WEEK 35

I never thought my YOP update header would be of a snowman in February.  But with the crazy weather we have had this week.............there was over 40" of snow 200 miles north of us.  Our mountains to the east of us are covered with the white stuff.  That is not normal.  The snow level dropped to 1500 feet this week.  That is super low here.  Scottsdale got snow and that is only a few miles from where we live!  Yes, I have lived here long enough to have seen snow in our neighborhood.  NEVER in February though.

This is what I see as I am heading east on the roads here.  Isn't that just gorgeous?  It will all be gone by the end of the week.  Well, that area will.  Our ski resort said they will have ski season through spring break next month!  WOOHOO!  I think our drought is starting to wane.  We received over 2" of rain in 24 hours.  Everything was all nice and clean after that.

So now that you have all that info, let's talk crafting news.

I have FO's to show.

The socks are done.  Love this yarn so much.  WEBS is closing it out so I purchased 10 more skeins of different colors.  Hubby also loves the feel of this fiber so he picked out a couple of colors too.  These are my happy socks.  The colors make me smile.

A tissue box cover.  I found Lion's Brand Mandala in DK weight and thought I would give this pattern a try.  It is crocheted and worked up fairly quickly.  I had seen these on another blog and really liked it.  She used scraps of different colors and they were spectacular.  The next ones I make will be done that way.  This one is a bit boring for my taste.

Since it is the last Sunday of the month, it is dishcloth time.

Six more cloths were made this month.  As you can see, I am using up all my bits and pieces of cotton yarn to make these.  I do have plenty of whole skeins of cotton but did not want to let these pieces go to waste.  Next month I will be using "real" skeins for them.

That is all for the FO's.  I am still working on my Summer Flies shawl.

I so wish photos would do this yarn justice.  It has a metallic thread running all the way through it.  Last week I had just finished the first round of lace butterflies which was section 2.  I am on the 5th section of the pattern now.  I hope this thing is going to grow quickly.  As of right now, it would fit an American Girl doll!  I am a bit larger than that!  There are only 3 more sections to do before it is completed.  There may be some added rows if it looks like it is going to be skimpy.

That is all for today's crafting.  This past week, I did purchase a Cricut Maker.  There has been some playing with it and I am loving what it does.  Card making will be taken to a whole new lever as well as some sewing and decorating ideas I have.

Yesterday, our daughter and son in law took us to the local Italian Festival.  My hubby is 1/2 Italian so we thought it would be fun to go and have a look.  WOW!!!!!!  So many people crammed into a 2 block area.  We made it for about 2.5 hours and then left to go and have a nice quiet Italian dinner at our favorite family owned Italian restaurant.  It was a perfect end to the day.  

The rest of today will be spent lounging around.  I have cooked so much food this week, we are just doing leftovers tonight for dinner.  

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

UPDATE FOR WEEK 34

 

Greetings all you faithful readers.  It is still dark outside here.  That is the perfect time to do an update, right?  So let's get to it.

There was a finish this week!  WOOHOO!

Another "To the Point" shawl for the prayer shawl ministry.  This was a VERY difficult one for me to work on.  I am not a lover of the color green.  Seldom will you find me wearing anything with green in it.  Even though everyone says I look splendid in green, it is not hanging around in my closet or anywhere in my home.  That being said, I know there are people out there that LOVE green and why should I not make something they will love.  There is a small amount of green left in my stash which will be made into more shawls.  It was given to me (thank you Linda) so I will not let it go to waste.   The best thing about this yarn......it is super soft and snuggly.  Of course it is an acrylic, but I am not a yarn snob.  If it feels nice, I will use it!

There is another half finish.

The "Car Socks".  I could not get a splendid photo this morning with it being dark outside.  Trust me when I tell you the toe is purple and hot pink!  

