Rainy days and Mondays...

I know, I know. It's Tuesday. And neither rainy days nor Mondays usually get me down. But lately it's been raining ALOT and I'm tired of feeling damp.

I suppose you've noticed that there are pictures of yarn in this post? Well, that yarn was dyed for me by my Dye O Rama Swap buddy...Lucia! She lives in Massachusetts and they've been having alot of rain. She e-mailed me to let me know that my yarn would be a little late because of all the rain - she wasn't able to get outside to dye the yarn (see her blog for details).

It was worth the wait! The colors are rich and deep and soooo beautiful! Blues and teal/dark green, purples...it's beautiful! The yarn is nice and soft. And there's alot of it!

I think I'm going to use the yarn for the Simply Lace socks from the Spring 2006 issue of Interweave Knits.

The pictures don't do the colors justice. It was raining yesterday when I took these pictures, so the light wasn't that great.

Lucia also sent me a jar of pink peppercorns. I've never tried them, in fact, thought I'd never even heard of them. I was looking at the jar one day and it came to me. I grew up (for about 7 years) in Southern California. There are these pepper trees all over the place. They have pink peppercorns growing on them. The reason I didn't think of this right away? Well, I never really believed they were pepper. I thought it was just a name or something, because I'd only ever seen black peppercorns.

So I now have some pink pepper. The label states that the "taste is characterized as delicate and aromatic rather than the traditional pungent "spicy" flavor associated with black and white peppercorns". I can't wait to try them!

That package arrived last Thursday. Friday, I got another package! Here's what it contained:

I won this from a contest that Nancy had (by the way, today is her birthday, so go wish her a happy birthday - her best friend, Maribel created a wonderful tribute post to Nancy, so visit her blog, too!). I didn't originally win the prize. But the woman who did win, didn't respond to Nancy's e-mails about her winnings. So Nancy pulled another name (actually, her son pulled the name) - and it was my name!! This Lopi yarn came from Iceland (read Nancy's blog to learn more about it). The colors are beautiful. The book is awesome. That night, I had to knit a swatch (I felted it Saturday, but don't have a picture of the felted swatch).

Sunday, I knit this bag (I got the pattern from the book). It took me about 10 hours, total, to knit this bag. I think it's so cute. I washed it once last night, but need to wash it another time (it's not fully felted yet).
Last night I cast on for a second bag (because I had more than a skein & a half of the yarn left over and I like this bag so much!). I'm about half-way done with the second bag.

Oh! And if you haven't heard, Cara is having a drawing for lots of awesome prizes. She has a registry at Heifer International. For every $10 you donate, your name gets entered into the drawing once. She has raised $13,467.00 so far! You can donate to the registry til the end of the month (I think, check out her blog for the details).

That's all for today (hopefully someone's still reading my blog!). MAKE it a great day!

I'm still here.

I'm still here. My life has been incredibly boring lately. I haven't been knitting (for several weeks, now). I haven't even checked my e-mail and/or knitting blogs every day. In fact, days go by where I don't even turn my computer on.

I guess I'm waiting for my Grandma's memorial service (which will be July 15th - yes, a month & a half after she died). The QP's been having a rough time with my Grandmother's death. It's hard to explain death to a 7 year old. All she knows is that she misses her Nan. For any person, it's hard dealing with your own grief. It's even harder seeing your child sad/upset/crying. I think that having the memorial service such a long time after her death just prolongs everything. The service (to me) is some type of closure. Having this drag out for a month & a half means a month & a half with no closure.

Anyway. Thank you, everyone, for your warm wishes, condolences, etc. Your comments/thoughts/prayers mean alot to me. Normally I e-mail those who leave comments to my blog, but, well, I just haven't felt like e-mailing. Just like I haven't felt like knitting. Or blogging. Or doing much of anything.

But, I wanted to thank everyone - and to let you know I'm still around (even though I haven't been knitting or even taking pictures).

In Memory...

