Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Moving Weekend!

It seems like it was not that long ago that I was moving from one house to another and it kicked my butt!  Now my daughter moved out into her own apartment and it kicked my legs this time.  See, she moved into a 3rd floor apartment and there were two sets of stairs to each floor...so you would go up stairs, turn on a small landing, go up stairs and you were on floor two....repeat and you were on floor three.  By the time I was done going up and down just 4 or 5 times, my legs were jello!  That was Friday night when I took groceries to her new apartment to surprise her.  Then on Saturday I do not know how many times I went up and down those stairs...but it was A LOT!  My calves were killing me by mid day.  But we got all the heavy stuff out of the way.  Now she just has a few small things to come and get.  She took mostly all her furniture from the house except the dining room table, we did not have an extra dining room table so I got her this one....The first pic is from an advertisement and the second and third pics are of the table in her actual apartment....that is Arran (Jaime's youngest) in the picture.




See all the circles in the legs of the table and the backs of the chairs....well, those go perfectly with the placemats I am making her for this table....no, I am not done.....and yes, I should be.....so sorry!  I made the first one during the Memorial Day weekend....I am almost done with the second one....just one more side to go....it has cables that form circles....she picked out the pattern and the table so she can obviously match better than her mother can!  The pattern is called Sunday Brunch.


Paige said that Antonio did really well his first night at the apartment.  He has his own room there but she still woke up with him having had crawled into her bed at some point during the night...she had put up night lights so he would not not get scared....here are two pics...one with then waking up together and one with them having a doughnut at the new table (with no placemats yet).



I do miss him already, but I bought some stuff for her new apartment yesterday so she came by to pick up the stuff and I got to see him and we played a while.

In other big news.....I finally got to see Darlene after 18 miserable days without her.....she is so wonderful...she got me an awesome Harley Davidson Shirt from Cody, Wyoming (she always gets me one when she is on vacation and I LOVE them)!  Thank you Darlene!


She also rode her motorcycle by Beaver Slide Dry Goods Ranch in Montana where they sheer their sheep and have the wool mule spun.....Darlene got me a cone of yarn from them and I love it!  She got herself one too and we are probably going to make the Ink Cardigan with this yarn (when we finish the other billion things OTN)...it is 1700 yards of complete awesomeness!!!



Speaking of Darlene....she will have some new bags in her shop soon....She has a new sized medium bag that I have shown on my blog before....it is the perfect size right between her big size and small notions size. They are 12" long, 7" tall, and 4" wide.....



Now, she has taken that perfect size and put a dividing zipper pocket in it.....she is just so awesome....now this bag is going to a good friend, Paula H.....I am so jealous she is getting this bag...I hope Darlene has already shipped it because if not, I may steal it.....I know I will be buying some of these bags when she has them ready!  I am in love with this bag!




Okay....well, as far as knitting goes....all I really worked on was Paige's second placemat which I posted a picture of up above....oh, and the Hitofude Cardigan....Darlene told me that one of the girls from the Stockinette Zombies did the whole cast on with Judy's Magic Cast on...so I had already done the provisional crochet cast on and then I tried to pick up the stitches and it was a mess, and I tried again and again with no success, so I tried JMCO and I had a couple of errors so the last time was the charm (and it was also the last time because it finally worked)...I only have like row 1 of this cardigan done, but I have done row 1 like 4 or 5 times.....finally!


Lastly, I have two stash enhancements.  I saw this big skein of Katahdin on the Miss Babs website in colorway BFF a while ago and they only had one skein, I could not afford it at the time but I told myself that if it was still there when I could afford it...it was mine....and it was still there.  I love this colorway.....I have no clue what I am going to make with it, I just know I love it!  I wanted it to have more black, but it was the only skein and I still love it.  I also got two small yummy toes skeins in the same colorway for a pair of socks!




Well, that is about all I have.....I know it is not much knitting...but I hope to have more for you next week....since on Friday I can start my Camp Loopy #3 project and I am anxious to start it!

Since I got a little bit of exercise this weekend...here are some of my thoughts on exercising





Happy Happy Happy Knitting everyone!

