Year: 2011

One Year Ago Today…..

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Son & Grand Daughter

 It’s been a year ago today since I lost my youngest child.  He called me almost every night and I miss those phone calls.  He never had anything  really serious talk about, I think he was just lonely and wanted to talk about what his day had been like to someone who would listen to him and cared about it.  My biggest fear is that his little daughter won’t remember who he was because she was only 3 1/2 and she and her mom live about 5 hrs from me.  My car won’t drive that far so I have no way to visit her and if the mom ever comes to my city, she’s never let me know.  I’m not angry at the mom, tho’ she will have a lot to explain to her daughter when she gets older, I just hope she will help my grand daughter to remember her dad, who loved her very much.

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Grand Daughter's Watercolor

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My oldest grand daughter is very artistic.  She likes to do beading and she plays the violin.  Now she has done this watercolor in her art class (she is in middle school).  I’m properly impressed – I know my sister will be impressed too as she is also very artistic as well and she and my grand daughter are best buds.   I also enjoy many crafts and I sing so I guess she comes by it naturally. 😉  She gave this picture to me and probably tomorrow I will go find a frame for it.  I introduced my other two grand children (who will be 5 and 3 next month) to the Smurfs.  Hehe, they loved the old cartoons.  When I go to babysit on Friday nights they always ask if I’m bringing my Smurf dvd (bought it from amazon.) 
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I’m over half way through the 2nd comfort shawl now.  Had to tink about 4 rows, twice – was trying to knit in a car while carrying on a conversation while on the way to the Temple in Nauvoo last Saturday (such a peaceful place).  Anyway that meant that I had to re-knit the tinked rows twice,  sheesh.  Hope everyone is enjoying the last of spring as we get ready to head into summer.  And I have to say that we have hit the upper 80’s already this last week, and my air conditioner is on the fritz.  My land lord is going to have someone come look at it.  He looked at it and said he thought it was the fan.  After today the temps are going back down a bit so it won’t be so hard on my fur baby.  At least living on the upper floor of the apt I have been able to leave windows open so it wasn’t sweltering inside.

Happy Easter – 2011

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He is Risen!

 

Spring is my favorite time of year as new life begins to bloom and trees and grass take on their beautiful green colors, wipeing away the dreary winter.  One of my favorite things about Spring is Easter and the Atonement and Resurrection of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.   How blessed I feel to know that I can repent and try again when I make mistakes and that because Christ rose from the dead, that there will be a resurrection for all of us.

The youth speaker today told a very powerful story that gave a simple example of the atonement.  I found it already written out on this blog.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Wishing everyone a blessed and wonderful Easter Day.

2nd Comfort Shawl Update & General Conference

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2nd Comfort Shawl Update - click picture for larger image

 

Here is the newest picture.  It’s coming right along and looks pretty good so far, it is not blocked in this picture.  I promise I will post the instructions as soon as I am finished so I can make sure all the kinks are worked out.  I’m sure it will be at least several weeks out before I’m finished with this shawl.  I’ve been able to knit on it a lot the last two days as General Conference is this week end and I do have the BYU channel on my cable here.  So I’ve been able to sit on my couch and knit as I listen to the Prophet, his Counselors, the quorum of the 12 Apostles and the other General Authorities of the Church speak.  It has been wonderfully uplifting, a spiritual feast which has been so needed.  I have looked forward more than usual for several months to General Conference in anticipation of the spiritual uplift and peace it always brings to me.  What a blessing my tesitmony is in my life, knowing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the earth again, with living prophets and apostles and their living testimony of the Savior.  

With all the upheaval in the world today, natural disasters and personal burdens and turmoil – I wish you his peace.

The Bus Ride

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Well while my foot is healing I had been getting rides from a co-worker, but she isn’t able to take me anymore so for the past few weeks I’ve been riding the bus.  I have to get up earlier and it gets me to work about 30 min early, which is fine – I’d rather be early than late.  Usually it is pretty boring, except for some unusual people who ride occasionally.  However yesterday on the way home we were about a block from my work and had to stop for a train.  There was a tractor trailer (aka Big Rig), from the local community college for training new tractor trailer drivers, coming the other way also stopped.  All of a sudden it started rolling onto the track with the train coming.  All of us in the bus were “Oh my gosh!!”  Pretty quick the student driver jumped out of the truck and the instructor got the truck restarted and was pulling it off the tracks while the train was stopping and the student driver ran in front of the truck just before the truck got off the track.  He made it to the sidewalk but I thought “DANG!!”  I’m sure he failed that test!!!  He’s lucky to be alive.  Everyone on the bus was talking about that for the next 30 min (takes me about 40 mins to get to work and to get home in the evenings, but only 15 mins in my car)  Then just before we got to my stop a pick up truck ran a stop sign and almost hit the bus as we were turning.  I told the bus driver as I got off that it had been a really interesting ride that day.

