2018 in Review

2018 was clearly not my best year for blogging. I did manage to do a few interesting things since my last post in July though, so here are the highlights:

In late July my daughter Jess moved out to OR in hopes of finding a decent job in a friendly city and state. Her instincts were good: she was able to set up a couple of job interviews within 2 weeks of arriving in Oregon, and had a good job offer before the end of August.

In early August Dan and I flew out to Oregon to stay with Mom and join her and all of my siblings, their spouses, and most of the grandkids (everyone except my oldest who couldn't get away from work) to spread Dad's ashes. It was a good weekend spent together and sharing memories.

I was able to take a knitting cruise on a schooner (!!!), the J&E Riggin, out of  Rockland, ME, along with 2 knitting buddies, Iris and Elizabeth. It was a 4-day cruise along the coast of Maine, great food and company, a little bit of knitting instruction (socks), and a great way to really get away. The knitting instruction was for socks without a pattern. I only managed to knit most of one sock, and fear I haven't written down what I did for that sock in order to knit the second one in the same size. Hopefully when I finally get around to finishing the pair I'll be able to read my knitting well enough to make a reasonably well-matched pair.

While I was cruising, my daughter Jess and son Jeff flew out to CT and they, along with Dan, drove my car out to Oregon for Jess to have. Jeff had limited time available to help and wanted to be back in CO for his first wedding anniversary, so they drove straight through from CT to Cheyenne, WY in about 30 hours in order to get him back home in time.

In September Dan and I took a vacation to Stowe, VT at the Trapp Family Lodge. Wonderful, relaxing week and great hiking.

Started a new job as part-time office manager at a Synagogue office and had to leave it due to a flare-up of tennis elbow (from the computer work).

Dan and I flew out to OR for Thanksgiving this year. First time I've had Thanksgiving dinner with my side of the family in over 20 years!

Managed to do a little knitting anyway (my arms are recovering, and I'm diligently doing my stretches and exercised from physical therapy) and finished a cowl and continue to work on my cardigan. The pattern is called Conic, designed by Lori Versaci, and turned out great! The cardigan I'm working on, Pour Moi, is also by Lori Versaci. The back is finished and I'm working on the left front. As my arms improve I'm hoping to get more knitting done so I can actually wear the cardigan this winter.

To finish out the year, I sang in Christmas concerts, had 2 of three kids home for holidays, and am looking forward to a busy 2019 finishing more knitting, sewing, and quilting projects!

Shelley in CT

Wedding Countdown

T - 11 days

Suits and dresses fit, are hemmed or altered, shoes are ready, and hopefully we haven't forgotten anything terribly important.

I'm still madly knitting away on the bride's shawl. I had hoped to have it finished by the end of July, but that didn't happen. Sadly, my tennis elbow (in both arms!) flared up this summer and I have been very conservative with what I'm willing to do with my arms. I'm icing every day, and the knitting doesn't appear to be making things worse, thank goodness! Of course, my tendency to procrastinate didn't help either... Nothing like a looming deadline to inspire progress.

Yesterday I put the shawl on a string so I could stretch it out and steam block and check the size. 

I've got about 4-5 inches more knitting to get to the goal length. One more lace repeat on the back panel and then a row of lace leaves for the bottom edge and an inch or so of seed stitch to finish it off. I think it's doable. Knit knit knit!!! Last night I finished off th 3rd skein. Hopefully tonight I can join the 4th skein and get the rest of this thing knitted so I can block over the weekend before we leave for Colorado. 

T - 10 days

Finished the knitting. Didn't go with the seed stitch border. In part because it really didn't stretch enough, and in part because I was running out of yarn  here's what I had left when I was done. 

Finished knitting and quickie steam blocking at about 2 am, the morning we were leaving for Colorado.  Got at least 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready to go the the airport. 

