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Sunday, August 26, 2007

My List

School starts tomorrow. It is after 10:00 pm here and the house is so quiet. All the kids are in bed and - I think - asleep. Starting tomorrow I will officially have all three kids in all day school. The last time our two oldest were in all day school I got pregnant with our youngest. It's a joke around here that I tell about our kids being in school and NO! I am not pregnant! Although if I knew I was going to have three children and was younger, I might have gone for a fourth. Five in a family is just an odd number. Think about it. Lots of rides at amusement parks are for two people. You can't pair up evenly with five. Four people fit much easier in a smaller car than five (thus the SUV we bought a few years ago). That's ok though, I love having a family of five, too.



Some of my mom's family are in town. We had a big barbeque at my mom's house last night. Two of her sisters are here and her niece. We had more family over last night, too. It was fun, but I arrived a little late because I worked at the scrapbook store yesterday. As soon as I got there it was time for dinner, and then it seemed that everyone left shortly after that. We've decided that we need to have these get-togethers on a regular basis. I've thought of having theme dinners when we get together. Any ideas out there? I'd love to hear them. This would be new to me, so I'd love any help I can get.



Before any kind of get together, though, I NEED to get my craft room organized! The craft room is now called the crap room, because it seems to be the room where all the stuff you don't know what to do with gets stuck. Yes, a lot of it is mine, so I need to get working on that. That is high on my list of things to do when the kids are at school and I have a day off. I think I'm going to work on it, and then reward myself when I'm done by spending a day at the scrapbook store and cropping all day with no interruptions.



I've started a new pair of socks - again. I'm working with a striping sock yarn by Cascade Yarns in a superwash. The colors are similar to Gryffindor's colors from the Harry Potter books/movies. I got it at my lys. I also recently bought some yarn through Etsy. It is yarn from Fearless Fibers, superwash Merino colorway Midnight Passion, which is shades of purple. I love the yarn. I I have an idea for this, but I'm not going to mention what it is because it is for Christmas and you just never know if that person might happen to lurk here! You can check out her Etsy shop at: http://www.fearlessfibers.etsy.com/ She has some delicious looking yarn. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I am getting a little sock crazy. After this pair is done I want/need to go on to something different. Something easy, something quick. Any suggestions?



On my list of things to do this week are. . . First, you should know about my list. It is a big white erase board on which the left side I write down things that need to be done around the house - basically chores. On the right side of the list I write down the things I'd like to do once the list on the left is finished. As I am finished with that chore/project, I erase it. Rarely does the whole left side get totally erased, and even more rare is the total erasure of the right side. This week on the left side of my list I will have to add working on my craft room and go through the paperwork on my computer desk (it is pushed next to my hard drive, and is slowly taking over and becoming bigger than the tower!). On the right side of the list I need to add: work on my current socks, and make at least one, and clean the scrapbook junk off of the treadmill. Even though this has the five letter word "Clean" in it, I am still putting it on the right side of my list, because believe it or not I do enjoy cleaning my scrapbook stuff. I just spend more time making it a mess than I do cleaning it. Once the treadmill is cleared, I will have to add "Exercise" to the....left side of the board.



Enjoy the last week of August!

Friday, August 17, 2007

Pictures of socks!




Ok, I'm attempting to add these pictures without the help of my kids. If all goes well the first picture is the "Spiderman" sock I'm knitting up for my 6yo. The second picture is the finished pair of jigsaw socks.









Thursday, August 16, 2007

podcasts and projects

What a busy week it's been! Here's a quick summary of what we've done this week: DD's oral surgery to extract wisdom teeth, picking squash, high school registration, first Cub Scout meeting, First Grade homework, picking squash and beans, 911 call for my mom (she's fine, had a heavy nosebleed), band practice, picking squash and cucumber, son learning to ride a two wheel bike. . . and did I mention we have squash?

In between that I did manage to finish my jigsaw socks! I love this yarn, the color and the way it feels. I'll take a picture and post it hopefully tomorrow. I found a pattern on the internet (www.craftown.com) for a child's sock. They are for my son and we are calling them his Spiderman socks. He picked out the yarn for this and it reminded him of Spiderman. It's a striping yarn that has black and red, yellow, green and blue stripes. It's Regia yarn 75% wool, 25% polyamide, whatever that is. It does feel rougher then what I have been working on, but once it's knit up, it's not bad.

