Life

Christmas Cactus

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Early blooms

Early blooms

 Last year in mid November came the first blossoms I had on the Christmas cactus that had been given to me for Christmas the year before. 

This year, because of the unusually cool Summer and early Fall temps, my Christmas cactus already has buds on it and it’s only the start of October.  Hmmmmm.  Wonder if that is just the difference in the cooler temps here for fall vs TN last year.  With winter coming soon, I sure miss TN about now :P.  I’ve already had to bring my plants in from my balcony due to the lower temps at night, sigh.

I’m still looking for that pattern that screams at me, KNIT ME, KNIT ME, for the alpaca shawl.  In the mean time I like to hold the skein of yarn and feel it’s softness.  It’s time to start spinning the 2nd skein of yarn :).

Yesterday and today I’ve been able to listen to General Conference on the BYU station of cable TV.  It’s been great and very uplifting, I love General Conference time in the spring and fall every year.

Hand Crafted Soap

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CD Spindles

CD Spindles

 

 

I decided to, as a fun project for the Activity Day Girls in my ward, to teach them to spin using a spindle.  I bought these from one of the vendors on my spinning list who makes and sells them.  The Activity Day Girls range from 8 to 11 years old and I thought this would be a fun activity.   I am sure the girls will enjoy them. 🙂  Hopefully I am training new spinners for the future :P.

 

Custom Soap

Custom Soap

 

It was time to reorder my smell good soap (one of the luxuries I decided I needed :P)  and I have to say that  Autumnoak  makes the most wonderful soap!!  She will even custom make soap for you.  She  loves what she does does and it shows!  I love her Sandalwood & Rose and the Lilac & Lavender soaps .  What wonderful smells and the soaps lather so nicely.  I also love the way the soap lasts and doesn’t dwindle away quickly.  You will have to go check out her etsy store and see all the wonderful soap smells she has for sell :). 

 

Punta/Wenslydale Wool & Mohair rovings

Punta/Wenslydale Wool & Mohair rovings

 

She also sells roving and I bought some of this wonderful Punta and Wenslydale Wool roving (the beautiful blue and white roving).  She also sent some very lovely Mohair roving for me to play with, I have never spun or handled any Mohair before and it is an interesting texture.  I am excited to see what the yarn will look and feel like when I spin it.

If you spin you should check out the very nice rovings she lists on her etsy site.  She is wonderful to do business with.

Floodstock

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click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

My son and his friend Dustin invited me to go to the Farmer’s Market with them this morning.  It is once a month in the down town area.  I thought Farmer’s Market, ok, vegetables etc, plus I had seen people working on the item in the picture while driving home from work every day for the last several weeks (I will describe it better in a min.)  So I thought sure.  Well it was awesome, they had a rock band performing old Beatles songs, many vendors selling everything from fresh produce to meat, to crafts, baked goods, a guy who did some awesome items with those ballons you twist into shapes.  I’m going back next month and taking my camera with me, and more money :P.  So be prepared for an update next month.

Ok, the picture.  It is a sand sculpture, yep, I said sand!  It says Floodstock on it (yeah, a take off on Woodstock).  It’s celebrating the recovery from the terrible flood that they had last year that devistated the downtown area.  It’s a way of saying, WE ARE BACK.  There are still buildings in the downtown area that are being or need to be renovated, but the work is coming along.  The business I work at is right there in the downtown area and they just recently finished their renovation from the damage the flood caused.

Click on picture for larger image

Click on picture for larger image

 

This small hand embroidered pillow is what I bought today, of course because I spin, but also because sheep are just so darn cute :P.  Besides it was made by a friend of mine from my church who had a vendor booth set up there. 🙂  I also bought some turnips, because I love them and it was cheaper to buy fresh ones than the ones in the store that have the paraffin covering to keep them fresh.  

 

 

 I do have to say that Cedar Rapids has something going on all the time.  I wanted to go to the Freedom Festival tonight up at Kirkwood Community College because 3 Dog Night was going to be there playing, but there are too many things needing my attention.  I’m sorry to have missed seeing one of my all time favorite Rock groups.  Maybe next time.

Birthdays

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madison-1austin-2

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDI AND AUSTIN!