T - 6 days

Bought some glass-headed pins (I needed more anyway) at a lovely local quilt shop in Estes Park near our resort (we were taking a few days before the wedding weekend, with my Mom and her sister, up in Estes Park, CO to try to relax and acclimate a bit to the altitude) Figured I could do a better blocking on the bed and let the shawl cool more so the shawl will hold its shape.

T - 2 days

Down in Boulder now for the wedding weekend activities. Pinned the shawl out and fired up the hotel steam iron (thank goodness for hotels that provide good steam irons!) and steamed the heck out of that baby. Then left it to cool completely. It's the next best thing to a good wet block, which I really didn't have time or facilities for.

I was quite happy with the way it turned out.  Once it was completely cool and dry, I pulled out all the pins, and wove in the ends. 

T - 1 day

Delivered the shawl to the bride. Woohoo!  Hopefully by the next post I'll have some wedding pictures to share. 

Looking forward to being the mother of a married man!

Shelley in CT

Ragnar

So a few months ago, my son sent me a message, asking how "not interested" would I be in running on a relay team in the Ragnar New England Trail Relays? Well, I've run on relay teams before, and had a good time, though that was mostly in my youth. I followed the link he sent to see what it was all about. https://www.runragnar.com/event-detail/trail/new_england_ma

For those of you not familiar with the Ragnar "brand," they are best known for road relays. The one I had heard about was from Yale (New Haven, CT) to Harvard (Cambridge, MA). They've organized these races all over the country. The road relays consist of of 12-person teams, require 2 vans for transport, and are run overnight and into the next day. The New England Trail relay is 116 miles with an 8-person team, and is run over 3 different trails, all very hilly, and is also run through the night into the next day. The runners camp out at the site, and each runner runs all 3 trails. Now I have run an overnight relay before. It was the Oahu Perimeter Relay, about 140 miles total, on a 7-person team. Back in 1981; I was in high school. So it's been a while. I would need to up my training, fit in some trails and hills, bump up the mileage, but I thought I could probably do it. And what a challenge! And, of course, a weekend with my son Jeff, whom I don't see very often because he lives in Boulder, CO.

Yes, of course I said I'd do it. Ragnar is a tough one, so I'd also get bragging rights. Luckily, the other team members weren't too worried about speed. I figured I could tough out the hills, but couldn't guarantee pace.

I trained. We planned. I pulled out headlamps and sleeping bags, borrowed some camping mattresses. Found a hotel for the night before the race. I was so ridiculously nervous. Jeff flew into Boston the night before the race started, I picked him up, we battled Boston area traffic, and drove up to the hotel. Neither of us slept well. Then we killed some time the next morning driving around the area before driving up to the camp site.

view from Shelburne Falls hiking trail

obligatory selfie

As we were setting up camp (our illustrious captain, Randy, had brought tents and more camping gear for the group) I got ready to lead off with the first leg that afternoon. That first leg was a bit of a shock for me, even though I knew, theoretically, what I'd be up against. I knew there would be a lot of elevation gain, but the actual running of it, whoo boy, took my breath away. I hung in there, it was the shortest leg, through the mud and the rain, and finished up. At least then I knew, more or less, what I was in for on the rest of the course. I passed off to Jeff. The rest of the team trickled in throughout the rest of the day (only 7, so the 3 hot-shot runners each took an extra leg). It was a bizarre kind of race, with the camping (I didn't sleep much between my legs, though I tried!) and the nighttime running. My second leg was the longest and highest elevation, and at night. I wore a headlamp and carried a second light, which was very helpful. I could focus the second light right down at my feet so I could see the roots and rocks. Running trails in the dark reminded me of the old Mario Kart game called Rainbow Road (I think). All I could see was the small portion of the trail that was lit up right in front of me. It was unlike any race I had run before. I have to admit that I walked a lot of those steep (and not-so-steep) uphill sections. There were even a few downhill sections where the trail was narrow and full of roots and rocks when I had to slow to a walk so I didn't turn an ankle.

