It’s That Time Again

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments
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It’s time again to embroider things for the Whippet Club my son belongs to that they give as prizes at the show they host every late summer/fall.  They still had a few items left over from last year so I don’t need to embroider quite as many :).  It’s a nice design and looks great when embroidered on the towels and blankets.  I’m sure the winners enjoy them.

 

Work is going well, just wish I had more time to knit and spin, clean and unpack, sigh.  I feel so time crunched.  Ever notice that when you are young time goes by so slowy and you are sure that it takes forever for anything, and then as you get older time seems to unmercifully speed up and you don’t have time for anything?  I think things should go fast when you are younger and slow down when you get older ;P.

Floodstock

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment
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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.

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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

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

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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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. 🙂

Spinning Fiber

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This is some very soft fiber.  The content is Alpaca, baby Alpaca, Silk, Merino, Cormo and glitz from Twisted Sheep Fabulous Fibers on etsy.  It is very pretty and should spin up into a beautiful yarn.  As soon as I get finished with the green and red that I am spinning together, I plan on spinning this new fiber.  I really will finish the Christmas yarn (red and green), hehe, I just have not had time to sit down and spin, too much going on in my life, but I need to make the time to do it because I miss spinning.  With the weather still nice I should do that for 30 min or so when I get home from work to relax, before it gets to hot to spin out on my balcony. 🙂

Pay It Forward

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments
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 You may remember the PIF (pay it forward) that I participated in about a year and 1/2 ago.  It was fun to do.  The person who’s site I signed up under had a very busy year and was behind in getting things out.  I was suprised and thrilled when I got something extra in the order I had placed  for some fiber from her etsy store.  I had totally forgotten about the PIF, but she hadn’t forgotten me at all and was very apologetic about the delay.  What she sent was this very cool pair of hand knit socks and some very pretty custom made stitch markers. 

 

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Here is a close up of the stitch markers, you’ll see the really pretty fresh water pearls on the bottom of beaded section. 🙂

 

 

I’ll post a picture of the beautiful and soft fiber I bought in a few days. 🙂

Memorial Day Weekend

/ LDSVenus
For those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom!

For those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom!

 

I just want to thank all those who are now serving or have served in any of the branches of the Armed Services, for your love of freedom and being willing to serve your country.  I give a special reverence to those who were willing to give the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, for what they loved, a free and safe country.  May we always honor them in all we do to keep this country free and safe.

Summer Cold

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments
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 :)

/ LDSVenus / 3 Comments
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 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

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments
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.