2nd Comfort Shawl Start

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Start of 2nd comfort Shawl

 

Ok, I promised a picture of the start of the comfort shawl I have designed (well I didn’t create the lace pattern – it appears to be a shetland lace pattern, someone correct me if I’m wrong – but I did design where that pattern went on a rectangular shaw.)  I am stagering the pattern every other row rather than have them right under each other every row.  I’ll post another picture when I get more done, it was hard to block enough of it to see the design properly with so little of it done yet.  This is alpaca yarn, and unfortunately has been disconntinued but it is very soft and I love it.  A comfort shawl should be comfy and soft and so I wanted to use alpaca for it, I should have just enough to do this shawl.  🙂

PIF IS HERE!!!!

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PIF!!!! (click picture to enlarge)

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I got home from work today and there was a box for me.  WOOHOO! it was the PIF (pay it forward) from my knitting/spinning  friend at LS Fiber Adventures.

Don’t you love getting unexpected packages?  It came at a perfect time as this has been a hard week.  I opened it up and there was all this loveliness!  She knitted me the most beautiful lace scarf with beautiful shades of turquoise (my favorite color!)  I’m sure she spun the yarn as well.  It will be well loved! 🙂  There is some beautiful Bluefaced Leicester roving to spin – I’ve never spun this kind of wool it will be a fun adventure and spinning hand painted multi color roving is way fun because you never know what you will end up with.  There is a CD with gospel music that will be a wonderful addition to my Sunday music, I love hymns and gospel music ;).  There was a fun pair of Easter socks (they will be very fun to wear!)  There are two very cute  journals, as a latter-day saint I do keep a journal, tho not as diligently as I should, this is a great reminder to keep up with it and when my present journal is full, these will take it’s place.  And last but hardly least there is some very yummy eatable goodies – wonderfully delicious wafers rolled around a vanilla creme 🙂 and Cadbury mini eggs.  I feel like it’s Christmas!!!

Wasn’t it just Day Light Savings Time? SPRING!!

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Old Indian Wisdom (click on picture to read words)

I notice the older I get the faster things come up.  Remember when you were young and it took forever for your birthday or summer to get here?  Now they just whiz by at an alarming rate, that seems to be one of the unfortunate things that happen as we get older and gain wisdom (well I hope I have accrued some wisdom anyway :P.)  At any rate, I used this Old Indian bit of wisdom again because (with just a hint of sarcasm) obviously the federal government didn’t pay attention last year when I used it on my blog and day light savings time is here again this year.  sigh.

Well, WOOT WOOT, my car has been repaired and is in my garage!!!  However (don’t you just know there is always a however?)  my foot isn’t healed sufficiently yet to drive it.  I drove it home from the mechanics house about 20 mins away and my left ankle is letting me know about it (it’s a manual with a clutch and not an automatic transmission).  So it will be a couple more weeks before I can drive it because I went back to the Dr yesterday, (my supervisor thought my foot should be healed by now and suggested I go back to the Dr), and she said “nope, as long as you are using that ankle the ligaments you tore will be very slow to heal”.  She wanted to put an air cast on it because she knows I am single and self supportive and staying totally off of it is not an option, but they didn’t have one and I have to wait until I get paid on Tuesday to afford it.  But I want it to heal so I can drive and walk and all that other stuff that I haven’t been able to do since the middle of Jan when I fell down the stairs, so on Tuesday when I get paid, I will go get one and use it (the pharmacy is only a few blocks from my house).  She did put a splint type of brace on it which she said would be better than the soft support one that I was using, and she put me on a high dose of ibuprofen every 6 hrs for a full week to help with the inflammation.  So I’m crossing my fingers that in 2 or 3 weeks I will be back to more normal :).

 After 4 trips to the frog pond, I have finally figured out my pattern for the new comfort shawl I am making.  When I get a bit more done on it so that you can see the pattern I will post a picture of it.  When I am completely done I will post  a link to the original daisy shawl pattern and my version of a rectangular shawl pattern for it along with the picture of the finished shawl :).  I’m torn right now between wanting to spin and wanting to knit, but the knitting is winning out at the moment.  Perhaps later this week when I need a break from the shawl, I will pay more attention to the “come hither” from my spinning wheel.

