One Skein Swap

The other day when I got home from errands and such, Hubband informed me that a box had arrived for me in the mail. It was full of wonderful surprises from Sharon, my partner for the WhoDuKnit One Skein Mystery Swap. She sent some fun books (of course, we are a book group after all!), yarn, a ladybug muscle massager, some potato pops (already consumed-very yummy!), and some (not pictured) very nice Neutrogena products.

 

But best of all was what she had made with the Fiesta La Luz I had sent her to work with. Sharon made the most beautiful scarf for me and included a wonderful scarf pin to wear with it!

 

Thank you so much Sharon for such a wonderful swap package and beautiful scarf. I will enjoy wearing it!

DC Replacement

So last Friday, Hubband and I went to the Big City. We stayed near the infamous bridge and wandered around
here. We walked past a famous statue and music spot, found dinner, and had fun relaxing together. Saturday we went for a drive to poke around Stillwater, MN. While we have not been impacted at home by any of the flooding around the mid-west, we could see some problems with it on our trip.
This is a road from one direction,

 

and this is another view of the same road looking toward the fancy bridge,

 

and where it goes under the approach to said bridge, next to the river. (Personally, I think the clearance sign is a bit off on in its measurements.)

 

Due to the higher than normal water level, some boats that normally would be able to zip right under the bridge with no trouble,have to slowly approach with caution,

 

or just get into the queue and wait their turn.

 

Of course, some boats always have had to wait for the bridge to do its magic!

 

(The bridge keeper did seem to pick when to lift it, based on this one's proximity I noticed.)

 

At this point there was the "All Clear" signal for the bridge to start back down.
We spent another night in the big city, walking past famous spots again, having a wonderful time, just hanging out together. We had a really wonderful anniversary trip!

 

I had started a pair of socks for Hubband before we left and got a lot of knitting time in while driving about, but totally forgot to take any pictures of "Socks on Trip"; I even had it with me while we were waiting for the bridge! So we are making do with socks on the deck and
"Socks with Frogs." (I have since finished the first sock and will be turning a heel of the second tomorrow.)

What is it? (Part 2)

Awhile back I mentioned I was knitting a mystery project for WhoDoKnit. I have finished the mystery project and it is now winging its way across the country to Sharon. So for now I am just going to share more pictures of the pretty yarn, and what a patch of it looks like knit up.(Sometime next week after she gets it, I'll let you in on the mystery.)

I'm still around, sort of....

Well, OK, more than sort of. Around, there, there, and over there, just not here lately. Hubband and I did go away over the weekend for our anniversary, just not to DC as planned; it seems that we did miss out on a heat wave there! We had a great time where we went and I have a few a few pictures and a report, but probably not until Thursday or so. I am behind on a lot of stuff it seems and need to catch up on general life stuff, laundry, emails, blog posts, and I am sure there are other things I am forgetting right this moment. I am sure this isn't really that different than most folks lives.

Anyway, I do have a Whiskers On Wednesday post for you, just in case you wanted one (or not). After meeting Oribel at the shelter (while we were waiting for our paperwork to be approved over the weekend), we picked up a few "things" we needed. Things like litter, food, a couple of toys (she was a baby after all), a bed; you know, "cat stuff." Well, she has used all, and loved most, of her stuff except the cat bed. She looked at it, gave it a sniff, and went off to look at something else. She actually did sit in for one brief moment when placed in it, but that didn't last very long. For the most part it has been ignored completely (which is really weird in a way, considering how much attention everything else in the house gets). Well, she did have her hand-knitted spot after all, so why would she need a purchased cat bed?

As I have said before, everything belongs to Miss Oribel, including things that used to belong to someone else before she came to live here. Sadie has a pillow to sleep on near my desk, but it is often occupied by a certain cat, watching her favorite show, "What is going on in my yard outside the door."

 

For the last month or so she spends a few hours of her afternoons napping on one of the dog beds in our room. (Well, it isn't uncommon for her to start on one and move to the other as the sun shifts across the room.)

 

I keep telling her she is going to smell like a basset, but she really doesn't seem to care.

 

Oddly enough, one day not too long ago, she took a great interest in her own cat bed. Apparently we had it in the wrong orientation all along. How were we supposed to know that what we thought was up was really supposed to be down?

 

Fortunately she is willing to share with anyone that wants too. She isn't really too picky about that part.
I suppose that some of you may be wondering why I don't do Dogs On Thursday, considering we do have two dogs around here. Well, as it happens, for the most part, they don't do nearly enough to make for interesting blogging on a regular basis. They are great dogs and we love them a lot, but they are old bassets and spend a lot of their life sleeping, or moving from one sleeping spot to another. Just not very interesting blog fodder on a regular basis.

How do you know summer is here?

Well, how do I know summer has arrived where ever I am? Well, usually by the need to turn on the air conditioner. That has hasn't happened here yet. Oh, wait, there was one day we turned it on because it was 73° and about 95% humidity. We didn't need the house to be any cooler than it was, but I get kind of fussy and cranky when the humidity is that high. The best way of knowing summer is here? Well our anniversery would fall on the "First Day of Summer" so that tends to help.
The whole "School's out" thing helps too, especiall since it now involves people being home from college!

No worries

So when I told DTE what her dad had said about the owner's manual, she started laughing. It turns out the DTY drove up to The Cities and she was asking her older sister where the cruise control was. DTE told her the truck didn't have cruise and wound up getting out the owner's manual to prove it. (This would be the same truck that DTY has been driving back and forth across the county since she was 15 to go backpacking in the mountains. I think if it had cruise control her dad would have shown it to her by now.)

Should we worry?

Hubband went out to the truck this morning with an armload of stuff to drop at FedEx. (This would be the same truck that took the daughters to the Twin Cites yesterday to drop DTY off for a trip to go visit a friend and to chauffeur DTE to visit a friend as well. You know, a 180+ mile round trip.) He came back inside to pick up the second armful and said, "This is a bit ominous, the owner's manual is out and sitting on the seat. I wonder what this means?" (This would be the truck that delivered DTE home at around 1 AM this morning.) Guess I'll have to ask the daughter about this when she gets up.....
I decided to double check that he had his cell phone with him before he left; you know, just for safety sake.

Whiskers on Wednesdays

I realized sometime late last week (or over the weekend) that some of you may be new here at Coffee Yarn, linked from Whiskers on Wednesdays. If you are, "Welcome" and I hope you enjoy your visit. I also realized that I didn't properly introduce Miss Oribel for the first WoW post. Rather than run through the whole think, I will just link you to this post, which was where she was introduced to everyone after she came to live with us. So today you get one of her baby pictures.

Firefox 3

Now I don't know how many of you out there use FireFox as your browser, but I will say, "If you don't, you really should consider it, seriously." Unfortunately, maybe not today. It seems that today, the public "release date" for FireFox 3, has "broke[n] some of its servers". I am a bit confused about this, as I have been using FF3 for several days, if not a week or so. Well, ever since Hubband turned into a FF3 junkie and had a hard time going from FF Beta 2.something to Beta 3, depending on if he was using his computer or mine. Oh, this from Devoper Mozilla might explain it

This third FireFox 3 Release Candidate is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback.

I guess that really shouldn't surprise me; one day many years ago I turned on the computer and it looked all different than it had the day before. When I asked Hubband about it, he told me he was a beta tester for Chicago, more commonly known by its public name of Windows 95. Seems like Hubband has always been Beta whenever possible; it just stopped being possible for some things.

We have been a FireFox household pretty much from its Phoenix days and I honestly don't know much about IE at all. Well, except that for some dumb reason Blogspot hasn't been able to deal with FireFox and Hubband had to do "computer magic" to make special IE stuff happen for blogging purposes. Maybe that will change in the very near future....
[Probably the thing I like best about FireFox is the Add blocker feature. I hear people talk about pop-up adds on their computers, I don't think I have ever seen one of those. Even when I pull up a newspaper page the embedded adds are blocked. Well, I also really like the Earthquake add-on.]
Just don't try to load it from some other site unless you like taking chances; or getting Rick Rolled (please note this is a Wikipedia explanation link, not an actual "you will be RR" link.)
Future Tense review

Geekiness signing off for now...

I am soooo sorry....

I was re-labeling some posts today,and the only way I can figure out how to do that is to deleate or change teh lable and then republish the post all together. Part way through I realized that if any of you out there have this on some sort of "e-mail/notify when a post is published" thing, you were likely getting a lot of notices on "old" posts. What else can I say besides "Oops"?

One Sweet Patio

(Almost finished)

Everybody needs a home

apparently even when it is our front garden.

Washington DC cancelled.

Well, not exactly. Washington DC is still there, and will be for some time I imagine. The cancelled part is us, we won't be there this coming weekend. Hubband's business there has been cancelled, thus, so has our trip. We will be missing this, which obviously happens only once a year; we had been planning to look at monuments again at the National Mall while enjoying our BBQ. Just 'cause they are all too cool to pass up. I had also been looking forward to hanging out at Kramer's (which Hubband had never been in or heard of until I took him there, despite the several times he had been to DC before that), and finding something to eat while looking at books. I had also planned on hanging out at this uber-cool train station. I always love spending time there, rather than just passing trough in a hurry (several times a day). We had also planned on seeing the NMAI. It was still being built the last time I was in DC, when we took the girls five or six summers ago. We had also talked about possibly spending a day at the National Zoo, since neither one of us has been there at all.
Other things in DC that are "must see places" (but we have been to them so they were not on the top of our list for this trip)in my opinion include the US Holocaust Museum, the Washington National Cathedral (they have Darth Vader and moon rocks), and the International Spy Museum (great fun). Of course riding the metro about is mandatory, it is just the most sensible way to get about and it can be a lot of fun. Plus the fact that you can keep yourself busy looking for other knitters while you work on socks riding around. I had planned on making Hubband's socks on the trip as it seemed most fitting.
We are still going to go somewhere for a night or two, since we have arranged for a pet sitter and all. We just haven't really figured out where and what yet. We only found out the change in plans a couple of days ago. I know that Hubband will have another trip to DC before the year is over (and maybe more than one), just not sure when and if either of the girl people will be around to take care of the pets. Here's hoping for when the time comes!

