Knitting

Knitting with My Handspun

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Spun Hand Dyed Superwash Merino on the Niddy Noddy

Skein of handspun, hand dyed merion superwash

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Well, on the left, you can see the Merino superwash roving, that I was spinning, wound on the niddy noddy.  It made a nice baby weight yarn.  I did have the wpi (wraps per inch) but forgot to write it down and so much has happened this week that I have forgotten what it was.  Some of it plyed all purple, some all blue and some heathered with both colors.

On the right is the final skein after it came off the niddy noddy, and below is the lace scarf I am working on with the skein.  🙂

Knitting a lace scarf from the hand spun

My computer is fixed (thanks to a very nice neighbor who had a boot disk and the operating system that I use.)  My 2nd hard drive was large enough to put my things on from my main hard drive so now it is just a matter of moving things back over to my newly reformated main hard drive.  So nice to have my computer back up and running!!  You don’t realize how much you depend on them until they are not available.

I started my new job on Tuesday.  It is very busy, but not stressful and I am doing things that I enjoy and working with people I worked with last year when I had a long term temp job at this place of business.  Things are a bit tight as I have been on unemployment for the last 3 weeks, but when the new month starts life will be back to more normal financially.  My job starts at 7:30 instead of 8am, so I will have to get up a little earlier sigh, but it’s just so nice to have a job that will become permanent in the next month or two. 

Yesterday was my youngest son’s birthday.   My daughter was going to come with me to the cemetery, but it was storming.  I went anyway because I can’t give him presents like I do my children who survived him, all I can give now is my time – so I did.  He would have been 29.

Are You Ready for Some Football? 2010

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Dallas Cowboys!!!

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Yep, it’s pre-season again!!!!  Dallas won their first game against the Bengals (16 to 7) and lost their 2nd game against the Raiders (17 to 9).  They lost against the Raiders in pre-season last year too. 😛  I didn’t get to see either game tho, I need the NFL channel ;).

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Well I’m doing this from my daughter’s computer because I did the last Micro Soft windows update and now my computer will not boot up. 😦   It won’t even get to the windows screen, it freezes before it gets that far.  So when I get some money saved up, I will take it to a computer place and have them get my data off of the hard drive, and reformat and add the OS back on and then restore my data.  Computers can be such a pain, but you almost can’t do anything without them anymore.

I hope everyone is surviving the heat.  We have been hot, hot, hot the last several days.  Suppose to cool back down starting tonight, thank goodness.  I have some pictures of the yarn I finished spinning, plying and am now knitting into a scarf. 🙂  But I will have to wait to do that until I get my computer fixed so I can upload the new pictures.  sigh

Oh yeah, I have a temp to perm job that is suppose to start next week either on Monday or Tuesday.  It’s at the bank I worked the long term temp for last year :).  I’ll be grateful not to have to keep changing jobs, which is sooo stressful.

One Month Today

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Son & Grand Daughter

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It’s been a month since I lost my youngest son.  This picture was taken about 2 weeks before his loss.  There is much upheaval in the family with my other children as they wonder if there was something they could have done, if they could have reached out more, feeling guilty because they took him for granted, etc.  I want them to understand that I too have the same feelings.  I need them to know that there was nothing they could have done.  I want to tell them that maybe taking him for granted will help us all as we go forward to remember that life is fragile and we should relish all our relationships.  I wanted to thank them for their help with his funeral arrangements and the financial support they are giving for that purpose.   That shows me how much they loved him, and it speaks volumes, because I know their financial situations are as precarious as mine.  Life is short and we shouldn’t put off spending time with those we love.

Patriotic Dishcloth

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I have started to spin a little bit again, and  I’ve been working on some dishclothes during my lunch hour at work, I’m too tired to knit when I get home from work – I’m not sleeping real well.  This is the last one I finished.  You can’t really see the pattern very well because the color obscures it.  The yarn is Sugar N’ Cream Stripes and I thought I remembered where I got the pattern but I can’t find it at the moment.  If I’m able to remember it, I will edit this post and put a link in.  I’m working on a different pattern now, that will end up being a smaller kitchen towel, but I’ve had to frog it twice already.  I’ll get it done, it’s not hard, my thinking is just not always on task at the moment.

