MIA

I can't believe it's been 10 whole days since my last post.  Wow!  Time sure has gotten away from me lately.  We've had a lot going on around here and the days haven't been nearly long enough to get it all done.  Three members of the family have been sick.  Big C came home from college so we could take him to the clinic.  Big Daddy and Small T have also been ill.  There have been a lot of doctor appointments in our schedule.  I've also been subbing at the school some and we've had a lot of school activities in the evenings.  Even though it's only March, you can tell that school is nearing the end of the year because the evening activities have really stepped up their pace.

I was lucky enough to have an overnight visit from my mom and my sister, Lea.  Lea is the next youngest under me.  I'm the 3rd kid, she's the 4th.  Lea and Mom were here to attend a funeral (along with the rest of us).  Our cousin passed away and even though our dads (who were brothers) had a lot of kids each, we really don't have any extended family.  So when there's a problem, we all band together, even when we haven't seen each other in ages, which was the case here.

We're still going for prom dress fittings and alterations.  This is Small T at the last appointment, which was the day my mom and sister were travelling to our house.  Small T looks so grown up here.  It saddens me a bit.  Every time I look at her here, I get very emotional and think that one day, she'll be getting ready for her wedding.  Where does the time go?  Just yesterday, she was that little girl sitting in her high chair.

My niece, Z, came for a visit and she tried her prom dress on while she was here.  She loves it, by the way.  It's a good thing that Prom is on April 5th for her, as we just found out she's going to have a baby and she's got a tummy pooch starting already.  She's had a lot of issues in the past few weeks and she's running my sister, Annie, ragged.  But things have finally settled down now and I think Z will be ok.  All it takes is a good OB/GYN to answer some questions and lay to rest a few fears that a young, newly pregnant, girl will have.

I blogged about teaching my sister, Annie, to knit.  It's a good thing I did.  I posted before that she had finished her first knitted block, which is shown above.

She's also finished a 2nd block (above) as well as a 3rd, which I don't have a photo of yet.  Knitting has become her stress reliever and now she'll have 9 more months of extra stress with her daughter pregnant.  Z's still in high school, goes to vo-tech to their CNA program, works a full time job, and was kicked out of her dad's house at Christmas.  The girl has some high stress going on and her mom is finally having to handle a lot of it herself.

Big Daddy's truck has had some health problems again.  After attending my cousin's funeral, Big Daddy and I were headed out of town to see my biological dad, who was in kidney failure, in a big hospital several hours away.  We ran over a piece of re-bar sticking out of the pavement on the highway and ended up spending 5 hours with Roadside Assistance in an attempt to get the spare tire out from under the bottom of the truck.  The mechanism that lowers the tire malfunctioned and in the end, it had to be beaten off the truck and then out of the tire.  It was a horrible 5 hours but the Roadside Assistance guy was the best!!!  He never gave up!  And there was also an older gentleman that stopped to help us and if it hadn't been for him, we'd have still be sitting there in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, outside the Tire Center (who refused to help us after telling Roadside Assistance to tow the truck there and and that they would help get it fixed ... and then we turned the tire center guy in to the Manager who couldn't believe that their guy would do that since it's against company policy....imagine that!!!)  In the end, with the help of these two guys (but not the tire center guy), we got back on the road at about 9:20 pm. My biological dad was still expecting us to show up.  So we did.

I have been half-heartedly working on my blocks for the Knit A Block A Week Challenge.  I finished Block 10, which is shown above.  It's made with Caron's Simply Soft yarn in Lavender Blue.

Here's a photo of the first 10 blocks I've made.  Seeing them all together gives me a little boost to keep on going with this challenge.  So...

I started Block 11 last night.  I'm using Caron's Simply Soft yarn in Off White.  I'm only a little bit behind with my blocks at this point.  I think I should already be done with Block 11 but I will try to get some time with it today.  I'm a little confused with how many blocks I need to do per month as my March calendar is a bit wonky as far as how many actual weeks there are.  Or maybe I'm just having a "duh" moment and can't figure it out.  Which is probably what is happening.

I finished the Earth Tones knitted throw on Friday.  I am so happy with how it turned out.  This is a Stash Buster project for me, so I'll be blogging about it separately as well as here.

I finally took the apple blossoms and pom poms I made back in January (blogged about here) and tied them to my "sticks".  Small T took the pom poms off and said it looks better.  This is a Stash Buster project too, so I will blog about it separately as well.

While sitting in the various hospitals, I have had plenty of time to look at magazines (which I love to do).  I found a lot of things that made me drool.  Take this "tree" for instance.  It's a Christmas themed tree.  Hard to believe, right?  But it's just gorgeous!!!

I love the little painted pine cones and the little fabric acorns and the stars are cute too!  I seriously want one of these in my own home!!!

Then I found this...it's simply captivating!  But what I really like about the photo is the piece hanging from the ceiling of her porch.  I think it's a dragon.  In fact, I'm sure of it.  I could see this hanging in my home somewhere even though my family would think I was crazy.

Next up is this quilt.  I just love it!!!  I was actually thinking of trying to crochet something similar.  Hmmm...the possibilities!

Yesterday evening, I sat down with my upstairs yarn stash and my basket of projects and got them all sorted out.  I wrote down my list of WIP's and also my list of things to do, and then I spent a bit of time updating my Crochet Mood Blanket.  I'm glad I have been keeping a journal because it sure came in handy in getting this updated.  Speaking of my journal, I'm on the 4th book so far.  Sounds good, right?  Well, it's kind of become my journal of everything.  I keep all my craft project notes, my daily journal entries, my recipes, etc. all in these books.  That's why I'm going through so many books so far.

And last, but not least, last night while we were watching TV and I was crocheting, Big Daddy made us some "surprise" milk shakes.  Mine was caramel.  Yum!  We seldom have this type of treat and it was GREAT!  Thanks Big Daddy!

So...there's a few bits and pieces of the last 10 days.  I hope you enjoyed it.  :)