Honey, I'm home!

Hello everyone, that wasn't too bad was it? I was only gone for about four days. I am so glad to be back on line again. I was going nuts not being able to check email, online banking, talk to Lora on yahoo messenger or read blogs. The worst I think, was not being able to get on Ravelry whenever I wanted too. I am a Ravelry junkie. It will take hours to catch up on everything I have missed.

I know you are wondering how I got back online. Well, this really cute guy came over on Saturday and again on Sunday. No, it was not a random cute guy, it was Tata's husband. She willingly offered up his services. All I had to do was feed them and have beer. I bet he never worked so cheaply before.
Tata has two really great kids. A baby boy that Alex and Eli had a great time entertaining and guess what.....A daughter for Olivia! Most of my friends have boys. There are boys everywhere Olivia turns. She was delighted to have a girl around her age to play with. They had so much fun together.

Knitting has brought some wonderful people into my life. I hope it has done the same for all of you.

Sorry, will be unavailable for some time

I had a major computer crash, so I will not be able to finish the story of Starsky and his trip to Hooters. If you need to get a hold of me please leave Lora a message and she will get back to me.

I hope to be back on line soon.

Sonya

A lovely little girl

Sunday we went to meet the newest family member.

Baby Lydia had everyone captivated, especially Alex. He did not want to give anyone else a turn.
Daniel is going to be a wonderful big brother. Suzannah said that Lydia was drawn to Daniel right away.
My mother in-law holding her great niece.
What a proud mommy!

Tuesday night knitting

It was a fun night at knitting. We had a big crowd, lets' see.....Debbie, Ila, Tata, Loretta, Jill, Becca, Nicole and Sherry. Can't forget the girls, Olivia and jOY. Nicole is working on a Hip in Hemp skirt for her little girl, Tasha has jumped right into the deep end of the knitting pool and is working on a sock.

School has started for several of the knitters. A few of us might try to sneak in an extra knitting night.


Sherry is not the lone crocheter anymore. Debbie has been joining us.

Look at what I got!

It seems that Lora made a little mistake with her last pair of socks. For some reason they were too big for her. But they turned out to be the perfect size for me. Thanks Lora!

Oh the humiliation!

Dogs on Thursday

Take a close look at Starsky. He will look different tomorrow. He will be different tomorrow. Starsky is having what my almost 11 year old calls a nutectomy.

Are you done laughing?? Good.

The Snip Clinic (a KY Humane Society program) is having an interesting neuter drive. It is being held at a local Hooters restaurant. Drop him off at 10am at the restaurant tomorrow and pick him up at the restaurant Saturday morning. I will let you know if everything comes off without a hitch.

How many have you read?

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.
*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE .
That us just too much work, so I will make bold the titles I have read
Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

It seems that I am not quite as well read (23) as I thought I was.

A blessing in the form of a baby girl

We are so excited, the extended family is one member larger now. Daniel has his sister!
Please go wish Lydia a warm welcome.

Can you believe this??

If you want kids to hang out at the library you need to start them young. Why would they want to encourage video games at the library anyway??
What were they thinking!!

Children's knitting group turfed from library under new craft ban
Last Updated: Friday, August 15, 2008 10:39 AM ET Comments29Recommend24
CBC News
A six-year-old girl says she is disappointed after her knitting group was asked to leave an eastern Ontario library due to a new ban on arts and crafts.
"I really had fun in there in the library, and I'm really sad that they stopped that," said Kingston Currie, who used to spend two hours a week with the Itch and Stitch Club at the Long Sault Library in Long Sault, Ont., about 95 kilometres southeast of Ottawa.
Pamela Haley, manager of library services for the united counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, said the ban on crafts was put on place because the municipality is revamping its 18 library branches in an effort to attract more people and needs to be more literacy-focused to achieve that end.
She said the library's new fall lineup includes teen book clubs and Scrabble nights. The library will also be holding some events not focused on literacy, such as video game nights, to attract a younger crowd.
But under the new plan, there will no longer be a space for Kingston Currie and the other girls, aged six to 10, who used to sit around a table teasing yarn into organized patterns and items with crochet hooks and pairs of needles.
Currie's mother, Maryann Currie, said the sight used to make her want to make them a pot of tea and bring them some biscuits.
"Like, it was so cute, and they were quiet," she said. "They weren't disruptive, so I don't understand what the reasoning is behind it."
Kingston said she wants to do something about knitting group's ejection.
"I think it wasn't really nice, and I think I want to stand up [for] what I believe in."
Haley suggested one way the group could reclaim their old spot.
"If they want to knit in the library, why not formulate a book club and knit as you discuss a book?" she suggested. "Relate it that way and sort of think outside the box."

And now a few words from John....

Me: What is your favorite thing about my knitting?
John: Seeing the joy you get from knitting.

Me: What is your least favorite thing about my knitting?
John: The yarn stash that is all over the house.

Me: What is something I have knitted that you recall as being good?
John: The London Beanies

Me: Do you think knitters have an expensive hobby?
John : Sometimes it can be.

Me: Do you have any hobbies?
John: No

Me: Do you have a stash of any kind?
John: dvds, cd, records, tools, comic books

Me: Has my knitting in public ever embarrassed you?
John: No, never

Me: Can you name another knitting blog?
John: nope

Me: Do you mind that I want to check out yarn stores everywhere we go?
John: No I don't mind but I will if you spend too much.