This is my (maternal) Grandmother. She was born May 1, 1920. She died around 9:30 PM June 5, 2006. She was 86 years old. She's survived by:

2 siblings (she was one of 6 children)

3 children (she had a total of 5 children)

6 grandchildren

11 great-grandchildren (out of 12 great-grandchildren)

This picture was taken at Christmas time. It is me, the QP, my Mom, my cousin (her mom & mine were sisters - her mom passed away in 1988), and my cousin's daughter. And, of course, my Grandma. Four generations.


Here is my Grandma with the QP and my cousin's 4 children.

The QP & I lived with my Grandma for about 2 years after the death of my Grandfather. She & the QP were very close.

For the past two years, she's been living in a nursing home. She didn't like it there. When her last bit of freedom (being able to leave the home & walk to her daughter's house, less than a block away from the home) was taken away from her, she refused to eat. Then she wouldn't get out of bed. Within a couple of weeks, she died. Her youngest daughter was her power of attorney while her son was on vacation (he & his wife left for Colorado around Memorial Day - knowing my Grandmother was not doing well). She had one of the nursing home nurses call my Mom (her sister) to tell her that their mother had died. Before my Grandmother's son left on vacation, he and his sister planned on having a memorial service for my Grandmother in July (when he's back from his vacation). The service is scheduled for July 15th. They didn't include my Mom in the planning at all.

My Grandmother would be apalled (is that how you spell that word??) at how some of her children are acting.

Needless to say, it's a rough time.

Thanks SP8!

Saturday, I received a package from my wonderful SP8! It contained two balls of Filatura di Crosa Primo (100% new wool) yarn, a cute heart pictures frame, a bookmark, some sticky notes, some gum, and a wonderful note. Everything is blue (since that's my favorite color). She also included a Polly Pocket and a mini Madame Alexander doll for the QP. The QP loves both of the dolls - and didn't already have either one! And I love my presents! Thank you, SP!


I cast on (that same day!) for a Horseshoe Lace scarf - that's why you only see one yarn ball in the picture. I'm almost half-way done with the scarf. I don't have pictures of it yet.

MAKE it a great day!

Here it is!

Here are all three skeins, hanging to dry. I dyed these on Saturday.

This...

...and this...

...and this...

...turned into this. This was the first skein. I think I was a little stingy on the dye because I knew I had two more skeins to dye, and wanted to make sure I had enough (mixed up) for all of them. I could have mixed up more dye, but didn't want to.

This...

...and this...

...turned into this. See the pinkish/purple? In real life it pretty much looks purple. That's from the blue that I used. It "bled" and turned this purple-y color. It looks cool.

This...

...and this...

...turned into this. This is the third skein I dyed. I used plenty of dye on this one. This is the yarn I'm going to be sending to my Dye-O-Rama Swap pal. She wanted water-y colors for a certain pattern. I like it. Again, it reminds me of the colors in the water around the Florida Keys. I was born in Key West (although, we only lived there til I was about a year old), so that's one of my favorite water examples.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my dyeing. I am now out of dye-able yarn, so I won't be doing any more for a while (I have the QP's school AND her summer day camp to pay for - which doesn't leave me with too much yarn money!).

Today, I'm putting away our fall/winter clothes. It's been in the high 80's and 90's here all weekend (and Monday and yesterday). Very yucky! It wouldn't be too bad if it weren't so damn humid, too! Oh well. This is how the weather is in Pennsylvania.

MAKE it a great day!

My brain's pattern...

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a dreamy mind, full of fancy and fantasy. You have the ability to stay forever entertained with your thoughts. People may say you're hard to read, but that's because you're so internally focused. But when you do share what you're thinking, people are impressed with your imagination.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

I saw this on Ann's blog. It was hard for me to decide which picture to pick, but my eyes kept going back to this one. Turns out that this pretty well describes me. I've been told I'd be great at poker (since people have a hard time "reading" me). Although, I can't say that anyone's ever told me that they're impressed with my imagination. :-)

I did some dyeing today. 3 skeins. With the new dye colors. They're still drying. I'll take pictures of them tomorrow. Maybe I'll even get them re-wound tomorrow. Maybe not. It's supposed to be hot here the next few days. I don't like the heat & humidity - well, that's not true. The heat's ok. I HATE the humidity. It's gonna be a long summer for me (no air conditioners or central air in the house).

