Happy Birthday David! & Scout's Meme

Today is my brother's 36th birthday. Happy birthday David!

Not much new here, just cleaning out the laundry room today. It's a hot, boring job, but necessary job.

Scout's "Wanna Know a Secret" Meme . I now tag each and every one of you who reads this to tell a secret that might make your friends/readers lose respect for you. Come on. Play with me. Please? Ready, set, GO! I expect to see some good ones out there. Go post!

Here is something that I don't normally share with my peers. I love fishing. Please don't hate me PoMo Golightly or any other vegetarians or fish lovers out there. Summer days make me long for mountains and fishing. Must be a hold-over from childhood. We used to camp and fish a lot.


This picture was taken in the Cascade Mountains outside of Winthrop, WA. Those would be rainbow trout and yes, I caught them all! The sneer indicates that this was taken during my early teen years, but I can't remember exactly when. The aforementioned brother was probably the source of my annoyance.

So there you have it, I'm a hillbilly. I detest malls and shopping (except for books and yarn). And on that note, I'm off with my shovel to scrape up some roadkill for the stewpot.

Happy Saturday everyone and don't forget to enter Ferg's contest. She dyes up some delicious yarn!

Catch Up Friday!

Hey there! Just a quick catch up from this corner of blogland.

First off, a HUGE welcome to Grace Caroline. She was born just two days ago in the land down under and now Terri of Lilypily Yarns is a proud grandma! Grace is just beautiful and you'll notice that she's sporting a lovely hat made by none other than Grandma Terri herself!

Next in news blogland is the announcement of another YARN CONTEST! The ever-busy and extremely talented Ferg is holding a contest. Ferg is a retired school teacher who has noticed a trend or dynamic in the English Language towards simplification. Among her observations is the dwindling use of adverbs, hence her contest.

I'm after the BEST use of the adverb "best". In order to show how you know it's an adverb, you have to use it in a sentence and then let me know that you know it's an adverb by telling what it's describing.

1)I shall give the contest till the 16th July. Ten days should be enough.

2)Answers can be sent as comments to this posting and I will repeat the BEST three in a new posting after the 16th.

3) Anyone can tell everyone about the contest because I'll need all the publicity I can get if I want more than three or four responses!

Gillian will personally hand dye yarn and mail it to whomever provides her the most creative answer (correctly used of course). It's been quite some time since I was in school and although I always detested sentence diagramming, etc. the incentive of beautiful yarn makes this sound like a fun challenge.

I'm pretty much ready for next week's Girl Scout Day Camp. Here's a picture of our flag...
I finished it last night except for the name tags. The girls will have to come up with their own camp names and stick those on the giraffes.

I'm looking forward to this annual adventure with the exception of the overnight camping part. My almost 39-year-old body doesn't take kindly to a night of sleeping on the ground anymore. Cripes, getting old rots.


In yesterday's mail my P.S. Sock Club yarn came from Mama-E! Talk about some gorgeous purple yarn. Here's a picture of it with some of the non-dead flowers left in my long-neglected garden. I can't wait to start some grape-a-licious socks with this yummy yarn named "Beauregard" (as in Violet Beauregard from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).


While I've been preparing for next week my girls have been pre-occupying themselves in the pool and with other backyard activities. Not exactly the most exciting summer on record, but not terrible by any means either.

B is running between school and a temporary graveyard job. The poor feller doesn't have any time to relax, but we hope that the classes will enable him to find a great job with benefits and decent hours. Medical insurance is very underrated. I'm still trying to figure out how to finance medication for the two of us. We found a program for the girls. But I won't dwell on the long and sordid details of this endeavor.

In the evenings I've been knitting a few rows here and there before falling asleep. Currently on the needles is a Picovoli sweater. I'm using some Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino and size 2 Addi-turbo circs. for this. The yarn is soft and delightful to work with. And although I love Addi-turbos, they are almost too slippery to use with this smooth yarn. Being a tightwad prevents me from purchasing another pair of bamboo circulars though.

Hope everyone is doing well. I see that Cindy's poison-ivy has cleared up enough for her to start spinning again! Cheers.

Indepence Day!

Happy 4th of July for all of you from the USA and Happy 4th of July to the rest of the world too (let's all party)! We were awakened at shortly after 3:00am to rolling thunder which shook the house. Many people here in western Washington complain that it always rains on the 4th of July. Personally, I find it reassuring. Afterall, the Einsteins down the street from us hardly practice discretion when setting off their fireworks. Each year on the 5th we police the yard for paper, sticks and other debris that has blown our way. So far the rain has never prevented us from eating bbq, waving the flag, being with family or friends or feeling patriotic and extremely fortunate.

For us the festivities actually began on Saturday with the annual Fourth of July Parade in Tokeland, WA. At the end of the parade there was a picnic complete with sack races for the kids and a bagpipe band.

And this visit held a special surprise because my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Wayne were visiting. I haven't seen them in 9 years! My cousin, Mark, will return from his 4th tour in Iraq in August and he's getting married. I haven't seen Mark in almost 20 years. Not to sound cliche', but were does the time go?!

We left A2 with my Mom & Dad for several days and she is having a grand time at the beach.



Yesterday Dad turned 65. Happy Birthday, Dad! I finished his hat (while watching the parade) and successfully made him some cardamom bread. It wasn't near as good as Grandma Helen's, but it was edible and recognized as caramom bread so I was happy.

Yesterday's mail included a package from Sapporo, Japan. Inside there were gifts galore courtesy of JRS . Several weeks back she held a contest to "Name the Song". She showed words from a Karaoke song that she and a friend performed and the first three people to correctly name the song received Japanese goodies. The song was "Centerfold" by the J.Geils Band and it induced a 1980's flashback. Anyway, inside the package were socks, a bag (just the right size for knitting accessories), my very own chopsticks, 5 adorable erasers shaped like sushi and noodles and three packages of rice candy for my girls. Thank you J! I'm looking for baby knitting items for you.

Cindy out in St. Louis is recovering from a bout with some poison ivy and promises some July spinning. She's very talented and I can't wait to see what flies off of her wheel!

And in other blog news, the world is still awaiting the arrival of Terri's new granddaughter. Terri has been knitting up a storm and that will be the best-dressed child in Australia!