you will be going back to try and figure out who is with whom.  I would give it 4 stars.

The next book I finished was:

The main character is this book is a young woman who has Downs Syndrome.  She lives at home with her divorced mother.  This was a paperback I had purchased for my mom to read.  She finished it and gave it to me to peruse.  I really can not tell you too much about this book.  Not because I can't, but because, I think you need to experience for yourself.  If you know anyone with mental disabilities, this book will make you stop and rethink about what their life is like.  I give this 4.5 stars.  The writing was wonderful and the characters were developed to perfection.  The first half of the book was a bit slow, to me, but after that, I could hardly put it down.

I am reading on my kindle only at the moment.  Not because I do not have any paperbacks, but because, I find I can pick up on my book anywhere I am, since I have kindle on my phone, tablet, kindle and laptop.  I am on the move quite a bit these days so the books are good company for me when I do not what to knit.

The current book I am reading is:

I have only gotten to the end of chapter 2 so not really sure how this is going to go.  It has been OK so far but, I am hoping it will get funnier as I read more.

That is it for my book review.

Hubby is heading out tomorrow morning for Las Vegas.  He needs to help his mom with some legal stuff and also will get her to some dental appointments she has.  I so hope he can convince her to move down here with us.  He can not keep heading up to Las Vegas every time she needs something.  She is 90 and really should not be living alone.  We have even asked her to move into an assisted living facility and she refuses to do that too. We thought, that way she could stay in Las Vegas where she has all her doctor's, dentist and other places she likes to shop and gamble at. Fingers crossed that this time he can talk some sense into her and get her to move down here.  We have casinos, shops, doctors and dentists here too!  

He will be gone for a week.  I have some wonderful organizing plans while he is gone.  I already bought bins for my freezer and cleaned it out and organized everything in there.  I do need to label the bins though.  That is one thing on my list.  One of the lights in our carport has been burnt out for half a year and I AM going to put a new one in there.  Hubby keeps insisting it burns out every week.  The last bulb was in there for over a year.  To save having an argument I just kept quiet and decided to replace it myself when he is not home. Our Arizona room needs some work to organize it up a bit.  That is my BIG project for the next week.  I think I can get 80% of it organized in a weeks time.  It will be nice to have it all nice and neat back there again.  

Of course, there will be knitting and puzzle working going on too.  Tomorrow is Prayer Shawl meeting and I will work on my Grainne Shawl.  My grand daughter and her maternal Grandmother will be going with me.  I am still working on the log cabin squares too.  Still on square 1 though.

Tonight is taco night.  We were going to have them last night but............Grand daughter's birthday was yesterday and she wanted to come over and go night swimming and have spaghetti for dinner.  Who could say no to their Grand?  Her mom was at work when they all came over but when mom arrived.................there were squeals of joy and excitement.  Her mom had picked up Grand's best friend, on the way to my house, as a surprise for her.  You see, Grand has been in Seattle for the past 5 weeks.  She has really missed her BFF and her mom and dad.  This was the best surprise her parents could have done for her.

That's it for today.  Hubby goes to Mass tonight to set everything up for the priest.  Maybe I will change that light bulb out while he is there!  That would take one thing off my to do list!

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

WEEK 5

So, if you didn't notice, July has 5 Sundays in it.  It also has 5 Mondays in it too.  The only reason I mention it is because this is week 5 in our Year 7 YOP and we are still in the same month as when we started.  OK, so maybe you did notice and it isn't something that sticks out to you like it does to me.  That's OK too.  But, if you didn't notice, I am happy to of assistance LOL.

Anyway, the reason we are here is to watch me be boring for the next several posts.  Here is what I am working on.

Sorry about it being bunched up, but those live stitches on each side needed to be on stitch holders or I would be so sad.  

Some of you wondered what was wrong with my previous squares.  Let's see if I can demonstrate.

These are the squares I had to rip out.

See how the outside orange goes all the way to the end the left side but not on the bottom?  That is a problem when doing a 4 square log cabin.

This is what needed to happen.

The orange needed to go completely to the edge on both sides in order to make the effect we are going for.  (Light in the middle and dark on the outside.)  Once completed, I will edge it in green to give it a bit of pop on the outer edges.

The other thing I am doing this time a bit different is, I am not tying knots in the yarn until I complete a section of color.  That way, if it needs to be pulled out for any reason, I am not taking the time to get those knots out.  I am weaving in ends as I go also. That will save me time at the end when I am sick of looking at the blanket.

