THURSDAYS, THURSDAYS, YEA, YEA, YEA!!!

THURSDAYS, THURSDAYS, HA, HA, HA....
MMMMMM, I LOVE THURSDAYS!!!!

In case you're wondering...I love Turtles even more than Whoppers!!!
So therefore, when I sing about Thursdays; I'm singing to the tune of the Turtle song !

O.K. lots to catch up on, but the kids just walked in the door from school and I need to get ready!
Ready for what, you ask?
I'm getting picked up by one of my knitting friends,; I love my knitting friends.
She's taking me to Pick Up Sticks, because she has to pick up some yarn. She does; not me, no sirree Bob, I'm not getting yarn. Nope. Got enough yarn; especially since Connie and the gals at Pick Up Sticks presented me with this...


A BOUQUET OF YARN!!! ISN'T THAT A FABULOUS GIFT? AREN'T THEY WONDERFUL YARN SHOP OWNERS?!
i love knitters---they get me.
After we've visited the yarn shop (just visiting, because I'm not going there to buy yarn), KGB will be driving me down to join some other knitting friends, (whom I also love), for dinner.
Then...I get to go to KNITTING!!
It's been WEEKS since I've been knitting...I mean I've been knitting, but not out to knitting...I mean I've been out and knitting, but not out with my knitters, to knitting, on a Thursday evening!
I think I'll take some pictures and post them on....

You guessed it...FRIDAY!!! (her belly is sooooo soft.)

Rememberance Day

My children have impressed me so much this past weekend with their thoughtfulness and creativty. I share with you their rememberance days poems.

REMEMBER

Remember the soldiers who fought;

Take that as a thought.

Remember the soldiers who died,

And they did not lie.

Remember the nurses who fed,

And they put them to bed.

Remember the soldiers who tried,

And now you cry.

Remember the soldiers who came,

And when they left it rained.

Remember the nurses who saved;

They were brave.

So when you see a poppy...

You should copy.

H.B. - 9 YRS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remember in November

To all the people who gave there lives
To all the people who never saw the sun rise
To you and me
To all you can see
We must remember
In the month of November
Were poppies grow
I hope you know
That people died
And now they lie
So you and me
Could be free
And that is why we must remember
In the month of November
There was more to the war
There were more who were sore
All very sad
And some very mad
Because their family and friends
Were not there in the end
And that is why we all must remember
In the month of November

S.B. - 12 YRS

Yes, we will remember.

Thank-you guys, you make me proud.

Awwhhh Saturday Morning

Here it is.
We are a family of four.
My husband and I own a business that keeps him busy and out of the house a good, let's go with 6 1/2 days out of 7, and let's also go with that 5-6 of those are 12-14 hour days; so I'm here alone with the kids a lot.
We enjoy a comfortable lifestyle thanks to all his hard work and the children are still alive thanks to all of mine.
We are a family of four living in Canada!
Canada = Hockey; very few of us here can dispute that fact.
For the past four, five, six...years (honestly, who can keep track) there have been early hockey practices and games every Saturday and Sunday of every weekend from late September until early April. This was soon compounded by Dance classes also being scheduled on weekends so as to avoid too many evening activities after school (that just didn't work for our family---everybody got too cranky).
This year though, it's different.
Every body's graduated to big kid classes. Dance classes are held directly after school and we've earned the badge of daytime hockey, having paid the price of ungodly 6:00 (yes, A.M.) hockey!
I now look forward to Saturday mornings; this is all that I need for an enjoyable Saturday morning:

See? 'Zen and the art of RELAXATION' CD playing in the background, a book to read, a magazine to leaf through and COFFEE!! (Maybe works against the whole Zen Relaxation thing, but it's half decaf and the system seems to work) You'll also notice some knitting here today. Yup, I was knitting. You know why I was knitting?

Well, I started out just knitting, because, well, I'm a knitter! And then over the tranquil sounds of my CD came the lilting voices of my children as they prepared their breakfast...

"You took my egg! You selfish, little BRAT!!"

"Yea, well you're an IDIOT!!"

"You selfish, little BRAT!!!"

"Oowww, that hurt!"

"Chicken...!"

"No, I'm just going to eat my breakfast! STOOOOPPPP IIIITTTTT!!!!"

