He's Back!

My little patient is back visiting us for almost 9 days.  For those of you who don't know me well I am an Occupational Therapist, I work with special needs children.  This little buddy of mine has stayed with me before and now this time it is a long visit.  He is in Medical Foster Care, and that family had to take another child north for a week to stay with his new adoptive family.  They wanted to stay near by in case they were needed, so they decided to take a bit of a vacation with the two little girls they adopted several years ago.   We got approval for my little one to come back and stay with me, where he is comfortable and happy. 

While I am having a great time with playing and chatting, and bath time and bottles, I have to tell you I am exhausted!  Lord these little ones are a lot of work.  You forget just how much time and attention they need.  This must be why you have them while you are young, not an old lady of 48!  Of course my little buddy thinks he has landed at Disney Land.  We play, and play, and play.  And his new favorite friend is, "Doggie".  Yes that is his new word.

We all know my Max is the best, but he did not listen when I read out of the Golden Retriever manual that they are supposed to like children.  My boy simply does not like kids, girls or boys, young or old it doesn't matter.  Now he loves his own brothers, even their friends he has known his whole life get a good growl now and then.  He will never snap, just a slight warning then he removes himself from the situation.  Now that my oldest sons friends are through with puberty he is beginning to acknowledge they exist, he is funny that way. 

I have to tell you how proud of Max I am.  Last time my buddy was here he was not moving all that much.  We were working on sitting up and pivoting on his belly.  Max could stay clear of him without any problem at all.  Well let me just tell you progress is being made in the movement area of my buddy's development.  He can now get up on his hands and knees and crawl.  It is slow and methodical but he can do it, and you know where he goes, right?  You bet, right over to Max.

Bless my furry boy, he lets that child touch him and grab his fur.  He lets him pull up to kneeling on him, and listens to his squeals of laughter.  Of course I am right there the whole time letting Max know I am proud of his patience and understanding.  He knows I won't let that baby hurt him, he just lays there still as can be.  Dogs are amazing aren't they?  They know when a baby is delayed and has special needs, and they make an exception for that child. 

So Max and I are very busy.  We are taking care of the little one together.  Well that is until exhaustion takes over and Max has to go and rest. On the crochet front....nothing happening there.  Knitting, what is that?  Baby time, it is all about baby time right now.

A winner x 2

I think 2013 just might be my lucky year.  I have won two give-aways and I couldn't be more thrilled.  And guess what?  They both arrived on the same day.  One from Spain and one from my favorite state of Wisconsin.  I feel like it is Christmas or my birthday, well actually this is a lot more special as I don't usually get presents for my birthday.  I bet you are as excited as me.  Want to have a look? I am warning you a picture laden, very happy post is to follow.

Let me introduce you to Sue of Mr. Micawber's Recipe for Happiness, if you have not met already.  Sue's blog is filled with the beauty of Wisconsin, beautiful projects and ideas for healthier living.  I am  just so thrilled to know her.  She was giving away this copy of Interweave Crochet, why do you ask is she giving away a magazine?  Not only is Sue amazing, her writing a joy to read, and her pictures beautiful, she is also the creator of the pattern on the cover of Interweave Crochet. 

This gorgeous scarf is called the Ghost Cone Scarf and frankly it is amazing.   Is there a word to describe something that is more than gorgeous?  Maybe ravishing or stunning, take your pick and that is what this scarf is.  

Inside the magazine is an even better picture if that is even possible.  Run as fast as you can to your nearest store to buy this Winter 2013 issue, it is something you will savor I promise you.

Sue also included yummy chocolate yarn.  She was including real chocolate but since I can not eat sugar she came up with this idea, I love it.  Chocolates taste good going in but then they are gone, chocolate yarn can last forever. 

 Sue also included a beautiful bracelet made from the broomstick pattern found in the scarf.  It is so beautiful.

And it fits perfectly.  Thanks so much Sue for your generosity.  Please go visit Sue and give her a big congratulations for her amazing cover on Interweave Crochet.

This wonderful package traveled all the way from Spain to my doorstep.

Another introduction is in order, meet Amanda of Crafty in the Med.  Amanda has a wonderful blog full of her life in Spain.   She is a teacher, Mother and crafter, what more could you ask for?  Amanda makes wonderful creations and takes us along her life journey in Spain, her blog is fascinating please go pay her a visit. 

Included in my fun package were so many great craft items.  There is floss and fun ribbons.  There are pin backs and little elephant charms.  

This wonderful magnet.

 

And look at this!  Amanda made this  wonderful basket.  It is the color of the sea, with beautiful opalescent stones inside.  The outside has this black trim with black beads.  It is so big and perfect, just the right size to hold yarn and a project.

And look what else was in my package, yarn, yarn and more yarn.  Beautiful self striping sock yarn and beautiful black yarn.  Oh my goodness I am so excited!  Yarn is really the best gift ever is it not? 