My last leg was at dawn; not quite full light at the beginning, but much easier to run in than total darkness. By the end of it all I was feeling every muscle and then some. I had strained my left ankle during my second leg, from all the slippery roots, but not a sprain. I just had to be very careful on the downhill portions of my last leg, to make sure I didn't land badly and cause some damage. My ankle was definitely feeling the strain after the race, but no worse. I iced it for a while after that last leg. We finished the race in under 24 hours, thanks to all our fast runners like Jeff.

Jeff finishing up his last (4th!) leg

Here's the team just after the finish.

The Mountain Goats

Took a few days and a good massage to stop hobbling up and down the stairs, but I survived! I can't help but think that Dad would have been so proud of us, and he'd have wanted to hear all about the race, and he'd have been especially proud of Jeff's speed and the way he tackled those hills.

Can't finish up without a little knitting content. I've been working on an exciting new project that involves some designing, or more specifically, reworking an existing pattern to keep the general shaping but change the gauge and lace pattern.

When Jeff and Julie announced their engagement, I decided I would really like to knit Julie a shawl for the wedding. I had no idea if it was something she would like or not, so I asked her, making sure she knew that my feelings would not be hurt if she just wasn't a shawl kind of person, or it didn't appeal to her. And I think that Julie is an up-front, tell-it-like-it-is kind of person, and would give me her real feelings on the issue. Happily, she liked the idea. We spent a little time when she was visiting in January looking at different shawl styles to figure out what she liked and didn't like. The end result was a Faroese shaped shawl (with shoulder shaping), a bit of lace down the middle back, a little horizontal lace band near the bottom, but not a lot of lace and no big holes. But the very most important part for Julie is the feel of the yarn. That girl has expensive tastes. Cashmere is definitely a favorite, alpaca, silk, anything soft and luxurious.

Finding the right yarn took longer than I expected, but I "forced" myself to persevere, petting lots of different yarns to find just the right one. I finally ended up with a luscious sportweight teal yarn, Shibui Dune, at a new-to-me local yarn store in Old Saybrook called The Knit.

I'm basing the pattern on a free shawlette pattern from Interweave Knits that I had knitted years ago in a heftier worsted weight yarn. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/summer-shawlette-2. I reworked the numbers for the sportweight gauge. After a few false starts and tweaking of the pattern as I went along, I have a beginning, and have charted the lace and written out at least the first half of the pattern. I'm not too far into it, but now that I've worked out the numbers, I think the knitting will go fairly quickly. My goal is to have it finished by the end of July. That gives me a buffer in case something isn't right and I have to reknit part or all of it.

Julie's Wedding Shawl; starting at the back neck and knitting down

I'm really quite happy with it so far, and this yarn is just heaven to knit with. The light green markers are for the shoulder shaping, and the lace is a leafy pattern that continues all down the back of the shawl.

There's one more event I'd like to mention. Jessica graduated from Wellesley in May, on a chilly, rainy day. My Mom, Dan's Aunt Karen, and Jeff flew in for the occasion. We were only missing Jason, who was in the first week of a summer internship and felt it wouldn't be appropriate to ask for time off so early. Jess worked so hard to graduate in 4 years, despite that fact that Wellesley only accepted a percentage of the credits she earned at UMass before she transferred, and she still managed to fit in a semester abroad. I have to admist that Jessica and I set up an Excel spreadsheet in order to figure out how many credits from which source fulfilled different graduation, major, and minor requirements. She is now the proud owner of a Wellesley College Bachelor of Arts!

Happy Graduate

the Graduate, with assorted family members

Jess, my Mom, and me at Wellesley greenhouse: can you tell we're related?

Shelley in CT

2017

2016 ended on a high note. Jeff and his girlfriend Julie announced their engagement in November. We've loved Julie every since Jeff first brought her home for a visit. We had just been waiting for them to officially decide. Then we had a wonderful time in December and January when all the kids came home for the December holidays.  

