Yesterday, my DH found some huge, fresh shrimp and brought home a couple pounds, I already had a lovely wild salmon on hand...
So last night was a wonderful and easy dinner! Broiled salmon on a bed of rice with a layer of sliced onions, a layer of sliced lemons, my own special sauce that has been altered to use olive oil instead of butter (it's healthier and tastes good!), shrimp scampi a la' Mom..it's all about the olive oil, garlic, Pescino, paprika, and a couple other little dashes of this and that, and finally sprinkled with freshly (and finely) grated parmesan. A side of fresh greenbeans crowned with pearl onions and crusty bread to dip. Sounds complicated, but it's one of the easiest things to fix! And fast and such a pretty dish! Our son and his tot drove up exactly as I was taking it out of the oven. How does he do that??
Okay, chortling and tummyrubbing done...been thinking about some of my knitting projects. There's been a dismaying number of disasters in my "redesigning" projects. The most recent was discovering I had carefully knitted the front parts of a baby cardigan and...they were both the left side. Rip, rip, rip....
The other cardigan, the one done in that gorgeous Sonata cotton...yeah that one. The button band refuses to pick up properly. Did I slip that first stitch of every row just so it'd pick up perfectly? Yep. It's a perfect and neat selvage. Does it work? Nope.
Solution so far...I knitted a separate button band using a provisional cast on just to see what was going on. Haven't tried to put it all together yet, I'm waiting for my knitting disposition to improve. Meantime, am over halfway thru knitting a warm, wool sock while I consider things. It's entirely possible that I'm far too tempted to leap into a new project and have been woolgathering instead of paying attention to the cardigan. (Yep, I said that..you may now all groan in unison.) And part of the problem is that I have three new knitting books. One of those I bought just for one particular pattern in it. I love 'em all, but that pattern...I love it. It has no diagram and goes strangely in one direction then the other, I'm not certain I understand the pattern at all...but I want it on my needles asap. Gotta try it! This might be one of those week-long learning curves.

July Color!

It's July and the colors are blue/violet. Hmmm...from my favorite and battered chair by the window with it's violet flowers, I see...a beautiful spill of fabric as I knit a sock with bright violet needles! There are grapes in the kitchen and out on the deck my ice cream maker cranks out something wonderful for a hot summer day, to go with a bit of blackberry cobbler for a grandchild.
And to start the day just right...
three new books arrived in the mail!

oops..

Postponing my anxiety fit til next week. Somehow I misread that calendar? Not unusual, just ask my family...
On the other hand, a package arrived with a few spare dpn's to take with us, I find I love those Bryspun dpns. And hopefully a couple books from Alibris will get here this coming week, so Corky won't have a chance to chew the box to shreds while I'm not here.
For the trip, I bought a nice box to hold the knitting neccessities. It has a handy top thingie where I can put the smaller notions, and the bottom thingie for yarn and such immediately fell apart soon as it was home. *sigh* My new shoes are wonderful tho!
Halfway through the first sock for Theresa...nice warm wool! She loves keepsakes, which is good, since as soon as she forgets they're handwash only and throws them into the machine they'll felt into cute little Christmas tree ornaments....

Tomorrow...tomorrow...

...We'll be off to Missouri and Tennessee!
My husband Allen and I are going to visit family, fill out more on the family tree he's been doing for a long time (it's becoming an epic), see new sights.
It's been rainy all week here and because pickup trucks and men go together like peanutbutter and jelly, I'm curious to see how a suitcase repels water. My beloved old van faithfully took us everywhere for years, daily trips thru Atlanta and beyond, even to California and once to New Orleans. It's tired and not as reliable as it used to be. Therefore...this time it's the truck. That utterly male and impractical vehicle. All you truck lovers need not tell me how wonderful trucks are, tell the kids that. It's the van they always want to borrow for moving, rambling, shopping, towing boats and trailers. It's a big service van. No fancy stuff..and I want another one just like it!
This will leave our son and a two year old grandson in charge of the house, three cats (one is a young lunatic, two are elderly persnickety aunties) a parrot that loves pizza, three dogs (plus a stray that has deposited a litter of cuties under Allen's woodturning shop) a flock of chickens, eggs they've hidden in unique and imaginative places....this frightens me just a little. Will the house still be standing in a week?
Will my computer still function? Do I have enough dishes to last them a week? I will be clutching my cellphone and praying the whole time we're away. I'm taking a stash and needles with me, plenty of sock yarns and hopefully two new books from Alibris will get here today to keep me occupied on the drive. One has a nifty baby sweater I want to knit!

Family ties

Well..as much as the family disrupts my attempt at a sedentary mode, we missed our oldest daughter very much over the fourth of july dinner. She's been recovering from a bit of surgery that followed the complications after Anna's birth. It was a lovely weekend, but there was definitely a large piece missing with Theresa and her family not here.Sometimes I'm guilty of seeing the crowd as a constant and maybe don't appreciate each individual within it as much as they deserve. Maybe it's way too easy to fall into this, especially when faced with a half dozen tots holding out plates at once. But that's a reason...there's no excuse for it.
I think I'll go knit her some prayer socks. She's not a shawl person.