Me: Do you understand the importance of a swatch?
John: Do you mean the watches?

Me: Do you read In the Skein of Things?
John: When you make me.

Me: Have you ever left a comment?
John: You can leave comments??

Me: Do you think the house would be cleaner if I didn't knit?
John: No, it wouldn't make no damn difference

Me: Is there something you would like me to knit for you someday?
John: A hat with a skull on it.

Me: Is there something you would never want me to knit for you?
John: A sweater

Me: Is there anything else you want to say?
John:When we first met you said you were not crafty at all, I knew you were and you are a wonderful knitter.

Harmony not intact

I was knitting away in the waiting room of a dr. appointment when the unthinkable happened. No I was not accosted by some strange person (could have been seeing as where we were) for knitting in public, kids did not cause some horrible catastrophe, my needle broke. Not just any needle one of my new Harmony size 5 double points. I gasped so loudly that heads turned and one peeked out of the little window at the front desk. I could not believe what had just happened. Not only was this my waiting room knitting but it was my wedding rehearsal/dinner knitting. We had to be there right after. The rehearsal was ok, I did not have much down time, but I needed it at the dinner. I survived.

I have already talked to Knitpicks and they are sending a replacement set, but I have to wait for them to get here. I do have other projects to work on so....all is not lost just a beautiful dpn.

The first day of school..

Well, today was the big day. I have a 5th grader, a 3rd grader and a 1st grader. It is hard to believe that Alex is in 5th grade already. It seems like it was just a few months back that I was handing him over to the kindergarten teacher, hoping that she would take good care of him. I don't think the kids were too excited about starting a new school year. But I will have to admit I was really happy. There had been way too much togetherness over the summer. They were ready to start seeing other adults besides me. I was ready to have some time for me to do whatever I wanted or needed to do. Or just to do nothing at all.

I got an ear full after picking them up from school. I heard all about the teachers, the friends in class, how Eli did not have enough time to eat all of his lunch and that Olivia recognized her teacher from VBS.


Our goal this year is to be on time every morning.

Knitting in my dreams

I knit a sweater.
In a dream last night.
It was so real, measuring arms, checking stitches. I was at the neck bind off and was worried that it would not be a stretchy enough bind off. I am wondering and thinking about what to do, when the answer popped into my head, "Alison". Alison always says to bind off with a larger needle to get a stretchy or loose bind off edge. It was an interesting sweater, it had a small opening mid chest. Apparently it was a mans' sweater, the opening was to pull a tie through.

Friends

July was filled with visits from out of town friends. You all know Lora and her boys (of course you do, I talk about her all the time).

These friends are from Seattle. We had not seen them in over three years. Emily and the kids, Desmond, Ciara and baby Adain

Tuesday night knitting

We had a really good time last night. Let's see...Becca, Sherry, Tata, Jenny, Ila, Nicole, Ruth, Ashley and Theresa, who brought a friend, where all there. Olivia came with me, school will be starting next week so she won't be able to come very often anymore. Becca brought her spinning wheel and a drop spindle. Tata has shown some interest and those spinners are more than happy to spread spinning love.



Olivia loves to watch them spin, Becca let her have a turn. She was enjoying herself so much.














Several of us looked up to see that she had accidentally spun her hair into the yarn.
It was a sight to see. She was a little embarrassed, but then they all starting fessing up that they had done the same thing. Nicole said that her daughter had gotten too close once and her hair became one with the yarn.
Here she is with her first yarn.













Becca is helping Tata get started on a drop spindle.













She sent her home with one of her drop spindles and some roving.
I wonder if Tata new what she was getting herself into when she joined our little group.
Ashley is giving Becca's wheel a whirl.
Olivia is holding Mr. Dangles. Ruth knit him as a first birthday present for Sam. He will love it!

Two elephants and a lion just hangin out.
No Tuesday night knitting post is complete without an appearance by the most adorable Sam. We will miss Sam and Ruth, school starts in a few days so they won't be able to join us every week.

Birthday shoes

Look at my new birthday shoes! I got three pairs. The sparkly ones were first talked about in this post
New Croc sandals and maybe the coolest shoes I have had in a long time

clear Converse! So all of the socks I will knit for myself will be on display for everyone to see.

According to John, I now have to get rid of three pairs.

Girl's Day

Olivia and I had a girl's day on Thursday. She started "girl time" a long while ago. We talk about girl stuff or she tries on all her dresses, we paint nails, fix hair or look through my jewelry box.
We invited my knitting friend Ashely to join us, just three girls out for the day. Ate lunch at Tumbleweed and went to see the move Kitt Kitteridge- An American Girl. The movie was good, Olivia really enjoyed it. There are some good actors in it too. Stanley Tucci, Chris O'donnell and Joan Cusack were very entertaining. It was a little bleak at times, the movie is set in the 40's and the depression was in full swing and boy were the children mean to each other. But I guess not much has changed.
After the movie we went to a near by used book store and she got two American Girl books and I got the Yarn Harlot's At Knits End, meditations for women knit too much. Knitting and spinning are just not enough for Ashley so she found herself a book on soapmaking.
Then we went to Grater's Ice Cream. We all had a great time.