My Daddy & Me

Well, I ended up having surgery on my back on February 4th. Now My Handy Man says I'm glued and screwed and he's wired! That's a reference to the screws in my hip and the glue they fixed my fracture with and the defibrillator/pacemaker that he has now. Excuse the "french", but it's HELL getting older!!!

I'm doing fine. I went back to work on Monday for half a day and was really worn out by the end of the day. Tuesday I was feeling more like myself, but still sore from the surgery. Today I'm feeling even better, but still a bit sore. The Dr. said it would be about a week before the soreness went away, so I'm not worried. I've got a follow-up appointment tomorrow morning, so I'm anxious to see what they say.

BUT - I did manage to get quite a lot of knitting done while I was recouping - pictures to follow soon - I hope. Gotta get my little models rounded up.

My Daddy was moved from the hospital to a "Skilled Care Facility" aka Nursing Home, on the day of my surgery. It was quite a shock that they moved him when they did. We thought he had until the 12th to stay in the hospital, but apparently NOT! Lord how I love how the insurance companies have more to say about what goes on than the doctors do! He is about the same as he was. The doctors say he probably won't get much better because of the number of strokes that he's had and the other health issues that he has. At least now he is closer to home so Mom can have an easier time getting to him and so can other members of my family. I'm an hour and 15 min. away and it seems like so very far! They say he has 100 days of coverage, so we hope to make arrangements to care for him at home before the end of that time. For those of you who have or have had aging parents, you know how hard it is to see your loved ones go down hill. I think my brother said it best - "It's hard to see him die in pieces!" AMEN TO THAT! My Daddy has always been such a sweet and loving man, I hate to see him in such awful shape.

I'm going through old pictures and looking for a place to have them scanned so that I can post them on this blog. I thought I was somewhat organized - guess not as much as I should be. I've been going to do that for a long time. Guess now is the time to follow through.

Please keep my Daddy and Mom and all the rest of us in your prayers. Pray for God's will. Although we hate to loose him, we hate it more to see him and Mom this way.

Blessings.

January 2010 Snow Fall

I took these pictures while walking around our property, checking things out. I'm not much of a photographer, but I hope you enjoy them.

It's Catch Up Time

It's been too long since my last post and a LOT has happened.

We had a really nice Christmas. My brother and his wife and daughter came from Texas, my nephew and his bride came from New York and my youngest nephew came from the Carolina's (I can never remember if it's North or South Carolina!). They all stayed at my Mom & Dad's house because it is more centrally located and easier for the rest of the gang to get to, plus it's almost twice the size of my house. My daughter and son and their families live closer to my parent's than we do, so all the holiday festivities took place at Mom & Dad's. It was great to have the whole family together AND everyone got along!

How great is that?!

I ended up knitting 15 pair of fingerless gloves before it was all said and done. All of them were similar, but I did make a few changes to accommodate the type of yarn I was using and to better suit the recipient. Most of them were made from yarn I already had, but I did purchase a few new skeins for others.

Originally I made the gloves to fit the females of the family and my female co-workers and friends. Then my brother and my oldest nephew decided they would like a pair. They put in their request for the color they wanted. I checked my yarn stash and found what I needed to make a pair for my brother (camouflage of course!).

but my nephew wanted dark grey, so I had to buy some yarn for his.

No worries though, my local Michael's was having a big sale and I got some Vanna's Choice yarn for $2.50 a skein. Plus it was a good opportunity to plump up my stash!

I rarely make myself anything, but I made a pair for me too! They have really come in handy during our latest cold spell.

So here we are already to January 21, 2010. I can hardly believe how quickly time has flown by.

January 5th was our youngest Granddaughter's first birthday. There was a party at her house on the 10th and LOTS of little ones and their Mommies and Daddies came. I think she really enjoyed her cake!

My sweet 81 year old Daddy had a stroke on January 15th. It seems to have affected both sides of his brain, hist left more than his right, but his speech doesn't seem to have been affected, thankfully. His long term memory is pretty good, but his short term memory is barely there. He is in a certified stroke center rehab hospital and seemed to be getting a little better. However, my daughter just called to let me know that the hospital called my Mother to let her know that they think he has had another one. I'll leave in a few minutes to go see how he is. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. Mom too.

