It's All Mine

Well, I made my final car payment today! Woo Hoo!!! I bought my Buick Rendevouz 5 years ago and today I paid it off. Now, that extra money each month can go to pay off the yarn balance on the credit card. Ha Ha.

This photo was taken a few days after I bought the car in January 2004. I love my car! It fits the dogs (even though they both want to ride in the front seat at all times), my scrapbooking gear, my knitting gear, and the Girl Scouts. And it feels so great to have it paid off!!

Ready or Not

Well, I have the presents ready to mail (wrapped, in the car and I'm headed to the Post Office today). I have a few more rows to knit on the last knitted present and when I bind off and weave in the ends it means I am DONE with my Christmas presents. I just have a few stocking stuffers to buy and I have to wrap the presents for my family, but for all intents and purposes I am done!! Wow, and I thought I would be knitting right up until Christmas - but I have two whole weeks to spare. Of course, the presents I'm sending to the UK will probably arrive late (sorry Mel) but that is ok.

An artic cold front is arriving in Casper this weekend - temperatures in the single digits for the highs! Buuuurrrrr. I think my hand knit scarves, mittens and hats will be getting a workout next week. Woo Hoo!!

We have drifts of snow and ice on our back deck from the snowstorm we had on Monday. Pershing and Lucie love to much on snow and ice - in fact, they each beg for ice cubes when I am at the freezer. Odd. So anywho, everytime the dogs go out they munch on the ice. But when they come back in, they each pick up a chunk of ice from the deck and bring it in the house to chew on. So, slowly but surely my deck will be cleaned off - one piece at a time. Of course one day Lucie got a little over ambitious and tried to bring in a 2 foot icicle and I made her leave that outside. I do have my limits.

Still no photos as I still have not found my camera. I have a real mystery on my hands here. I really hope it turns up soon.

'Tis the Season

I'm only going slightly crazy this holiday season.

I had a huge list of things to do this weekend - which included a bunch of Christmas knitting to catch up on, baking, shopping, wrapping, etc. I managed to do everything expect the Christmas cards and wrapping.

I have an excuse for the wrapping tho - I normally wrap on the bed in the War Room but I had a knitted present blocking on the bed over the weekend. As it is now dry and blocked I can start wrapping tonight. I also needed to finish knitting some gifts before I could actually wrap them and send them off (novel idea I know.)

I have also misplaced my digital camera. I could have sworn it was in my car but lo and behold it is not there. Hummm. I took knitting photos yesterday using the "old fashioned" film camera. But I really need to find the digital camera as it has some other photos on it I need to work on scrapbooks. If anyone sees a silver digital camera (I don't know the brand - it's silver) with a broken lens cover (I dropped it at the the dog park on day - mittens and cameras don't mesh very well) please let me know. Maybe the dogs took it as they were tired of having their photo taken all the time. This also means that I don't have any photos to post at this time. The cable to connect the camera to my computer is sitting here ready to be used, but no camera.

My LYS (local yarn shop) is having a party tomorrow night and we have to bring in yarn from our stash for a gift exchange. I had a hard time trying to find some yarn to gift. We had a limit of $20 worth of yarn. I don't want to be mean and give out all of the little leftover balls of yarn from years of knitting projects, nor do I want to give the really crappy yarn. I managed to find some chenille yarn and some nubbly stuff purchased at a garage sale. I figure that they add up to about $20 of yarn. Who knows. I need to wrap the box still so I have the rest of the day to change my mind if I want.

My final scrapbooking retreat of the year is coming up this Saturday. Crop 'n Carols! I am still working on my European Invasion album (from my year abroad about 13 years ago). I also have a calendar to work on, I just need to find the photos. There is probably something else but it is not occuring to me right now.

I still have 1.5 presents to knit, and I need to buy some stocking stuffers for the family. Oh, and I need to make a gift to take to my Girl Scout meeting - under $8 and has to be hand made. Humm. Something knitted I'm guessing.

Hat Season

The snow a couple of weeks ago clued us all in that it is getting to be hat weather here in Wyoming. Here are two of my latest projects:

This is the Four-Square hat designed by Jared Flood, aka Brooklyn Tweed. You use two different yarns and change color every 2 - 6 rows. The greyish color is an organic wool from New Zealand. The brown is from Knit Picks - their Peruivan wool. A very southern hemisphere hat. I knit this for the accountant for work - he has spent a lot of time with me recently helping me understand our accounting system and this was to thank him for his time and trouble.

This hat is from the recent Vogue Knitting magazine and it knit up soooo cute. This is for Autumn, the 3-year old daughter of a friend. How is this for a perfect birthday present? The inside yarn is wool/alpaca mix (and since we recently visited an Alpaca farm it is very appropriate) and the outside is a 100% wool. It looks very cute on Autumn.

Literate Knitter

I bought two books last night and finished one and am half-way through the other. Yeah, I know absoutly nothing about delayed gratification. I blame my mother and grandmother for not knowing when to close a book and go to bed. It's a curse, but it is better than some other curses I can think of.

