WEEK 8 UPDATES

 

There are reasons to celebrate this past week.  I will share that information at the end of this post.

In the world of crafting, I have kind of been slacking.  I have been waiting on floss for my favorite Madonna and Child XS.  It was mailed from Ohio on the 8th of this month.  Normally, I receive floss from them in about 3 days.  It was scheduled to be delivered on the 12th.  Got a note from USPS it was going to be delayed.  Well, by the 20th I was a bit peeved and contacted USPS and was informed only the sender could do anything!  Contacted the vender to inform them about it.  That night I got informed my package was in Kent Washington!!!!  What???  So it took 12 days to go from Ohio to Washington.  It showed up in my mailbox on the 22nd.  So, only 2 days from Washington to Arizona.  And USPS keeps raising their rates?  Now I know why.  Takes so much more gas to go from Ohio to Arizona these days. LOL

So, while waiting for the floss to arrive, I started another To The Point shawl.

This will be #42.  I have 2 more colors to use before I am out of this type of yarn.  I am very limited on Worsted Weight yarn now. Once I no longer have enough worsted weight skeins to make these shawls, I will start making scrap-ghans with what I have left until I am completely out.  How exciting is it to think I might actually deplete one of my yarn weights by the end of this YOP year!

That is all I did for crafting.  I did play with my sourdough again this week.

I made a boule of pumpernickel fennel  sourdough bread.  It is so yummy.  I also had one of my cookie tubs returned to me last night with wishes for more SD cookies.  Makes me happy to know they were loved that much.

Hubby and I decided to become a one car family.  It has been a thought of ours for the past several years and we finally decided to do it.  We traded both of our cars in and decided to go with a 3 year lease.  Since we are both well into our 70's we truthfully do not know how much longer we will be driving safely.  Here is what we now have in our driveway.

Yup, we decided to go with an all electric vehicle.  It is a 2025 BMW SUV and we are thrilled with it.  I am sure we will even be more thrilled when we figure out all the bells and whistles that are on it.  We picked it out on Tuesday evening and picked it up on Wednesday afternoon.  Our charging box should be installed sometime this coming week too.  

So, that is one reason to celebrate this past week.  Here is the other reason....................

Jaxon!!!!!!!! 

Top left photo is from August 16th, bottom left from August 19th and the big right photo is from August 24th!  What a difference a week has made.  She is now at a rehab facility and getting 150 hours of physical, occupational and speech therapy per week.  She still has a way to go.  Her concussion/brain injury is probably the hardest thing for most of us to handle.  Her time lines are way off and she thinks things have happened that have not happened.  She has pulled herself off her pain meds as she knew they were messing with her thinking abilities too.  We figure she has at least another week if not 2 weeks before she will be able to go home.  Each day we see more and more improvement.  We have been blessed!

Today is the day I really do not do much.  I will go and visit Jaxon for a little bit.  There is a jigsaw puzzle that is screaming to be started.  Actually, I have 15 puzzles that are wanting to be worked.  There is a loaf of 'regular' bread that is going to be made.  We have plenty of leftovers in the fridge for our dinner tonight.  So, a nice and relaxing day for me.

Here is your chuckle for the week.......................

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

WEEK 7 Can We Get A Break!

 

Oh My Goodness.  This week was not a week I care to ever repeat.  I will explain at the end of this post.  But, first, I will regale you with my crafting adventures.

I finished the To The Point Shawl #40.

I still need to add the medal and tag before turning it into the prayer shawl group.  I played around with my photo gallery to see if I could do a little something different .  Well, it's different LOL.

Believe it or not, I picked up the RCR sock and actually put some rows on it.

This is my take a-long project.  It got taken a-long quite a bit this week.

Now to explain the title of this post......................

Thursday night I got a call from our son, Jay.  He was on his way to a hospital 40 miles away from our homes.  His daughter, Jaxon, had been in an accident.  Well, of course, my heart dropped to my ankles.  This is what we know so far.................

