Vacation

Could we be home already?  I feel like we just left.  Our vacation in Turks and Caicos was just wonderful.  The water was the most beautiful turquoise color, really it was too beautiful to capture in a picture but I tried.

 Some days the water was calm and gentle.  A few days it was so wavy that they wouldn't let the scuba divers and snorkelers go out.

 The sound of the surf is just magical.  Even right at the edge of the water you could see turquoise flecks, almost like someone had put coloring in and it was dispersing.

 My knitting made a quick trip to the beach for a photo opt, it didn't stay because I do not like sand in my yarn.  I did see one woman knitting a sock under an umbrella, I almost ponced on her but decided to let her relax in peace.

 Can you imagine taking a nap here?  Napping with a warm breeze and the sound of the surf!  I didn't but I would have loved to.

 My youngest found a sand dollar as we were walking in the water, we threw it way back into the water in hopes it would survive.

 The clouds rolled in every afternoon then cleared away about 5 pm.  On our last full day it was cloudy all day, but it was still so beautiful.  We all had a bit too much sun so it was a relief to not have to worry about getting sunburned.

The flowers were amazing, many that we have here in Florida but they looked so much nicer.  We have frosts that kill many of them off, and of course deer that think hibiscus are their favorite food.

My sons learned to scuba dive so they and my husband were busy about 4 hours a day.  Hmmmmm sounds nice to be left alone to walk on the beach and read doesn't it?  And the one thing I did was read, and read, and read.   All four books were gone in days.  I loved them all, Wildflower Hill, The Thirteenth Tale, Moloka'i and The Peach Keeper.  Each book was totally engrossing and if you love exquisitely  written literature, The Thirteenth Tale is for you.

Hope you had a wonderful week.

One, Two and Away I Go!

Spring Break is here!  I know that sounds funny because I live in sunny Florida, but we are going away.  While lots of you dear blogging friends come to Florida for a visit, we are going south.  To the Caribbean.  Ah....the islands, sun, sand and a bit of tropical flavor!

 I have painted my toe nails.

 I have gathered some books to read on the beach.

I have found some beautiful yarn that reminds me of the ocean to make a simple drop stitch shawl.

I am ready.

Have a great week, see you soon.

A Scarf and Update

 My first special order is complete.  Some University of Tennessee flower loveliness.

 My son's early departure from the swim meet and various Doctor appointments put me a couple days behind on this.

I so hope the lovely person requesting it has fun wearing her college colors in flower form.

As for my son I thank you all so much for your kind thoughts and concern.  Sprained ankle number one is still healing and has a bit of range of motion restrictions.  In comes Mom the therapist to try and save the day, much to her son's total dismay.  He hates it when I have to work on him non stop.  I try to tell how lucky he has to have me...... well we will remember he sent my flowers in his more grouchy moments.

Ankle number two has a Grade II sprain and needs rest, rest and more rest.  Just about when I get number one under control, number two will be ready for me to go to town on.  I can just envision the lovely time I am about to have with my darling boy, who hates to be injured.  After I get more range and all the swelling goes down we get to start strength training!!!  At least at this point nothing appears to be torn or broken, so there is good news.

Have a wonderful day!

The Good and Bad

 This has been an interesting weekend.  I took off Thursday to Orlando to watch my son in a very important swim meet.  I was so excited as I was going to be spending time alone in a hotel room, that is right alone!  I haven't done that since before my kids were born.  I had a lovely little suite at the hotel where all the swimmers were staying.  I was on swim duty, watching the meet, transporting kids, picking up lunch, etc.  My husband was going to travel back and forth to finals, so I was in charge of swimmer related stuff.  Isn't my little suite so cute!  Please note basket filled with crochet on the table.

 I was so excited to just spend some time alone, well that is any minute I was not being a swim Mom.

Here is what happened. One of my sons very close friend did not have a place to stay so he spent every waking moment with his team and every sleeping moment on my pull out sofa.  We were room mates.

 My son did not swim well at all as he is still not over his right ankle injury.  He went into this meet with a terrible attitude and frankly it showed, but is understandable considering how much quality training time he lost.

 Here is a picture of my boy stretching before the 400 IM prelims.  Sitting in the chair is Olympian Peter Vanderkaay who was in the lane next to my son.  He trains at the University of Florida with Ryan Loche (who was also at the meet).  Believe me Peter Vanderkaay cleaned my son's clock!

Not doing well made the meet longer and much less exciting for both of us.

 What I got to work on when I did have a few minutes of down time, and while waiting for my son to swim was my very first special order.  A flower scarf in the University of Tennessee colors, white and this interesting orange cotton yarn.  I blew up this picture sent to me by the woman requesting the scarf and matched the colors as best as I could.  They look like a perfect match with better lighting.  I had several people ask me what I was doing at the meet, I think they were bored waiting for their kids to swim.