I haven't really done much scrapbooking this week. I have been attempting to organize my craft desk a little at a time, and I do mean a little at a time. I did manage to put away most of the supplies I had taken with me to Tahoe.

Something fun I've been doing is looking up podcasts and listening to them, usually when I am knitting. I really should be listening to them while I am on the treadmill, but apparently the treadmill hasn't been calling my name loud enough to hear over the noise of our household of five. Here are a few I have been listening to: socks in the city (www.socksinthecitypodcast.blogspot.com) - Carrie talks about different yarns for knitting socks, and lots of other things pertaining to sock knitting. She also has an Etsy shop (www.etsy.com), and her store is under dharmafey. lime & violet (these gals are crazy-fun), she-knits podcast (www.she-knits.com) - seriously, she has 7 kids and finds time to knit! and sticks & string podcast (www.sticksandstring.com.au) - this is one I started listening to. I just really like the sound of his accent! Plus a guy who knits, how awesome is that!

Well, I don't have much in the way of a list on what I want to do this week. I'd love to finish those Spiderman socks. I'm working at the scrapbook store this Saturday so I may get to see what, if anything is new in the scrapbook world! I've been thinking about Christmas - you know it's only about 19 weeks away. Start making your list.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Furry Adventures in Tahoe

I am back from my scrapbook retreat. We've always called it a scrapbook retreat, although it's really more like a mini vacation with friends. This year two friends and I spent five days at Lake Tahoe. It was a friend of a friend's house they let us stay in. We were close enough to the lake that we could hear the boats, and close enough that we could walk to if we wanted to, but we stayed at the house almost the whole time. This time away is just that for us. We get away from our every day schedules. We set our scrapbook stations up in the living room and leave it there until it's time to leave. We watch movies when we want to without having to worry about whether it's ok for the kids to watch. We wake up in the morning knowing that we can sleep in a little if we want to. We go to bed at night and read with the lamp on. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. We have so much fun and look forward to it every year.

This year we did have some excitement while we were there. One evening I heard what sounded like a plastic cup drop on the driveway. I looked out and the door to my SUV was wide open. I yelled and out comes what looked to me like a big blur (it was dark and I was looking through the screen door). I screamed to my friends that someone is breaking into my vehicle. Well, there we are, the three of us all wondering what to do. We should call the cops, should we go down to look at it? Hurry, lock the door! We eventually go outside on the deck and yell across to the neighbors who are outside and ask if they've seen anything. It was a bear, they tell us. I'm thinking they've had a little too much to drink, but we go along with it. When we finally venture downstairs to the driveway we look inside my Suburban. Inside we find that the console has been opened and two sets of headphones have been pulled out of it. There were two cups from Starbucks left inside and one of them is laying on the driveway, the lid is smashed on the floor of my Suburban. Later I find a bottle of Tums in the back and it's been partly chewed. There is also a sandwich bag on the ground. I remember that my kids must have left it there, conveniently eating the sandwich, but leaving the crust of it in the bag. Must've been that the bear smelled! Luckily there were only a couple of light scratches on the outside of my Suburban that I can have buffed out. Once we found out that it was a bear, we actually had a good laugh. What a night!

I did bring my socks to knit, too. I finished one sock and am close to the heel on the second. My daughter is getting them, as they fit her perfectly. I wanted to finished the 6th Harry Potter book so I can start on the 7th, but I am still reading a Patricia McKillip book that I want to finish before I start another. And, of course, I got lots of scrapbooking done. Got almost caught up with my oldest's book, and almost finished my youngest's DW album. Plus I organized my paper.

It was nice to get home to see my family. I think they even missed me a little. Now it's back to the real world. My daughter gets her wisdom teeth pulled out this Friday, so I won't be working at the scrapbook store this Saturday. Just a nice relaxing Saturday (which equals running around playing catch up on the housework in our house). I plan to get the other jigsaw sock finished this week. Next will be knitting "Spiderman" socks for my son. He picked out the color of yarn (red, dark blue, yellow, thus Spiderman), now I need to figure out how to change my sock pattern for adults, or find one. I'm fairly new to knitting socks, so it takes me a while to figure it out. I'm looking forward to knitting those.

Just a reminder, only 141 days until Christmas! That works out to about 20 weeks. It's never to early to think about that, especially if you want to make something for gifts. This year my daughter has already started a list of who she wants to make socks for. Takes after her mother, I say!

G'Night!