Month: June 2013

Knitting

Spinning, Birds and Blessings

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OFF THE SPINDLE

Pulled my first ever handspun off my drop spindle yesterday afternoon, gave it a quick bath and laid it out to dry.  I can only hope to improve, I suppose.  Mr. Iknead’s drop spindle works like a charm and is easy to use.  It turns so easily and spins for what seems like a long, long time.  I invested in a small niddy-noddy and a yardage counter from Knitpicks today, they were on sale and if I stay as interested in spinning as I think I’m going to, I’ll need them.  Here’s a look at my first ever handspun:

Very kinky and I’m sure horrendously overspun but it’s a start.

LET ME DRAW YOU A (BIRD) BATH

Mr. Iknead and I finally got back out to The Good Earth Garden Center today.   We went out last Saturday but our shopping trip was cut short when my mother took a turn for the worse and had to be taken to the Emergency Room.  More about that a little later.  Anyway, we spent a couple of hours or so just wandering around, looking at different plants, coveting the largest and prettiest of whatever we happened to be looking at and browsing containers and pretty pots.  We had decided a few weeks ago that we really needed (read wanted) a small birdbath for the front yard, so we spent a little extra time just checking different ones out.  They were pretty expensive and we really just didn’t see one that turned over our engines and decided to wait for the perfect one, maybe pay a little more rather than just getting one that we thought was so-so and inexpensive.  We had this agreement and were leaving when I saw the Birdbath That Called My Name.  We both loved it, the price was right, so our front yard is now graced by the perfect birdbath.  I hope the birds love it as much as we do!

I love the leaf shape!

Now, if only the ground cover would hurry up and fill in…..

WHERE WE STAND

Our meetings with hospice went very well, Mom was officially admitted to Arkansas Hospice and they’ll be coming to the nursing home at least five days a week, caring for her and providing support for us.  A nice surprise was that Bigmommy’s best friend since babyhood is a social worker with Arkansas Hospice (we knew she worked for a hospice, just not which one) and has known my mom pretty much forever.  She and her family are like family to us and that gives us reassurance and comfort during this time, when it feels like we’re always second guessing ourselves and the decisions we’ve had to make.  A blessing.

THE GRANDS

The Stuttgart grands are at Grayton Beach, Florida even as I type.  They’re enjoying the Vaughan side of the family tree, and I’m sure being totally and deliberately spoiled rotten by their Grandmary and Pops,  aunts, uncles and cousins.  Another blessing for sure.  Waiting on some beach pics, will show off a few when (and if) they arrive.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Knitting

Home Again, I Hate Dementia, What’s Next

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OFF THE NEEDLES

Nothing, absolutely nothing.  This is not to say I don’t have projects in varying stages of completion, I have tons of them, just none even close enough to pull an all nighter to have something to post.  But, hey, the day has just begun and I do have 24 hours to finish something.  Totally within the realm of possibility.

MOM

Thankfully, my mom was discharged from the hospital early yesterday afternoon to go back to her nursing home.  Her doctor has recommended that she be placed on hospice so Mr. Iknead and I have meetings today with both companies that work within her nursing home.  I’m not ready to lose my Mom, though her dementia has erased my “real” Mom and I’ve been grieving that for a long time.  Dementia kills the person within long before it kills the body without and I hate it, but it is what it is.  To be continued……..

YARN

Newest yarn acquisition in my favorite teapot

Another two skeins of Premier Yarns Wool Free Sock.  Mr. Iknead’s socks using this yarn in a blue colorway are still on the needles, but I’m totally loving the way it feels and how it knits up.   As soon as I get something, anything, off the needles, I’m starting myself some socks using this.

Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.  Napoleon Hill

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Knitting

WIPW 6/26/13

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ON THE NEEDLES

This is the WIP that I nearly went nuts getting posted to this week’s WIPW yesterday, only to figure out that was NOT Wednesday, it was Tuesday and no, I’m not oriented as to the time, place or person. Hanging out in a hospital room will do that to you.

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Scrappy Yarn Blanket from The Heathen Housewife

http://www.shellykang.com

A Free Ravelry Pattern

APPRECIATION

I just want to give a quick Thank You to all who have encouraged me and prayed for Mom and me these past few days.  I can definitely feel them all.   They’ve really made a difference, helping me maintain a positive attitude and a patient heart.

I’m linking up today with Tami and Frontier Dreams, give them a visit and be prepared to be wowed!

