I have revised the pattern : Hills and Valleys in order to make the last rows look less stretched out. If you are are interested take a look at the pattern. I will try to get some pictures posted in the next week or so. At this time the only cloths made with this revision have loose ends that need to be woven in.
The past month has seen me in the worst blogging and knitting slump in ages. I am also way behind in email. There has just been a lot of activity in my life, most of which is not exciting. It took a couple of weeks for my household to fully recover from the flu that hit us in February. Somewhere along the way I have had a flare up of arthritis in a knee which was injured as a teenager. It tends to happens a couple of times a year and never fails to wipe me out. This time was no exception. As of yesterday, the knee was feeling much better.
For the first time in ages, a computer time slump and a knitting/crocheting slump have hit at the same time. I am finally starting to snap out of both of them in the past few days. Yeah!! I will be spending time this weekend doing an assortment of knitting/crochet and computer related activities. I have some ideas, but will have to see how much gets done.
Have a great weekend and a Happy Easter!
It’s been a rough week in my house to say the least.
I, who very rarely get sick, developed pneumonia. Our teenager got the flu and my husband had a very bad cold. For a few days There was an unusual amount of sleeping going on, day and night. My favorite words seemed to be "When did you last have a drink?" and "What is your temperature?"
Thankfully the worst seems to be over. My husband returned to work today. A call to my employer informed me that I am not due back until tomorrow. I am able to knit and do a few household chores without wanting to lie back down. My favorite teenager decided to play a computer game today. We are on the mend. Praise be to God!
Knitting needles were pulled out today with the result that a couple of dishcloths on the needles got completed. I made a pile of recently knitted ones, only to discover there are a lot more waiting to be photographed than imagined. That project will have to wait until another day.
For now, the sun is shining, it is 34 degrees F. outside with a bit of a North wind. February is more than half over and there is the promise of Spring in the air.
Have a great weekend and may God Bless!!
Since I am normally a fairly healthy person with lots of energy, it takes a lot to get me down. I have caught what seems to be the local Flu bug. :( Oh Yuck!! I have the classic symptoms of coughing, sneezing, body aches, elevated body temperature, weakness and being tired ( wiped out ). My truly wonderful and loving husband said "You sound terrible" A call to my friendly physician yesterday resulted in her calling a prescription for antibiotics to my pharmacy. In the fifteen or more years I have been seeing her, this is the first time she has ever called in medication for me without having actually seen me. She is a stickler about such things. Bless her wonderful heart and extremely high sense of ethics!
Not only that, but she has grounded me from yesterday through the weekend. My first response was that she was over reacting a bit. I should have known better. She was wise in doing so. I still feel lousy. She was right in making that decision. This Lady who sees herself as " just an average physician" has extraordinarily high standards of ethics, practice and care.
Of course, I am doing all of the right nursing measures: forcing
fluids; extra vitamin C; plenty of antioxidants; extra sleep; extra
rest; Tylenol and taking the antibiotic as ordered. I do feel badly for
my employer, since that means one less nurse on a tight schedule. But
with a high temperature and the symptoms I am experiencing, it is a
violation of conscience and good health practices for me to go to work.
I would much rather be working than home with this stuff any day.
Under the circumstances , what is a person to do? I pondered this question for a very short time yesterday and came to what seems to be a logical conclusion. I should knit, of course! It keeps my mind and hands busy; does not take much energy; and makes me feel good about myself. In addition, I like doing it. Yesterday, in a burst of energy, I wove in loose ends on some dish/wash cloths, and completed two more that were almost done. At this point today, there is not the energy or motivation to take pictures of them, but hopefully that will come in a couple of days.
Thank goodness for the ability to knit, knitting needles and a large stash of yarn, threads and patterns. Once again all of those things are holding me in good stead. Today, I have done some work, which is really play, on the Building Blocks cloth by Sue Schaefer. It can be seen just a little bit down the page. She undoubtedly one of my favorite designers and this pattern is no exception. It is working up quickly and easily without using too much concentration, which meets my need today.
Another thing for which I am very grateful on days like today is the Internet and email. I can talk with with family and knitting friends; download free patterns and work ( it is really play ) on my blogs. These are fun things to do that don’t require much energy and I can stop whenever I choose.
This is the first day of Project Spectrum Three. The theme this year is elements: Fire, Earth, Air, Water. Each of these has colors associated with it. The colors for February and March are:orange, red and pink.
I took some time today to go through my yarn stash to find some cotton yarns in these colors. I have decided to make some wash/dishcloths using these colors. The patterns I use will have a Spring based theme. That provided a good reason to search my pattern stash with the result that finding suitable patterns was easy enough. The hard part was choosing what patterns to use. :)
Days like yesterday will never cease to amaze me. I went to work early today at my employer’s request. Out of habit and an internal need to be prepare, I packed some extra clothing; my medication ;an extra skein of cotton yarn and the current wash cloth being made with a ‘no brainer’ pattern. Since the weatherman was predicting a major winter storm coming our way, I wanted to be prepared to spend the night at work if necessary.
The snow had begun to fall by the time I left the house. That was all right. It continued to snow off and on for my entire shift. We received updates on road and weather conditions from employees as they arrived. It was going to be fun night to drive home. Oh Yuck!! It goes with the territory, but I don’t have to like it. In typical fashion, the nurses, of which I am one, were the last ones to leave. We got our cars cleaned off and headed out for home. A trip which normally takes about half an hour to make, took closer to an hour. I got off the highway as soon as possible and chose an alternate way home. It is easier that way in snowy or icy weather. The trip home was slow but steady going. My vehicle and I made it safely home after what seemed like forever. That was such a good feeling. Nothing equals the feeling of arriving safely home after a perilous journey.