Jaxon was at a sanctioned motorcycle meeting/rally.  When it was over, her boyfriend decided he wanted to do a wheely and got permission from one of the shop owners to do so.  He did the wheely and at the end of it, went airborne, hit a curb, hit Jason, hit a pole and flew off his bike.  Jaxon has a compound fracture of her femur, two huge gashes (the Dr said they look like shark bites) in her broken leg, two small fractures of her pelvis, gash on the top of her head and many many abrasions on her body.  As for her boyfriend.  He suffered multiple fractures of both legs and multiple fractures of his pelvic bones.  He was wearing a helmet thankfully.

They both will heal...........eventually.  Jaxon has had surgery on her fracture and now has a titanium rod in her leg and the gashes have all been sutured.  We pray the ones on her leg will heal properly or there may be skin grafts in her future.  

The family was in the hospital all day Friday waiting for her to come out of surgery and get updates to her condition.  She finally opened her eyes late Friday evening and they were able to pull her breathing tube that evening too.  She was moved from ICU to a regular room yesterday afternoon.  She is extreme pain and does not remember anything that happened.  

This family is ready to catch a break here.  

The other good news, I was not the only one knitting in the waiting room.  A lady across from me was making a baby blanket and had just taught herself how to knit via youTube!  She was at least my age.  I was very impressed!

And now for your chuckle for the week...............

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

HEALTH & BREAD UPDATE

 

HEALTH UPDATE

Ok, so, I got good news from my urgent care visit.  No infection!  Thanks for asking.

I went to see the surgeon today about my thyroid nodule.  There will be a biopsy done....sometime.  First, permission from my cardiologist to stop my blood thinner for three days, then blood work, then schedule it with the hospital radiologist.  Good Grief!  It is the hurry up and wait game now.

BREAD UPDATE

 I am happy to report, my sourdough is going great guns.  Look at this beauty I cooked this morning after it rested last night in the fridge.

It has not been cut into yet.  Hopefully it is just as pretty inside.

My starter is going nuts!

She went from 200ml to 600ml in 2.5 hours!  I could make a boule of bread everyday with the way she goes.  I am now looking for discard recipes to help keep that crock down to a manageable size.  There might be tortillas and chocolate cookies made with it.  My family members love both so will be able to give them away.

That about covers everything around here.

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

WEEK 6

Another week has passed.  It was full of activity, family and crafting.

CRAFTING

I spent a fair amount of time on XS.  At this point I am still only working on the full coverage one.

It may not look like much but, trust me, this took several hours of time.  The spotted area took me 3 hours!  I must be the slowest cross stitcher ever.  It is still enjoyable for me and that is the most important part.

I am bored with the RCR socks so decided to make an old faithful pattern:

To The Point shawl is being worked on.  The color of this is much brighter than shown.  This will make #41.  An easy project to take along when transporting people to appointments.

KITCHEN STUFF

My sourdough starter is going crazy!  It doubles in size within just a couple of hours of feeding it.  That means I was obtaining a plethora of discard.  What to do?

Belgium waffles seemed like a grand idea.  They were delicious too.  

There was also a loaf of sourdough bread made with the active starter.

This was a success.  I have had a horrible time getting a good loaf of sourdough made.  This one used beer in it but you can not taste it.  I will be making this type again in the next day or two.

I made two other items with discard. One was Chocolate chip cookies.  No photo of them but I do have a photo of my new cookie jar they are stored in.

Isn't it cute?  My friend in Vegas had this jar but in white.  It seals tightly and keeps the cookies fresh for quite a while.  I think the cookies will be gone before we see how long the freshness will last.

The other discard item was crackers.  Hubby loves them and they are super easy to make and use a lot of discard.  I use different spices in them to make them super yummy.

HEALTH

I had quite an unusual experience this week.  I needed to go to urgent care for a suspected infection.  (Waiting on the results)  The Dr was busy doing a procedure so they asked if I would be ok with a telehealth Dr.  I was ok with that.  So, this is what I saw when taken into the room.

I chuckled about this.  If you have seen NCIS LA, you know, Heddy had one of these that followed her 'team' around the office.  She would keep tabs on their activities and talk to them.  Well, I am happy to report, Heddy was not the Dr on this one.  It was interesting to say the least though.  I was still laughing when I left and the staff started laughing with me when I explained why.  They all agreed.

