First Sewing Project

BG made her first machine sewn project this weekend. A simple fleece hat. She picked out the material, talked to the store employee about how much fabric she needed, and did all the cutting and sewing herself. She is very excited and can't wait to try another one.

Another "What was I thinking??"

One of the advantages of homeschooling and having homeschooling friends is that you don't have to wait til the weekend for a sleep over. BG had her cousin, who I am also homeschooling this year, and a friend over Tuesday night after Girl Scouts. The 3 of them watched a movie and ate popcorn while camping out on the living room floor. Actually, it went much better than I thought it might. No fights...no loud laughing and yelling. They were still talking when I stumbled to bed at 12:30 am, but were quiet enough that it didn't interfere with my sleep. Friend brought some school work with her, so the 3 of them did math together on Wednesday. There were a few scuffles (like..what do we play next? and I don't want to do that), but, all in all, it went smoothly.



Facebook has this current thing about posting an old picture of yourself. I don't have any digital pictures of myself as a youngen, but found this family one of DH, DS, BG and myself. Hard to imagine that young man in the back is a burly Army father of his own little girl. And BG is taller than me now! I think she was about 18 months old in this picture. AH, time.... As Terry Pratchett says (paraphrased) Endless days of rapidly passing years...

Long Time

It's been a long time since I blogged and realized many things have happened since BG went off to camp. She had a great time and is eager to go back this year.



DS#2 got married and had a baby. Ajala Michelle was born in early September of 09. For New Years, we got the message from them that another baby will be born in August of this year!

The family got together on December 12th for our annual ThanksBirthHanuMas gathering. No injuries, barfing or fights...it was a good day!...lol.

I received the KnitPicks set of DPN... 6 sizes from 2.00mm to 3.25mm.. and "Continuous Cables" by Melissa Leapman. Trying to go Cold Sheep and not buy any new yarn till I have a chance to knit up a lot of my stash. I made several washcloths and tribbles as gifts to the DDs, so was able to use up some of the cotton here.

Heard about a great way to use up sock yarn stash. Match yarn and pattern and bag it under the labels of the coming months and challenge myself to knit a pair each month thru out the year. We'll see. I did finish one pair this past year.

SOTN: Offler Stole, grey scarf for sis-i-l (started as a Christmas present for 08), the Messianic scarf/stole from YarnYenta, and recently started: MMario's MMystery shawl KKnitalong. This shawl is not going well as I have dropped stitches (again) and will need to restart clue 1 (5th time).

Will try to do better about blogging this year...but no promises.

Camp Gilgal

Its been a busy month. Lots of preparations to get BG ready for camp. But first, we needed to celebrate her birthday a little early. She will celebrate her 9th birthday at camp, too.



Camp Gilgal is sponsered by Jews for Jesus, so BG was very excited to go and see some of her friends from the Ingathering there. This is her first "away from home/ away from me" camp. The leaders are so sweet and take lots of pictures to add to their flickr account so we can see our children enjoying themselves. One of the first activities is for each cabin to make a tribal flag. Here BG is cutting out elements for the flag:



And here is the finished flag:



And here... well... I am not sure exactly what they were doing that required a little war paint... lol.

3rd UFO Finished

Finished another scarf that has been in the works for a few months. This is my version of the TNT scarf. Pardon the picture. It's hard to take a pic of something around your own neck...lol.



Done in Serenity sock yarn with about 1700 or so beads. I thought I might have a problem with binding off, but I cut the yarn with enough beads for the last row and bound off the first 5 stitches, passed the end of the yarn thru as if it were the last stitch, slipped the beads in place, and then continued binding off the next section. Was a lot easier than I was thinking it would be...once I figured it out.

Few bragging rights here. DH's Army Med unit trained this weekend and the local news caught a little of the action.

Starts and Finishes

First let me brag about a (finally) finished. I finished my Queen Anne's Lace shawl that I made with #10 crochet cotton as a tablecloth for my antique oak pedestal table.


MMario's design is beautiful and an easy knit, although with 4 extra repeats of the last several rows, it took quite a while. I started it August 08 and finished May 30, 09. I will say to MMario's defense that I wasn't just working on this project. Babysitting, other knits and general life did not let me put in the time I should have.

Now for a start. A group of us at Ravelry have decided to read the Little House books over the summer with our children and do crafts along those themes. Hopefully I will blog more often with finished crafts that BG and I have done together.

In other knitting news: SOTN: Arch-shaped socks 75% done, MMario's Offler stole 10% done, Ankh socks 20%, 3 scraves at various stages and YarnYenta's Shabbat scarf about 10% along. Hmmm...may need to add a new project?