Outdoors looks beautiful now that I am safe and warm inside of my own home surrounded my family. Hopefully I will be up early enough to capture some pictures of the snow in the morning before it gets warm outside.
Weather in St. Louis is known for changing quickly. This week has been no exception to that. We had 70 degree temperatures on Tuesday afternoon that plummeted to 15 degrees by 9pm that evening. Today it is predicted that we will receive snow. The amounts we are to have vary depending on the area in which you live. At this point the average snowfall will be 8-10 inches across the region. Today could prove to interesting.We will see what happens by tomorrow morning.
Have a great day!
Whew!! I am so glad today is Friday. This past week has been quite an adventure. :)
It all began last Friday when I decided to take advantage of January White Sales to get some much needed bath towels to replace the worn out ones in my house. Coming home from the store, which is about a fifteen minute drive from home, my car made a loud clunk like sound under the hood. I managed to drive it about five minutes to a safe location before calling for a tow. My wonderful husband was able to use his lunch hour to pick me up. We later learned that there were some serious, but repairable problems with this vehicle. It stayed in the shop the entire weekend, mostly waiting for a part to be delivered. I drove back and forth to work without problems on Monday.
Tuesday was a different story. We met some friends at a local library to visit and go to lunch. When we left for the restaurant, the power steering was not working. Thanks to the help of a Good , our friends and my husband, we returned the car to the shop. The problem turned out to be a faulty power steering pump which was replaced without a fee to us.
I drove it to work yesterday only to discover steam coming out of the hood when I pulled into the parking lot. There was no time to worry at the moment. I was safe and had other things to do. A brief call to my husband assured me that he would meet me after work to follow me home. The trip home was delightful. My teenager and I enjoyed the time to talk while my husband followed us. The car ran fine until I pulled into the driveway. Once again there was steam coming from under the hood. A trip to the mechanic this morning has revealed a small leak in the cooling system which has been repaired for a very small fee. Hopefully this has taken care of the problem. The vehicle still has some repairs that need attention. We know what they are and thankfully they can wait a while to be handled.
Now for the knitting part of this post. A couple of weeks ago, I posted some knitting goals for the weekend. The only one which got met was this one:
.It turned out to be a larger project than I realized at first. There were more than forty patterns that got printed out and placed in a notebook for future use.
There are eight cloths still waiting to be photographed and posted here and on Flickr. Maybe there will be time to do do it on the weekend.
At the moment I am working on three designs by Sue Schaeffer. They are each beautiful in their own way. With any luck, two of the three will be completed this weekend. There is so much to do and so little time to do all of it.
Have a great day!!
Can you tell I am excited? I am so glad this week is finally over. Nothing is wrong except that it has been a busy week. Work has been super busy which means that I am normally completely exhausted at the end of the shift. Conversations with some of my colleagues tell me I am not the only one to experience this. I come home, take some family time, to a load or two of dishes or laundry and sleep. It is not very exciting. Some days there has been knitting or computer time. At other times, the best I can muster is family time.
This brings me to another subject. As you may or may not know, we are a homeschooling family. We made this choice several years ago for a variety of reasons after a considerable amount of research, discussion and bit of prayer. We have reached the point in life where our families needs are increasing for educational and parental time with our offspring. That not to say we are lacking in this area. It is only meant to say that my husband and I are seeing the need for more of our time to be devoted to this area of our lives.
Because of this, I have withdrawn from some of groups of which I have been a member for quite a while. The list owners have been notified privately of this, but I have decided to discuss this here. If you are part of any of those groups, please be assured my decision was strictly based on the need to give my family more time. Children are only young once and I want to keep my priorities in the proper order.
Having said that, please let me tell you about some weekend plans. We will do the usual errands such as shopping for food, going to the bank, cleaning the house, taking the recyclables to the recycle center and laundry. We are also including lots of individual free time. We are all basically introverts and need time alone to recharge our batteries. It helps all of us to get through the busy times. My time is going to be spent doing fiber related activities.
Here are some of the things I want to do, listed in the order they come to mind:
Have a great weekend!
Comments Off on It Is The Weekend!!
Posted in Fiber Arts
Tagged Dishcloths, Fiber Arts, Knitting, Knitting Goals
The holidays are over and life is settling down again.
Here are some of my knitting goals for this year:
* Knit two dishcloths a week or more.
* Somehow use more yarn than I buy.
* Learn to do intarsia.
* Finish up some partially done projects.
* Learn to read charts. I want to learn to do this so I can
translate them into words due to some visual issues.
* Play around with knitting cables.
Except for the first one, these are not in any particular order.
When the second one was posted to an email group, I was completely serious about it. After thinking about it and being faced with such details in life such as yarn sales and new yarns, I have come to realize that this goal is unrealistic.
At the end of last week I took advantage of a 30% of most yarn sale at Michael’s and bought enough yarn for making the Ribbons of Life Scarf found here. Prudent knitter that I am, extra yarn was purchased to insure enough to complete the pattern. There is now an additional 200 gr–7.0 ounces of yarn in my overflowing stash. I have not used nearly that much in the past week.