The Heart's Homeplaces

A beautiful stormwashed field in late evening and a peaceful meander down to the pond. Places to muse, to knit, to ...be.
Sometimes I look at my houseful of family and all they entail and I think about the folks that have homes so tidy and orderly that one almost whispers in them for fear of disturbing even a mote of dust. I think about the geometrically trained flowers and exact treeforms in pretty magazines.
Then I look around me and smile...and my heart sings.

Practical knitting!

Okay, I spent 3 days gnashing my teeth, ripping out, experimenting, gnashing, ripping, experimenting some more...and ended up with my own little sock method. My method, of neccessity, requires no mental efforts, no math other than the guage for inches and the ability to count off half my original number of stitches for the heel. I am probably the only person in the knitting world that couldn't figure out socks before this. I am intimidated by pages of instructions and have the attention span of a guppy. My attention span is caused by our kids and their tots that seem to be at our house almost constantly. We cannot comprehend the "empty nest syndrome" others speak of. I tried not cooking, but then they brought large containers of fried chicken from whatever greasy place they passed on the way. Yuck. There's no solution, other than to learn to live with the chaos of a noisy, cheerful family. We're loved. So are my biscuits and home cooking.
Back to the practical knitting tho...last week, I happily turned out 3 pairs of socks and one little toe-up (also my own method) prototype. Easy!! And now I can pick up any yarn and knit a sock without referring to silly instructions that look like Feinstein's cookbook. I call this practical knitting! Today...I am ripping out a half done cardigan for the littlest grandbaby and doing it by my practical method as well. Little or no seaming, neatly done and easy to pick up and put down a few dozen times a day.

Things I learned about socks:
1. If you slip that first stitch of each row you knit on that heel flap, picking up the gusset is super easy and neat.
2. On the first knit row after picking up gusset stitches, knit those picked up stitches (only those!) thru the back loop for that extra twist that snugs them up.
3. Learn that funny little figure 8 cast on to two needles and knit toe-up. Much easier to have that sock finished when you finish knitting and not sitting in the corner waiting for a grafted toe job. Especially if you have small children that interrupt grafting a lot. I have a link to a site that explains that toe thing, if anybody wants it. Once learned, it's with you forever.
4. The inside of the elbow to the wrist where the hand begins is the same length as that person's foot.
5. The length of a person's foot is the same as the circumference of around the heel and over the top of foot just below the ankle.
6. It's easier to measure someone's arm from elbow to wrist than to tackle them and measure their feet. It also doesn't tip them off that they will be getting handmade socks for Christmas.
7. Measure a kid's arm while they're napping. They don't wiggle as much.
8. Knitting toe-up works out exactly the same as knitting toe-down, just start the "heel flap" that normally you do just before the heel turning part when you get to the beginning of the ball of the person's heel. It's about 1/3rd of the foot length, I think. Don't do anything fancy to it, it's going to end up on bottom of the foot. You can do reinforced stuff to the turning part or just past that, if you really want to have that.
9. When you get done with the cuff, you have instant gratification, because it's finished! Tuck in that tail of yarn and gloat!
10. You can fix a nice cup of tea for your best friend who knitted her sock top-down and is trying to kitchener her sock toes while a two year old piles 7 stuffed toys in her lap to be kissed.

Ever have days when your kitchen looks like this?

And what you really feel like is this?

..and more..

The plain brown shawl in soft, washable wool that youngest daughter and I are doing as a KAL. Yep, we're both bored to tears with it, but heavily fringed we'll enjoy them when done. She's learning to knit, I bribe her with wonderful knitting toys.

And then the beginnings of another fluffy little blankie for Anna. It's blurry, not sure why..

And finally, a finished crocheted shawl with the filigree rose, done in cotton.

I have a lot of things on the needles, I know. They do get done tho, really they do! I'm not even going to think about the socks..

Ahhh...I love the printer!

It has a thingie on front where I can insert the camera card and circumvent the need to find a cable to download the cam to the puter! So we can play catch-up now!

This is the back and fronts of Tay's little cotton beach cardi, hopefully I'll get that matching yellow T-top made soonish to go with it.
Then on the right is the cardi in progress for Anna (no idea why it looks orange on here, it isn't!)
The bag in the middle is a little cotton crocheted thing that exactly holds Anna's red (wine-colored) cardi while I work on it, excellent to loop on my wrist and hold sock yarns and whatnots as I chase around the house after the little ones. (It's supposed to keep me young, riiiiighttt...)
Not sure how these are going to do on one post...let me finish on next one here...

I think I'll stay put here..