And as an update on the fall I took in the chicken coop back on November 17th - I had an MRI and they discovered that I have a compression fracture in my T12 vertebrae! Great - I've been walking around with a fractured spine for 2 months! No wonder my back keeps hurting!!!

I'm doing OK. Pain medicine works wonders! I'm working as usual and now sporting a fancy new back brace that makes me look like the hunch back of Notre Dame! I was given a choice of wearing the brace or having a special type of bone cement injected into the fracture to fix it - I think I made the wrong choice! This thing is driving me crazy(er) - so I've called the Dr.'s office to see about scheduling the other procedure. Wish me luck!

You know what they say - "When it rains, it pours"! I'll keep you posted on my Daddy's progress! Pray for a miracle.

More Christmas Knitting

I've been knitting away for Christmas. Sometimes a financial situation requires resourcefulness when it comes to gifts. Since most people really like hand made items, I don't know why I don't do it more often!

I've been wanting to make fingerless gloves since the first time I saw them on some of the knitting websites and in some of the knitting books I have. As of today I officially have 3 pr. completed and 3 pr. in various stages of completion. I've done each pair a little differently, but all of them are variations on the same theme. I just combined all of the information from a number of different patterns and made adjustments according to the yarn I had on hand. Except that this particular pair required that I purchase some purple yarn, since I didn't already have purple in my stash. But purple is my co-worker Vicki's favorite color, so whats a knitter to do?!I've also knitted a few of these pretty washcloths to gift and I ordered some handmade soap from Angie over at Maple Valley Off Grid Farm. to give with them. She and her family are living on a beautiful Amish farm and really getting back to the old way of doing things. When you're through reading this post, be sure and jump on over to her blog and take a look. They have a great love for God and a much more simple, if busy life.And then I was inspired to make some home made body scrub/bath salts, which I'll post about later.

As I was going trough some of the knitting that I'd done a few years ago, I came across some of the felted bags I made and forgot about. I thought they would make great gift containers, so I put the gloves, a knitted washcloth, the soap and a jar of body scrub in this one (it's red and purple, but the picture looks a little off color), and gifted it all to Vicki. She was thrilled and I was thrilled that she was thrilled!

Vicki is on her way home to Ohio (wearing the fingerless gloves I'm sure) and I'm off to continue knitting.

Have a Merry Christmas.

My next post will be after Christmas because I'm off work until then and I won't have access to a computer!

Repurposed Front Door

You may remember this picture from when DH was removing the old front door to gain access to our newly enclosed front porch. As you will see below, it now has a new purpose.Since the newly enclosed front porch connects to the dining room and kitchen area and since the wall between said rooms was removed, we have had to rearrange our kitchen. Tee Hee Hee! Ain't it ashamed?!!!

So, since DH has time off from work until after the first of the year, I've made him a list, errr, I mean we've come to an agreement on the projects that he can work on, using materials that we've already purchased. One of the projects is MY NEW PANTRY!

We borrowed some space from our side entry that we are now using as our main entry door. He bumped out about 3 feet and built a new enclosure that runs the full length of the current kitchen. I'll post more pictures of that part later. It's completely huge and completely awesome, or will be when we get it all finished.

So far we've put in a few shelves to accommodate some of the lesser used items and some narrow shelves to store canned goods, etc. That has only used up about 1/3 of the total space so far. The plan is to get a small, chest type freezer to put at one end. Above the freezer will be a shelf or two for items needed for the freezing process: bags, containers, butcher paper, etc. In addition, I plan to place some hangers for wrapping paper and ribbon, scissors, gift bags, etc. so that I have a place to wrap gifts. I will be able to use the top of the freezer as a work surface! It will be wonderful to have a designated place for that!

There is also a plan for pegs to hang my reusable shopping bags, bins for my recyclables, shelves for my wine glasses and perhaps a few bottles of wine, baskets for my veggies and who knows what else. I'll just have to see what I can squeeze in there.

So, yesterday DH took the old front door and installed it in the entry to my new pantry! Once he gets it all trimmed in it will be painted, I'll order a "PANTRY" sign from Upper Case Living and put it on the horizontal piece just below the windows and I'll frost the windows with either some paint or some cool paper I found.