More brick information

After showing you pictures of our bricks yesterday, and promising to tell you all what we are building (here), I realized that some of you out there that actually read this blog, may not read it on the weekend. So..... I am going to give you some pictures and some of what we are doing to the bricks, and will do the "reveal post" on Monday afternoon, just in case anyone want to guess. (Not that there I have any prizes associated with this, but you do get some self-satisfaction if you guess correctly.)

 

There is cutting of the bricks involved at this point of the project. Hubband did straight cuts with a chisel, but DTY is running the saw for the angle cuts.

 

(Have I ever mentioned that she kind of likes power tools?)

Have you ever wondered

what 1400 bricks in your driveway would look like? No? Well, perhaps just as well you didn't ask me, 'cause I wouldn't know the answer. However, I can show you what 1400 bricks in our driveway looks like.

Well, 1380 bricks to be precise, but what is another 20 bricks at this point?

 

Good thing the wrapping is several layers think and very strong, considering the slope of our drive.

 

This is how all those bricks get to the driveway, just in case you were wondering.

 

The stabilizing foot of the truck did this while they were unloading the first pallet.

 

This is what it looked like before the arm got very far from the truck (and the rest of the time after the first pallet was set onto the concrete).

You have one more day to figure out what we are building. The main course is being consumed right now, but the hole won't be finished eating for at least a day or two. After that it will still get to have desert, but I will give you a sneak peek tomorrow. It is going to be SO cool when it is all done!

What is it?

I started a mystery project yesterday. Well, I know what it is, but a mystery in that I am making it for someone else (for the WhoDuKnit One Skein Swap). Sharon sent me a skein of Sundara yarn to work with . So far there has been a lot of knitting, holding of stitches, stopping knitting, and starting all over again.

 

The rain storm that happened here in the "Mid-West" night before last left a little over two inches of water in our rain gauge (causing great problems a lot of places, but fortunately not for us). It did cause the mud balls to melt and one of them to fall to its death. Hmmmm, and they didn't even have green skin....
Also on the "What is it?" front, growth has recommenced and sand is being laid and leveled as I type. I need to be off to get a needed tool (DTY says she doesn't need it, but we'll use it for more than just this project. Guessing from the noise I just heard, she is going to be wishing she had taken me up on it several days ago.)

Well, who knew

our hole would develop such sensitive stomach? It turns out to be delicate enough to not be able to handle rain on its sand. It seems that the hole could handle its soup course, even two servings of it, and then a drink of rain just fine. However, once it has its salad, it can't have anything to drink until after it has the entree. So the growth around here has slowed down until the rain stops long enough for the servers to get both courses timed properly. I just hope timing works out before next week......

Apparently its eyes are bigger than its stomach.

The hole has eaten all of the gravel it can hold, and it has leftovers on the driveway. We have come up with a couple of possibilities of other places that might be hungry, but who knows how much those places can hold.

It was fed as much as it thought it could hold, but then that was pushed down and it was fed some more. Its second helping was also smashed down nice and tight.

We are hoping that it didn't get served as much extra sand as it did gravel. We also decided the sand needed some protection from the elements until the hole can digest just a little.

Whiskers On Wednesday

Jessi has started Whiskers on Wednesday,so you get new Oribel pictures. (Not that I have told her I am going to sign up, but I guess I can work out those details with her later today.)
Here she is, actually holding still (well, she does a lot better at that, now that she is almost a year old). She has her favorite toy safe between her feet (you can see the corner of it).
Miss Ridiculous, holding one of her most favorite things in the world, a "Coaster Mouse." These are the ones that she carries all over the house, drops in dog water dishes, fish bowls, on me or Hubband, and expects us to throw so she can fetch them. We used to use them as coasters, but all of them are hers now.
Seriously, she takes them with her everywhere, and somehow it involves a weird chirping noise.

Essence of Baby

Well, that is how Hubband describes this blanket. He has pretty much summed it up, but he really does mean it in a good way. He knows the mom, he likes the blanket, and he knows she'll love it for her new baby girl. I figure that counts as a seal of approval (well, and the Grandma saw it while I was working on it in Idaho Falls and she says it is perfect).
The pattern is "Rambling Rows Afghan" by Pat Penney and Carol Anderson of Cottage Creations. It is a really great pattern and is designed for several different size choices (baby size through . The yarn is TLC Sparkle Soft in Orchid, Mint, Pink, Yellow, and White.

 

Here is the edge pre-I-cord;

 

front view of the applied I-cord;

 

back view;

 

and the corner view. (The corners are done by knitting three "rows" of I-cord off one edge without attaching and then attaching it to the next edge.)

 

I will leave you with a few random pictures of it, just in case you forgot what it looked like hanging out on "the chair" or wanted a close up of the mitered decreases. (The second picture is probably the closest to the true colors, but I am sure you all get the general idea.) I plan on taking it to show and tell at knitting tomorrow night and then it will be mailed off to it its new owner.