Life

Fall Make Way For Old Man Winter

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LDSVenus

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Up front  just so you know, I am not a winter person.  Snow is awesome if you are looking out a big picture window at it in a nice heated room, and you don’t have to get out in it.  Warm snow would be terrific. 

My ferret and my bird shed and molted in preperation for winter in early August this year, about a month earlier than normal, during a heat wave.  We have been having cooler than normal temps in September and today, while I was walking to where I park my car for work, I saw geese flying over head,  headed south.  And altho’ I love watching and listening to the geese, it’s a bit earlier than normal as well.  So I’m getting ready for an early winter!  I wouldn’t mind winter so much if it wasn’t so, you know – COLD.  Guess I will be thinking about how nice it would be to live in Hawaii in a month or two :P.

My son gave me some of the fiber off of his goat.  All goat’s soft under fiber is called cashmere except for the Angora goat which gives mohair instead.  His goat has a lot of guard hairs which have to be picked out, so I have it at work and during my lunch break, since it only takes me about 10 to 15 min to eat, I sit there with tweezers and pick out guard hair and vm (vegetable matter) from the soft fiber.  The more guard hair I get out the softer it is.  It’s pretty dirty tho, so as soon as I get the picking done, I will need to wash it before I spin it.  I think this will be a long, on going project. 

 ***Just wanted to make mention that there is an actual cashmere goat that produces very nice cashmere fiber, but as I said before all goats produce cashmere (again except for the angora goat) tho not as abundantly and not the same quality as the actual cashmere goat does, but it’s all soft :).****

3rd Comfort Shawl Done

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3rd Comfort Shawl started

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Yes, it’s the same picture because I finished it on my lunch hour at work and gave it to her so I didn’t get a finished picture, I know, I’m bad.  She was so surprised and held it close and said, it’s so warm.  I hope it will give her many days of warmth and comfort.

I’m starting another shawl, but this will be the one that I’m spinning the cria (baby alpaca) for a friend just because.  I have one skein and a spool on the wheel that I need to spin more onto and then ply it so that will give me 2 skeins.  I will need 3 maybe 4 skeins for this shawl.  It’s one I’ve done before, the Wisp shawl.  It’s light and very pretty.  I think light and airy for the warmth of the alpaca would be good, because alpaca is very warm.

I’ve been so moody this week, and then it hit me why, today would have been my youngest son’s birthday.  Happy Birthday son, I miss you.

I had to take Thor to the vet’s last week end.  He’s having some bowel issues and they put him on anti-biotics and a steroid.  She said if he’s better after the round of anti-biotics (the steroid is in the anti-biotic) then it was a helobactor infection and he should be fine, and that is my hope.  If not and it comes back  then it was an inflammation problem and the steroid was taking care it in the lower colon area, and she will try a different anti-biotic for the lower bowel and see if that takes care of it, and if not then she will have to do a biopsy to see what is going on.  Poor Thor was not a happy camper about getting his temperature taken (he had a sore bottom) – this was his first trip to the vet and I don’t think he likes vets now :P.  I’m glad I had a some savings, and it took it all.  This is why I don’t recommend ferrets to those who do not like to spend money at the vet’s office as the ferrets get older, because you will.  I have my own health check up’s coming soon and when all the free wellness checks that my health insurance takes care of for the year are done, I will be dropping my health insurance so that I can use the premiums I was paying for to take care of Thor.  He comes first.  Other than the free wellness checks (and they cover a lot of things), it was more of a catastrophic insurance plan, because it doesn’t pay for anything until I’ve spent $5,000 out of my own pocket, except for the wellness stuff.

A Round Tuit – revisited

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A Round Tuit

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Years ago I saw one and thought it was so cute.  I found this one on the internet and used it several years ago, and have found that I have had to bring it out of mothballs and use it again :P.