The book I finished:

"Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair" by Crazy Aunt Purl. What a great book! Now, I consider myself to be a drunk knitter covered in dog hair (Aunt Purl goes for wine, I love my beer and vodka tonics) but I can identify with her. This funny woman can go thru a very trying time in her life and eventually take the time to laugh and find the humor in her situation. There are also some knitting patterns in the book - if you want to knit a cat tunnel that is. Actually, there are some great patterns in the book and I would love to knit the bracelet purse for someone.

The book I am halfway thru:
"Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again" by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, aka the Yarn Harlot. This woman is a very funny writer and I have read all of her books. Take the time to read her essays - there are some great knitting ideas and concepts in them. My favorite thus far - sock yarn is the knitters equivalent to methadone - when you need a yarn "hit" then sock yarn fits the bill.

I love both of the blogs that these two woman write. Take the time to check them out.

Coming the mail soon.....
"It Itches" by Franklin Habit. It has been released and I have it pre-ordered so it should be on my door any day now. I love Franklin's cartoons about knitting and I love his sense of humor. Also out now is a "beef cake" calendar he did called "Men with Yarn". Oh la la.

Just a Little Snow

It started snowing overnight Thursday into Friday and by Sunday morning this is what it all looked like.

Here is Ron brushing off the car so we can go take the dogs to the park and go out to breakfast.






Here is a view of our backyard. I figure we have at least a foot of snow, it not more, on the railing of the deck.








This is Lucie at the dog park having a most wonderful time. I don't have a speed racer setting on my camera so getting photos of her is rather hard, but I think I was able to capture her joyfulness. She and Pershing had a great time at the park.

This was a wet, slushy snow, so by the time we finished at the park I had wet socks as the snow was deeper than my boots were high.

Saturday I held a Fiber to Fabric Festival for the Girl Scouts of Casper - the event went off quite well and everyone had a most excellent time. The 42 girls and adults that participated were able to learn spinning, weaving, wet and needle felting, knitting and crochet, Kool Aid dyeing, and they worked on Quilts for Newborns in need. My volunteers were wonderful and they had as much fun as the girl scouts did. I was one tired puppy Saturday night. Planning these events are a lot of work but they are very rewarding. However, Mother Nature sees fit to have it snow every time I plan one of these. Last year in October I held a Scouts Tee Off golf event and it snowed that morning. But, Wyoming scouts are tough and we golfed anyway. It is pretty much a crap shoot tho with any event held in October. But with my luck, even if I hold an event in July it will still snow.

I am starting to knit Christmas presents. I have ideas of what I want to knit for people, I just have to find the time to work on them. I knit myself a pair of fingerless gloves out of a llama/silk yarn I bought the last time I was in Boulder. Very warm yarn - in fact, I am wearing them as I type this out. My office gets kind of cold and my heater unit is behind me so the back of my chair gets warm but the front of me stays cold.

Ok, I thought that all of this snow and cold and such like was supposed to kill off the flies!! No such luck. I have a really pesky one in my office right now and I'm ready to go postal on the guy.

Tools of the Trade

I've come to realize that my two hobbies have A LOT of stuff associated with them. Needles & Pens, Yarn & Paper, Patterns & Pictures, both use sissors. Needless to say I have to haul all of this around when I go to events and classes.

Last night was the first night of the knitting class I teach at Casper College. We have a huge class this semester - woo hoo! Darlene is teaching 5 new crocheters and I have 10 (yes, count them, 10) new knitters. And 4 of them are teenagers! This will be the largest group of new knitters I have had to teach - but I think I shall be able to manage.

On the first night of class I always haul everything to show the students what this new hobby involves. They get to see and feel and squish all the different types of yarn - lace, fingering, sport, worsted, bulky, wool, cotton, alpaca, llama, silk, bison, seacell, hemp, etc. They get to see all of the types of tools - needles (straight, circular, double pointed), gauges, rulers, cable needles, yarn needles, stitch holders, stitch markers. And they get to see the finished projects - I tear apart my house pulling out scarves, hats, gloves, sweaters, dish clothes, socks, shawls, blankets, and the like. The fall semester always has more of the finished projects to display as I am knitting Christmas presents. The spring semester does not have a much - just photos. I try not to overwhelm everyone with all of this - I just try to get them excited about the semester and all of the cool projects they get to create.

Tonight I am off to a scrapbooking retreat for the weekend. Instead of yarn and needles, my car is now loaded with paper, albums, and photos. We will be up on Casper Mountain for the next 48 hours! The golf pro claims that this is just an excuse for us girls to escape and drink beer for the weekend. He is right - I do have beer in the car. But we will be doing a lot of scrapbooking! I plan on getting my knitting album caught up, and I will also be working on the album from when I did my year abroad in 1994. Talk about a trip down memory lane.

Maybe I'll have photos to post of my adventures. For a scrapbooker I sure hate to take photos.

To keep you amused until then, here is photo of my mom wearing the shawl I knit her. It is out of Malabrigo yarn - the wool/silk blend. Yummy. And this is the Clapotis Scarf/Shawl: