Memorial Day
THANK YOU to all those who now serve our great and blessed country.
THANK YOU to all those who love this country and served in the past.
And to those who served with pride and honor and lost their lives, WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOUR GREAT SACRIFICE IN OUR BEHALF OR IN BEHALF OF OTHERS WHO SOUGHT FREEDOM. (John 15:13)
.What a busy month this has been. Things are picking up at work and it has been pretty busy (tho’ my supervisor tells me it’s not that busy – I’ve seen the numbers and it has picked up, but yes it will get much busier :P). This week will be the busiest of the month and will only get busier as the summer comes. My weekends this month have been busy with church projects for service. I went to the Temple the first Saturday of this month (it’s a 2 1/2 to 3 hr drive), cleaned the chapel the next Saturday and yesterday our Relief Society did a service project and made baby blankets for the neonatal preemie unit at our local hospital and made thank you and birthday cards for the local meals on wheels program. Always feels good to do service, but makes the weekends go by way too fast :P. Next Saturday I have a dear friend that is coming to town to visit me and to see her daughter graduate from high school, that does not seem possible – only yesterday her daughter was this little girl getting ready for kindergarten.
There are some people who ride the bus in the mornings that have varying degrees of Down’s syndrome. They are going to their day hab programs or to the places that hire them to work a few hrs a day. I notice that when other people get on the bus they usually sit farther back. I don’t, I sit up front closer to them – I enjoy their playful light hearted chatter with each other and their friendliness. They always have a smile and a hello and it’s a refreshing distraction before the stressful duties of my job. I feel like they are the closest I will get to angels here on earth.
I continue to work on the comfort shawl, but have not had the time to work on it as much as I would like to, I was hoping to be done with it by now, but am just a little bit over 1/2 done. I’ll give my self another couple of weeks before I start fussing at myself. I do knit a few rows on the bus ride home and when I’m not to busy to take my lunch break, I knit then too, but that really is not nearly enough time to be spending on it. I’d really like to be spinning on that cria alpaca, however I can’t justify my spinning until I get closer to finished with the shawl. I’ll update my progress on the shawl next week, maybe setting a deadline will make me find the time to work on it. sigh.
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
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 - 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.
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.
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!!!! (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!!!
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!! 🙂
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!!
LDSVenus-knits 