The only other item I will be working on is.....................the Grainne Shawl.  That will be worked on during the Prayer Shawl meetings on Thursday mornings.  As I had mentioned before, I will always have a shawl on the needles or hook.

I have had a few other questions posed to me this week and I am going to take the time to answer them here.  

1.  My new laptop/tablet is Windows 10 based and Android 5.0 (I know that is an old android system, but there is not a 2 in 1 out there that has anything newer)  It is only 10 inches and I really love it.  (Although, I am using our PC for today's update)  Here is a photo of it.

Yesterday, hubby and I went out and I got a bluetooth mouse to go with it.  One of my son's is an IT guy and he is the one that told me about the bluetooth mouse thing.  How nice it is to not have anything plugged into my little computer, no matter how small the ANT is, it would still stick out a bit.  This is much better.  It also makes browsing the internet much easier too.

See the chewed up ruler?  It says "Lefties Rule!"  There is a lefthanded store in Seattle's Pike's market.  I picked up a few things there and this is one of them.  It was also a great teething toy for my boy dog when we first got him.  We were told he was 2 years old and yet he was still loosing baby teeth................want to try that age thing again? LOL

2.  Gluten free, GMO free change in lifestyle.  Our nutritionist did get back to me on Friday and said she would send me her bread recipe.  I am still waiting for that LOL.  I realize she has a husband and 3 young children and am sure her life outside of the office is not all sit down and watch TV time.  I will remind her on Monday about the recipe, if I do not have it yet.  If anyone on here has a GF bread recipe that does not use Xantham Gum please leave me the name or website in the comments.  I do have chia seeds I can use to help hold things together. This is the flour we were told to use for baking (per the nutritionist)

3.  Going out to eat is not hard at all.  Last night hubby ordered smoked wings because they are not breaded in any way.  We can always order salads with grilled chicken on them. There are always lettuce wraps, we can ask for instead of flour wraps.  Many restaurants offer gluten free buns for their sandwiches.  As for the GMO, that is not something we can control in a restaurant setting.  We just try and do our best with everything else.  Order fruit instead of fries or chips.  Or even ask for steamed veggies.  There are lots of ways to go about it.  

I have a girl dog that is not feeling well since Friday evening.  I finally made her some rice and an egg so she would eat.  I know she ate something outside, but have no idea what it was. She started throwing up Friday night and stopped eating and drinking then.  If she is not better by tomorrow, we will be making a vet visit again.  She did eat the rice/egg mixture and that is the first she has eaten since Friday morning. I will give her some more of that again this evening, if she manages to keep it down.  She started drinking water yesterday so I am hoping she is on the road to recovery.  This is the sweetest dog ever and I so hate to see her not feeling well.  She is 11 years old and I know that seems old to many of you but....her breed normally lives to be about 17 to 20.  So you see, she is just middle aged LOL.

That is my update for the week.  I am sure there will be more blogging during the week as I have lots of fun stuff going on this week and will want to tell you all about it.

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

New Tricks

So I got my new 2 in 1 laptop/tablet.  Learning to use it efficiently is my new trick I am trying to learn.  Seems I need to type slower than normal for the strokes to get to the screen.  That is hard as I pride myself on my 70 WPM I type normally.  This means my blogging will take longer.

I do like the convenience of being able to switch between the two without picking one up and putting one down.  I am still getting used to all the features, but have time to learn.

I am working solely on the log cabin blanket.  It is slow going as it increases 10 to 20 stitches with each  turn.  I am hoping to get the entire blanket done by one of two dates.......October 20th ( her bday) or December 25th (no explanation needed).  This would be a BIG chunk of yarn out of my house.  My next few blog posts will be boring, but that is how monogamous knitting goes.  I apologize upfront.

On the home front........We FINALLY got our A/C people to get in gear and had another air return installed yesterday.  We knew we needed one but they kept goofing around and running tests and FINALLY sent a crew to do it yesterday.  Of course it was 110F that day and much hotter in my 12 inch high attic. We already notice a difference in much better circulation in the house and the inside humidity has gone down too.  Yippee for us.  Hopefully this will help with our electric bill too.