I lack the will to redo my links and sites on a new place. Or I might scribble on both sites out of general wickedness.
I haven't posted in so long! But we've been delightfully occupied with the newest little one!
She looks so much like her mom at that age. We adore her...she never fusses about little things like....well..no..we didn't really put that little cardigan with the orangutan length sleeves on her. But she wouldn't have fussed, I'm pretty sure. Sleeves are being ripped back as we speak...I blame that on her 2yr old cousin who helpfully (and repeatedly...) brought me all the pretty dpn's that were holding the sleeves in progress. Maybe I thought I was knitting a head start on his next "helping" me, I really don't know...
Our youngest daughter is revisiting her new knit skills and we're doing a simple shawl together. We're both bored to tears with our shawls tho. This could lead to a dozen new projects at any moment.
I'm still campaigning for a new digital camera. It will happen, I promise!

Am I moving?

I'm considering it seriously, altho I've gotten rather comfortable here and learned a little html the hard way.
I imported here to http://grandmother.wordpress.com/
and could really use your opinions. Go see, tell me what you think..Wordpress does have advantages..it's easier to add links, doesn't take me 2 hours to figure out how to talk to the template code to make a thingie or decorate. On the other hand, personal decorating is limited in Wordpress, but they'll probably figure out toys for that soon.

Let me know!

Oh..and I did find my beloved old spindle! Corky finally gave it back with only a little slobber on it, so I'm very happy again.

Anna is here!

Lovely Anna Elisabeth made her appearance..the day after Easter! 7lbs, 8oz. of noise and dimples! Pictures forthcoming (it's that silly camera problem again..)as soon as I can, meantime all are well, even if my post is so long overdue. She's going to be brown-eyed like her mom and has beautiful brown hair. First baby in a couple generations that didn't arrive looking like Winston Churchill on a bad day.

My favorite fat old hen proudly hatched 5 chicks on the same day, it's in the air..!!!
So we celebrated with a family cookout and discovered the yummy fragrance on the wind enticed a ragged starving stray kitten to our roof. He's a sweet little buttercream tomcat and is quite fat and sassy since moving in with us.

Obviously..Spring has sprung!

Okay, that makes two jammie bottoms, two sweaters, a baby blankie..and the latest addition to the family still is being coy about making her grand entrance.
Possibly she's waiting for gramma to get a new digital camera? (this is my argument, anyway)
But if she's waiting for a Faire Isle miracle, it's going to be a while. I can't even begin to focus on choosing a pattern and the idea of steeks still makes me shudder.
(Edit: These are finished, but no pics of finished items.)

Oldest daughter is about to pop! The new baby is apt to make an appearance by this coming weekend and I still have half a leg of jammie bottoms to finish, two sweaters and a blankie to put together! (Panic!) Since she’s so near term, we’ve kept her 3 year old, along with our son’s 2 year old..you can imagine how much knitting I’m getting done here! Ack! In our little retirement cottage this is bedlam!

I have been a very naughty gramma ... but..but..it was so pretty! Knitpicks had the Palette yarn for such a nice price..and Christmas will be here again before we know it! (that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it)
So many colors! Now doesn't that look like molten sunshine!
I'm not even going into the Inox spree last week....

Okay, I'm just not into making a sweater for myself. It's been frogged and returned to nice skeins (it was green, it was boring...and 80 degree weather didn't motivate me) so now I'm planning Dale of Norway! I have wool to dye when I decide on the colors for them...yes, "them!"..I want to make one for a 2 year old grandson, a 7 year old granddaughter, my 6'2" son..this could occupy me for the next three months! And of course the newest to arrive (Soon!!) will have soft, handknitted things while I ponder the colors for the others.

A Blog Reborne

A Blog Reborne *Cheers!* Now that's some bobbling! Good job!

The sweater I decided I should knit for myself is going to take forever and many reruns of "Law and Order" to finish, so I thought I'd add a few visuals of the Unknitters Association that inhabit our lives (and delightfully so!).
Dinah, the reigning Dowager tabby is 16 in March. She effectively raised our three children to respectable adulthood and declines to raise the grandchildren. Job well done, Dinah!
Embers of the tender heart and vacuous mind gently urges the grandchildren to new mischief at every opportunity. She's 6 and uses decoys of black fuzzballs she creates here and there to evade the results of her complicity.
Corky..is Corky. Half chihuahua, half schnauzer, he's the constant companion of the two year old grandson and a chewer of many knitting needles and...well..his list of sins is long. He still refuses to confess as to the whereabouts of the missing drop spindle.

While I knit along, I thought I'd post a couple pics of a few things my DH has made. The odd one by itself is made from a banksia pod which grows in Australia. I can always tell when it's been in the house, I can smell it...no one else seems to be able to, but I detect a pervasive and inescapable odor from it.
These are just a few things he's done, I love watching him turn a twisted old burl into something lovely and flowing.
If my drop spindle doesn't reappear somewhere soon, he'll have to make me a new one. Here's hoping the spindle wasn't one of Corky's victims.