But here I am, halfway through 2017 and no blog posts. This past year has had a lot going on and I just haven't had the motivation. 

Not too long after the Marathon trip, Dad had more and more serious health setbacks. Scans showed that his cancer had spread, and he was past the point where treatment would help. We needed to focus on the time we had left with him. We brought the 2 younger kids out to Oregon for a quick visit before they went back to school. Jeff was planning a visit as well. I flew out again in early February, as did Jeff, and be there with Dad and Mom. Dad passed on February 13, after a day surrounded by Mom, all 5 of his kids, and a few grandkids as well. 

Dad didn't want a funeral, he wanted a party. So Mom's focus in the following months was on planning the celebration. We all tried to help from a distance, and shared some good stories and lots of pictures of Dad throughout his life. All 5 kids, along with spouses and grandkids, were there for the Celebration of Life. It was a good day with lots of friends and family. 

Since one of the reasons I started this blog was to talk about knitting and sewing projects, I need to mention some of the small knitting projects that I finished up in the last year or so. One was for Dad, last year when he was having some health complications. I made him a hat to keep his head warm last winter.

That kind of sums up how I feel about cancer in general, and Dad's prostate cancer in particular. The hat has been passed along to my brother, who was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has since had his prostate removed and currently has no evidence of remaining cancer. Yay!

I have more sad news to report on the cancer front. The "yarn hug for Miriam" that I talked about knitting in my post of August 2015 did eventually get finished, and was sent to and worn by Miriam. The picture above is the finished piece just before I sent it. She reached the end of her treatment options last spring and passed away surrounded by her family. I was able to fly out to attend her funeral and speak briefly there about the wonderful friend and woman that she was. 

In more positive news, we adopted 3 cats, sisters, from a local shelter, back in December 2015. They are very cute, 2 of them are fluffy, and they are very silly. We're still working on socialization. We have once again ended up adopting the "scaredy cats" from the shelter, who were not used to people and are a bit skittish. They've made a fair amount of progress, but there is still a ways to go. Two of the kids are home this summer to help me with that. 

happy girl with cat

watching chipmunks

That's about all I can fit in this post. More later.

Shelley in CT

The Heat of the Summer

I'm slowly working up to longer runs. My during-the-week runs are 5 and 6 miles and they feel pretty good. Last weekend I finally managed 7 miles again. I hadn't run that distance since before the trip to Colorado (I think the travel and altitude there set me back a bit.) My speed has been really up and down, mostly depending on just how humid it is outside on a given day. As long as I'm still getting in the mileage and not suffering any major injuries, I can't really complain.

On the injury front, I'm still having trouble with the tennis elbow. I had an MRI done early this month, and my ortho said that it didn't show any tears or ragged edges. That's good, but he didn't really have any other good suggestions. His suggested therapy is to take an anti-inflammatory medication constantly for a week and see if it has any effect. I'm taking meloxicam, and so far, several days in, I'm still having some pain in my arms. I'm so frustrated with this injury. It would have been much easier to break a bone. That heals faster and more completely. This tennis elbow has been an issue for me now for over a year!

Through it all, I'm still knitting. Slowly. And not much. As long as I don't knit for too long at a time I'm not having too much trouble. I haven't been able to bring myself to restart my daughter's second sock. It seems as if I've been knitting those socks forever. At least I only have to reknit the easy part. Grafting the reknit leg to the already-knit foot will be the big challenge.

cute but not quite matched in size

see how the top sock is shorter than the bottom sock?