I really need to get some updated pictures from my daughter!!  Anyway we celebrate birthdays today for my daughter’s last two children which are 2 years and a week apart.  Since Austin will be 1 she figured it would be ok to celebrate them together since he won’t notice the difference this year anyway.   Anyway I get to go have fun at Chuck E Cheese today.  🙂

Amazing how fast children grow.  You have your own and then all of a sudden you have grand children that age.  But it’s much nicer having grand children.  You get to spend time with them and leave them with their mother and go home to peace and quite :P.

I’m hoping to be finished spinning with the green and red superwash merino this evening.  As soon as I get it plyed and set I will put a picture up of the skein (probably tomorrow or Monday).  Since I am spinning the two colors together and it already looks like green and red candy cane stripes together, I am wondering what the two plyed together will look like.  Someone at the spinning group, that I finally got to go to last week (it was fun), said they thought it might turn out looking cabled after plying the two singles together.  I look forward to seeing  :).  It’s an experiment anyway.

Spring Gardens

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click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

 

 

 

These are some flowers from my son’s garden.  He has beautiful flowers in the front and back yards.  I still find it funny that these come from 1 of 4 children who hated to go weed the vegetable garden when he was younger :P.  His gardens are really beautiful. 🙂

Summer Cold

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Renaissance Fair

Renaissance Fair

Once again it is renaissance fair time.  I won’t get to go to the one in Amana, IA, this week end tho’.  My wonderful grandson shared something with me last week end.  His cold (I love him anyway) ;P.  I started not feeling well on Monday and had the scratchy throat yesterday and the coughing has started in earnest today.   My co-workers are teasing me about the coughing, but I told them they might not be in such a teasing mood by the time the coughing stops.  If it goes into bronchitis (which frequently happens because I have asthma) I will be sick with a cough for about 6 to 8 weeks, I’m sure my apt neighbors will be thrilled at night as well, as I’ll be coughing all night long too.  sigh.  I try so hard to avoid this every year for this reason.  It is not tons of fun.  My plan is to try and get as much rest as I can.  This will also affect my singing in the choir :(, did I ever mention that I sing?

My job is going well and I enjoy it a lot, still have hopes that it might turn into a permanent job.   I think I will go make myself  some herbal tea for my cough.

What a Deal :)

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click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

 

 You gotta love the 1/2 Price Book Store .  For a little over 1/2 the retail price of the Quick Knits: Cool Projects I got both books.  I love knitting capelets and shawls so Viva Poncho will give me some great ideas.  Transforming a poncho into a capelet or a shawl will be what I would probably be doing, tho’ there are some capelets in the book :).  I like my capelets to open in the front and that is something I will change when I knit them. 

Should be fun.  As soon as I finish my grand daughter’s afghan and find some time, I might start something from one of those books.  I have some more patterns finished on the afghan and will get a picture sometime this week to post so that you can see that it is coming along.  My goodness I have to be very careful when knitting certain rows of the lace because it’s easy to lose track of where you are and I have to tink back to figure out where I made a mistake.  So I can only knit on it when I am not in jepardy of being constantly distracted, like babysitting with the grand children :P.

I love my new job, and tho it is very busy I don’t feel stressed out, rushed maybe, but not stressed.  Liking what you do helps alot. 🙂  It’s a lot of detail work and that is what I am good at and enjoy.  I always thought I would have made a good research scientist because I love Science (it was my best subject followed by English), I notice small details and am terribly curious (much to the annoyance of others :P), however math is not one of my better subjects, so I didn’t pursue it.  I use my talents as I find a place for them and they can make life interesting, to me, but not always to others  🙂 . 

We have had a lot of rain and thunderstorms this last week, tho’ no tornadoes like other parts of the midwest.  Hope all my friends in the other parts of the midwest are safe and sound.  Looks like the weather for at least the next week here is going to be rain free and after tonight (which will be close to, but not quite, freezing, sigh) it will warm up into the middle 60’s to lower 70’s in the day and middle 40’s to lower 50’s at night.   Hope the 3 or 4 little plants in my garden will be all right tonight.   The others are seeds that should come up soon.  At least it isn’t snowing ;P.

Happy Mother’s Day

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Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day

 

 

Hope all my friends are having a wonderful Mother’s Day.  I miss my mom and wish I could tell her Happy Mother’s Day, so all of you who still have your mom around, be sure and let her know how much you love her.