I did see the geese flocking back a week ago last Thursday (March 3rd) and all the wonderful red-breasted Robins!!  The female Robins should be showing up in the next week or so – they are usually about 2 weeks behind the males so the males can set up their territories to court the females and entice them to their carefully picked out and fought for spots.  AHHH, SPRING IS IN THE AIR!  Farewell Old Man Winter!! 🙂

One Lone Christmas Catus Bud

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Late Christmas cactus bud

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While I was watering my plants this last week end, after neglecting them for a little over a week,  I noticed a single bud on my Christmas cactus.  It has already bloomed this last November or December and I have never seen one bloom so late.  Not sure why just one bud or why so late in the season.  But I will just enjoy the beautiful blossom when it unfolds and wonder.

Also this weekend when I was trying to update my wordpress software for my website, it failed and knocked out my blog and other pages.  I could see my home page but that was it, I had no access to my admin functions.  So I went to my brilliant son (who is the server administrator for my website, and a programmer). When I told him I wasn’t able to get into my admin functions, he looked at it and said “it is very broken”.  But he had it restored and up and running before I knew it.  If you are needing a new website and interested in someone who is willing to listen to your needs and work with you do check out his website TDM Web Consulting. 🙂

I’m still working on the design for the comfort shawl, but after having to frog it 4 times, I’m going to cast on a few patterns of the daisy with some scrap yarn and work on that instead of messing up this nice alpaca yarn, until I figure out what I need to correct the pattern.  Maybe this week end. 

Also we are suppose to have 40’s and 30’s the rest of the week, WOOT!!!  Gotta love that Spring is right around the corner.  I haven’t seen them, but someone told me that they have already seen male robins before March 1st.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen them here before March.  I’ll be on the look out and see if I can get a picture.  🙂  I guess that means an early Spring, maybe that groundhog was right!!

Current Projects & a Tease of Spring

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Another Pair of Cabled Gauntlets

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Lest you think I haven’t been doing anything – tho with no current blog post or picture I can understand why you might think I wasn’t doing anything ;).  Anyway, I just finished another set of my cabled gauntlets, found on My Free Knitting Page here .  I use the 12″ circular needles to do them because I really don’t like working with double pointed needles (I will if I have to, but I try really hard not to have to :P.)  They always turn out nicely on the short cable circular needles.  I hope my friend will like them.

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2nd Comfort Shawl

This is the start, or restart, really it’s the 3rd restart of a comfort shawl I am trying to knit for the other mother who lost her son (to cancer) last fall.  It’s a rectangular shawl, unlike the one shown in the link a little farther below, I’m just using the daisy stitch for the shawl.  You can see the nest of yarn because I started it and didn’t think I had enough stitches so I had to frog it (rip out rows at a time) and cast on more stitches, only to find out I had enough to begin with, was just reading the chart wrong (I have to write charts out because I can not read them very well, thus the error in translating it to something I can read better) so I had to frog it again.  But the pattern, the daisy shawl pattern,  is pretty and I’m not one to give up when I start a knitting pattern.  This one has a double yarn over, which isn’t hard to do, but I’ve discovered that the purl row after the double yarn over is a bit confusing, so I’ve gone to my knitting list to enlist some help in how to purl a double yarn over and still have two stitches that are open and lacy when I’m done.  I may have to tink (take out stitches one at a time) the last row I knit, hopefully I wont have to frog two rows.  I’ll follow up when I figure out what I’m doing wrong and get a bit farther with the shawl.

We had beautiful weather Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week, was awesome!!!  40’s and even middle 50’s.  But it’s just a tease of Spring, because Winter isn’t really over here in the Midwest until late April or early May.  But hey it was a week of 30’s to 50’s instead of teens and sub zero weather, and I’ll take it!!!  Come on SPRING!!!

The Blizzard – 2011

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Blizzard 2/11

Blizzard 2/11

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Thought I would post a couple of pictures to show you what it looked like when I got up this morning.  My work delayed opening until 11 so I did get to catch a few more winks :).  According to the news we got somewhere between 13 and 18 inches.  All I know is the roads were piled with snow on the sides.  The road crews did an excellent job of clearing the roads.    Is it spring yet?