I REALLY need to consult Layla at The Lettered Cottage for some suggestions. I think I'll purchase one of her consultations for myself for Christmas! If you haven't already, you need to check her out. She has amazing talent! Any suggestions for pantry design are welcome.

Christmas Knitting

It's been a good while, maybe 2 years, since I last picked up my knitting needles. There's been so much other "stuff" going on that I just had not had the time. But,that all changed when my DD saw some self striping sock yarn in Hobby Lobby and said that she thought it would make cute hats for her girls. So I bought a few skeins of sock yarn and that's all it took.

Coincidentally, at work we have started a new program with The Circle Center, which I will explain at a later date, and one of the first things we had to do was choose something that we needed to work on. I decided to work on "focusing", which I often have a problem with, as you will see. And I always wondered where my DS got his ADD!?!

If you are a knitter, you know that knitting is a good thing to help with focus. In fact, with many patterns, focus is an essential part of completing a project successfully.

Well, sock yarn is what is called "fingering weight", which means it requires small needles. And I needed circular needles to keep me from having to sew seams, which I always try to avoid. So I made a trip to Haus of Yarn, my local yarn store and bought some size 2 circular needles. Well, OK, 2 size 2 circular needles. One is 16" and one is 12". Who knew that there were 12" circulars out there?! I HAD to have them.

Then I decided I needed a good book for knitting with sock yarn and I remembered seeing this book the last time I was in a yarn store?!

So I asked if there was a similar book with patterns just for kids, and this is what they showed me:

Well of course I had to buy BOTH of them, you know, just in case I decide to make some things for me too. And I HAD to buy 2 skeins of Lana Grossa sock yarn because you CAN'T go to a yarn store and not buy yarn!

So I knit up 2 precious hats from the yarn I bought at Hobby Lobby, which I of course didn't take pictures of, for my DD's 2 girls. THEY LOVED THEM!

Then a big light went off in my head - hey - I could knit Christmas presents for other people too!

I know, sometimes I'm a little slow.

So I pulled out the Lana Gross and started knitting a scarf, in the round. But knitting a scarf on size 2 needles takes a LONG time, and I quickly got bored with it. But I had gotten far enough that what I had already knit was about the right length for a child's hat, so I made it into this cute little hat for one of the smaller members of my family (shh, don't tell). Then I decided little people need little leg warmers too, so I winged the pattern for the tiny little leg warmers to go with it.

Then I realized that I had LOTS of yarn left over because these two things only took part of one skein and I have 2. So I've started these leg warmers in a slightly larger size for another one of the smaller members of my family. They are working up great on my new 12" circular needles. They are just knit in a K2 P2 pattern, which goes pretty quickly and I just found out that they only have to be about 7" long - so that should take just a few nights of after work TV knitting!

But if you think that's all I've been knitting - remember the focus thing? Yeah, well, just maybe I've worked on a few other knitting projects too. You know, because I get bored doing the same thing all the time and need options!

Nothing Crafty Happening Here

I've been neglecting my poor little blog the last few weeks. Truth is, I've been on the injured reserve list, after slipping in the mud and landing on my fanny in the process of feeding the chickens. The fall sent me to the emergency room for a large number of xrays because I heard cracking as I hit the hard ground.

I had a fall at work a few years ago and broke my left hip. Ended up with 3-4" screws in my hip. Not fun. But, I found out that I have osteoporosis, so the cracking sound really scared me. Luckily nothing was broken and I didn't knock my screws loose - although some would say that I've always had a few screws loose!

So, since there hasn't been any craftiness happening, I thought I'd post a few pictures of our property after a big snow, to get you in the winter mood.

These were taken a couple of years ago from our bedroom, looking through the French doors. The snow only lasted a few hours. As soon as the sun came out it all melted away. A friend of mine who is an artist used the first photo to paint me a beautiful picture for my birthday, which is now hanging in a special spot in my house so we can enjoy the memory of the beautiful snowfall.

I hope you enjoy them.

Now that Christmas is just a few weeks away, I've started knitting again. I'll post pictures soon.