It's a Wrap

Here's my wrap. I finished it last weekend, but I need to buy a couple of buttons. Once I buy the buttons and sew them on, I'll get some better photos of my wrap. As you can see, Spike was helping me while I was taking some photos of my wrap.

Here's a close up of the yarn and the pattern. It's difficult to see the pattern on the left in the photo. In person, it's no problem to see the pattern.

I can't type up what my other project is, because Taylor is reading this as I type it. I found a pattern for some fingerless gloves that are glommits. I have the perfect sock yarn for them and I'm looking forward to starting them. I think they'll be great for work and they'll be washable.

Rainy Days

It rained a little bit on Friday. I was doing a few things around the house when I got home and I was looking out the window. All the colors of the plants looked so vibrant. I grabbed my camera and went into the front yard. It wasn't raining very hard. Just enough to leave beautiful drops of water on everything.

This week has been kind of odd and hectic since I got the news about my Grandfather passing away. I've been trying to stick to my normal routine, but when I get home from work, things seem to fall apart. Normally I exercise after work. But the first couple of days seemed to involve a lot of phone calls. Finally by Friday I gave up. I figure I'll get back to exercising on Tuesday. I haven't been eating very well either. I think it's stress and grief mixed together. I'm not going to worry about it until after the funeral tomorrow.

The leaf is from one of the rose bushes in the front yard. It's been warm enough that my roses are still blooming and so are the morning glories. Actually we never watered the morning glories, so they didn't even grow. After the first rain, we have a nice carpet of morning glories in our side yard. Next year I'll water that part of the yard during the summer so we can enjoy the morning glories all summer.

We seem to have a lot of cob webs in our front yard. This one was the prettiest. I've noticed a lot of spiders around the house lately. There's one that hangs out by where the cat eats. Taylor thought it was dead and told me it was "disgusting to leave a dead spider next to Spike's food." I found out while I was doing laundry that the spider is not dead.

Last night a spider was crawling on the couch right next to my leg. It startled me and I brushed it onto the floor. Will took it outside. I guess there was a spider in the bathroom sink one morning that scared Taylor.

I've been knitting a little bit, just on one project. I'm over halfway done. I'm hoping to finish it in a week or two. I'm looking forward to starting something new. I am enjoying watching the yarn change from one color to the next. I'm really loving how the colors are blending together.

Memories

This may sound silly, but I always remember how much Poppy loved cars. I was thinking about him on my way to work this morning and I was remembering the story of how he tried to return a car to the dealership. Apparently the car was advertised as going 100 mph and according to Poppy, it didn't and he was angry. Poppy was even angry at the dealership for not taking the car back. I was on the straight stretch of the San Mateo Bridge and there weren't many cars around. So I thought in remembrance of Poppy I would go for it. I had my car up to 95 mph, I only slowed down because I was coming up on traffic. I have to say it was a lot of fun and made me laugh out loud. I had no idea my 10 year old four cylinder car went that fast. I wasn't even at top speed.

Quick Post with Sad News

No one has been posting because we've all been busy. My Grandfather passed away on Monday. Mom is busy with arrangements and making and taking lots of phone calls. Kelly is making plans to get here for the funeral and finding out her passport has expired. I've been moral support for Mom and trying to help her out how ever I can. I also call one parent and relay information to the other parent. It's been a week of sadness, being quite busy and trying to keep things normal.

Halloween

Here's Taylor in her costume.

I took photos of all of our pumpkins, but not all of the photos came out very well. This one is Morgan's pumpkin.

This is Taylor's pumpkin.

I was working in the yard this morning and I saw this spider. The spider won't be happy when we pull up the tomato's.

Here's Will modeling the scarf that I made for him. It's made out of yarn that I made. I think it came out great! It's the first item that I've knitted out of yarn that I've made myself.

Every time I make something for Will and he wears it in the morning to drop off Taylor at school, one woman makes comments about them. I find her comments mean. She's not only making fun of Will, which is her intention, but she's making fun of an item that I've made for someone I love very much. She called the fingerless gloves that I made for him, homeless gloves. When Will wore his scarf, she told him that he looked gay. I realize that she's just giving Will a hard time, but this also reflects on me because she's specifically making comments about something that I made for Will. I find it hurtful and just mean.

Moving on to other items, we had a great Halloween, I've eaten way too much candy. Taylor went trick or treating and afterwards, we went to a Halloween party. It was a busy and fun night.

Day of the Dead

We have a few friends that are artists. A couple of them always do something for a Day of the Dead show. This year the show is at the Meek Estate. I've driven past the Meek Estate all my life and I have never been inside the mansion. Apparently money is being raised to renovate the mansion. The few rooms we did see were in great need of repair, but very beautiful.

Anyway, this is some of the art work from the Day of the Dead show. I love the ones with colored paper. They were put in windows so they look like stained glass. They were all beautiful.

This one is also made out of paper. It reminds me of a quilt. It was quite large and took up the whole wall.

This is the one that my friend Phil did. It's made out of leather. Just so that you can get idea of the detail that Phil goes to, I took some close up photos of the officer's faces. This is of the 4 Oakland police officers that were killed.

Phil talked to the officer's families to find out eye color. Each family gave Phil a piece of leather that came from the officer's uniforms. In a one case the family gave Phil a leather star that the officer had made himself that went inside of his ticket book. Another officer's family gave Phil a leather shield that the officer had made for himself.

Look at the hair!

See that brown shield to the right of the officer's face? That's the one that a family gave Phil that the officer had made for himself.

Pretty cool, don't you think? I think it is. All of the exhibits were beautiful. There were also exhibits from students from all of the local high schools. Morgan didn't finish his project early enough for it to get into the show, but some of his class mates did.

On the knitting front, I finished Will's scarf. It's the first item that I've knitted out of yarn that I've spun. It's blocking right now, so I'm hoping it will be dry tomorrow so I can get a few photos of it. I finally finished spinning my small sampler of fiber that I bought at the Black Sheep Gathering. I Navajo plyed it. I think I finally have the hang of Navajo plying. It doesn't look as good as Darryl's,but it's way better than my first attempts.

Cats & Socks

This is our cat Spike. He's been laying around all over the house lately. He likes to lay on the rug on the bathroom floor. He likes sleeping in the rocking chair and on the foot stool in the living room. I've even seen him sleeping on our bed. He used to sleep on our bed all the time, until we got Daisy (dog). When ever I wash something knitted or block a knitted item, Spike thinks that I've laid that item out for him to sleep on.

I washed my sweater and I knew that Spike would lay on it. I was hoping that just his white fur would stick to the sweater and than it would be less noticeable. Will kept kicking Spike off of my sweater, but I've done that and it doesn't work. A few minutes later and he's right back where he was.

Here are the finished bumpy socks. I've worn them 2 or 3 times. They're very comfortable. I haven't posted photos of them because I wanted to wash them a few times to see if they became less bumpy.

Here they are after being washed a few times. They are a little less bumpy, but to me the pattern still doesn't show up very well because of how bumpy the yarn is. The yarn is not bumpy because it's not a smooth yarn. In fact it's a very smooth yarn. It's bumpy because I knitted them from a long piece of fabric that was knitted up already. I've seen them called sock blanks when they're undyed. Darryl bought one of these too, when we were on vacation. I don't know if he's knitted his yet or not. I want to see how his socks come out when he does.