Of course, despite the little knitting I've been doing, I couldn't resist starting a new project. My best  friend from high school, Miriam, is going through a rough time with her health. She lives halfway across the country and other than call her every once in a while, there's not a lot I can do from here that is helpful to her. So I decided she needed a nice warm cowl for the winter. I'm calling it a "Yarn Hug for Miriam" and bought a pattern that looked like it fit really nicely around the neck. Of course, I've spent more time tweaking the pattern than I have knitting so far. When I downloaded and read through the pattern I realized there was some odd shaping up at the neck that I didn't like. So I'm rewriting the neck portion to make it more cowl-like at the top. I'm also reworking the stitch pattern so that I can knit it in the round without changing directions, as the pattern directs. It took a lot more time up front but I think the knitting is coming out much simpler and more straightforward, and I'm getting the same stitch pattern as written in the pattern. Hopefully my changes will continue to work the way I intend them to.

the top of the cowl

We just had our last week with Jason home, before he headed back to school for his sophomore year. He was the only kid home and working this summer, poor kid, but he managed to escape his boring parents, getting out to see friends once in a while, and also found ways to socialize with faraway friends via Skype. Life is certainly easier when the kids can drive themselves. In addition to working and catching up with a few friends, Jason has had some cooking lessons. He is living off campus this coming year and none of his prospective roommates are all that interested in cooking. As he'd like to save some money by not eating out all the time, he is working on becoming Chef Jason. This has been a good thing for me. On cooking lesson days, I pull out a recipe, help him find ingredients and cooking implements, pour myself a glass of wine and sit at the kitchen island to "direct." Life is good!

Jessica was home briefly between the end of her sophomore year and the beginning of her internship in Japan. We scrambled to help her do laundry, shop for the items she'd need over the summer, clean up all the things she brought home from school and pack for Japan. She has just now finished up her summer internship and is "hanging out" in Tokyo until her junior year abroad in Tokyo starts up at the end of August. She has been able to visit with her host-sister Aya, who lives fairly close to the University. That gives me a little bit more peace of mind, knowing that Aya and her family are close by in case Jessica needs somebody. She probably won't; she has managed to get where she needed to go and take care of getting her student visa while in Japan, all on her own. My little girl is growing up. <sniff!>

The last of the news is that I turned 51 this past week. It was great to see all the happy birthday messages on facebook, I got flowers from my wonderful husband, and my son made me dinner. Yum! And I really don't feel 51, so I'm just going to enjoy the other parts of the birthday and not think about the number.

Well, I'd better finish this up so I can post it before all the news is old again. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Shelley in CT

Slow and Sweaty Wins the Race....

......or at least gets me through the summer. One of my morning runs this week was at 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) and 81% humidity. It certainly could have been worse, but it definitely was not my speediest run. Thank goodness the weather changed and this morning the temp and humidity were at much more reasonable levels. I'd love to say that it improved my time tremendously.  Oh well. 'Nuff said.

On the bright side, I haven't had any real problems lately with my hamstring. I'm trying to pick up the mileage and have been making very slow progress. I've increased mileage up to 7-mile runs, then backslid, then increased distance again, then backslid. It's been little things, like banged up toes or travel (several days at altitude in Denver, CO for a family function put me out for a week! Apparently my body doesn't handle altitude very well). I'm also still having trouble with motivation. I know I will stay in better shape if I can run at least 3 times a week, but that is easier said than done. I'm back up to 5 miles for distance and hopefully I'll keep moving in the right direction for the rest of the summer.

I'm still thinking about running a marathon sometime in the next year or so. I had talked to my older son back in June about running the Portland Marathon this coming October, but after much consideration and hemming and hawing, decided that it just didn't give me enough time, given the general age and condition of my poor legs, to adequately prepare without injury. I'm thinking October 2016.

On the knitting front, I haven't really gotten anywhere. I finally finished up my daughter's socks. When I had woven in all the ends and laid them side by side to admire them, I discovered that the sock tops don't match, size-wise. With the same needles and same stitch count, the second sock came out narrower and shorter. I must have been really stressed knitting the top of that second sock to have tightened up my stitches that much. Sheesh! I thought about trying to stretch it out to match the first sock, but realistically, that won't work. I really don't want to reknit the whole second sock though. I've already had to pull out part of the foot and reknit so the second sock would match the first. (Seems I couldn't read my own notes on what I did on the first sock.) So, rather than reknit the entire sock, I think I'll reknit just the top and kitchener the new top to the original foot, which is the correct size. And I'll think really relaxing thoughts as I knit. Whenever I get around to knitting again.