Amanda you have spoiled me rotten, and I am so happy!!!! Okay I know I have been using a lot of explanation points but how else can I show you how thrilled I am.  Bloggers are the best.  Where else does someone you have never met, take the time to send you something so special?  Taci sent me that fantastic sheep, by the way the pattern is up on her blog now, go and take a peek.  Sue and Amanda you are the best, I am sending you both a million thank yous for your kindness and generosity.

Happy Friday everyone, I know I am having a great one.

Hearts

I'm thinking about hearts.  What are you thinking about?

A sheep in the mail

Blogging friends are the best.  I have said it before and I will say it again, blogging friends are the best.  If you have not met Taci of TACIStudio let me introduce you.  She is gorgeous, and lovely, and so, so thoughtful.  And boy can she knit and crochet!  You need to pay her a visit to see her beautiful family and her beautiful creations, one of which I am the proud recipient of.  Are you as excited as I am to see what she sent?

You see in blog land people really do get to know you.  While out to lunch with a few blogging friends (Teresa, Gracie, and Betsy), Taci showed them the amazing sheep she had created.  After some discussion my name came up because I love sheep.  Taci also knows that I love sheep, so she made this special sheep just for me.  

 

I find it amazing that people I have  grown to care about, were talking about my sheep love, while out to lunch about 2,000 miles away from me.   

Maybe it is because every time they post pictures of their fun time together, I am jealous they are all able to get together and meet in person and frankly tell them this.  Or maybe they just know that I love sheep. 

Either way this adorable sheep made it to my mailbox yesterday.  I was so excited to open it up, and Taci let me tell you that it is even better in person!  I am so thrilled and touched that you would take the time to make this for me.   A thousand thank yous are being sent your way Taci. I will cherish this sheep forever.  Very soon Taci will be posting the pattern for this adorable sheep on her blog. so keep an eye on her blog and you can make one too, I know I will.

Now that I have my own table to work on in my bedroom.  I decided to make a little cush for my tush.  Even though this tush of mine has been expanding of late, I still wanted a bit of a buffer when sitting down. 

I used the remnants from the ripple blanket I am making for my family room.  Apparently my whole house is dark reds, greens and chocolate brown.  I must have been seriously into those colors when I decorated this house.  These colors go well with this stool for my bedroom/work table.

That is finished project number four for me, 40 yards of yarn used.  My total so far is 1,120 yards of  yarn used for finished projects.

Have a great day.

Friday Fumblings

Thank you all for your Max well wishes.  After visiting the vet and giving him medication, rice and chicken, (he thought he had died and gone to Heaven) he actually had a reverse in his problem if you know what I mean.  The poor boy could not go to the bathroom, it became a constant source of conversation here.  Did he?  Not yet?  Walk after walk, lots of time outside smelling around and nothing.  Finally when I was about to call the vet again he had success!  So he is feeling quite proud of himself and we are relieved.  He was feeling so great today he had a nice bark at the pool when it turned on for the morning.

I am fumbling around today, not getting much done.  I had a migraine last night and my head is foggy today.  I am so lucky as my migraines do not really hurt that much anymore, when I was younger the pain was unbearable.  Now I just get the visual disturbance, which gradually clears up and I am just left being tired, foggy and off balance.  Today it feel like the world is moving at a faster pace than my brain can keep up with.  I ran a quick errand and realized that I should not be driving so I came home right away.  Lucky for me my patients canceled today so I did not have to work.  So I plan on being cozy in my house and spending the day trying to get caught up on paperwork.  

I am not sure needle felting is on the agenda today, foggy + tired = needles poking my fingers, maybe I will try tomorrow.  For now I think I will work on my ripple blanket.  This blanket is for my family room.  I am not in love with the colors, but it will fit right in on my brown leather sofa.  I have cherry wood floors and a reddish rug with lots of green in it.  My family room is homey and dark, so the blanket works.  But I have to admit that crocheting with these colors is a drag...... the colors in my family room make for a warm cozy room, but are not fun to work with. I envy all the bright colored blankets I see in blog land, they are so fun, but just don't fit in my house.  So drab will have to work for now.  I am crocheting nine rows before I change colors.  Each color will be used three times, the drab beige will be used four.  This is made from Plymouth Encore yarn.  This yarn is not something I am in love with but very cost effective for a blanket, especially when purchased at 25% off.

I am off for now, my fingers and brain do not seem to be connecting at the same speed so typing is very interesting right now.

Hope you all have a fantastic Friday and I hope you find time to do something you really love.

Max and more

 I had the day off work yesterday.  The family  I work with on Mondays and Wednesdays has the flu.  After visiting there last Monday they all got ill but I got lucky because  I seem fine so far, thank goodness.   But my beautiful boy isn't feeling too well.  So instead of working, I was visiting the vet with Max.  He has a bit of a stomach bug.  Lots of washing of his furry behind has been occurring these past few days if you know what I mean. 