Hubby and I went to the nutritionist on Tuesday.  She is wonderful and so easy to talk too. Basically, we need to read all labels and if we can not pronounce an ingredient, back on the shelf it goes.  We are going to rice pasta, non GMO as much as possible and gluten free breads.   Nothing sugar free is allowed to be consumed, but need to watch the sugars in our foods.  Will be using coconut palm sugar for all baking and cooking as it does not spike blood sugar.  She got her insulin diabetic husband off all meds with diet alone.  So this should be pretty easy for us to get hubby's blood work back to normal.  We also have 2 supplements to take each day for inflammation and immunity building (both of which I need)  She uses an holistic approach and that really appeals to both of us.  We go back in two weeks to report on any areas we need help or see improvement in.  I am working with her right now on bread baking with gluten free flour.  99% of recipes want me to use Xantham Gum which is a GMO product and the flour she suggested is a bean flour which has some nasty taste to it.  I sent her an email asking for help and hopefully will hear back from her before end of day today.

That is all from here today.  Hubby has offered to take me to lunch, so need to go and get all prettied up for him.

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

Sayings...............

I am sure most of you had a parent that would throw sayings at you quite a bit.  My mom was famous for that.  I hear those sayings in my head in certain situations.  Sunday night and yesterday evening, I heard some of those sayings over and over.  Like:

Pride cometh before the fall

Haste makes waste

A woman's work is never done, from break of day to setting sun.

Every cloud has a silver lining

ETC...

So what brought this on?

Remember this from Sunday?

I was so proud of the fact I had gotten another square done and was on a roll.  I sent photos to my daughter and she was super excited too.  I also informed you that I needed to figure out the next 2 squares as to how to knit them so they would make a true log cabin effect. Guess what.......................

Yup, I had to frog both squares.  I pulled the pattern out and realized the pattern called for 9 colors of yarn.  We only were using 6.  Therefore, we had to arrange the pattern a bit differently than the original designer did.  It took me 4 hours to frog that yarn.  I was so sad.
But...................I am not a quitter.  There is too much money invested in this blanket to just forget about it.  I am going to start it all over and this time it will be done correctly.  This blanket needs to get done and out of my house.  It has been hanging around since 2011.  It is time to GO AWAY!  I colored in the pattern blocks that came with the pattern:

This time, I took my time and really thought about how the colors should be to make the effect we are wanting.  It came out perfect this time and I am now ready to begin the task of a redo.

Today is a bit of a slow day for me.  Hubby and I have a nutritionist appointment and after that we are free for the rest of the day.  I am going to start back on square one this afternoon while we kick back and enjoy some time together.  My other WIP's have been put on hold until I get a handle on this.  I need to slow down, read the instructions, look at my notes as to which color follows the one before.  Thank goodness it is a garter stitch and nothing fancy.  I know I complained about it being boring but maybe that is a "blessing in disguise".

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

YOP 7 WEEK 4

Happy Sunday everyone.  Another week has flown by.  I have made progress this week. Seems I had a bit more time to knit this week.  Lots of waiting rooms in my week = lots of knitting.  Let's take a look;

Finished my Darcy socks.  They have had a nice soak. been blocked and are now ready to be mailed to their owner.

Worked just a little bit on the Grainne shawl.  See the progress marker?  That's all I did this week.  I only worked on it for 1 day though and there are over 300 stitches a row.  I am ready to start another mesh section.  Should get that going this week.

I picked up the log cabin blanket and completed square #2.  It is a very easy knit, so easy it is almost boring.

I laid the 2 squares side by side and realized, the next 2 squares need to be adjusted or the middles will not line up right.  Glad I laid them out. The pattern called for 9 colors and we only chose 6.  Makes a big difference in the end when putting the squares together to get the light/dark log cabin effect.

After all that fun, I decided to go and cast on another pair of socks. That almost didn't happen though.  I have so many WIP's I kind of felt guilty thinking of adding another project to my needles.  Then I realize.......socks aren't WIP's.  They are calming, lovely, traveling, small, in your purse projects.  So let the casting on begin.  I had a hard time choosing between the Car Socks and Petty Harbour socks patterns.

Petty Harbour won.  I know the stripes don't match.  I tried to match them but.......it would have required gong down 3/4 of a skein to get the matching stripes.  They will be under pants so who is going to see them?  Hubby has already claimed them as his.  This is the first time making this pattern but will not be the last.  I am happy it does not ruin the stripes of the yarn.  It is a simple 4 row pattern and I already have it memorized.  I do like the fact it has a bit of texture and is not plain vanilla.  I am hoping to make them long enough for him to wear them in his boots.

It was a great week,even if it was busy.  Next week is pretty busy too but there is plenty of down time to knit too.  More waiting rooms.  July must be health month.

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