Which brings me to my next tale of woe. My tennis elbow, which has been plaguing me for over a year now, is STILL not better. After a third round of physical therapy, I've been sent back to the orthopedist to see what he's got up his sleeve. I now have an MRI scheduled, which will hopefully tell us something helpful so I can finally get some relief. I am so frustrated with this injury. In some ways, it's not as bad as a foot or leg problem since it doesn't keep me from getting around. In other ways, though, it affects just about everything I do every day.

As I have been so neglectful of the blog this year, I thought I'd offer a brief recap of my spring.

In March, hubby and I took a trip to New Orleans. I'd never been there and we thought it would be fun. We stayed at one edge of the French Quarter and could walk just about anywhere we wanted to go. The weather in early March was changeable, and we got some rain and storms, but we got some beautiful sunny days too. We took walks every day - there was a great path along the river, which was only a few blocks from our hotel. One morning the fog was so thick we couldn't actually see the water from the riverside path we were on, all of 10 feet away.

We walked down Bourbon Street:

 We took a cooking class at the cooking school next door. This is cajun style jambalaya (on the right) and gumbo (in the bowl). It was a very fun afternoon; we did all the cooking ourselves, with help and advice from the teacher, and the dinner we had at the end of it was delicious! The gumbo we ate was not the gumbo we made that day. According to our teacher, gumbo needs to sit overnight so all the flavors will combine and soak into the meat. So we ate gumbo that had been made a day earlier, and our gumbo was put into a big gallon ziplock bag and frozen solid. They assured us that there would be no problem taking the frozen gumbo home on the plane. We were skeptical, but really, what did we have to lose? Wouldn't you know, I carried it on with me in a grocery bag and it made it through the security x-ray machine, and stayed frozen solid all the way home.

The other high point of our New Orleans trip was getting to see NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" live. Yes, I know it's a radio show, so what is there really to see, but it was a lot of fun to be there for the taping. It was pure serendipity that the show was traveling to New Orleans the very week that we had planned our vacation there. And the theatre was only a few blocks up the street from our hotel! The Saenger theater in New Orleans was historic and absolutely gorgeous. The show was hilarious. I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt! It took over 2 hours to tape the 45-minute radio show, so we got to be there for the bloopers, the digressions, and a lot of extras from Paula Poundstone.

After New Orleans, we had kids come home for spring break. Youngest son was home for a week and briefly overlapped with the girls, our daughter and our host-daughter from Japan, who flew out to visit before her school year started. I took advantage of having girls here and we took the train down to NYC and saw a Broadway show!

girls in Grand Central Station

three girls taking in a show

tired out, going home on the train

After we took our host-daughter to the airport to fly home, and our daughter back to school to finish up her school year, Beatrice the cat passed away. She had been failing and we knew the end was coming. I'm really glad both girls got to spend time with her.

Sadly, Beatrice passed away in the night just after taking our daughter back to school. The cat is very important to her, so I drove up to Wellesley that day, brought her home so we could bury Beatrice, then drove her back up to school so she wouldn't miss any classes.

we buried her in the back yard

We fit in a family wedding in Philadelphia in June, followed by a wedding celebration (yes, for the same wedding) in Denver in July. Daughter is in Japan for a summer internship and younger son is home working. That's everything in a nutshell. I'm hoping for more positive things to say about my arm progress in the next blog post, which will in turn increase my knitting output and my sanity level. Stay cool!

Shelley in CT

How did we get to March already?

First off, I finally finished the carboy sweater for my youngest son. Ta-da!