Monday, July 21, 2014

Just......one......more.......day!!!!!!

Happy Monday everyone.....I have just one more day till I see Darlene!  She comes back to work tomorrow and I am super excited!  I have so much to tell her and show her.  She has been on vacation since July 4th, so that means I have not seen her since July 3rd....talk about withdrawals!

While she has been gone, we have another friend that knits with us and her name is Barbara.  Barbara also went on vacation recently and she got me the cutest wine glass and a bottle of wine.  She also knows that I have been looking for the Copa wine bottles ever since I saw an episode of Shark Tank where this guy was on it....so when she went to Rockport, she was able to find them and picked me up a moscato bottle.  Thank you Barbara!!!  Isn't this cup cute?



I got a few yarn enhancements.....I have pictures of the yarn I told you that I ordered for some more socks...Paige likes the lighter color, but I am not starting her socks till I finish at least one more placemat for her (moving day is this coming Saturday...yikes!!)


My 'Box of Fun' from The Loopy Ewe came in and I have my yarn for Project 3 for Camp Loopy...I will be making Clapotis.......


I made Pikes Peak with this order and got some cute buttons to put on my Bags By Awesome Grannie project bags...they say things like "Shawl", "Socks", "Hat" and then in order to make my order ship for free, I got some heel soak (I love this stuff) and a skein of Madeline Tosh Sock yarn in the Duchess Colorway...I know I am going to want to make more Stephen West Shawls (once I knit down some other things) and this color has always called my name, so I went ahead and snagged a skein.....look at the close up...it is awesome!



Do you remember those little sandals I crocheted for a friend?  Well, I took them to her and they are a tad large, but she will grow into them!



This past week there was one day that Paige asked me to take Antonio to daycare for her because she had a really early morning meeting....it has been a while since I have had to take him, but we had fun in the car.....


and then Celeste came by to visit Oma......I missed her soooo much, it has been a while since I have seen her because I have been busy and her mom has been busy.....so I snapped up a picture of Paige and Celeste together (Celeste's hair is sooooo long it s almost to her buttox!)


Oh......and I saved the best knitting news for last.....I FINISHED MY BAY OF FUNDY SCARF for Camp Loopy #2....Yahoo!  I attached my 3rd skein last Tuesday (as I had hoped for) and I attached my 4th Skein on Friday night......wow.....I must have really wanted to be done with this one.  It was 71 inches x 21 1/2 inches blocked out (I added two more repeats to it to make it wider).  It fits me very, very, very well, but today is my sister's 44th birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY JANICE!!).....so this one might (I said might) go to her...I have not decided yet....I may make her something else.....




Yeah....now that Camp Loopy #2 is done and I have about 10 days till the next project starts....I am going to work on Paige's placemats (I do not have a picture to share), possibly start my Hitofude Cardigan with a provisional crochet chain cast on (I am not looking forward to that) and I am going to try to finish these socks (one heel is turned)...these are tour de sock socks...the last tour de sock pattern came out this past Saturday but I am sitting it out.  It has color work and I am not fond of it.  So, if I finish these socks, I will have finished 3 of the 6 tour de sock socks....but none of them in time :(  Next year I think I will still pay the money to benefit Doctors without borders, but I will just be a cheerleader!


I found a picture of this swift lamp online somewhere (facebook or maybe instagram)....I want one of these!



That is all I have.....I hope everyone has a great week!!!  Happy Happy Happy knitting!!!




Monday, July 14, 2014

Lots of stuff....and I will be a Grandma again!


Hey everyone.....life after the Stephen and Steven tour has been good.  I have some great news....I will be a grandma again...I knew this news last week when I posted but the posting was so full of Stephen and Steven I thought I would wait another week to post.  Little Mario and Amanda are expecting again.....a boy this time!  Little Mario is my late hubby's son.  He and his wife had to have fertility injections to have Alexxis (a little over a year now) and since they had to have fertility injections, they did not think they could get prego on their own....but they were wrong.  I think they were both very shocked to find out they were prego (a few months ago) but they just found out the sex and it is a boy!  So there will be more baby knitting in my future.