 When I was trying to be quiet at  night time before bed, (so I did not disturb my room mate) I was able to look through this amazing Japanese crochet magazine sent to me by the very lovely and thoughtful Kathy B.  Kathy if you only knew how happy you have made me.  This magazine is just filled with crochet loveliness.  So sorry that Kathy's nephew bought it for her thinking it was a knitting magazine.  Kathy doesn't crochet so win, win, win for me!  Thank you Kathy for your thoughtfulness, aren't blogger's just the nicest people in the world?

So last night my son came up to my room with a buddy just before curfew.  Hugs and a bit of chatting and off he went.  Seven minutes later, frankly not even enough time to get my crochet out there was a knock at the door.  One of my son's team mates was at the door.  "Hi Mrs M, there has been an accident, Dave twisted his ankle walking down the stairs, it is pretty bad." Note, swimmers are generally not safe on land.  Okay rush down 5 flights of stairs to see my son pale, ice on what was his good ankle, the coach even paler and a baseball size lump on the outside of his ankle.  

Long story short, they packed up my son, I packed up myself and we headed home at 9:30 at night.  He is on crutches, we are scheduled for x-rays on both ankles tomorrow and heading off to see a very good Orthopedic Doctor/friend on Tuesday.

Please keep us in your thoughts. Me to get through this and my son and husband to have patience.

On a side note next time I am in Orlando and I am not on duty I would love to meet up with you Dee.

Hope your weekend was not as injury prone as ours.

I Can't Count....

All is not perfectly rosy here in crochet land.  I am working on my crochet sweater/vest/what ever it is going to turn out to be project.  And after really, and I mean really looking at the pattern I have decided I have a bit of a counting issue.  You see I was crocheting away thinking I had 112 squares total to make.  After much deliberation  I decide to make the back a bit larger so that added 8 squares, 120 total.  Great!

 I have 40 completed squares so I am good to go, right?  Hmm......something still seems a bit off.  Actually I think I am a bit off as I was not calculating for my size at all.  I am not petite, actually I am quite tall.  And even if I am not  big chested I have broad shoulders.  Time for more calculations I think.

 Lets take a second to gaze at the beautiful tulips on my table because I think my blood pressure is about to seriously rise.

 The back should have 45 squares, and each side 54 which is a whopping total of 153.  153!!!!!  That is a big difference from 120, really what was I thinking?

Let's all take a deep breath, and maybe a few more.

The question is do I have enough yarn?  Remember I have had to double the yarn to get the right gauge......  This will either be a brilliant project or a colossal waste of time.  I guess we will see what happens.

By the way Max and I are totally safe from Mr or Mrs Alligator, you don't need to worry.  I would never let Max be the alligator's lunch.

I will be at my son's swim meet this weekend so no blogging for me.  If you have some spare positive thoughts, could you send them his way?  Thanks, and I hope you all have a safe and beautiful weekend.

My New Friend

Look who Max and I saw on our walk this morning.  This alligator is in the pond area right behind my house and down the street about 25 yards.  He kept shutting his eyes when I took his picture.  I believe Mr or Mrs Alligator is approximately 6 to 7 feet long.  Way too big for this little pond.  We have had a very dry Spring so the ponds here dry up so quickly.  The rainy season doesn't start for several months, so I bet my new friend will move to deeper water very soon.  The fun of living in Florida is that there are large reptiles living here right under your nose.  Max and I kept a great distance and we were on higher ground, but just the same I will be watching for my new friend in my backyard.

Hope you are having a fun Tuesday.

A Quiet Morning, Until........

 It was a beautiful quiet morning at my house.  The air was still, the sun was just trying to peek out of the clouds.

 The boys were still asleep due to the time change, well except for this one.

 There was some puttering to be done on the lanai, when............

 What is this?  The pool is going on. Instant alert!

 This is very serious business at our house.

 Max barks, and barks.

 He bites the water and barks some more.

 He runs around the pool until the bubbles go away.

 Mission accomplished!!!

 

Now complete and utter exhaustion!

Thanks for all my lovely comments on my last post. Happy Sunday!

Friday

Just to get you a bit up to speed on the happenings or lack of happenings at my end of blog land.

 In the mail today I received these fun crochet books from Amazon.  I looked, and looked and looked in my area for Crochet Bouquet and couldn't find it so had to order it.  I usually try to visit my local bookstore or yarn store for books, but as I said they didn't have it.  So while I was ordering these other two popped up and well, they were on sale, can you blame me?  I have just taken a quick peek but so far I am really impressed with 200 Crochet Flowers, Embellishments and Trims.