And, he likes it and has been wearing it to school almost every day. Definitely the mark of a successful sweater. Makes the knitting worthwhile. I had some real slow-downs while knitting this sweater though. Over the summer I didn't get much knitting done just because this project is big and wool and our summers are hot and humid. Not really a good mix. Then, when I was close to finishing, I procrastinated A LOT over cutting the steek in the front. The pattern is actually written to be knitted back and forth, no cutting involved. I've made sweaters in the round with steeks before, and not had any problem with them, so I thought it would be much easier to avoid all that purling on the wrong-side rows and just knit it all in the round and cut down the front later. Now that it's done (and I'm very happy with the result), I'm not sure I'd do the same thing again. Sure, the knitting went great, but crocheting and cutting the steek (I used a crochet steek that I learned in a class at Stitches one year), tacking down the cut edge, and even determining the exact middle so I could cut in the right place, slowed me down as I worried over doing irreparable damage to the sweater by cutting in the wrong place. If I were to knit this pattern again, and I might, as it was a really straightforward knit, I think I'd stick to the instructions and knit back and forth.

Here's a nice article from the Vogue Knitting archives, written by Meg Swansen, about steeking, with instructions for the crocheted steek.

Today we are finally getting some spring weather. I could use all the snow this winter as my excuse for not blogging all these months, but really it's more like plain old laziness. It did, at least, give me plenty of time to start and finish some small projects.

First new project was a cowl for my daughter. I had been looking for some nice yarn but couldn't decide on a colorway, and she and I were having a hard time determining colors that she like via iphone pictures long-distance. One weekend in January, I had driven up to see her at school and just happened to find a nice local yarn shop. So I brought my daughter in to pick out some yarn. She found some wonderful bulky yarn, and the shop owner just happened to have a free pattern with yarn purchase. With bulky yarn, the cowl knit up in no time and she has been happily wearing this cowl every since!

While I was on a roll, I decided that I needed a cowl for myself. I had some lovely bulky Malabrigo yarn that I had won as a door prize at Stitches East several years ago. I had found a hat pattern with reversible cable on the brim, and it knitted up beautifully, but I really didn't look good in it, and haven't found anyone to give it away to. So I frogged the hat and reknitted the yarn into a cowl. I used a free pattern that I found on Ravelry called Cobbled Cowl by Annie Riley, which is a linen stitch pattern. I modified it by adding  k2p2 ribbing at the top and bottom so it wouldn't roll.

Malabrigo yarn as a hat "BEFORE"

Malabrigo yarn as a cowl "AFTER"

I have already gotten some good wear out of the cowl, and it coordinates beautifully with my blue down coat

Next snowy-day project was a new clock for the kitchen. Our old clock, which had lasted us probably 15 years or more, had faded, cracked wood, and wasn't really fixable. I decided to hunt for a new clock. No luck at the local stores, but I found some interesting clocks on Amazon. I finally decided on this "steam punk" style clock, which was a good size and a neat look, but was made in cheap plastic in all one color.

I had read a lot of the customer review on Amazon when I was shopping, and many of them talked about enhancing the look of the clock with a little metallic paint. That sounded like fun to me, so I bought a few different metallic paint tubes and started my art project.

I had to mix the metallic paints with black paint to tone them down a bit and with each other to create different colors, but was very happy with the result.

On the Wall

Well, that's probably more than enough projects for one post. I've got another one in the works that's a suprise for the recipient, but by my next post it will hopefully by finished and gifted and ready to be photographed for the blog!

Shelley in CT

One more off to college...

Dear Daughter with van packed and ready for Freshman Move-In Day!