Baby is due December 16.....10 years to the day that my late hubby died....we are all hoping he is named Mario Alonzo Ramirez III, but Little Mario (the II) is not sure yet.

Here is Alexxis holding a blue rose with Daddy

I worked some more on my Stage 4 tour de socks socks...but it was clear that I was not going to finish by 9 am on Thursday.  One of the requirements was to do 6 pattern repeats on the leg....well, that was going to be like 86 rows....that is one long leg!  So I only did 5 repeats (I like it better) and I started the heel flap on one of them....but I am still really enjoying this pattern...it should be smoother sailing from here on out as no more beads are needed.


My friend, Heather, posted on FB that she wanted someone to make these sandals for her baby girl (I made a pom pom blanket for her baby back in February/March, exactly like Alexxis').....I did not make these, this is the picture she posted on Facebook...


I could not find this exact pattern at the time (I did find it later) but I made her these.  The first picture is NOT my picture, it is the picture from the pattern.....the second picture is the set I made her...I only had 4 buttons to hold the flowers so I could only but 2 buttons on each sandal.



These were crochet, so for someone who does not crochet a lot...I'd say I did pretty good.

I have some stash enhancements.....my mother told me that she thinks my niece (she is 14) would love for me to knit some socks for her....My mom said her favorite colors were red, white and black, so I found this self striping yarn to make a pair of socks for her.....the colorway is queen of hearts.


While on the simply socks website (which rocks by the way)....I found this Turtle Purl yarn in the colorway burberry (the tag actually says trenchcoat, but it was advertised as burberry).....well, if you know me...I love purses and bags....and I love burberry (along with many other brands) so I had to get this colorway for me....I cannot wait to make them FOR ME!  Darlene is the one that told me about the Simply Socks website and Turtle Purl yarn...she listens to way more podcasts than I do and she is way more "in the know" than I am (maybe she should be the one blogging).


Paige sent me a text last week telling me how much she loved a certain pair of socks I knit her (January of last year....I blogged about them here).....anyway, I think she really likes them because they are a cotton blend...and lets face it....here in Texas, it is not always comfortable to wear wool socks...it is hot here!  She wants more socks like this....so I ordered some more yarn....The yarn is called CoBaSi by Hikoo...it is COtton, BAmboo, and SIlk (take the first two letters of each and you have CoBaSi).  She said she wants green, so I am waiting for Kiwi and Blarney to show up in my mailbox today or tomorrow.....



I have one more enhancement that I think is pretty cool.  It is a light you can bend and put anywhere, but it was advertised to go around your neck and that is how I used it.  It was great to knit in the truck when it got too dark at night....it was also great sitting outside knitting in the dark while camping...but it did attract a few moths and small flying bugs (that was a down side).



Camp Loopy project 3 was posted this past week.....this put me in a little of a panic.  I was not expecting them to post till later in the month...but when they posted last week I realized the month was moving along faster than I wanted it to....and really hardly had anything done on my camp #2 project....I was only at like 6 inches.....


So.....we went camping this past weekend and I think I got a nice chunk of knitting done.....I am well into my second skein and hope to attach my 3rd skein by tomorrow....since I only have 4 skeins....if I finish my 2nd skein around the 15th...I think I will be okay.  It is about 22 inches now.  I did have a cable mistake and I had to rip out like 13 rows...but I fixed it.




While we were camping at Chalk Bluff, I took several pictures...the water in the Nueces River is crystal clear and you can see the rocks on the bottom....there was a gorgeous sunset...and a HUGE full moon that I learned was called a super moon or 'the buck moon'.  There was a stop at a liquor store for more wine which is also a gun shop (ha, ha...only in Texas), and my knitting with the tents in the background (Jaime spoils me and I stayed in the AC in the RV).....








Well, I think that is about all I have for now.....have a great week everyone!  Here are some of my favorite pics I have stolen from others on the internet......





Happy Happy Happy knitting everyone!