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  Wayne Dyer

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Knitting

You Mean It’s Not………

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WHAT’S UP

Still coming to you live from the 4th floor, UAMS, another day spent sitting in Mom’s room, imploring her to eat, which doesn’t work very well, but I was able to get about 1/4 of her supper into her.   It seems to take forever, between sips of water or tea and I’ll admit right here that even in routine situations, my patience is short at best, but, you do what you have to do.  She’s having difficulty drinking, I can’t tell if she’s just too weak or can’t remember how to use a straw, so I’m using the old straw in the drink, finger over the straw, into the mouth for a drink method.  Then, as I was doing this for the billionth time today, the idea of using a sippy cup occurred to me, so I’ll give that a whirl tomorrow.  Her doc told me today that if her blood pressure stabilized a bit and if her appetite started returning, there’s a possibility of discharge back to the nursing home sometime tomorrow.  We’ll see.

WHA…..?

I spent most of the day attempting to get one of my current WIPs photos downloaded so I could post it for WIPW (the internet service sucks at the hospital, to the point of  being nonexistant) and guess what???  IT’S NOT WEDNESDAY!  Hospitals can do that to you, every single day is the same, only the faces change and the days are really, truly a minimim of 48 hours.  There’s actually something called ICU psychosis, brought on because there’s no discernible day or night in the ICU, the lights are always on and the routine has no beginning or end.  I think I might have a touch of it and I’m not even the patient!

THE GRANDS

No matter what, these little ones bring me joy beyond measure, so here’s my happy for today –

The Papoose, Smiling With Her Whole Face

Babydiva, In a Rare Moment of Stillness

Couldn’t You Just Overdose on the Sprout’s Cute???

SILVER LINING

Since I labored all day under the impression that today was Wednesday, not Tuesday, a photo has been taken and uploaded and blog post drafted, nearly ready for posting; so, for once, I’m already a little ahead of the game for once.

Never let yesterday use up too much of today.  Will Rogers

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Knitting

Patience, patience

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WHAT’S UP

Mom was hospitalized yesterday with sepsis, most likely from a UTI and since she’s pretty much nonverbal from dementia, it’s a lot like having a sick baby. She can’t tell us what’s wrong, and we have to use the old trial and error method on our part to figure out what’s wrong and the best way to fix it. She’s getting better though and hopefully will be moved to a step down unit in the next day or so. All the better to practice patience.

No photos today; posting using my iPhone on the teeny tiny screen is hard enough.

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains. Dutch proverb

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Knitting

I’m Not Believin’ This ****, Trying Something New and A New Bowl

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FROM THE I’M NOT BELIEVING THIS FILE

You know the feeling you get when you’re working on a project and honestly, the instructions just don’t seem to make any sense, the shape of the project is odd and the whole thing is just …..you know, wrong?   You know how it feels to just continue knitting according to the pattern, because sometimes you just have to trust that it’s going to be OK and everyone will live happily ever after?  Well, yesterday, I’m flying high with the Quick Shawl Collared Shrug, bulldozing on because, like I just said, sometimes you have to trust the designer, no matter how wonky it seems.  My inner knitter kept repeating, “this just doesn’t seem right and this doesn’t make any sense” until I finally (for the umpteenth time) read back over the pattern, somehow noticing, this time, the page order.  Yep, you guessed it.  I knit the entire thing without noticing the pages were out of order.  Page 3 was entirely missed, never noticed it, except that, again, I thought the whole thing was just odd.  Nope, operator error.  So, I sucked it up, frogged the entire thing and restarted, with the pages in the correct order.  Dang, the whole thing makes sense now!  Did I mention that I’m now so paranoid that I’m now obsessively checking page numbers?  Live and learn and remember to check page numbers.

No photos of this debacle, it’s too fresh.  😦

SPIN

Over the last few months, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about spinning and drooling over the beautiful yarn that’s produced.  I watched a few YouTube videos and decided to give it a try.  I went to Hobby Lobby and found a nice sized round wood thingy, a dowel and some cup hooks, brought it all home, had Mr. Iknead drill a hole in the wood thingy for the dowel and BAM, I have a drop spindle!  I’d bought some roving a while ago with really no plans for it, I thought maybe about doing some felting, but nothing concrete.  This was a good thing because I’m heavily into instant gratifications and always want to do things RIGHT NOW, if not sooner.   Being the proud owner of a drop spindle AND roving, here is a photo of my very first attempt, I’m sure horrendously overspun and whatever else beginners tend to do, but I’m proud just the same.

First Ever Handspun!

I haven’t mentioned to Mr. Iknead (yet) that this is only the beginning of a new obsession, although I suspect he suspects and that my next acquisition may be a sheep, you know, for the wool and all.  Besides, we love animals and it will keep the grass clipped, right?  Oh, and the fertilizer!  I almost forgot about the fertilizer!