I have gotten another full pattern finished and have started the 4th pattern on the afghan.  It’s getting bigger and coming along.  My goodness, it is so soft. 🙂

My children got together about 1 pm yesterday afternoon and I wondered why they were all together and didn’t have me come over.  They had my grand-daughter call me about 5 pm telling me that her mom needed me to come over to help her with something.  I went over and they were all in the back yard, so I walked back there.  They had prepared a garden for me and even had some plants and seeds for me to plant, they’d had to cut small trees out of the garden area and pull a ton of prickly weeds.   I had told them that I sure missed having my vegetable garden to work in and eat from.  What a wonderful Mother’s Day gift.  You need to know that my children were never fond of working in the garden as children, because I use to send them out to pull weeds when they got into trouble :P.   So for them to have prepared a garden for me touched me deeply.  They each have  flower and/or herb gardens that they enjoy tending so I guess it wasn’t a horrible thing to have them work in the vegetable garden when they got into trouble as children ;P.

Life on the Fast track

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My Balcony

My Balcony

 

 

Ahhh, Spring!!  The birds are singing and it’s beautiful with the trees flowering and leafing out here and yesterday was hot as heck!!  We’ve been in the 50’s and 60’s until Thursday when we hit upper 70’s and yesterday we were mid 80’s,  Sheesh.  This week will be back in the 60’s again, thank goodness because the air conditioning isn’t working yet at the bank I’m working at.  They are still doing repair and rebuild work after the big flood here in Cedar Rapids last year.   Anyway this is a picture of my balcony.  It’s not screened in like my apt in TN but it is so wonderful to have a balcony again.  I have a place to put my plants outside and to sit and spin or knit (when it isn’t raining or way to hot.  I didn’t go out on my balcony in TN when it was way to hot either ;P).  

 My life has been a bit busy this last week.  8 to 5  job and I have to get up at 5:45 (get ready, make lunch, take care of Thor) because I have to leave by 7:15.  I am working down town (about 16 to 17 min from where I live) and there is no parking lot at the bank, only metered parking on the street, so I had to pay for a parking permit to park in a parkade and walk 3 blocks to work.  I really don’t mind the walk (and there is a skywalk that goes from building to building so I won’t get wet if it rains, but it’s a bit of a meandering walk that takes an extra 7 min or so to walk), just hate having to leave 15 or more min earlier :P.  Tons of stuff to learn in the new job (isn’t that always the case? :P) and that leaves me drained when I get home.  Had a couple of evening things I had to attend to this last week and still try to get to bed between 9 and 9:30 pm so I can start all over again at 5:45 am the next morning.  It’ll be much better after I adjust to the new stuff and time period.  Saturdays are busy too with laundry and errands, but I’ll get a routine down, put some fun back in my life and it will all be good. 🙂

click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

 

This is something my sister has been working on.  It’s called silver clay.  I’d never heard of it but they put silver powder (yeah the real stuff!) in clay and she said you have to fire it after you have finished making whatever it is you are going to make with it.  I think she did a wonderful job.   She’s rather crafty too (making things, not sly – sly to me is not a good thing to be, ie decietful, full of trickery :P), guess crafting things runs in my family :).

 

Oh yeah, to my son who just finished his 4th blanket in the last month!!    PFFFT 😛  I’m working on Jade’s afghan, I did some rows today :P.  Should have some evening time to work on it this coming week :).

Happy TEA Party Day

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venus5ab1 

 

My son has his web hosting site up and running and I’m switching over so this is my first post on his hosting site.  He’s decided to go with Word Press for the blogging part.  It’s a lot different than what I was use to at Yahoo, but I’m learning it.  If you are interested in changing hosting servers, you can contact my son, I have a link to his website in my blog roll.  I like the fact that if I have any problems, I don’t have to be connected to an out of the country service rep (that has a hard time with American slang or phrasing), I can just go over to his house and yell at him :P.  JUST KIDDING SON!!!

My unpacking is coming along and I’m just waiting for the back ground check to come in, should be today or tomorrow, so that I can start working at the bank.  Hopefully this position will turn out to be a temp to hire job and not just a long term temp job, because it pays well and I enjoyed working with the mortgage title company, this will be a bit different but I’m excited about it anyway :).

Oh yeah, happy TEA Party Day!!!  TEA = Taxed Enough Already!