Ebbs and Flows

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My grand daughter

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This last week end, my daughter had her wedding reception.  She got married on the April 15th (hoping it would take the sting out tax time?) in Las Vegas and had the reception here.  The picture is my youngest son’s daughter.  He lives in state but about 4 hrs away so I don’t get to see him or my grand daughter very often.   But I got to see her and him as we celebrated his sister’s wedding.   I promise to post a picture of the wedding as soon as I get one ;P.

While my daughter celebrates wedded bliss, my son is going through a divorce and this sweet little girl is caught in the middle with the divorce and custody upheaval.  She wants to spend more time with her daddy but in IA the dad has little say in what happens in custody cases and unless it is pre agreed, full custody usually goes to the mother with the dad getting every other week end.  My personal feelings are that in all states there needs to be automatic joint custody for the sake of the child unless there is found to be abuse.  A child needs equal access to both parents.   But no matter what happens we just need to patiently get through the hard stuff. 

I’m still working at my long term temp job.  It is a fun job and I actually enjoy going in every day. 🙂  I hope I can find a permanent job that I will enjoy as much.  Working temp jobs is a bit stressful because you never know, when that one is done, how long it will be before the next job and if it will be something you will enjoy or not. 

I am doing a little knitting on my lunch hr, the rest of my life has been a zoo lately and I haven’t gotten much done on the spinning or knitting front.  But I plan on spinning some today so I can relax.  I think I will take my spinning wheel out on the balconey and enjoy this cooler spring weather today. 🙂  Hope all of my friends haven’t been hit too hard by this crazy spring weather that has been churning up all those storms.

Spring at Last, or is it?

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1st Day of Spring!

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The weather has been in the 40’s and 50’s for a couple of weeks and our snow was mostly melted off, except some of those huge piles from the snow plows.  Then on Friday it got cold, in the 30’s.  Saturday was the 1st day of Spring and this is what I woke up to, and yes it’s already melted off and the weather is back into the 40’s and 50’s :).  I never take warm weather for granted here in IA until May and sometimes Mid May, we’ve been known to have snow in early May.   Hopefully that will not be the case this year :). 

 
 

Slippers

Here are the slippers that I’ve been working on, they are at knitting on the net.  As you can see on their site they have a pompom on the front decorated as a chicks head.  I chose not to put that on, my grandchildren would have those torn off in nothing flat :P.  I’ve only had time to knit at lunch and these are actually the 2nd pair I’ve made.  The 1st pair was a blue pair for my grand son and I gave them to my daughter before I got a picture of them ;P.  These are for my grand daughter.  She will get them in the morning when my daughter picks me up to take me to work :).  Hopefully my car will be repaired soon, being carless is so not fun!!!

Daylight Savings Time, Once Again

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Old Indian Wisdom - (click on picture for larger image)

 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t like Daylight Savings Time!!!   And to be honest, the older I get, the longer it takes me to adjust to the new time and less I like it!!  I want my hour of sleep back, and I don’t want to have to wait until fall to get it back!  Ok I’m feel better, still tired but I feel better ;P. 

They don’t have Daylight Savings Time in Arizona or Indiana, anyone else?  Glad to see someone thumbing their nose at it.  Sigh, I wish Iowa would.

I’m working on some knitted slippers for my grand children, I’ll post a picture and the link  in a day or two, when I can find the time  to post and not fall asleep when I try to knit :P.

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I’m a Procrastinator

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There I’ve said it.  Yes I am a procrastinator.  It’s really hard to avoid recognizing that, but I try :P.  It’s so much easier to say, “I’m laid back”, “I like to go at my own pace”, but the ugly truth is I’m a procrastinator.  Sigh.

I’ve known it for a long time, but I avoided thinking about it.  However my youngest son is going to be going through a divorce and I told him I had two bedrooms and he was welcome to come stay with me to give him a chance to get back on his feet here.  It meant finishing getting what was left of those boxes still in that second bedroom somewhere else.  I have the room in closets and storage for the boxes, but I have put off doing something with those boxes saying I was going to go through them, until now I have to, I’ve only been in my apt for a year (did I mention I’m a procrastinator?), and I was eventually going to use that second bedroom for my sewing and craft room.  But I never got around to doing it, so now my son will be able to stay in it, and eventually when he’s situated and on his own again, I will have an empty room to put my sewing and craft things in, but then I’m a procrastinator ;P.