LOOKY, LOOKY

I Made This, See My Initials??

Class starts again Monday morning and I’ll be so happy; I’ve really missed the studio and the friends made over the Spring Session.  My head is full of ideas, can’t wait to get back into class and try them out!   I love this stuff!

Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.  Mother Teresa

Knitting

Passing It On

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AS PROMISED

Like I posted yesterday, I spent pretty much the entire day with the Papoose and the Sprout.  The Papoose is always fascinated by my knitting, she will pick up a piece of yarn and run it through her fingers, saying “I’m knitting”.  She also has a toy that is big wooden beads on a string that can be strung and unstrung and she’ll put them on and take them off, all the while saying, “Look!  I’m knitting!”  In keeping with my belief that you’re never too young or too old to learn something new, I fixed her up a real, live knitting bag with some old, wooden, blunt size 13 needles and three balls of some scrap yarn – pink, green and blue.   She was so proud!  Like I said, never too young.  I cast on a few stitches for her and she played around with “knitting” most of the day.  Here’s my favorite photo from yesterday –

Proud Papoose

Sweet Hands!

and while we weren’t looking –

Another Knitter Is Born

Seriously, I get a warm, fuzzy, lump in the throat feeling looking at these, thinking about sharing my love for knitting and fiber with the grands and then their sharing it and hopefully, loving it as much as I do.  The more (ehem) mature I become, the more I crave continuity and this makes my heart and soul sing.

JUST A COUPLE MORE

Angel

Babydiva And Babydaddy At The Lake

I love that she loves the water, I see a lot more pool/lake time in the future!

I can be changed by what happens to me but I refuse to be reduced by it.  Maya Angelou

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Knitting

Drive-by WIP Wednesday 6/19/13

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EXCUSES, EXCUSES

This post is later than usual for a very good reason – I was with the Papoose and the Sprout pretty much all day today and as much as I love to blog, share and probably, at times, overshare, if given the choice, the grands are going to win out every time.  We all had a blast and laughed and chased and hid and laughed some more.  What a blessing of a day!  Really, it just doesn’t get better than today.  No way, no how.  I’ve some awesome photos to share tomorrow – I took about a bazillion – so get ready for some grand goodness then.

ON THE NEEDLES

A little backstory:  I bought this yarn about a month ago from Jimmy Beans Wool, mostly because it was on sale and sometimes, the Mad Tosh yells “buy me, buy me” louder than the little voice I carry around in my head that says, “you know, you have plenty of yarn just back in the room and besides, remember Mr. Iknead’s austerity plan?  Really, even without the plan, do you NEED this yarn?”  YES YES YES, SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP LITTLE VOICE, MAD TOSH IS IN TOWN AND IS TAKING NO PRISONERS!

Before Winding

After Winding

Mad Tosh Chunky

Nectar

See why I folded under pressure?  Could anyone have resisted?

Then, on Monday, I found the cutest shrug on Sweaterbabe.com and bam, I knew without a hint of doubt that the Tosh was meant for the shrug and the shrug was meant for the Tosh.  The stars aligned, the angels sang, the whole nine yards.  So, here’s todays WIP Wednesday offering –

#101 Quick Shawl Collared Shrug

Look at the difference in the colors.  It’s more of a coppery color than purple, the unwound pic is truer to life.

What do you think?  Are they soul mates or what???

Linking up with Tami’s WIP Wednesday blog today.  Go on over and enjoy.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.  Thomas Jefferson

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Knitting

Potpourri (You’ve Been Warned)

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WARNING

This particular post will probably be all over the map, the weekend was so fantastic and I have so much stuff to show; so, consider yourself warned.

GREEN GROWING THINGS

Now, truly, I’ve never, ever had the desire to garden, it always looked like so much work and fretting about what to plant and where and when.  It just wasn’t my cup of tea.  Give me real, live things to fool with, like babies or puppies or kitties.  Note that plants are not under the category of real, live things.  Honestly, I sort of thought that people who were really into gardening were, well, a little odd.  Until now.  I’ve done a complete 180 on the garden thing.  Here’s how it happened.  Remember how I’ve been cleaning out, going through and organizing about 18 years of stuff?  Cleaning out the garage one day, I found a couple of seed packets, I for sure remember that one was morning glory seeds.  Just for chucks, I found a couple of pots that already had dirt in them, stuck the seeds into the dirt, gave them a drink and sat back to see what would happen.  And yeah, just like seeds are supposed to do, they came up!  I was flabbergasted!  Success!  With that little confidence boost, I got some basil seeds at Wallyworld, bought some real potting soil, again stuck the seeds in, covered them up and gave them a drink.  Another success!  Amazing!  There really could be something to this gardening thing, so, I bought a couple of begonias (my mom always loved begonias), set them out back with the rest of the growing things and again, settled back to watch.  They grew!  They bloomed!  They grew so much I had to repot them!  They lived!  I learned why people garden – it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s soothing, it’s just very, very cool all the way around.  I am now a gardener.  Who woulda thunk it?