OK, this is a better shot.  Thank goodness for photo editing on my computer!  Anyway, I still have 52 foot rows to do and then 20 toe rows to do to finish sock #2.  My goal is to have it completed by next Sunday's update.  I have been asked what yarn I am using.....This is Diversity by Plymouth Yarn in the colorway Fruity.  A joy to work with, no wool, machine wash and dry and wears like iron!

The other finished item this week is...................the Moogly "Simple Home Basket" made for my DIL's bday.

It is about 11" in diameter and 9" deep.  She loves it!

There will not be another one made anytime soon.  This was so hard on my hands!

There was a new project cast on this past week.

"Summer Flies" shawl.  It has been in my library for ages as has this yarn.  The yarn is Blue Heron Rayon Metallic.  Yes, I know, there is green in this.  But there is also purple and lots of sparkles, so it makes it ok to have.  There is a different ending to this shawl than is printed on the original pattern.  It is called "My Version of Summer Flies".  I am going to be using that ending as I like the looks of it much better than the original one.  

That sums up my crafting week.  There were more dishcloths made but will post those photos at the end of the month.  What are you working on craft wise?

Tomorrow is a holiday here in the US.  Presidents Day, complete with parades and closing of all government offices.  I don't know how many parades will take place, seeing as the weather around the US is pretty crazy right now.  Lots of snow, rain, wind and just plain cold all over this year.  There was even snow in Hawaii last week!  We have been having rain on and off for the past few weeks.  Our temperatures have been about 15 degrees below our normal.  My heater is still running and normally by the middle of February I have my windows opened during the day for the lovely fresh air.  Not this year!

Not much else going on here.  We have a memorial to go to this afternoon for a friend of ours who passed away last month.  Seems like the dark colors in my closet are getting a lot of use lately.  Hopefully, this will be the last one for a while.

OH!!!!!!!!!!!! I knew there was something else I wanted to know.  In my midweek post (Don't think many of you follow except on Sundays) I asked if any of you have a die cutting machine like a Cricut or Silhouette.  If so, which one, how often do you use it, what do you mostly use it for, would you recommend the one you have or a different model?  

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

PS:  To see what others are doing in YOP, check out this link!

  

Happy Fri-Yay

Hello my dear readers.  Are you happy it is Friday?  It is amazing, even though I have been retired for over 2 years, I still love when Friday comes around.  Probably because I do not do many 'chores' on the weekend.  I really try to do most household things during the week so we can be free to spend time with our working friends and family.

How is your weather?  I hope you are all staying warm and as dry as possible.  We got rain all day yesterday and should be getting more on Monday.  This last storm played heck with my RA!  I was down for 2 days because of the barometer going nuts.  Today, I finally feel like myself again and am moving much better.  So, I am going to celebrate by having pizza and a beer for dinner tonight!  Yay me!

I cooked for Valentine's Day, even though I was not feeling up to being on my feet for any length of time.  There were pork chops smothered in cream of mushroom soup and also air fried garlic Parmesan asparagus.  So very yummy.  Hubby was very please too.  Do you cook something special for Valentine's Day or do you go out to eat?

This morning I finally was able to get out of bed early enough to go and have a fasting blood draw done.  This was supposed to have happened 2 weeks ago but, with traveling and then feeling like crap............well, it is now done.  Do you put off medical things just 'because"?

For the rest of the day, I am going to crochet on the prayer shawl I started last week.  There is also 1 sock left to complete, so that will get a bit of love too.  I started another shawl for ME, but have not worked on it since last Sunday.  Once the second sock is completed, I will pick it up again and give it a lot of love.  What are you working on?

Now, I do have a serious question.  Do any of your have a die cut machine?  Like a Cricut or Silhouette or Brother?  If so, what do you do with it.  Do you use it often?  I received an Cricut Mini several years ago for a gift.  I finally hooked it up last year only to find out it is no longer supported on the internet.  It has very limited capabilities.  I was hoping to make greeting cards with it but making cut outs to paste onto card stock.  Researching all the different die cut  machines is quite time consuming and who better to ask, then my crafting friends.