 My MIL is here visiting this week.  She is 93 1/2 and pretty amazing.  I took her to Joann's for some yarn on Monday and she is knitting up a scarf.  I taught her how to knit when she was 85.  I have had some time to sit and chat with her so I am working on my crochet sweater/vest/whatever it turns out to be project.  16 squares completed and 96 to go.....that is if I have enough yarn.

Each square is 3 inches wide.  You can tell this is going to be a long project.  I am going to try and just look at the new books without letting all those fun flowers grab my attention.  I will not crochet a new flower, I will not crochet a new flower.  Hurry someone hide all my cotton yarn!

Hope your week was fabulous and that your weekend is even better.

Happy Monday

 Happy Monday!  Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.  I got lots and lots done around my house and a bit of crochet, too.

 Five Flower scarves are blocked, and boxed up ready for the trip to my sister.  They are made from 100% cotton and are so fun for spring and summer.

I made one of these last year for myself and I have to say I wear it more than most of my knit or crochet items.  When I wear it people stop me and ask where I bought it, which is a compliment and an insult all at the same time, if you know what I mean.  Last year when wearing it at a fancy smancy mall near me I had four people stop me, a record.  So hopefully someone out in Etsy land will like them, too.

You know I love to keep track of my finished projects, so here we go.  The two crochet baskets will count as one finished project and two scarves will count as one.  So that puts me at 13 1/2 finished projects for the year so far.

 Until I know if more flower scarves are needed I thought I would try and work on this lovely sweater from Interweave Crochet Winter issue.  I spent yesterday afternoon making swatch, after swatch, after swatch, and not getting it right.

This yarn is so thin it actually is weaving thread.  I don't think I have ever used yarn this thin.  It reminds me of dental floss.  Super fine yarn is apparently not my thing.  I had to put on my reading glasses because I couldn't see where to insert my hook.

In order to get gauge I had to double the yarn and go up two hook sizes.  This of course creates the dilemma of running out of yarn pretty quickly.  So I am going to experiment, this could be a major bust!  I am going to alternate square colors so I use an even amounts of yarn.  I am going to start at the back and work out on both sides equally.  And I am going to make it into a vest instead of a sweater to save on yarn.

I think because the colors are somewhat muted that alternating the squares will not make it too busy.  I actually drew out the pattern to see how it would look.  It is a giant rectangle with openings for the arms, very similar to the blue vest I recently finished.  This could be a colossal disaster or the work of a genius, only time will tell.  I think what will happen is it will be fantastic and then the styles will drastically change to super tight, cropped sweaters.  Well too bad, I am going to wear it anyway.  That is if I don't run out of yarn first.

A Little This and That

First I'd like to thank you all for your insightful comments on my Blogging post.  I just wanted to make myself clear that I was not asking for more comments, just stating that I think it a bit odd when people don't comment back on your blog after you have repeatedly commented on theirs.  I think a simple, "Hello, or thanks for you comments," shouldn't take up too much time.  I don't think you have to comment on every post your friends write, no one has that much time, and I really appreciate all of you and the time you take to visit me on this little blog.  I loved reading your comments, bloggers are an amazing group, kind and so full of wisdom.

 We haven't had a picture of Max lately, and by the looks of the photo above he was not having any part of the camera.  He is sensitive to the paparazzi,  so I had to be patient and take probably another 20 pictures before he would look at me.  And by the look he is giving me in this picture he was not that happy with my camera wielding behavior.

 Max has a bad right hip.  When he was a puppy I could tell by his walk that his pelvis wasn't bearing weight evenly.  He wiggled a bit too much on one side.  Sure enough hip dysplagia was the diagnosis.  We watch him carefully and give him pain medicine when needed.  His hip is bothering him again after playing a little ball in the backyard with my husband, it troubles him to get up and down.  He actually slept by my feet last night on the bed, so he must have been hurting.  Even dogs need their Mom's when they are not feeling great.

 This week has been all about gardening and I am paying the price today with a sore neck and back.  I tamed the front of my house and planted marigolds and petunias in a boarder.  The marigolds are to keep the deer away, well today's photo should just be of the marigolds because the deer ate all my petunia's last night and left the marigolds alone.

 The back of the house has been cut back, weeded, weeded again, planted with annuals that are not showing up in this photo for some reason.  28 bags of stones have been added, (notice sore back above). 

 The azalea's are in full bloom, such an amazing color.

 Look at this sweet iris, such a soft color.

 A basket full of beautiful cotton yarn to make more crochet flower scarves for the Etsy shop.

Love this latest flower version I came up with while watching American Idol this week.  I'm not sure if you are watching this year or not, but I think the singers that have been picked are pretty talented.  Some years you just can't believe that some of those people made it in, but this year even if I don't like someones voice I can see why others like it.

So how was your week?  Did you get a lot done?  What are your plans for the weekend?  Hope you find some time for yourself.