Basil, Batchelor Buttons and a poor sad Begonia that’s doing oh so much better now

The Morning Glory that started it all

Red Hydrangea

So, I’m now “one of those people” and proud of it!  There’s a lot to be said about getting your hands dirty!

JOSIE

While I was out documenting my new gardening obsession, I snapped a couple of pics of Josie Pug on a whim.  Isn’t she beautiful??

WHAT I’M READING

Outstanding book and particularly relevant to me as I caught myself doing a lot of (internal) screaming while waiting in line – any line.

I love just looking at the gorgeous photos in this one.

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.  Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Knitting

Lake Love

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LAKE LOVE

Mr. Iknead and I were graciously invited yesterday to spend the day at Lake Ouachita by Babymama’s dad and stepmom, of course, we couldn’t accept fast enough!  It was a perfect day, low humidity, lots of sunshine and lots of room on the lake.  This was Babydiva’s first lake outing and I think she loved it.

Babydiva and Babydaddy

Every Day’s A Lake Day When You’re a Diva

Jimmy, our host with the most and Kate

Aunt Sarah, Kate and Babydiva, Bathing Beauties All!

Lake Ouachita

The visit was such an unqualified success that plans are in the works to rent a cabin and bring the rest of the fam.   So nice to enjoy the whole family, in-laws, out-laws (but we really don’t have any) and other-laws.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.  Oprah Winfrey

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Knitting

Such An Honor

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THANK YOU

Soknitsome has honored me by nominating me for a WordPress Family Award.  This is something I love about blogging, making connections with others, which in turn makes all of us better that we originally were.  Thank you soknitsome, again, I’m honored.

Since turnabout is fair play, I’m nominating a few bloggers that I’m particularly inspired and/or moved by.  They are (in no particular order):

1.  speckledblue

2. february12

3. at350degrees

4.  for the knit of it

5.  flaws and all

6.  harmonic oscillator knits

7. pixelknitsponderings

8. Row’s Pottery Shed

9. uknit2

10. …my spare moments

Should my nominees be inclined to pass on this award, there are just five simple guidelines to follow:

1.  Display the award logo on your blog.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you.

3. Nominate 10 others you see as having an impact on your WordPress experience and family.

4. Let your 10 Family members know you have awarded them.

5. That’s all.  Please just pick 10 bloggers who have taken you as a friend and feel the love.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.  Joseph Clinton Pearce

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Knitting

FO Friday 06/14/13, Best SIL Ever, Too Hot To Bake?

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Linking up with Tami’s FO Friday blog today.

OFF THE NEEDLES

Medano Beach Bag

Sugar’n Cream 100% cotton

Ecru and Country Red

This bag is proof that stockinette in the round with two colors CAN be messed up.   I was nearly to the bind off when I noticed that I’d missed a stripe, wrestled momentarily with wanting to frog the whole thing and decided to leave it be.  So, the bag has a unique pattern, designed for easy recognition in case it’s ever in a pile with 20 other red and white Medano bags. :p  My only complaint was that this bag grew so slowly, due to my decision to use number 4 needles instead of the number 7 or 8 recommended.  I do like the density of stitches that the small needles gave me, I’ll just scale the whole bag down a little next time.

YOU SHOULD BE SO BLESSED

Happy birthday to my best son in law ever!  I truly believe he was sent to us (not just to Bigmommy, thank you very much) straight from above.   His gifts of love, faith, positivity, strength, generosity, ideas of fun, common sense, intelligence, loyalty and sense of humor have elevated us all.  (He has a ton more assets but I ran out of fingers.)  Great father, great husband, great friend, great preacher, great man of God – Clefton, you’ve covered all the bases!   We love you!

Clefton and Annabelle

IN THE OVEN

Yeah, it’s pretty hot but I’m baking today anyway.  I think I’ll start with Sundried Tomato Basil Bread using my own fresh basil and maybe move on to something sweet, Pull Apart Cinnamon Bread, maybe.

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.  William Menninger

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