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My Table

Posted on April 8, 2010 | Comments Off on My Table

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This is a picture of my kitchen table last Saturday. Everyone in my household was asleep except for me, i decided to take advantage of it and treat myself to two of my favorite things: a cup of tea and crocheting. It was a very peaceful time as I sat crocheting. There was time to enjoy the feel of the rhythm of my hands making stitches with my hook and yarn.I had a sense of peace as I worked. My fingers flew as they made a
familiar stitch many times. I wondered who would receive this blanket and prayed for him or her to be comforted and warmed by it.

Before I knew it, my tea was gone;three rows of orange had been added to the blanket and it was time to wake my household. As I cleaned off the table I hoped the sense of peace would remain through the day, which it did.

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Ready For Spring

Posted on February 22, 2010 | Comments Off on Ready For Spring

We had a taste of Spring on Saturday. The temperatures got into the lower fifties. The air was warm  and fresh with a light breeze.The sun was even out. Like most people in our area we took advantage of the situation and spent a bit of time running errands. The people around us seemed much more friendly and relaxed.  It was wonderful to be out and about.  We enjoyed it while it lasted.

Sunday morning brought us back to the reality that we are still in the month of February with cool temperatures and rain. I am grateful it was not snow, but missed the warmth of the sun and the cheer it brought. Today was another chilly cloudy rainy day. I took advantage of it to play with yarn and look for some patterns online.

At the moment I have a Baby Genius cloth on my knitting needles. It is being made with some beautiful variegated  worsted  wt.  yarn that was in a Grab Bag from Pisgah Yarn and Dyeing Company.This is a great pattern. Not only does it look wonderful knit with an ombre yarn, but it works up quickly and easily. It should be completed tonight before I go to bed. Pictures will be added to my Flickr Badge once they are taken.



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First Love

Posted on January 8, 2010 | 1 comment

My original motivation for having a blog was to talk about my adventures in knitting and crocheting. I was just starting to knit dishcloths. since i wasn't working outside the home, I relied on patterns from library books and books from my own collection. I learned very quickly that the internet is a very rich source of free patterns for all manner of dish and wash cloths. Rather than saving all the links in the Bookmark folder of my browser, I decided to list them on a side bar of my blog. Little did I know, how many were and are available. After a very short time my list had grown to the extent that it seemed most practical to devote an entire blog to this topic. Thus was born Dish and Wash Cloth Mania.

What started as a very small blog, has grown over the years to  have more than forty pages and more links than I can imagine. I continue to be fascinated not only making dish and wash cloths, but by searching for them on the internet. 

There are some amazingly creative designers and artists who share the
fruit of their love and labor with the rest of the world by turning
their patterns into dish or wash cloths, They are all beautiful! Due to piracy  and copyright issues, some designers have begun making
free patterns available only through Ravelry. I respect this.

Over the years, web hosts have gone out of business; designers have died or moved on to other activities; and others have quit offering free patterns in favor of selling them.In spite of these things the availability of free patterns remains astounding.

If you never tried making one, please do so. You might find you like them.

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Back Again

Posted on November 16, 2009 | Comments Off on Back Again

It feels strange to finally be writing here again. The past couple of months have been a bit hard at times. Life is improving. All is well in my household.

In the past few weeks I have started to knit and crochet again.It has felt good to do so. It seems like I have been trying to make up for lost time.I decided to take pictures of some projects yesterday with the result that there are fresh pictures under Finished Items on the right side bar. 

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October!!

Posted on October 2, 2009 | Comments Off on October!!

In the midst of busy weeks, September slipped away. It was a bittersweet month. Jim White, of KMOX fame died. A chronic physical condition worsened and is now requiring  attention. I started a new job. 

When I woke up yesterday, one of my first thoughts was: "It is finally October!!" This is my favorite month.  Leaves start to change color and  drop from
the trees as the
temperatures begin to drop.The colors range from bright oranges to assorted shades of
brown. There are chilly,windy days that give way to cool evenings and
nights. The sun rises later in the morning and sets earlier in the evening. There is always a sense of newness and change in this month. I begin another of my life and am excited at the prospect of another year. There is something invigorating about this. This is also the time of year that lends itself to  curling up with a hot beverage and doing a fiber related project.  

For these reasons and more, I  joyfully welcome October!

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Good Bye Mr.White

Posted on September 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Good Bye Mr.White

The local St. Louis paper announced the death of Jim White, a radio personality who retired from KMOX radio about ten years ago on Wednesday,  September 2. This was sad news for me. I spent many an hour listening to him as a young adult. He kept me awake  as I drove home from pulling evening shifts at a local hospital. He kept me company once I arrived home. Many nights I fell asleep listening to his voice and those of his guests. Many times he challenged my thinking. He talked about the importance of having more than one  hobby; of family and loving life. He was involved in the community and taught the importance of giving back to it by example.