Looking at my calendar, I see we have a 3 day weekend here in the US.  It also looks like there is something going on everyday next week.  Fingers crossed my RA stays in control for the next 7 days.  There is too much going on to be laid up again for 2 days.  Do you keep track of your schedule using a calendar, bullet journal or electronic device?  I use all three.  That way I never miss an appointment...........well hardly ever.

OK, I am off to do some other computer stuff.  I am actually on the main PC today.  Hubby was away from it and I just plopped down and took it over. LOL  I normally use my laptop to write my blog.

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

JUST BECAUSE

Yup, I am posting today because I can.  There have not been too many non-YOP posts lately.  Not that I don't think of doing them.  The day just seems to slip away after I finish dinner and before I know it, bedtime is upon us.  Not today.  I have been awake since 3 this morning.  My feet finally hit the ground around 5.  My daily chores are just about completed.  I am waiting on my bedding to finish washing and drying so I can make our bed.  Then my day of 'work' will be completed and I can move onto my crafting or reading.  Which ever speaks to me.  There also might be a nap involved in today.  This is what happens when we get up way too early.

HEEHEE......hubby doesn't know I snapped that photo of him and Enrique snoozing after a very early morning.  He turns on sports and then promptly falls asleep LOL.  This was a morning he got up at 3 or 4.  For some reason, the older we get the more often we wake up at horrible times of the morning.

Tonight we are having tacos for dinner.  You have heard of taco Tuesday, yes?  It is a pretty common thing here in the southwest.  We try and have some sort of Mexican food every Tuesday to honor the saying.  I have already prepped the garnishings for the tacos so all that needs to be done is cook the meat and fry up the corn tortillas.  This is hubby's favorite meal.  He will be making salsa for the tacos, later on today.  He makes the BEST salsa.  It could take the varnish off wood!  We love it hot!  Our Daughter calls it 'weapon grade' salsa.

On another topic.............do any of you have cup holders in your furniture?  I have them on the piece of furniture I sit on.  Do you know what they are really for?

Yarn holders!  That is some of my cotton yarn I am working with today to make dishcloths.  They are the dribs and drabs left over from earlier made cloths.  I love mixing and matching them together to get interesting cloths.  No need to throw the leftovers away.  If they don't look nice enough to give as a gift, I will use them.  You can never have too many dishcloths.

Time to go and make the bed.

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

WEEK 33 UPDATE

Howdy one and all.  Another week has gone by.  Knitting and crocheting have been happening at Casa de Noce.  Hubby has made sure I have had plenty of time to craft this week to help ease my emotions.  It has helped so much.  Even though I am still sad with the passing of my brother, I can now talk about him without bursting into tears each time.  

Want to see what I have done this week?  Of course you do or you wouldn't be here.

The socks!  Oh how I love working with self striping yarn.  Also, I love the Fish Kiss Lips heel.  You can see where I was last Tuesday when I posted my update.  I have managed to work quite a bit on these lovelies the past 4 days.  As you can see, orange was the next new color to appear on the socks.  There is still one more new color to appear.  Fingers crossed it will show up before the end of the sock.  Since I wear sandals year round, I am not worried about the last color being hidden by shoes.  Any guesses as to the last color?

There is another project trying to be completed quickly.  It is the Simple Home Basket by Moogly.  So far I have completed the lining of the basket.

The outer part of the basket is over half done.

I have 8 more rows to do on the outer part and then edging and attaching them to each other.  This is a gift for my Daughter in Law.  Her birthday was over a week ago but, with all the traveling going on, I was gone on her bday.  I hope she likes the basket.  I think it will serve her well as she also is a crafter and this could hold so many things for her while working on her projects.  The only issue I have with this project is the yarn it uses.

