....and life goes on

I spent the weekend cherishing my family and doing things that heal.

First: the local church had a community Easter Egg hunt....This was after crafts, drama and singing. The kids had a blast.



We colored eggs here at home. And got food prepared for the usual family dinner at my brother's house. This cake was part of our contribution. DD helped decorate it. She really loves the cooking thing.





I finished the cloth that I started at pop's bedside and gave it to my SIL who hosted the family. There are a few mistakes in it. Guess my concentration wasn't so good. But she loves it anyway.

Pattern: diagonal ripple cloth
Yarn: Lily's Sugar n Creme
Color: Delft Blue
Needle: US7

I started to knit a prayer/healing shawl for the ministry at church. Dad was given the last one by the woman at church who is a nurse at the hospital and happened to be not only on his floor but taking care of patients right next door (and really took care of him as well) She tells us that on his last good night, they spent hours talking about many things and felt honored to have met him. This is a Lion Brand pattern and I'm using the same yarn that the group uses... Lion Brand Homespun, even though I really don't enjoy knitting with it. It is incredibly soft though (and machine washable) I knit during both services on Sunday morning and felt no guilt but prayed that the spirit of the services were knit into the cloth and it would provide as much (or more) healing to whomever receives it as it was giving me to knit it. I hope to finish it this week.

We had the annual egg hunt at my brother's house in the afternoon. The eggs were hidden in crazy places and obvious places. DD cleaned up, but she knows that she has to share the loot with her brothers.






Mom really enjoyed watching the excitement. It was the normalcy of the kids with the holiday that kept everyone going.





The good news is that our family was blessed with a new baby on Sunday morning. And she's beautiful Congratulations Cameron and Rachel. I'll cast on soon with a BSJ... just ordered the yarn (superwash merino) last night from Knit Picks I also bought yarn for the Wild Stripes blanket from Knitty.com to knit for our friends who are expecting their third. NIce to know we're not the only crazy ones out there ;-)

Early this morning (like 2AM) I dyed some yarn that I had spun on my wheel. I used the leftover egg dye for this skein. I didn't know what I was going to call it, but then it struck me.... hyacinth. It really looks like a combination of the colors of hyacinth with the green leaves. What do you think?

Today, I went to mom's to help clean out dad's stuff. I got all his clothing packed up so we can donate the usable to the church rummage sale next month. The unusable, I'll take to recycle. She's doing OK... sometimes better than her daughter.

until later, happy crafting

pictures

The little Panasonic point and shoot is now the camera I'm using. The kids got if from Red for Christmas. I don't know about the Kodak... I'm so sad about that camera.

Here are some pics:

Pattern: show your colors shawl by Spunky Eclectic
Yarn: Jeannie by Kraemer Yarns
Color: Handyed by me "berries in the snow"
Needle: US4

The color in this picture isn't great. The picture below shows its best color. I made a few stray yarnovers that are noticeable upon close inspection, but it's barely noticeable. The new thing that I learned while finishing this shawl was the knitted picot edge. I like it and it's easy peasy! Also this was my first real blocking and a chance to use the wires I bought at Joann.com with a 50% off coupon :-)




Here's mom with her newly acquired shawl. I drove down to my brother's house this afternoon to give it to her along with some other things for she and dad. I think she likes it. Hope she uses it in good health!



Tami over at Tami knits is hosting a contest in celebration of her 100th post. Go leave a comment to enter to win some yarn and stitch markers and tell her I sent you!



DD's rug has been started. Her room is pink so I chose pink. She had a fit and wanted blue So we compromised and put both colors in with white as a buffer. I'm modifying the flower power towel pattern.


That's about it for now.. Happy crafting

:-/

My camera seems to be broken. I'm wondering if little hands got hold of it. I have a shawl to show off and some new projects I'm working on. One is a knitted rug for DD's bedroom. I'm adapting the flower power hand towel pattern by enlarging it and using triple stranded cotton on 10.5 needles (well 2 of the 3 strands in the triple strands are double worsted, so it's like 5 times the thickness of the towel)

My brother called at 11 PM today asking for some remedies to my father's incontinence problems as a result of the recurring tumors in his bladder. well not a solution to the problem, but rather ways to deal with it. Seems dad isn't doing well with adult dipes... a. doesn't want to spend the $ (and probably isn't changing as often as he should to make them effective) and b. is getting confused as to how they work. So at any rate, they aren't working out very well. I grabbed some prefolds that we have sitting in the house waiting to be liberated and some Malden Mills fleece I bought oh so long ago and fashioned a super thick pad... by folding and sewing the prefold in thirds and sewing the fleece to the back to act as a waterbarrier. I made two tonight and hope that DH (who is battling the flu) is on his pins enough to let me run down there in the afternoon (it's a 60 mile trip each way) to deliver them and show him how to use them. I was thinking maybe I should try to knit up a wool soaker for his as well. I'll have to get him some briefs though because these won't work so well in boxers. The man is so thin I could wind up getting teen briefs. He 6' tall and only weighs about 130 pounds so a size small should do fine. I have a wool pad that is made from a felted sweater, double thick (the back and front parts of the body are sewn together) that I then lanolized so that he could sit on that in case of leakage. How ironic that DS2 has been out of dipes for about 6 months now and I'm still working on wool and cloth. Getting old isn't any fun!

I found a gorgeous cloth pattern on Ravelry that I think I'll knit for myself. It's really pretty. It's called Ivy's cloth. It was a part of the cloth of the week KAL that I belong to but haven't had time to knit... one of these days.

WIth any luck I'll find the software to install on my computer for the kids camera they got for Christmas so that I can upload the pictures.... I'll bet they won't even fix my camera :-(

quick update

before we run to the grocery store (what fun)

I frogged the chicken rice-a-roni scarf... looked through the stash and decided on the retro colorway of Paton's merino. It will definitely provide a different look than I was really looking for, but the colors are nice and the beige matches dad's hat from last year almost perfectly. It's not quite as soft either... I just wasn't ready for the agony of hand dyed yarn again... (not that there isn't enough in my stash) I cast on for that on Friday. Knit through DD's gymnastics class yesterday.

This morning I cast on for the show your colors shawl by Spunky Eclectic. DH bought my wheel from her... love her colorways.. anyway this is in the berries in the snow colorway I dyed about a month and a half ago... Hope mom likes it!

I also finished the first hunter's mitten and started the second on Thursday. No pictures of that yet though.

And Monday night in the shadow of disgust for the miscolored scarf, I cast on the Binary Hat for my dear nephew. His favorite team is the Philadelphia Flyers and his high school colors were black and orange, but the piece de resistance is that he works for Best Buy in the Geek Squad and their colors are..... black, orange and white... hence:

Pattern: The Binary Hat
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride
Colors: Ebony and Harvest
Needle: US 8
I love that it knit up so quickly. I was finished Tuesday evening and that was with working a full day on Tuesday. It says his name in binary language reading from the top down. I'm not sure that he's geeky enough to notice though. Maybe I'll enclose a note with the gift!

I'm in the midst of plying Targhee.... finished the second bobbin this morning. Pictures later.

We settled our contract. Both sides agreed now to wait for the signing until it's really finalized. There are some issues that I won't disclose, but let's say it could be sticky!

Getting ready for Halloween with the kids.. this next weekend will be CRAZY... to say the least. Trick or treating, parties and parades... yikes!

gotta go DD is getting restless