Happy Halloween

As the sign says.......I'd rather be knitting. Happy Halloween!

No Knitting

I haven't been knitting. I have three reasons. I may just be making excuses, but here they are.
1. Time....... Seems I have lost all track of it lately. Where does it go? How can I get it back? These questions I ponder all the time. No joke intended here.
2. The blanket I am making my son is almost finished. But as I have no Time (please see above), I am unable to finish it. It is too big to take with me so I am restricted to knitting it at home. And while I am excited to be in the home stretch with just 1 and 1/3 skein left to go I am finding it hard to get to the finish line with this monster of a boring blanket. My youngest son wants one too, which I promptly replied when you are 16 you will get your blanket. Good that gives me 3 years.
3. See the picture above. Crochet. This is starting to be a problem for me. I said before I was casually cruising knitting blogs when I came across this heart. Which as you can see is not knitted it is crocheted. I tried it on a whim and made many hearts. Then I saw the cutest bat (as in Halloween) on Sweaterbabe.com. Of course I had to make it. I would show you a photo but I have given them all away.

I am pausing here to catch my breath before my confession continues. The pumpkin above was a gift from my friend Lynda. She totally "gets" my Halloween fascination and feeds into it on a regular basis.

So while my blanket is too big to tote around I decided to try my hand at making a pumpkin of my own design. Now I know I am not a crochet queen, but I think I did a pretty good job. I have made one for a friend, two for my mother-in-law, and one for my acupuncturist. Does it look like a pumpkin to you? Or do you think it is a bit silly? Sometimes when you make something you lose the ability to see it for what it is. Cute or silly?

Up Late

It is that wonderful time of the year when my oldest has to make a visit to Hall-O-Scream at Busch Gardens. I am the unlucky parent who is on pick up duty so I thought I would post, to keep myself awake before my very, very late departure. Halloween is really my favorite Holiday. I love the fun of decorating and not having to buy presents! My oldest son was born on Halloween, which as I always say, it explains a lot about his personality. The cat hat above is my only Halloween purchase this year. I couldn't resist.

Last year while visiting my sister I found this beauty. Doesn't she look lovely on my cow? Every year I visit my sister on this weekend so we can go to The New York Sheep and Wool Festival, or better know in the knitting community as Rhinebeck. Due to the situation with my parents I thought I had better stay at home this year. But I will be imagining the beautiful Fall weather, the crispness in the air, the beautiful faces of the sheep and alpaca's, the amazing yarn and of course spending time with my sister. To all those attending Rhinebeck I wish you the very best, buy some yarn in my honor.

Last Friday I was cruising through my many blogs and came upon this lovely crochet heart on Knitpurlgirl.com. While on Knitpurlgirl I was lead to the creator of the heart, Teresa Kasner, of TeresaKasner.blogspot.com. Teresa provides the directions for this heart on her blog. The directions are really easy and extremely clear. I am a beginner at crochet. I made a baby blanket of granny squares and some edging around a blanket or two, but that is as far as my experience goes. So if I can make this, believe me you can too.

I have to admit I got a bit obsessed and made several out of different kinds of yarn to see how they would work. The thick yarn made some really fun, folk like hearts that would be great for trivets. The silk bamboo, made tiny heats that are very beautiful. So now that I have had a bit of crochet fun I have to go back to knitting my sons blanket. I have 2 1/2 skeins left. Give me strength, I am almost finished.

Have a great weekend.

Update II

Things continue to be crazy here at my house. Are you sick of me saying that yet? As I rarely have time to read blogs let alone post I thought I would just simply post pictures with a little info about them.

Max is depressed as usual. You see his Father has been away for a few days and we have had a baby in the house. This combination is just too much for him to handle.

Yes, this is the baby. My great niece has made a visit to Florida to meet her family. Is this not the absolute cutest face you have ever seen?

On to other news. Last weekend my oldest was in a conference swim meet. He won both his events and his relay team won both their races, and actually broke a meet record. Here he is being interviewed by Brooke Bennet the famous Olympian, who now works for our local news channel. Many of the high school swimmers were interviewed. No he doesn't usually dress like this after a swim meet, it was also the evening of the Homecoming Dance.

This is an update on the blanket I am knitting my son (see above photo). I am a few skeins past this point but this is my most recent photo. He likes it and it is not a bad knit, just a bit boring. And like I said in a previous post it is really important to him, so I knit on, and on, and on. He asked me why it was taking so long, so I added the number of stitches, multiplied by the number of rows per skein, and found out that by the end of this blanket I will have knit over 46,600 stitches. That is why it is taking so long!

This is a prayer shawl being made by my knitting group for one of our members. She is in Germany for special treatment for esophageal cancer. She is doing great, but we miss her. Everyone is knitting six inches. I think she will be touched.

Other news includes my next door neighbor. She is doing so well since her bone marrow transplant she may be able to come home early next week. That is at least a month early. She will still need to go back and forth to the hospital several times a week, but that is still a lot better than staying in an apartment an hour away from home.

My Mom seems a tiny bit better. I have arrived the last two days to catch her in the middle of therapy. She is walking a bit better and longer. Hopefully she will be coming home, with help, soon.

Hi to all my blogging friends. I miss you all and wish you a wonderful weekend.