MAKE it a great day!

Watery goodness

Look at what I got today! More dye!! You know what that means...this weekend (if the weather's nice) I'll be dyeing some more yarn. Yay!! Do you see the names of the dyes? I'm going to attempt to dye some watery looking yarn. Blues and some greens. Yarn to remind you of the water when you drive through the Florida Keys.

Oh! And I realized today that I can dye my own yarn and then knit one of the awesome lace patterns out there. That way my lace will be the exact color(s) I want! Sock yarn should work for lace, right?

Aren't these stitch markers cool? They were made by one of the Nutty Knitters, Melissa. If you've read the Nutty Knitters blog, she was one of my models in our great shawl photo shoot. She brought these stitch markers along last night & showed them to us. I think they're so pretty!

See this bag? This was made (for me) last night by the QP. One of the other women had her daughter along. Well, the daughter had all this craft stuff & she showed the QP how to make this bag. Cool, huh?
The QP came over and demonstrated how to use the bag (maybe she thinks I don't know how to use bags??). She put the yarn (that I dyed) into this little bag. This particular skein of yarn is a small skein (it's the result of me cutting the yarn while trying to wind it because it was so tangled that I couldn't do anything with it).

Well, I'm off to bed. I am going on a field trip tomorrow with the QP's class. They are finished with school next Friday (which is a half-day, and they have off Monday, for Memorial Day). This school year went by really fast!

MAKE it a great day!

Just for Dave...

When I was creating the last post, I thought about adding the lilac pictures. I didn't add them because I thought maybe you guys are sick of flower pictures.

Then I looked at the comments this morning & saw Dave's. Now I have to wonder if he's been hacking into my computer to find out what flower pictures I've taken but haven't posted yet...

But there you go, Dave. Lilacs. :-)

MAKE it a great day!

Intention

Every week I have the intention of posting every day (well, at least 5 days out of the week). What happens, you ask? I don't know. My life just isn't that exciting. I don't knit (and finish items) especially fast. And I'm not witty enough to make a great post out of something mundane. And then there's the thing with the camera.

Last weekend I donated 2 hat & scarf sets and one felted knit bag to the auction at the QP's school. I even made nice little "Angelia's Knitting" sleeves to hold the hat/scarf sets together. The sleeves also listed fiber content, care instructions, and hat/scarf measurements.

Have you seen them? No? Well, that's because I didn't take any pictures of them before I turned them in. There I had a nice post - all those finished items - and I forgot to take pictures! Duh!

In other news...I got a beautiful postcard from my SP8 today. It had a rose on the front. Very pretty and very sweet! Thanks SP!

I'll leave you with some pictures (since this is such a lame post!)...



This is the wisteria. If you remember the Backyard Greetings meme several months ago, you'll remember that this was bare. The day that I took these pictures, the wisteria was buzzing (from all the bees that were at the flowers). It was a little unsettling to walk under this buzzing wisteria, but I was willing to walk into danger for the sake of providing you all with wisteria pictures.

The wisteria flowers, up close.

I'm not sure what these flowers are. They're growing up the side of the shed. When we first got this shed, the QP was pretty little. You can't tell from this picture, but it kind of looks like a little barn. The QP kept talking about this cow. It took us a while to realize that she thought it was a barn & that a cow was living in it.

This is a close up of the shed flowers...whatever they may be!

MAKE it a great day!

Where does the time go??

It's been a week since I dyed this yarn! Here (finally!) are the rest of the pictures of it. These are the two skeins I dyed. I used the same colors of dye but look at how different they turned out.
The first skein. This one reminds me of harvest colors. I like the richness of the colors (I don't care for pastels - I like bold colors).

