Terrible Year

This has not been a good year for me. My mom died in February, I broke my arm in four places, my SIL had a car accident, my favorite cat had a stroke and I had to have him put to sleep, and my dad died in July. There were also a lot of little hick-ups along the way that just added to the bad year. I miss my parents and my cat Smokey a heck of a lot. Smokey is the black cat in one of the previous posts. He was a wonderful companion and my only lap cat.

Slowly life is getting better. I couldn't knit from the beginning of February until the end of  April. I am now caught up on all my projects that I couldn't knit while I was on the mend. I only have two more blocks to knit on the Great North American Afghan. I still have to sew all of  them together and add the border. I've been knitting a baby afghan for a shower on October 2nd. I'm almost done with it. It is a pattern that I got off of the Lion Brand site.

I Have a Pair...

of socks off the needles.

I had started this pair over a year ago. The socks were a project that I would work on at my Monday KAL. I haven't been to a Monday KAL for a long time and decided that it was time to finish these. The yarn label has become MIA but I believe that it is Opal yarn that has aloe in it. The pattern is from Fiber Trends. It was a basic sock pattern that I had used in a sock class to learned to knit socks

I also am working on the Vanilla spice cardigan posted on knitty. This was also started over a year ago. The Aran afghan had taken its place. I'm going to try and not have so many WIPs in the future. I find that it is hard to get into the pattern again after so much time has lapsed.

Today I will be going through my bins of yarn in the spare room to find my size 4 harmony needles. I wonder how many other WIPs are lurking there.

I Have Pictures

I finally have photos. This is my family of cats. I have four beautiful babies.

This is Molly. She was found by our neighbors who are not cat people. They called us late one night for our help. Molly was scared and so hungry that she wouldn't run off because the neighbors had put out a dish of tuna for her. She kept running around and around us until she just had to have the food. That is when I grabbed her. The moment I had her in my arms, she never stopped purring. It was like she knew that she was at the end of her journey. Whenever I rescue a stray, I always make an appointment to take them to the vets the next day if possible. Molly was at least 5 pounds under weight, had ticks, and a broken tail. She is now the beauty that you see above. Too bad you cannot see her gorgeous tail in this picture.

Above is Casey and below is Chyna. They were born the same year but different months. They were both born under my stylists shed. Her neighbor took care of all the kitties from the litters until homes were found for all. She gave the momma cat a permanent home. Casey is my most aloof cat. She only wants attention on her terms. Chyna is my skittish one and also the smallest. She barely weighs 5 1/2 pounds. Momma cat was also petite.

And finally, this is my boy Smokey. As you can see he and Molly are buddies. He arrived soon after I took in Molly. I think this was a conspiracy between the two of them. I often find them grooming each other and generally just being together. He is top cat and can be very dominate. He is also the only one that is a lap cat. He knows that he is not to sit on my lap while I'm knitting. He will either be on the arm of the chair or he will be on the foot rest.

NowI've aquainted you with my family.

Where are my.....

knitting needles?

I have too many WIPs at the moment. I'm currently signed up for three knitting classes. I only have one more class on the Great American Aran Afghan. I then have to assemble the remaining eight blocks and attached the border. I will be so glad when this project is done.

The North American Afghan just started in April. This class will continue until the Fall of 2010. I have all but one of the solid colored blocks done and 2 of the multi color squares are done. I will post pictures soon of the completed squares. Denton said he will show me how to get the pictures into my blog. Yeah, I'm a real ditz when it comes to doing anything on my own with a computer. I was a computer operator for thirteen years but that was big main frames not these little PC's.

Then I signed up to do a Faroese shawl. I've been wanting to do one for quite some time and this is the perfect opportunity. This one is a KAL on Wednesday nights at my LYS. To be honest, I just like to get together with ladies my age to knit. I had joined a local knitting group that met on Thursdays at Barnes & Noble, but this group was too young. There was too much talk about babies and such. How can one talk for two hours about the baby not sleeping the night before?

Anyway, getting back to my needles. The size I need is no where to be found. I have the Harmony straight and interchangeables from Knit Picks and I can't find either set of the size I need. I also have the Options set but I would rather not knit with the metal needles for the lacy project. But, I do have around eight pairs of size seven needles. Now how did I accumulate so many of them?

I believe that I should do what Toni does. She took her projects and put each in a seperate bag. Each month she will pick a different project bag to work on. I like this idea very much. I was taking Thursdays as a day to finish projects, but they were only small projects, i.e., weaving in ends, sewing on buttons. I wonder how many bags I will get. That is for another post.

Off to find my needles.

I'm still here

It has been a long time since my last post. What can I say, but life got busy.

It is almost Christmastime and I'm still busy. I hope to write more in 2009. I finally got a digital camera and have lots of photos to post.

I'm still knitting the Great American Afghan. We did 9 blocks in class. My last class was in October and my next class will be in January. I had five of the blocks to do on my own during the hiatus. I have four done and the fifth one is on the needles.

In April I will be starting the Great North American Afghan classes. I already have my yarn and book for this class. This afghan will be more difficult. Most of the squares are multicolored. A few are one color and we will not be having classes on those.

I also knitted a baby kimono, hat, and blanket for a friend. The kimono is from the first Mason Dixon book. It was a fast and easy knit.

Classes continue...baseball is starting

I just got my homework assignment for my fourth Aran afghan square. The square is by Suzanne Atkinson and has a picture of a church, tree, birds, and the sun depicted on it.

In our previous classes we were only to have the border finished before class and then we continued on with more of the square during class. The problem with this is, class is only 1 1/2 hrs long. We didn't get too far on our squares until class ended. The next class was a new square. If we had a problem we had to either wait until the next class (a month away) or come to one of the other classes that she was teaching. Now with the fourth square we can knit as far as we can. This way if there is a problem, we can address it in the class that the block is assign to. I think this is a much better arrangement.

Today I was busy copying and enlarging the charts for the next three squares. I like the format of this afghan. All the blocks are different so I don't get bored knitting them. I did two baby afghans for my aunt last year. I had to force myself to get them finished because I got bored with the patterns.

Baseball also starts in April. The Reading Phillies and the Allentown Pig Irons had and exhibition game on Tuesday night. The R-Phillies are the AA team and the Pig Irons are the AAA team for the Philadelphia Phillies. Allentown is a new stadium. The fans picked the name Pig Irons. There is a story behind the name but you would have to check out their website for that info. Last year the AAA team was in Ottawa. It is nice that they are now only about an hour or so from Reading. There are several bus trips planned to go to Allentown this year. I doubt if we will be going though. All the trips are on Saturday's and that is a work day for me. I must earn money to enlarge my yarn stash.

The big trip is to Chicago during the Labor Day weekend. I signed up for this one. We are going to see a game in Cleveland and Chicago but these will be with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Hey, It's St Patrick's Day

I'm not a big fan of St Patrick's Day. First, I'm not Irish and secondly, I don't drink beer no matter what color it is. Most times I don't even remember to wear green. Today I wore a rose colored top.

So for all you celebrants of St Patrick's Day, may the luck of the Irish be with you.

Now onto something I do like to do and that is knit. I almost finished my third square for the Great American Aran Afghan. I am waiting until class on Saturday to finish it off with four bobbles. I have never done bobbles and thought that I should get the teachers input. I did start the next square. It is a plain square with an Aran sweater sewn onto the square. I thought that I could at least handle the plain square without the instructors input. How could I possibly mess that up. Well I didn't read the instructions for one of the rows and had to frog already.