The Bus Ride

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

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

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

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!!!!

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

PIF!!!! (click picture to enlarge)

.

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!!

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment
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

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

Late Christmas cactus bud

.

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

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

Another Pair of Cabled Gauntlets

.

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.

.

.

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

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

Blizzard 2/11

Blizzard 2/11

.

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?

Happy Birthday to my 2nd Son

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

Tim

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON!!!

This is my 2nd son.  Of course he’s “a bit” older now, but isn’t he a cutie?

I was looking at my daughter’s youngest (my only grandson) the other day and thought oh my goodness, he looks just like my son!  He’s a cutie too. 🙂

Comfort Shawl

 I finished the comfort shawl that I have been knitting on for the last several months.  This is as it lay blocking.  I didn’t get a chance to get a better picture of it on someone before I gave it to the intended recipient.  I hope that it will bring her the comfort intended. 

I have begun the next comfort shawl that I wanted to make for the other mother in my church who lost a child last year.   Last year was a hard year.

 

We have gotten quite a bit of snow from this storm.  Blizzard winds today and forecast for tonight (about 40 mph) – we’ve got about 5 inches of snow so far today and it’s suppose to keep snowing through the night.  I’m suppose to call a number in the morning to see if we will go in at the regular time, late or no work at all.  Guess you know which one I am hoping for :P.  

Ok I’m a klutz!

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

 This isn’t me (and yes it makes me feel less embarressed to know there are other klutzes out there too) but this was the gist of what happened Friday morning after leaving my apt and just starting down the stairs to the lobby of my apt complex as I was off to work.  I missed the first stair and the rest was all “down hill” from there ;).  I have bruises down my right side and sprained my left ankle (not sure how that happened) but yes, I am a klutz.  This accident is making me stay mostly on the couch with my feet up (the other ankle was injured but not as badly as the left one), so I have lots of time to knit until I go back to work on Tuesday – I should have the comfort shawl finished and blocked by tomorrow – I’ll post a picture of it when it is all blocked.  Yes I went to work on Friday and they let me leave 2 hr early to go home and put my foot up and I went to the Dr yesterday morning and they sent me for x rays, which I haven’t heard rather it is just a sprain (as I suspect) or fractured (which I doubt), so for the most part, it’s feet up girl.  I’m glad I work for a bank and have a paid holiday on Monday!!!

My “little” sister has begun a new blog journey.  I loved her old blog and was sad when she let it go, but I’ve been pestering her for a few years now to restart it.  She has and it looks like it will be even more wonderful than the last one.  She is quite a photographer, into paper making, fused glass, mosaics and other things.  The name of her new site is “Eat It Anyway” just click that link, I hope you will enjoy it – she’s awesomely talented :).  I’ll also put this link on my blog roll ;).

Back to the couch for a while to put my feet up.

Happy New Year

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

Happy New Year

.Ok, I know it’s Jan 2nd, so I’m a day late. 😉  I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and Day and that you have an even better New Year.

I think New Year’s Day is a wonderful time to take stock of your life, the things that didn’t go so well and the things that did.  Looking back helps us determine what we need to work on and what things worked, it helps us to move forward when we can take that more distant look at our life instead of the up so close we can’t see the forest for the trees type of thing. 

Last year was a really hard year for me.  I lost my youngest son, an uncle, my previous mother-in-law (who I thought more of as a friend),  my car quit running and I had a really bad bout of bronchitis (my voice is still suffering as far as singing goes – singing is a comfort to me).  Those are just major highlights. 

I had some good things happen too (and you have to see the good things or life would be a real bummer), I found a permanent job that I enjoy, my dad is still healthy, I have very supportive siblings,  I have been able to keep my apartment through all the upheaval with temp work and that it is close to a bus line that goes to my work and house without having to change buses,  one of my co-workers lives not to far from me and gives me rides to work and home, and when she can’t I can catch the bus.  I have my faith and what a blessing that has always been in my life, it’s seen me through some pretty tough times.  Even tho my life has not been a bed of roses, I’ve always had a warm place to sleep, food on my table and family and friends, what more could I want.