Well, another summer has come and gone, and we are now down to just one kid left at home. And he has his license and can drive himself just about wherever he needs to go. It will be interesting adjusting to this. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First things first, we had to prepare dear daughter for her move to college, after we had all returned home from our various trips. She was returning from 2-1/2 weeks on Japan with her host-sister and we were returning from a trip to Colorado for my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. Once we had gotten past most of the jet lag (mostly hers, as she was coming back from a 13-hour time difference), it was time to make the lists of everything she would need in the dorm, and start cleaning, gathering, and shopping. Sounds simple, but gets much more complicated when you factor in an anxious teenage girl with a very particular sense of style, an unwillingness to compromise, and a propensity to procrastinate. Somehow it seemed that nothing on the list got done, no matter how many times I reminded her, unless I took charge and drove her to the stores and pulled out the list, or told her she needed to wash the sheets and towels TODAY, or carried suitcases and boxes up from the basement and pointedly left them in her room... She still has a couple of things she needs to finish up on campus this week.

Move-In went pretty smoothly. With the many thousands of students moving in on the same day, UMass came up with a system that required us all to sign up for a specific move-in time, and we had instructions to report to the "staging area" for our part of campus, and were directed to the appropriate locations by student volunteers. We were very lucky that our daughter had chosen a dorm that was mostly upperclassmen (who all moved in on a different day) so there were only about 26 freshmen moving in to her dorm that day. Things moved like clockwork, we arrived, were directed to the dorm, the van was unloaded in minutes, and by the time I had parked the van in the designated lot and hiked back up to the dorm, everything was in the room and she was half unpacked. Within the hours she had taken everything out of boxes and suitcases and put most of it away.

At UMass, family eats free in the dining halls (Yay!) so once most everything was unpacked we went off to the nearest dining hall for lunch. Quick and easy, and the food is actually quite good!

During the unpacking, we had determined that she needed a few more things - a couple of extension cords (how did we not think of those ahead of time?), another power strip, a shoe rack, and some over-the-door hooks. So off we drove to Bed, Bath and Beyond, just down the road, along with half of the other families moving their freshman in, to buy the necessary items.

Back to the dorm to put together the shoe rack, put up the hooks, and plug in the power strips and extension cords so that she could plug in her mini fridge and lights. I must say, we were quite efficient. When it was all done, though, we had a hard time saying goodbye. I'm not sure dear daughter was quite ready for us to go either, but I think we had the more difficult time walking away. Still hard to think of her away from home (though I'm completely used to oldest son being gone, but then again, this is his 4th year and we're trained). At least she's much closer than her brother, who's in Texas, and we will be visiting in October. We've already gotten a few texts from her assuring us that she's fine and keeping busy with New Student Orientation.

Daughter and Roommate

So now there are only 3 of us at home, and, of course, the cat. Younger Son has a busy schedule this fall with cross country practices and meets and rehearsals for the fall play, along with several AP classes. He is also our social butterfly and likes to go out with friends. Already testing his limits with the car and where and when he can drive. As I said, it will be an interesting year.

Knitting: I have done very little knitting this summer. I pulled out an old sock project to take with me on the trip to Colorado, since socks are so nice and portable. I haven't really worked on anything else though. After the hot days, I just didn't have the energy to take out a knitting project in the evenings. Oh well, I'll catch up this fall.

I've finally gotten around to sending out dates for knitting group. Soon the emails from would-be hosts should be rolling in and I'll put together the schedule. I'm even considering putting our schedule and group information on a website. How Twenty-First Century! Actually, it would probably be a blog for the group, but I could post schedule, location information, and updates. Something to discuss at our first knitting day.

Sewing: I have already posted most of my summer sewing. I made a microwaveable heating pad for dear daughter to take with her to college - the night before she moved in (now where does she get those procrastination genes???). Forgot to take a picture of it. Hope it works for her. I made it the same shape as the one we have at home and filled it with buckwheat that I had mail-ordered years ago in order to make many heating pads as gifts (and never did).

Ready to start in on all my fall projects: cleaning, organizing, painting, sewing, knitting, building, etc. etc. I have quite a list. I won't accomplish everything on the list. I'll be lucky to get to even a quarter of the things on the list, but then I'll just work on the rest of the list next year. No rush. If I didn't have a list I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

Shelley in CT