His self given nickname was "The Big Bimper". He said this was related to his size and the shift he worked. It was a reference to "things that go bump in the night. "

In my opinion he ranks right up there with other KMOX greats: Bob Hyland, John McCormick, Jack Buck, Bob Hardy and Jack Carney.

When he retired, I felt sad,because that time slot on KMOX would never be the same. It wasn't.
At the same time, I was happy for him. He was taking time to enjoy his hobbies and the rest of his life. He was going to have more time to enjoy his family. He was embarking on a new adventure.

I still think of him  when  "things go bump in the night."

Wednesday he left this world for the next.

Good Bye, Mr. White. Thank you for all of the lessons you taught. Thank you for all of the memories.

May you enjoy eternity. :)

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Computer Time

Posted on August 29, 2009 | Comments Off on Computer Time

My original plan for today was to spend every free minute possible knitting or crocheting. After all, there are at least three projects that need to be done in the next 2-3 weeks. They are all large and two of them have a few parts to them. Instead I took a lot of computer time.

If you don't know me personally, you might not know that I am an organization freak. Everything must have a place and be in its place. The exceptions to this are the spare bedroom which serves as a homeschool and craft room and Munch's room. I can tolerate a bit of clutter in them.

My computer on the other hand has been what I consider a complete mess. Links have been misfiled or double filed; the toolbar has had far too many things on it;  and bookmarks had not been backed up in ages. the list could go on for a bit longer. You get the picture.

I have been gradually cleaning this mess up in the last week. Despite my best efforts progress was slow. This morning I got up early and hit right into it. It is now almost 8pm and it is finally done. The tool bars on my browser have been put in order; many bookmark files have been checked and cleaned out; a lot of dead links have been removed; and the bookmarks file has been backed up. There have even been a few changes made to this blog. 

Somewhere during the course of cleaning out files, I even found a link to one of my all time favorite Firefox Add-ons: Get Mail which informed me that it is now compatible with the current version of Firefox. That was good!

This has been a productive and relaxing day.

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Computer Time

Posted on August 29, 2009 | Comments Off on Computer Time

My original plan for today was to spend every free minute possible knitting or crocheting. After all, there are at least three projects that need to be done in the next 2-3 weeks. They are all large and two of them have a few parts to them. Instead I took a lot of computer time.

If you don't know me personally, you might not know that I am an organization freak. Everything must have a place and be in its place. The exceptions to this are the spare bedroom which serves as a homeschool and craft room and Munch's room. I can tolerate a bit of clutter in them.

My computer on the other hand has been what I consider a complete mess. Links have been misfiled or double filed; the toolbar has had far too many things on it;  and bookmarks had not been backed up in ages. the list could go on for a bit longer. You get the picture.

I have been gradually cleaning this mess up in the last week. Despite my best efforts progress was slow. This morning I got up early and hit right into it. It is now almost 8pm and it is finally done. The tool bars on my browser have been put in order; many bookmark files have been checked and cleaned out; a lot of dead links have been removed; and the bookmarks file has been backed up. There have even been a few changes made to this blog. 

Somewhere during the course of cleaning out files, I even found a link to one of my all time favorite Firefox Add-ons: Get Mail which informed me that it is now compatible with the current version of Firefox. That was good!

This has been a productive and relaxing day.

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Changes

Posted on August 20, 2009 | Comments Off on Changes

The past few months have been full of changes. Many of these are fiber related. Most of my stash of acrylic  yarns have been given away to a local charity. My stash of cotton  yarns has been gone through, inventoried  and rearranged. I have printed out and filed numerous  patterns.

I have made a few changes here this evening. Links on the page Places I Visit have been up dated. there were several dead links that needed to be handled. I did the same thing with links on the side bars. It is nothing exciting. They were very important changes to me. 

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Just Busy

Posted on August 9, 2009 | Comments Off on Just Busy

I have been feeling guilty for not posting anything here in ages. Life has just been busy with every day activities. We have been taking time almost  every weekend I have off to work on cleaning out our basement. We have managed to get rid of books we don't want or need. We have recycled an assortment of thing that have lost their usefulness to us such as outgrown clothes, and that sort of thing. I have been gradually getting rid of my stash of acrylic yarn. The basement is looking a lot less cluttered.

In my spare time I have been trying to work on decreasing my stash of cotton yarn. This has been a dangerous thing to do. The last time I wrote I mentioned crocheting food and dishes. Since then I have had the pleasure of making an assortment of amigurumi projects. They range from  food to aliens and all sorts of things in between. Patterns, both free and for sale, can be found here on the internet, on Ravelry, on Etsy, on Ebay and in several books. A quick search using the term amigurumi on a search engine will lead to several resources.

My choice of yarn is 100% cotton for a few reasons. The main reason is that it is not flammable. This is a safety  issue to me because i don't want to take the risk of someone being harmed by an acrylic item in case of fire. Because of this my stash has an abundance of it in all sorts of colors.

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