So, I'm knitting. This conversation and numerous variations along the same train of thought were repeated several times. I'm knitting, but becoming more and more distracted by the dialogue in the next room. (Thank God it was a tres, tres, tres, simple pattern!)

I consider putting the knitting down, getting up, walking into the kitchen, clearing a path to the eggs using whatever means necessary, picking up the eggs and TOSSING THE EGGS INTO THE GREEN BIN!!!

Then my plan kind of fell apart. Send them to their room? Scream and yell to add some kind of punishment jobs? Argue about who's in charge around here? Call their father? (Not!!)

It all seemed a little counter productive.

So I focus on my knitting! I repeat in my mind, "Knit, knit, knit....".

As the volume in the kitchen continues to rise, I realize I need reinforcement if I am to continue to remain calm and so I say out loud, "Knit, knit, knit..."

They worked it out (I guess), nobody was bleeding after breakfast; they got fed. Me?

I knit two rows!! Come on....they're long rows!

Moral of the story?

Kids will be kids. They can work it out. (Just like my brother and I did.---That sound you hear is my parents falling down with laughter!)

Most importantly though, I will do WHATEVER it takes to keep Saturday mornings the way I like them---even talk to myself and accept the consequences of brothers and sisters in the kitchen.

Anybody got a problem with that?!

It's Tuesday Already!!

Trust me when I say it's Tuesday! I 'uploaded' pictures with every intention to post on Monday; actually been planning it since Saturday, but, well here it is Tuesday and at least you get to read something without a political agenda.
Whatever will everyone talk about next week?
Anywho...
When last we spoke I was conveying the joy I felt at welcoming a new knitter to the flock.
I had started L with a wavy scarf pattern. I cast on for her, showed her the 'knit' stitch and then ventured into yarn overs; she grasped the whole concept immediately. She left my place Friday afternoon happily working on her first scarf.
Saturday morning she appeared at my door with this:

ONE EVENING!! She even had decided that she wasn't too fond of the lacy-ness of the yarn overs, and even though she had already charted the whole pattern out on an excel spread sheet (L loves Excel), ripped out her first project, picked up all (but one) of the stitches and just kept knitting!
Handed out treats to the Trick Or Treaters and kept on knitting!
Her tension is lovely. I especially admire the way that she is so forgiving of herself and how she understands that it can be ripped out, it all takes practice, and she just wants to keep going!
I asked her if she had EVER knit before. You know as a child, someone showed her once, for school? Anything?
Nope. Never.
I showed her on Friday how to knit and on Monday tells me that she had had a problem with her knitting on Sunday. I was upset that she hadn't called me right away!
No knitter should ever be left floundering; help is ALWAYS a phone call, short car ride or even a google search away.
This was her problem:

She ran out of yarn.

She finished her first ever knitting project (managing to pick up that lost stitch too) in 3 days! She made her husband drive around for the weekend errands so that she could knit in the car (wonder who showed her that trick? hehe) Her back was bothering her on Sunday so she layed flat on her back, propped her arm on a pillow, turned on her t.v. and knit!

She loves her scarf, she just cuddles and cuddles it.

I showed her how to cast off. She did it.

I showed her how to sew in her ends. She did it.

And while I wasn't looking, she went downstairs and wound another two balls of yarn to get started on the next scarf!

Now, should the next post be entitled:

"A Knitter is Born" or perhaps,

"Another One Bites the Dust"?

Before you decide you should probably be advised that today we went out and she bought 4 more hanks of yarn. I had to teach her about Dye Lots.

"Never miss an opportunity to teach somebody about knitting," words to live by.

This is great, I can talk about L and not have to go into what I did or did not buy!

Double Duty

There are a number of very important things that I want to share with you today...and since I wanted this sharing to start yesterday, but was interrupted by children wanting to use my laptop instead of the PC designated for their use because, (all together now with a whine)"It's too sloooowwww," today's post will have twice as much excitement as yesterday!

Well, I'm excited.

Yesterday I had an appointment in Cookstown. Cookstown has a wonderful quilting store, but I get into serious trouble whenever I go in there; so I decided to pace myself and NOT visit it this time around. Yay me! I did rationalize to my driver, however that since I was behaving myself and choosing not to go see the new fabrics, it is only fair that I stop at the yarn shop that we go by on the way home. We go by it if we take that route. We could get home via another route, an even a faster route, that has less traffic and lights, but that wouldn't make any sense, because there's no yarn shop when we go that way! We go to Pick Up Sticks. I had received some emails letting me know about some new yarns that they have available now...and of course some sweet sale items too.