Here it is, knit. I don't love it. I think there are too many colors - or maybe I just don't like varigated yarn - or there's too much green. I don't know. I just know that I don't love it once it's knit.

The second skein. I only had a little yellow left in my squeeze bottle. Instead of having sections that were just yellow, I mixed it with the blue and with the red. I really like the colors in this skein. They remind me of sherbet (except for the blue part) or of a flower (leaves & all).

Here's the second skein, knit. I like it better than the 1st one - but still don't love it. Again, I think I just need to use fewer colors. Picking one or two colors is really hard for me - that's why I end up with this yarn of every color! Oh well. That's why these were my practice yarns!

Friday was the chicken bbq at the QP's school. The kids had an early dismissal - they were done at 11AM. Because this is the school's biggest fundraiser, 100% family participation is expected (that means that parents are expected to volunteer their time and to donate things). I donated 2 scarf & hat sets, 2 "spa" baskets, a felted knit bag & helped at the "Sweets & Treats" stand from 11-2. In case you don't know - that's the baked goods stand. We had all kinds of yummy things to sell! I made chocolate chip cookies and whoopie pies (to donate to be sold).

Whoopie pies are 2 round chocolate cakes with a white icing filling. The cakes are about the size of a cookie, maybe a little bigger. Some people make pumpkin whoopie pies (the cake is pumpkin) or red velvet (the cake's red velvet & the filling is butter cream), and some make a peanut butter icing filling for the chocolate whoopie pies. The most common flavor is white icing and chocolate cake. The whoopie pies are wrapped in plastic wrap & sold individually.

Today, the school held a "country breakfast", a candy drop (a small plane from a local airport flew over & dropped candy out for the kids), a "country auction", and food (fresh sausage sandwiches, hot dogs, pork bar-b-que (which is not the same thing as the chicken bbq - the pork is similar to sloppy joes), french fries (the fresh cut kind), cotton candy, popcorn, ice cream and baked goods. They also had a bouncy castle ( you know - those inflated castles that the kids can jump in) and a clown making balloon creations for the kids. The QP and I spent several hours at her school today.

I had every intention of posting earlier in the week - but then the days just got away from me - and before I knew it, it was Saturday night! I don't think I even turned my computer on after Thursday afternoon!

And the QP only has 8 1/2 days of school left! I am so not ready for her to be out of school!

Enjoy what's left of the weekend and remember to MAKE it a great day!

A Colorful Weekend

This past weekend, I did some dyeing. The first three pictures are of the 1st skein I dyed. I used Yellow, Copenhagen Blue and Cherry. These colors created this "Rainbow" yarn. I haven't taken pictures of this yarn knit yet. It's been rainy here, so I haven't had any sunlight to take pictures in.

The sun was messing with me the day I dyed & took the pictures of this yarn - it kept going behind a cloud. So I had very few "good" pictures. The yarn above does not have a black section - that's actually blue.

This is the 2nd skein I dyed. I was running out of the yellow dye (that I had mixed up), so there's no yellow in this skein. What yellow I had, I mixed with blue and red. This skein has alot of magenta, purples, blues and greens in it. I haven't wound or knit a swatch with this one yet.

Again, the light was funny - so that section is actually more blue than it looks.

A few weeks ago, Fawn had a contest on her blog. This is what I won! Can you believe it? I can't! I never win things!! It's a felted cell phone cozy, and the flower has a (hair) rubberband on the back - so I use that for the QP's hair. She also sent some stickers for the QP. Wasn't that sweet? The QP loves stickers! Notice the stationary she used - "Deery-Lou The Cheerful Fawn" - cute, huh? Thanks Fawn!

MAKE it a great day!

"I" is for...

Iris

These grow in the back yard.

Can you see the spider?

The purple iris grow along the south side of the house.

That's all for now. I have to finish getting things ready for the auction at QP's school this coming weekend. I'm donating two "Spa" baskets, two hat/scarf sets, and a lined, felted bag.

MAKE it a great day!