When my son was going to move in with me, I had to move the 1/2 room of boxes out of the spare bedroom and ended up putting some of it in my bedroom.  He eventually decided to stay close to his daughter (5 hrs away from me), and after his death, I just couldn’t make myself sort everything out and put away.  It’s finally time, and finding time to do it is not fun…. but I have some motivation to get it done because it’s time for the apt inspection the city does here every 3 years.  It’s coming up soon so I have to get that bedroom cleaned out.  I’m part way done and decided to take a little break.  It would be much easier if I had a week of vacation to go through everything and do it right, but I don’t have any vacation time until late this fall.  Sooo I will just have to do the best I can with what little time I can squeeze out to get it done in.  I’m much better at procrastination :P.

I’ve begun working on a comfort shawl for a co-worker who has been diagnosed with cervical cancer.  I’m about 1/3 of the way done with it.  It’s a simple comfort shawl, as I felt that it would be needed in a hurry and no time to work on something that will take a long time to complete.  I’ll post a picture of  my progress later this week after the apt inspection.

Well it looks like we will have football this year.  That makes me happy 🙂

It’s been hot as heck here and lots of humidity.  I will be glad when fall gets here for the cooler temps and less humidity, but that means winter is right around the corner, so fall is a 2 edged sword. 😛

Heat Wave and Harry Potter

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Ok, the ambient temp the last two days has been about 96 degrees, and the heat index, with the wonderful humidity that IA is known for, has been around 111 degrees.  I always tell people that IA has two season, cold & ugly and hot & ugly.  It gets hotter out west but they (except for TX which is also very humid) don’t have the humidity to go with the high temps.  You can have the humidity, I prefer the dry heat!!  The night temps have been in the middle 70’s,  sigh and my air condtioner is running 24/7.  I’m so thankful for that!!!  Suppose to cool down next week I think (I hope).

I got to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 on Saturday with my daughter.  I have to say it was AWESOME!!!  Yes, it is not exactly like the book, but it was very well done and I loved it!!  I have loved all the Harry Potter movies but I have to say this is my favorite of all of them.  If you haven’t gone to see it and you enjoy Harry Potter, it is a must see.

I’m working on the shawl I started to get the stitch count right for the Daisy Rectangular Shawl.  I mean you can’t have a started shawl and not either finish it or frog it.  I chose not to frog it, it’s acrylic yarn so it will probably go to my grand daughter because it won’t need a lot of care like the natural fiber yarns do and she can enjoy it and I won’t be worried about it. 😛  I need to be spinning on that Cria, but it’s been so hot when I get home that I haven’t been in the mood for it.

2nd Comfort Shawl is finished!

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Finally Finished and Blocked!

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Well, it is finished, blocked and given!!  As you can tell it is a diagonal pattern.  I orginally wanted to do vertical however that is just not the way it worked out.  I still have to figure out the correct number to cast on (had a little extra on one side and when I discovered it I was a bit too far to want to frog and begin again) and to cut the width down.  So give me a few days as I work this out and then I will post the pattern in My Free Knitting Patterns page for you to enjoy.  This Alpaca yarn drapes very nicely as a shawl and I’m sure it will be well loved.  I’m sad that it is a discontinued yarn tho, as it was lovely to work with and very soft.  I can now get back to spinning that wonderfully soft cria (baby Alpaca).

Well my children almost got to either come visit me in the hospital in the critial unit or to the morgue to identify me yesterday.  I was on my way to my daughter’s new house to get some steak and hambergers that were left over from her birthday party on Friday evening and as I was driving on a major street at 3o mph, a driver from a cross street didn’t stop at his stop sign and he was going about 40 to 50 mph.  I saw him out of he corner of my eye and knew he would not be stoping so I slammed on my brakes (fortunately there was no one behind me) and he came barreling out across the street and I missed hitting him by about 6 inches.  Hope it scared him as much as it did me.  I drive an older small sub compact car and the engine would have been sitting in my lap as I would have broadsided him.  Thank goodness for quick reactions and promptings from the Spirit alerting me to the other car.

Busy Month

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.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.

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.

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.

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!! 🙂