Isn't that a lovely colourway? Isn't it a lovely artsy-fartsy attempt at a photo shoot? I LOVE Noro yarn. This is Silk Garden Light. It's wonderful. I want to knit it, but.....
I should finish a few other things first.
I am slowly starting to embrace the fact that I just may be a 'Process Knitter' and not so much a 'ResultsKnitter', or maybe just a SEVERE case of 'startitis' (severe actually barely scratches the surface)...
Moving on...
Here's where the wonderful Noro found itself next:

Feeling a definite affinity to the whole autumn, pumpkin theme.

This however, can't be normal. Is it so bad that we're just going to skip the whole knitting process and start to wear balls of yarn??!!

Looks good though doesn't it?

There are a number of knit bloggers (yes, I'm referring to the Harlot again) out there who also use (as in I took their idea) nature as a backdrop for their knitted showcasing.

Me? I take pictures of yarn that I buy.
As I mentioned earlier that there were sweet sales at Pick Up Sticks (umm, Noro wasn't part of the sale---hehe) and while we were in there, quite a few other customers dropped in as well. I was pretty focused on the Noro bins, but my driver (a NON-KNITTER) just kind of hung back, watching and listening. I firm up the details of my latest yarn desire (LYD?) and I turn to see my friend, who has been quoted when sent on previous yarn shop errands, "Can you say 'fish out of water'?", is standing holding 3 skeins of yarn. I smile and ask her if she's getting some ideas; I'm thinking that I'm going to be asked to make a little something for her.

Nope.

She says, (and I quote---again), "No, you're gonna teach me to knit. I want to make a scarf for me, my husband and my son and these are the colours I want to use."

I thought she might be teasing me, cruel as that might be, I just never imagined that she would be interested! She wasn't teasing! She wanted to make scarves! She picked the yarn 1) because she overheard another novice knitter talking about it and how much it sounded like a good starter project and 2) she liked the colour (RED) and 3) it was on sale. Didn't even pay attention to what type of yarn it was, where it came from, touching it was secondary to the colour (I'm working on that one). Do you know what she picked for her first project? What yarn is on sale at Pick Up Sticks? Where she has set the bar for her future yarn purchases?

MISTI ALPACA

She liked the colour!?!

IT'S MISTI ALPACA!!!!

On the way home ---with our purchases---the topic of how much yarn I already possess came up (yet again) and she just wondered, why? I know others often ask the same thing. And I can only reassure you that for all the yarn that is housed here; there is sooo much more....o.k. a fair amount....alright! Some...yarn that I choose not to bring home.

The question still remains:

Is there any real knitting going on?

Yes there is!!! (Apparently, I'm not the only one easily distracted from the whole knitting/producing knitwear/blog idea!---Have a look at Too Much Wool---like THAT can ever happen!?)

One more scarf started. On this perfectly fabulous Halloween we sat outside and cast on! I'll work on the same pattern as my friend! I'll use my Hand Maiden and she'll use her Misti Alpaca. I can help at whatever point she is and I'll get something done from the 'MotherStash'.

Speaking of mothers...(mine's good; see previous posts)...have a look at this blog, Passing Down Crazy.

You're not alone, you're not alone; we all have days. Weeks. Months. Gasp, years.

So that's my excitement, new Noro, new Knitter (she's gonna be gooooood!), beautiful Halloween day and night, real knitting to show you. Yup, big post! Sharing the fruits of my labour and sharing the love of my craft.

Life is Goooood.

Look There's More!! ***Second Post Today***

Remember these?

Again: "Small Fungus on Fallen Tree"

TaaDaa!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

We called mom tonight to wish her a Happy Birthday and she commented on my lovely nature pictures.
My mom also has a plethora (again, love that word) of plants and flowers and so I send her this stunning pink rose!

As promised, some more of my nature shots!

"Small Fungus On Fallen Tree"---lost it---will try again!

"Along The Forest's Floor"


"Puff Balls?"


"First Snowfall"

My children are not fond of this one; I think it captures the true angst of winter snowfall.

Happy Birthday mom.

I love you.