This was a decent snow storm. It was about 6 or 7 inches. I took this Wed evening before it quit snowing because in the day it was so bright it was blinding!!! It was a dry snow so the wind blew it into drifts, and it does look pretty, but that will change as cars drive by then it will turn a brown color. I’m ready for Spring!
I wish they would quit changing things on WordPress, this took an hour to get the pictures almost where I wanted them because creating the one choice I usually use, made them way to big and very long with no way to make them smaller. Ugh!
Anyway, my mind is un-fogged and I can think straight again and knitting on the blanket again, I’ll put a picture up of my progress in a few days or a week. I was very sick for 3 weeks in Jan, with some ugly respiratory virus’, RSV and influenza A, not at the same time (thank goodness!) but as I was almost over one I got sick with the other, very nasty critters.
The first picture is from some extra cold air that came down from Canada in Jan. Yes that is frost on the inside of the metal plate on my sliding glass door inside my apt. If I’d get some heavy thermal drapes that might not happen or if it did, I wouldn’t see it :P. I’m not a cold weather girl, but here I am anyway. sigh.
The second picture is the yarn I ordered before Christmas but didn’t get to start the Christmas gifts I wanted to do, partly because I was sick with a cold (this has been an ugly winter for getting sick for everyone I know!!) and wasn’t up to it. But now I can tell you what I got them for. I bought some patterns from Arne & Carlos and the Christmas tree decorations with the knitting Christmas ball color work ornaments was one of them. I will need to buy more of this yarn as I go. There are 24 ornaments in this pattern for $7, but just before Christmas they are 1/2 off. I’m really not into color work, but these aren’t very big and maybe I’ll decide I like it better than I did years ago. I haven’t started working on any yet, they will still be gifts, but I have a blanket and a couple of hats and a pair of fingerless mitts to finish first. All this sick stuff reset my brain and now that I feel human again, my knitting mojo is back. But this year I will have a little less time to knit because the new calling I now have in my church is much busier than the calling I had before. Especially while I figure out what I’m doing and get use to it!!! Having a little anxiety over the change and that is normal for me with change :P, but the knitting should help with that!
Am I the only one?
This is instead of my Monday Funny this week. If you click each picture it enlarges it.
I went to volunteer at the Nativity Celebration that the local stake of my Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) sponsors here every year. I only took picture of a fraction of all the Nativity sets, that people brought in from all over our stake (a stake is just an area that so many wards and branches are in, a ward is a certain number of people and up that meet in a building and branches are less people than a ward) off topic :P. I was told people brought in 997 Nativity sets to show, not all were members of our church and we loved having them participate, all were welcome (they take their Nativity sets home on Saturday after it closes.) We only asked the visitors to bring in a can of food for the food bank we chose. We had different choirs and bands and orchestras from different schools and Church choirs that came in to perform on Friday and Saturday. Member of our Church made refreshments too, no charge for the refreshments (hot apple cider and cookies, etc). It was fun. I wish the picture could be enlarged of the bottom left, it had roads and stairs to look realistic, so nice.
I was only there on Friday afternoon because I had to help Saturday on the alpaca farm. This Saturday will be his Christmas celebration with the alpacas. He will have some of the alpacas with costume reindeer antlers, refreshments and Santa for the kids to have pictures with (that one is a family member and they charge for the pictures) but like normal no charge for feeding the alpacas up close and personal, and chickens and peafowl, and he hopes they will buy something from his farm store to help with the cost of feed, processing the fiber into yarn, etc. I’ll try to remember to get pictures! Last year people were standing in line from the small pasture where the alpacas are, to the end of his driveway (which is about 6 car lengths). This year he got a very big connect 4 game the kids can play while standing in line to get into the pasture with the alpacas because he can only let so many people into the pasture at a time. It’s to keep the kids busy so their parents don’t go crazy, lol, hope that works out :P.
I got my 3rd and final Fall Surprise Knitting Box from Twice Sheared Sheep. I don’t think anyone who gets this box follows me so I wouldn’t be giving anything away in case some haven’t gotten theirs yet. Lots of goodies! I forgot to put the bear tin back in the box for a picture of the full box, so I added it to the other things I took out to get a better picture of. I love the wolves mug, will serve many hot chocolate drinks! The mini skeins are a dk weight. Not sure what I will make with those, will have to think on it, they are soft :). There is a huge hat pom in there too! Will give the bag to my grand daughter M for her crochet, she is trying to learn. Love the counting stitch marker with the tree of life on it, it matches the progress keeper I made with a charm I received with one of my other fiber purchases. I’ll try to get a picture of that eventually, I keep forgetting (what else is new). The mushroom stitch markers I will use for progresss keepers :). I do love the bear tin for stitch markers and the very cute hedgehog tape measure. The card in there (took a picture of front and back) shows what is in the box and tells a little about them. She will be taking orders for the boxes again in Jan I think.