Ok, the above is also appropriate for the blanket I’m working on for my grand daughter, yes, I do work on it and I only have about 3 1/2 skeins to go, but I really should be finished by now.  I’ll stop letting things distract me this week and see just how far I can get, my grand daughter will be very happy, and probably very surprised if I actually get it finished, I mean I’ve only been working on it for about a year ;P.

Still looking for work, but at least that is one thing I am not procrastinating about, that’s one point for me anyway :).  My car let me know a few weeks ago that it would not be taking me anywhere anymore.  The steering rack has finally gotten so bad I’m afraid to drive it.  I can’t complain, I only paid $500 for it about 4 1/2 years ago, so with some pampering, I did get my money out of it. 🙂  You forget how dependent on a vehicle you are until you don’t have one.  I miss the independence that the car gave me, now I have to wait until someone can take me to grocery shop, or anywhere else I need to go.  I do take the bus sometimes, but it’s a half a day to take the bus to Walmart to do some shoping  and then wait for the bus to come back by and get home, which would have taken me about an hr to do before.   And I can’t carry too much because I have a 5 block walk from the bus stop coming home.  Sigh.  I also had a week job from the temp agency a couple of weeks ago and I took the bus to work every other day (my daughter took me the in between days) and my son picked me up, or I wouldn’t have been home until about 7 to 7:30 pm.  I had to get up pretty early to catch the bus and get to work an hr early because the next bus would have gotten me to work late.  Funny all the things we take for granted.  I’ll never take a car for granted again.

Happy New Year – 2010

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Granddaughter's Afghan/Blanket

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I hope this will be a wonderful New Year for all my friends and family.

Just to show that I really am working on this blanket I decided to put a picture of it’s progress.  It takes approximately 1 skein for each completed pattern (18 rows), yes I am on the 6th skein of yarn.  I have 5 more after this one so I am a little more than half way done.  To be honest I needed at least 3 more skiens, however I have not been successful in finding any.  That is what happens when you make something with discontinued yarn. 😛

I have about 1/2 of a spool to go on the spinning for the 2nd spool of Llama to be done and then I can ply.  You can guess which one will get done first ;P.  Sorry Jade.

A Few Last Things for 2009

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Old Man Winter - 2009

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This was what we received from the blizzard that hit the midwest last week.  We got rain and freezing rain (mostly just rain) until the end and then we got about 4 inches of snow.  Much less than other area’s who received 2 or more feet.  Snow on the ground and covering the branches in the trees is such a pretty and peaceful sight, until you have to go out side and deal with it, and besides that it’s cold, brrrrr. 😛

The “Boys” are doing well.  They beat the Saints week-end before last, and their old arch rivals the Redskins, this last week-end.  They will face another newer arch rival this week-end, the Eagles.  If  the Cowboys win they will win their division.  Woohoo!  They’ve had a decent year this year :).  I hope they win, but even if they don’t they’ve had an exciting year.

I’m spinning more Llama for my son, I have one spool filled and am working on the 2nd spool.  When it’s full I can ply and hopefully will have enough for 2 more skeins.  Incase my grand daughter is reading, I am also knitting on your blanket, it’s cosy to sit on the couch and knit in the evening.

Thor, my awesome ferret, is finally finished sheding his summer coat and has a wonderfully soft and warm winter coat.  He’s fluffy and beautiful, and I have much less ferret fur to vacum up :P.

My Church is having a New Year’s Eve party Thursday evening.  I will be glad to usher out the old and ring in the new,  it’s just been one of those kinds of years, so I’m definately ready for the new and hoping for a better New Year. 

Wishing all a peaceful and wonderful New Year!

Baby Sweater – It’s Done

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click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

 

 

It is mostly done, I still have to sew snaps on the neck and tuck in the ends on the hat.  But it is was fun to make.  It is knit in the round until you get to the split for the sleeves.  I only had time to knit on it at lunch at work so it took me much longer to finish than it should have.  I hope my friend will like it. 🙂   

 **New picture**