LIFE

I spent some time going about town with Tiff (TX DIL).  We had errands to run and decided to do them together.  It was 6 hours of pure joy.  Then, yesterday, we went to her house to celebrate the 25th birthday of their bonus daughter.  This girl had NEVER had a birthday party, EVER!  Well, we took care of that.  Josh is holding his own.  He has a few new noticeable things happening.  Nothing anyone would know unless you knew him well.  But, the family notices.  We take each day with him as a gift.

Here is this weeks chuckle for you.................

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

WEEK 5 MEMORIES

 

Hey there.  I am a day late again.  We just got back from our family weekend in Las Vegas.  I will talk about that as soon as I show you my pitiful craft activity.

I finally finished the area in the upper right hand corner.  There is still much more to do in that area though.  The enjoyment of working on this is still going strong.

As for the sock.............only about 4 rows added to it.  It even went with me to Las Vegas but only came out of it's project bag for about 20 minutes in the 3 days we were there.  Since I drove both ways, there was not any car knitting either.

As for the trip...............What great memories we made.  Three of our 4 kids and their spouses went with us.  We stayed with our one of our dearest friends.  They open their home to us anytime we request.  More family lives in the area so we were able to see them too while we were there.

Here is the motley crew.  We had so much fun making memories to last our lifetime.

The kids went down to the Freemont experience one night.  Just to have time with themselves and no parental units went.

From left to right.............Jay, Jenn, Josh.  Yes, I like 'J' names.

Here is a sweet photo.

Our DIL, Tiffany (Jay's wife) holding our youngest family member.  He is 3 months old and such a sweety.  They were watching the olympics.

We had one other exciting event happen.................

Josie turned 19!  Where did the time go?

It is very nice to be home again.  That was 2 road trips to Vegas in under a month.  I am not even wanting to think about another road trip for quite a while.  I think I hear my bed calling my name too.

But before I close, you need a little humor.  This will be me tomorrow.

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

WEEK 4

 

A month into Year 14 of YOP (Year of Projects).  That month flew by!  My projects are all loooong term projects so all you will be seeing over the next many months will mostly be progress photos.

Here are the RCR socks.

Not a lot of progress on them.  Where as, RCR socks normally do not take forever to complete, these are strictly my 'out and about' project. Someday, sock 1 will be completed and I can start sock 2.

My main project this week was my Madonna and Child xs.

It is unbelievable how much time it took me to do that square in the upper right side.  I thought this was 18 count aida but I measured it and it is 16 count.  Still seems super tiny to my old eyes.  I am really enjoying getting back into cross stitching.  This piece is going to take a very long time to complete but will be worth every minute and stitch when completed.

I got my new sourdough started going quite well this past week.

Friday I was able to make a yummy loaf of bread with it.  I also have quite a bit of discard and plan on making tortillas with it today.  It is nice to be back into sourdough cooking again.  I do admit, my scoring of the dough does need a bit of work.  

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

Our monsoons showed up this week.  We got an inch of rain in 24 hours.  It was sorely needed.  Along with the rain we had very strong winds (for us).  The neighbors across the street suffered some nasty damage.

Their poor Palo Alto tree lost a major branch.  The owner was out there yesterday trimming it up in hopes of saving the rest of the tree.  Another neighbor, behind us, cut down his HUGE ficus tree because of storm damage.  I was sorry to see that one go.  It provided such wonderful shade to him and his neighbor and it was beautiful.  Now, when I am in my backyard all I see is his garage and basketball net.

We also have new neighbors directly behind us.  We have not gone over to meet them yet.  They are still settling in.  I do hear many children's voices in the evening when they are all gathered around their swimming pool.  Going over and meeting them is on my 'to do' list for next week.

This week, we are once again, getting ready for another road trip to Vegas.  This will be a family trip for all our adult children.  We are staying with our dear friends there.  There will be 8 of us descending upon them this coming Friday and leaving them on the following Monday.  With Josh's GBM, we decided we need to be doing more family activities and making as many memories as we can.  