 After a very exciting visit to the vet (he loves her), we spent some time together.  Max took a nap on my bed as I tried to do more needle felting.

 I had gathered these acorns a few days ago on one of our walks, so I decided to felt little acorns to put inside them.  Once again an easy shape, but that is the way you start, easy.

Today after work I have tried some hearts.  Now these are not so easy, I seem to be having a hard time getting it right.  It is a fun learning process, but like most things in life I would like to be proficient at this right away. 

 
I love mixing the colors, like painting with wool.

It is hard to imagine the hearts started like this, beautiful wool fiber.

About a week ago I had my husband help me to bring my sewing table downstairs.  Sewing table?  Yes I know you all seem surprised.  I have had this for years.  I used to have my sewing machine set up in an extra room we had upstairs.  My husband took over the room years ago to exercise in.  It is hard to believe in my big house there is not a special place for me, so I decided to bring this down, move a chair and put it in my bedroom.  It folds up nicely when not in use and I can keep it up when working on a project.  So this is the space I am using to needle felt, not my own studio, but my own table, and that is as good as it is going to get for now. 

Hope you are having a great week.

Needle Felting

If you have been reading Mereknits for any length of time you know I have a bit of a yarn problem.  I am a certified yarn-a-holic.  I have confessed this before so this should not come as a surprise.  If it has anything to do with yarn then count me in.  While visiting Rhinebeck with my sister Claudia several years ago, we came came across kits to make yarn with a drop spindle.  I have kept the kit, but never learned how to use the roving to make the yarn.  I  come across it now and again and look at that fluffy bunch of wool and wonder when I will take the time to learn.  I had also bought a needle felting kit that has gone unused for years.  It had the foam pad, four needles and some basic directions.  I may never learn how to make yarn because I just remembered I had both, so I was all set to try something new without going out and purchasing a thing.

I have been interested in needle felting for some time.  I pin lots of felted items on Pinterest.  I am fascinated at how people create such beauty from wool.  They create three dimensional objects from wool fluff, sculpting and painting using wool.  So this weekend I gave it a try.  Remember I am new, new, new to this, but I'll tell you I had fun trying to figure it out.  I watched some videos and read some information, but mostly I played around.  I decided to start with a simple shape and go from there.  What to see?  

Acorns!

 I cut up some beautiful pine cones I found on a walk with Max and there you have it.  I am hoping to spend more time today trying to fine tune my technique.  It just so happens that my LYS is visited by lots of spinners, so there are many options for beautiful colors of roving, almost at my back door.  I am very excited, the possibilities are endless, that is when I get much, much better at this.  Hooray a new way to work with wool.

I finished my friend Amy's scarf from the yarn of my friend Finula, who passed away this past Autumn.  I have washed it and now it is ready to be shipped to New York so Amy can have something that  Finula once had.  I am not in love with this Noro Yuzen yarn, I find it very scratchy and once again Noro just joins yarn wherever without consideration to the color palate being used, which can be very frustrating.  But it is the thought behind this knitted item, not necesarily about the yarn used for it. 

I hope she likes it. That is three finished projects for me, with my yarn total at 1,060 yards used so far in 2013.  I am crocheting up a ripple blanket that is consuming a lot of my knitting/crochet time.  It may be a bit before that project can be counted.  

Happy Sunday.

Florida is all mixed up!

January is usually the  time of nice cool weather in Florida.  We get a reprieve from the intense heat which is great if you live here, but not so great if you are visiting.  We usually have several frosts, just enough cold to kill everything and make it brown.  Not this year, Florida is all mixed up.  Yesterday we had a record high of 85 degrees.  Now I know I should not complain to all of you in the bitter cold and snow, keep in mind I know I live here where it is warm.  You see we need a change in season and temperature.   I want to put on jeans and a sweater, or even a pair of boots.  I'd like to put my flip flops away, even for a few days.  

We have leaves still changing color and falling from the trees.  This usually happens in December.  Our color is not vibrant like you see in the north, we have lots of browns and golds, with a hint of red here and there.

There are leaves still clinging to branches as new buds are appearing on the same branch.

There is a hint of red on the maple trees as the buds are making the transition into bright green leave clusters.  This usually happens in February, not the second week of January.

My petunias are still blooming, usually they are a shriveled mess by now.  I even saw one of my azaleas had a few blooms on it.  I went outside to my back porch area this morning after work and saw everything covered in green pollen, wow, it is really early for all the oak trees to be blooming.  Now I have to schedule time to clean up all the furniture, bummer.

Even Max likes it when it is cool out, after all he has his winter coat on.

Is it mixed up where you live?