It is a SUPER bulky chenille.  So it does not have any give to it and it is very hard on my hands.  I knew it would be difficult when I decided to do it so have just been taking breaks every hour to rest my hands.  I am hoping to complete it today and get it to her ASAP.

I have been perusing shawl patterns today.  There is a very expensive skein of yarn, in my stash, I do not know what to do with.  I decided to turn it into a shawl and even found a shawl I love!  When looking at the projects done with the pattern, I discovered someone that used that same yarn to make said shawl.  I am so excited!  Finally I will get that yarn used and it will be something I will wear too.  Stay tuned for the update on that.

I started another shawl for the prayer shawl ministry.  There are no photos as I like to wait until it is completed to show it.  I will say this..........it is not in a color I am fond of.  It is in two different shades of green.  I have never been a huge green fan but know there are many out there that love the color.  So, why should I not make something that others will love?  It is another To the Point shawl.  (of course)  It should be completed by the end of the week, so there will be photos next week of it.

As far as normal daily life.............we have been keeping ourselves occupied.  We sat down this week and planned what we are going to do next to the house.  Hubby has agreed to work on the declutter with me and we are going to try and get all decluttering done in the next few weeks.  We are mainly concerned with our 'backroom' that we enclosed a couple of years ago.  It is where we kind of just 'throw' stuff we have no where else to put it.  It is also where all our tools are since we no longer can keep them in our shed.  (The shed has been broken into several times so it is basically used for Christmas storage now)  Once all the decluttering is complete, we will hire our handyman friend to come and get the flooring laid in there as well as in our 2 bathrooms.  That will pretty much take care of all the remodel of the house.  It all just takes time, elbow grease and $$$.  The time and elbow grease we have at the ready...............the $$$ takes a bit of time to build up LOL.  Tomorrow we start, per the hubby.  

For the rest of today I am going to work on the basket and hope to complete it.  I am also waiting to hear from my daughter in law to tell me to come over.  She is going to shave my undercut for me as it is kind of hard for me to do the back myself.  In turn, I will shave hers too.  It is so nice to have someone to do it without having to spend the $$$ to go to the salon for a 5 minute touch up.  The only reason I go to the salon now is to have to 'outside' of my hair trimmed up as it grows out more and more. 

This is pretty much what my hair is like now and I will probably not let it get much longer than this.  Super easy to take care of too.

Tonight, there will be a fun dinner of hot wings and sweet potato fries.  All done in my air fryer!  Gotta love Pinterest............I get so many recipes from there for the air fryer.  Not to mention ideas for home decor, yarn crafts, baking etc.  It is a dangerous place and a great time sucker too.  LOL  

Hubby is away this morning teaching RCIA at church so I am going to take this quiet time to work on the basket while watching a chic flic on Hallmark.  They have all their Valentine day movies going on now.  

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

WEEK 32 and LIFE

Good morning everyone.  It is Tuesday so I am a bit behind in doing my YOP update.  Most of you know the reason I am late this week and I will talk about that later in this post.  I was going to make two blog posts, (one for projects and one for life) but decided against it.  It will all be in this one post.  It will make it much easier on this sleep deprived knitter, to only type out one blog update.  So let's get started.

My socks are coming along nicely.  The striping in them makes me so very happy.  It reminds me of sunshine and green grass.

I am about ready to hit some other colors after the white section that just started on the left sock.  You can see where I was at last Sunday by the progress keepers.  Yes, I know one is much more advanced than the other.  Blame that on Super Bowl.  I just kept knitting round and round while watching a football game I had no interest in but, was waiting for some good commercials.

There was some dishcloth knitting this week also but, you need to wait until the end of this month to see what I did in that area.

Last Sunday I told you, my brother had possibly suffered a stroke.  This is where my story begins.  On Sunday evening my niece informed me her flight was canceled and she was going to drive 18 hours to go see my brother (her dad).  I talked to my sister- in-law on Monday morning and she was in tears.  The hospital had contacted her and wanted a meeting on Tuesday morning to discuss Palliative care for my brother.  This was a great shock to me as I was getting the impression, from my niece, that things were looking good. 