I got the results of my thyroid ultrasound and am now scheduled to consult with a general surgeon for a biopsy and possible removal.  Knowing most nodules are benign, I am hopeful this will also be my case.  My nodule is 3cm, so just a tad larger than we originally thought.  

That's it for this week.  I expect to be busy next week helping out with Josh.  He starts his 5th round of chemo and will be needing help with transportation for fluid infusions to help with the nausea.  The socks will be traveling with me.

Here is your chuckle for today.....

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

WEEK 3 OF YOP 14

 

Hey there!  Lots to tell y'all about this week so let's get right to it!

CRAFTING

There was crafting this week along with a finish!

Rose City Roller socks have been going places with me and getting a few rows here and there.  They will be getting more attention this week since I have completed.......

The Habitation Throw.  This is more of a lap sized throw and will be turned into our Prayer Shawl ministry at church. It will be given to someone suffering from cancer.  Making this with worsted weight yarn makes it go so much quicker than the original suggestion of fingering weight.  Making it during a heat wave of 115F (46C) was not the smartest thing I ever did.  Even with our A/C running as well as a fan blowing on me, it was really warm to have this on my lap.  However, after going to the infusion center with my son, I know this will be a welcomed lapghan for those who sit in there for several hours during treatments.

There was also progress on this:

It may not look like much got completed but, that is over 100 stitches done this past week.  In that 100 stitch section there are 15 different colors being used!  This will be lovely when completed though.  I keep reminding myself of that.  I just wish this was a portable project.  The enjoyment I get from working on it is huge.  Here is how I keep track of my progress too:

Luckily for me, the lady that started the project for me, also marked what she had done this way.  This has always been my go to for keeping track of where I am.  I know there are apps for phones that help, but I am a paper and pencil (highlighter) type of gal.  Must be the bookkeeper in me.

I am not sure you will consider this crafting, but I do.  Therefore, I will be putting this in this category from now on.  As you all know, I have been working with sourdough since the pandemic.  There have been multiple starters come and go in that time period.  Mainly, in the heat of the summer, I lose my starter to pink mold.  My kitchen is the hottest room of our house and there is nothing I can do about it.  We have tried everything to cool that room more but nothing works.  I have had to keep my starter in the fridge but when I want to make anything, it needs to be set out a day or two before use.  By the time it is getting active again, it molds.  My best friend in Vegas told me about a sourdough 'home' to help maintain a constant temperature for the starter.  It can be cold, so no feeding is needed for several days, or warmed up, so the starter gets active and ready for use.

Say hello to my new home for my starter.  It is tiny and so very quiet.  I love it.

Now, say hello to Dotty!  She just got started on Friday so is very tiny.  She will grow quickly in the next week and I should be able to start using her next week sometime.  I am so excited to be able to actually make sourdough items in the summertime now.  The home was purchased from King Arthur.  They put them on sale last week plus I had reward $$ to use for it and shipping was free.  The jars were purchased from Amazon during Amazon days last week.  I am a happy lady!

LIFE

I was pretty busy this  past week.  Josh and Josie took off for Seattle on Tuesday.  They are staying with Stacie's parents.  I envy them as it is a beautiful 80F (26C) for their high each day.  With them gone, Thor needed to have a little extra loving.  So, I volunteered to go and sit with him for a few hours each day.

While he was busy 'protecting' the house (see above photo), I worked on helping keep their pool clean.  They have a huge tree in their backyard that drops leaves quicker than a cheetah runs!  It is a constant battle.  But the tree offers some wonderful shade and no one wants to remove it.  It only took about 20 minutes a day to keep up with the maintenance.  Unfortunately, our pools are so warm right now, it is like hoping into a bathtub.  Not refreshing at all.

Friday, I had a thyroid ultrasound.  I am waiting for the results from it.  They person doing the ultrasound did tell me the nodule on the right side was bigger than originally thought and there is a smaller one on the left side.  She also told me my lymph nodes are clear and normal sized which is great news.  Next up will probably be a biopsy of the nodules and then we will take it from there.

I have 2 funnies for you today.  They are kind of related so I had to put both of them on here today.

And....................................

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