Number 2

I promise not to go all crazy posting only finished projects, because you see after the scarf I am making for my friend, it will be a long, long time before there is another finished project.  So for now I am going to bask in the glory of finished project number 2.

Number two is the same pattern as number 1, just a lot longer.  I was going to make sleeves, but when I attempted them I did not like how the join was looking, so I ripped it out and decided to go for length instead. 

At the underarms I switched to a larger needle to make it close better in front.  From looking at the top photo it looks like the joke is on me, but when trying it on it really did close more.  I found this  very fun pin in my button box.  I believe it was a clearance item at Joann's years ago.  

The pin is fun because I can use it  all sorts of ways.  Sort of like a shawl pin, buttons are so permanent.  I think I like this sweater, but not near as much as Number 1.  It's lovely and all (and I am not looking for compliments here) it is just a bit 70's to me.  Maybe it is the length, maybe it is the way the yarn changes, maybe it is all in my head.  You know one of my greatest fears is someone posting me on What Not To Crochet.  Have you seen that blog, it is a riot, well that is if your crocheted item is not posted on it.  I have this fear, (oh no here we go again, you have heard it all before) that sometimes the things I make are, well for lack of a better word....tacky.  Not everything I make that is for sure, but some things....well it is there somewhere in the back of my head nagging me, tacky, tacky, tacky.  So I am just going to push that thought away and go with this 

sweater/vest/longer cardi type of thingy.

The button up close and blurry, but you get the idea.  The yarn is Universal Yarn Classic Shades, I forgot to write down the color.  I used a whopping 580 yards on this baby, so my total for 2013 is 960 yards so far.  I think this is very fun keeping track of finished projects and the yarn used to make them.  I don't want you to think that all I do is sit home and crochet, although that sounds ideal doesn't it?  I had four whole days off in a row last week, Thursday through Sunday and I tried to make the most of it.  Lots of paperwork to complete, house cleaning to do but also time to crochet.  Now it is back to reality.  No more sleeping in, taking my time in the morning and sitting down with a hook in my hand at random hours of the day, but those days were glorious that is for sure.

Hope your transition back to reality is smooth, and hope you are finding time to do something you love, even if it is only for a few minutes.

Creating for yourself

I am all about creating gifts for others.  I love to knit and crochet to make special presents for my friends and family.  When I was new to the land of yarn I felt I had to justify yarn purchases by giving the end product to someone else.  Not any more I tell you.  I have to admit it took me a while to get to this place, I used to spend so much time, money and energy on only gifts.  Yes there was a rare thing for myself, but creating for others was my main goal.  I felt it allowed me to buy more expensive yarn because my friends and family deserved the best.  Why did I feel like I did not deserve as nice of yarn as everyone else?  After years of creating, and not seeing the people I love really use the items I made, I decided to focus more on myself, and to be okay with that.  

I got reminded of this yesterday as my MIL was visiting for the afternoon and evening.  She just came down form Milwaukee a few days ago.  She is staying with my SIL as we have stairs that are just too hard for her to get up and down.  She is 94 and frankly the most amazing person.  I have written about her in the past, I am blessed to have her in my life.  She is now suffering from short term memory loss, bless her.  She repeats the same things 4, 5, 19 times and asks with the same sense of urgency and passion.  She kept asking me what I was making and who it was for.  Well after you answer, me, me, me, 19 times it gets to sound a bit selfish, but it is not.  Who better to create for than myself.  I can pick the perfect color, weight of yarn, style of pattern and hopefully fit.  I can adjust the pattern to my liking and rip the whole thing out if it doesn't work. 

I deserve it.

So with that in mind I would like to show you my first finished project of the year.  The chevron crochet sweater I discussed previously.  I am really not a fan of chevron so I'd like to rename it the gentle ripple sweater, but since I did not write the pattern I can't do that.  I had just under 400 yards of yarn to make this sweater, so I knew it would be more like a shrug or vest.  I just kind of went with it until I ran out of yarn.  I already had the button and the yarn, so I didn't even have to run to the store for supplies.

  It fits snugly even though I went up a hook size and did the medium pattern.  I really love it.  It is made from my favorite Cascade Eco Duo yarn that I am in love with.  So in typical Meredith fashion I have started on number two with Universal Yarn Classic Shades, a beautiful cost effective yarn in a billion beautiful shades.  This one I am changing, well I always do so you should not be surprised.  I am adding sleeves like the pattern, but I am also increasing the hook size right after making the under arms, I want the bottom portion of the sweater to look more lace like and close more in the front.  We'll see how it turns out, and because it is for me, I can take my time and just roll with it.  I have decided that while counting my completed projects for the year I am also going to try to count up the yards of yarn I use up for these completed projects.  It might be a fun number to keep track of, so right now I am at 380 yards.  Not bad for January 6.

 Who is this spying on his Mother while she is taking a picture of a sweater hanging from a tree like a crazy person?