Knittinggarden

I finished knitting some things!  I know that doesn't seem like a very big accomplishment, but these days my knitting time is limited, although my knitting plans are as ambitious as ever. A month or so ago I wrote about a cotton sunhat that I was trying to make for my great-niece.  I attempted to crochet it multiple times with no success.  I gave up, then looked for a knitted pattern.  This I also failed to make several times; it came out looking way too small.  Undaunted, I went to larger needles and cast on a bigger size, and at last had a hat that looked like it would fit a three year old.  I hope I was right.  I didn't have a model close by to try it on. A larger accomplishment was my cotton mitred square blanket.  I started these squares about two years ago, knitting them one at a time as I sat in the sun.  I planned to make a big blanket out of them, but was in no rush to finish.  Then, inspiration struck.  My niece...

Celebrating the accomplishments of children is an exhilarating experience.  When those accomplishments make the children happy and closer to attaining their passion in life, it's even better. Our three kids were brought together as a family when the boys were eight years old and their sister was five.  Times weren't always totally smooth, but the first day of school photo each year showed their love for each other.  This is one of the first years. Through the awkward times, the afros and the braces, they always smiled from the edge of the driveway, adding Buddy to the mix when he came along. We ran out of first days of school when the boys left for college, but still managed to get photos from time to time.  Here they are singing a favorite song from childhood at the rehearsal dinner before the Princess' wedding. They do all clean up nicely! The kids are grown now and all working.  That's what I wanted to talk about.  We a...

Tuesday morning The Princess and I flew to St. Louis, rented a car, and drove a couple of hours to St. Robert, MO.  My SIL joined the National Guard and graduated from Boot Camp on May 9th, so we wanted to be on hand to congratulate him.  May 8th was Family Day, so we got to pick him up at Fort Leonard Wood and take him with us for the day.  He looks very handsome and impressive in his dress uniform! The Princess and her cadre of Army Wives.  Facebook is handy for making connections! We enjoyed meeting some of his buddies and their families and spending some quiet time, then had to have him back on post at 9:00 PM.  The next morning, we went back for an impressive graduation ceremony.  When that was over, we drove to a restaurant several miles out of town.  The drive was beautiful and the restaurant was actually in a cave.  The "shuttle" from the parking lot to the restaurant and "resort" was an old, rickety van driven by...

When our first lovely week ended, we drove back to Vegas, where my sis caught a flight home and DH picked me up.  We spent a few hours with the Princess, who unfortunately wasn't feeling well.  We got her as squared away as we could, had dinner with her, then spent the night.  We left for the drive to Palm Desert in the morning.  Due to a few miscalculations by the navigator (unfortunately me), what should have been a 5 hour drive at the most turned into about 7-1/2.  We successfully weathered the mistake with good humor, and embarked on a pleasant week in another desert. We went on a hike up into the hills and apparently my other hiking hadn't whipped me into adequate shape, because I thought I was going to have a heart attack for part of the time.  This was a lot more straight uphill and the terrain was much more dusty and desert-y than what we experienced in the high desert of Utah.  Different but also interesting and a good experience (it seeme...

It's been forever since I updated this blog, so I'll start with my adventures over the past three weeks.  They involved a little bit of knitting and quite a bit of travel and lots of fun.  My sister and I left Seattle on April 22nd en route to Las Vegas.  There, we picked up a rental car, had lunch with the Princess, and headed out to St. George, Utah.  There's a destination spa there, called Green Valley Spa , where we have been going off and on for the past 10 years.  I'll just say that we started going there when I passed a milestone birthday, and now, 10 years later, I had another one.  Though things have changed a bit since we first went, the hiking, spa treatments, accommodations, and staff remain top notch.  We hiked every day for a week, had nutritious meals, enjoyed exercise classes, and relaxed with wonderful spa treatments.  They are known for the fabulous roses all around the grounds and they were in their full glory. ...

Wool socks, wool sweater, wool scarf, wool coat.  Lots of rain.  That's enough about that.  I think I'll have to catch up with knitting and spinning soon.

I'm not on Facebook, but I sometimes access DH's page and look at photos (and  keep up with the kids).  I saw this today and thought I would share.

That's all I can say about that; the Hansen miniSpinner retreat I went to at the beginning of this week in Port Townsend, WA.  Fifteen people with miniSpinners, Beth and Kevin Hansen, Judith MacKenzie in the flesh (!) and a picturesque little old town.  Doesn't get much better than that. I caught the noon ferry from Edmonds, WA for the half hour to Kingston.  After that I had about an hour's drive to my destination.  Not a bad journey, and the scenery was beautiful.  Quite a few of us had decided to visit Taylored Fibers, so we carpooled to their farm.  We saw sheep (I think this one is a CVM) and sheep butts. We saw the big carding machine that Barry Taylor uses to make beautiful rovings, which he dyes.  Many of us came away from this room with bags of fiber.  I'm planning to make a sweater with the CVM/Merino/Silk blend that I got. We went back to town to get ready for the evening get-together.  This is the stately old hote...