The first picture is of hats that I knit every year. I use I love this Yarn Print (it comes in various colors) by Hobby Lobby. I like the striping effect it gives on hats. This year they are going to a family of children who lost their mom (3 boys and a girl). I thought they might appreciate new hats for winter. Hope they will like them. For this pattern I use worsted weight yarn, and cast on 89 stitches (for small and medium adults), knitting in the round, doing a 2X2 rib (the extra stitch at the last is knitted with the first stitch to make a good join in the round. I use a 16″ circular needle, my favorite is the Karbonz, it’s carbon with a metal like tip so It’s light weight. I use size 5 needle because I knit a little looser with my knitting style (continental combined) but the pattern calls for a size 6. The 2X2 rib makes it pretty stretchy. You can use less stitches for children, or a lighter weight yarn adjusting your needle size, for a smaller hat, just make sure it’s an odd number of stitches.
Hope everyone is well and enjoying the weather before winter gets here. We are still going between fall and summer weather and I wish the first frost would come early, my allergies are so NOT FUN, even my antihistamine is not doing the trick this year, and I’ve tried several, sigh.
My braided hibiscus tree occasionally goes crazy with flowers. Love the flowers! Every so often I have to spray it for aphids with a soapy water with a few drops of cedar wood oil (one of my doTERRA oils). The soapy water kills the aphids and cedar wood oil smell keeps them off for a while.
The alpacas in the next picture are enjoying the splash pad on a hot day. My son bought it for them last year. They love it, as soon as he drags it out and sets it up they are in it like any kid, lol. Occasionally one will lay down in it and hog it up. Tisk, tisk tisk. Sometimes he brings out a sprinkler instead, but there are some that stand on top of the sprinkler and hog it up, lol. They much prefer our winters which are often -20’s to -30’s without the windchill. Their coats are so dense that snow doesn’t melt on their backs, and rain doesn’t soak in! But, they spend a lot of time in the barn too, they always have access to get into or out of the barn. They love playing in the snow. He has large fans going 24/7 in the barn in the summer so they can stay comfortable when the heat is too hot to be outside.
Hope you all are staying cool, we are very humid and hot. Sweltering is what the weatherman said. Tomorrow they said with the humidity factor we will be around 101F.
For those of you not familiar with RAGBRIA, it stands for Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It’s a non competitive 434 mile bicycle tour across the state of Iowa from west to east. This is the 51st year for this. So instead of spinning to the ride across France this year I will spin to the ride across Iowa, so all is not lost with my spinning. I planned on starting today which is the first day of RAGBRAI, however I noticed my the plied string I use as my drive band, is very frayed and being held by two of the small strings, so I will go get more string tomorrow and fix the drive band and start tomorrow. Always something isn’t it, I’ll call it a flat tire on day one.
I had a hard time fitting my spinning time in this year and properly participating with the Tour de Fleece, but I will keep spinning to get some skeins done that I had planned on spinning for that. I hate that life gets in the way sometimes with my knitting and spinning, which are my way to relax and get away from our chaotic world. I did finish this skein of yarn that I started spinning last September, see my Spinning a Tweed Yarn for more information on the fiber :P. This is 4 ozs and about 150 yards, it is a bulky yarn. It’s really hard to spin a thiner yarn with a fiber with lots of thicker viscose bits. I did go ahead and just do a 2 ply because a chain ply makes a 3 ply yarn and I knew it was already going to be thick and thin and bulky, so I decided the 2 ply would be better. I think the colors turned out nice and looking more like a speckled yarn because of the bits of tweed color :). This will be given to my Ophthalmologist at my next visit for her 18 month old daughter. Should make a nice bulky hat for her, lol should knit up really fast, and yes we do get very cold in the winter here :). She did my eye surgeries in Dec and is a knitter, so this is why I chose to spin a skein of yarn for her. If I had realized how thick the viscose bits for the tweedy look were, I would have chosen a different fiber to spin for a sport weight yarn for a little one.
I have been enjoying the cooler temps, but this will be short lived as we start ticking up to the upper 80’s by next week end and August, which is only about a week away, is our hottest month. Last year my daughter got married in August, on the hottest day of the year, outside, and with the heat index it was 118 F. ugh.
Ok, I couldn’t help myself 😛
LDSVenus-knits 