After informing my family about this new turn of events, my son, that lives in town, told me he was going to go with me to Texas to see my brother.  My husband was quite upset as he was 300 miles away taking care of things with his mother who had suffered a stoke a year ago.  Tuesday afternoon I received a call from my SIL telling me to book my flight immediately as things were very grim for my brother and I needed to be there ASAP.

My son and I flew out Wednesday morning to Dallas Fort Worth.  My son, who lives in Dallas, offered us a car so we didn't need to rent one, and we drove from Dallas to Tyler Texas.  It is just at a two hour drive.  As soon as we got to Tyler, we went to the hospital to see my brother.  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.  I knew he was on a ventilator, so that did not bother me.  What was unexpected was the state he was in brain wise.  He was in a semi-catatonic state.  His eyes opened and closed but that was the extent of his movements.  He gave no response to being touched and the only response we got from us talking to him was when my Grand Daughter (on the phone) called him "Gruncle Stan".  Then his eyes went super wide.  So I know he could hear us talking to him.  On the lighter side of things......he had the hiccups the whole time we were there.

I called my niece after leaving the hospital and discovered we were all going to meet at the hospital on Thursday morning and they were going to have the ventilator removed as there was no hope for his brain to recover from the damage done by the stroke.  He had had a clot at the base of his brain which shut off blood supply for quite a while and there was no hope of recovery for him.  What a shock for my son and I.

Thursday morning the family and my brother's best friend, arrived at the hospital and were met by the neurologist who explained in detail what had happened.  She was phenomenal!  Then a chaplain came in and offered prayer for all of us.  Next were the nurses who came and explained what to expect once the tubes were removed.  We left the room during the removal, as we were told it was not normally a pretty site to watch.  We returned to the room and stood around my brother.  Telling him he was loved and it was okay for him to go.  He stayed with us for about 30 minutes and then he was gone.  Very peaceful and without any struggles.  We spent the rest of the day at his house with the family telling tales of him and laughing and crying together.

Friday just happened to be my son's birthday.  He decided he wanted to go to Shreveport Louisiana to do a little gambling for his birthday.  So, off we went.  It was a 2 hour drive and the scenery was fabulous.  We stayed and gambled for several hours and had a marvelous time together.  I won!  He didn't.  Then, off we went, back to our AirBNB in Tyler.  

Saturday we had a nice quiet day for the most part.  Here is what I did for most of the morning, into early afternoon.

Yup, knitting, reading and watching sappy Valentine Day movies on the Hallmark channel.  It was refreshing and a much needed down time.  My son was working on his homework.  He has 8 more weeks of classes and he graduates with his Bachelor's degree and with honors.  So very proud of him.

After he was done with homework, we headed out to the shopping mall as neither of us had brought 'funeral' clothes with us.  We had to buy shoes and an outfit to wear the next day.  We also stopped at a grocery store to pick up food for the next couple of days.  We were getting a bit tired of restaurants by this time.  I cooked up some pork chops and we had mashed potatoes and salad that evening.  It was so nice to just have a home cooked meal.

Sunday, we got up and went to Mass at the Cathedral in Tyler.  Then we headed to the AirBNB to rest up a bit and eat lunch.  We then headed to Longview (an hour away) to my brother's celebration of life service and reception at his church.  It was a lovely service and people there were just wonderful and so kind.

Monday, we got up, cleaned up the AirBNB and headed back to Dallas to spend some time with the other son and Grands.  It was nice to be with them for a few hours.  We had a red eye flight coming home and arrived this morning around 12:30.  It was so nice to sleep in my bed again!

So now you are all caught up on my life.  Hopefully you weren't too bored.  I am thankful for all the well wishes that came last week on my blog.  It is nice to know there were so many of you thinking of me this past week.

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