More pictures than you can shake a stick at!

Hello, everybody!  Today's post is all about pictures.  There has been a lot of pictures I wanted to post so now their are all going in the same post before I forget about them.  

First up, pictures from the guys' birthday party.   Bryan  was the king and Nathan was the prince, but the little prince would not keep his crown on!!



Yummy cake, isn't it?


The ballpit now resides in Mom and Dad's living room, but I hear Nathan has discovered how fun it is to throw the balls out of the pit, so it might go away soon.  Miranda, I burnt a cd of the birthday pictures for you, hopefully tomorrow I'll drop them off at Moms, I keep forgetting!

Around Valentine's Day Yarns had a big sale so of course I had to help them out, but trust me, not as much as some people did!  It was on a Friday Knit Night, so I got home late and the bag of yarn didn't get any farther than the living room.   Well, at least I didn't take any farther than the living room.   The cat on the other hand......

This is what we woke up to, starting in the bedroom with two balls of yarn on a pile of clothes, leading into the kitchen....


where there is a big ol huge mess!  The door straight ahead in this shot is the bedroom door, see the yarn coming out the door?  Zoey must have ran in circles in the kitchen with the yarn! Then it heads out into the living room (door on the right).


You can see the yarn better in this picture.  There are two different yarns here, see the ball of sock yarn up there?


And in the living room she must have ran around the end table!  No, I didn't kill her.

Here are pictures of Zoey's scars.  
Scar from her hernia operation. 


I was trying to get a picture of both here, there is only about 1 inch of fur between the two.  You can kinda see the bald patch on her tummy, but she was NOT helping!


See?  Not helping at all!!!

This just might be the cutest picture of Nathan ever!  And there are a lot of cute pictures of Nathan, let me tell ya!  Miranda sent this in an email, it sure cheered me up!

Excuses, Excuses

Yeah, I did it! I figured it out on my own! Yay, me! Here ya go, my excuse for the month of December.

Hey Dana, sorry I just now am managing to write you back.   When I stopped commenting around the blogosphere was because my husband had some health problems.  Since I really don't feel like writing it all out again and I would probably never get you emailed, I'll just copy and paste what I wrote to another friend.
I want to tell you more about the week we have had dealing with DH's crazy lymph node.  He started feeling bad two Thursdays ago, went to the dr.  the next Monday.  He gave us a good antibiotic and told us to come back if he wasn't feeling better by Wed.  Well, he wasn't, so he had DH get a cat-scan.   Couldn't tell what it was from that so we got sent to a ear, nose and throat surgeon in Hutch that same day.   That dr. threw a bomb on us when he said it might be cancer, lymphoma.  To find out he had a biopsy done, just went in with a needle to take a piece out.  Then we had to wait till Friday to get the results, which were inconclusive anyway!  So Friday(same day) he had surgery, the dr. cut a piece out and sent it off to be tested while DH was still on the table.  All they could tell was that it wasn't an aggressive cancer.  So they did rule out the worst case scenario but still didn't know what it was.  The dr. went ahead and pulled the whole thing out and sent it off to be tested.  Went back today and the dr. walked in and told us it wasn't cancer and he was very surprised about it, he was pretty sure he would be sending us off for chemo.  But they tested it all kinds of ways and did not find any malignancies, still don't know WHAT it is, some kind of infection, so they took some more blood for another round of tests.  He is on the mend though, he has felt MUCH better since they took it out.

Since then we managed to handle Christmas, it was nice but more stress.  We have a hearing for my disability on Jan. 24th, so had a meeting with our lawyer about it.  He kinda pissed me off and depressed me at the same time.  Told us we weren't doing what we should have been (why didn't he say something two years ago when we first hired him?), and that chiropractors won't count at all, and they have done the most to help me! Anyway, since then I have been slightly depressed and when that happens I tend to isolate myself without really thinking about it, such as respoding to email or even reading blogs.   My bloglines are really up there.  Things are ok and will get better.  

Zoe just had surgery for her hernia and got fixed at the same time.  So, she was abandoned and has two big incisions!  she made us feel really guilty for about two days.  The stitches on her belly she left alone so that scar is healed.  But she just couldn't leave the hernia one alone until I put Fuller Farms Tea Tree Salve on her.  I knew it wouldn't hurt her, but she sure didn't like the taste!  That incision is getting better now too.  

Thanks for checking up on me, hopefully before too long I'll feel like posting something.  Hell, I might copy and paste this up to the blog just to throw something up there! 
Faren

Both Techpriest and Zoey are doing great, though you can still see both of their scars. We actually just mailed out the last two Christmas presents to family in New Jersey, they had been finished for awhile, but I couldn't seem to get them boxed up and mailed.  And no, I didn't take pictures of any of the Christmas presents I made. Or the birthday gifts I made in January.    To distract you from those non photos how about more photos of Nathan from my birthday party?

Karla and Nathan, and below, her son and the little tike!  February 18th is his 1st birthday! Already!  You guys are right, he has gotten big!

My excuse for January??   My disability hearing and the depression caused by anticipating it.  It turns out that since they can find no cause for my headaches, I can't get disability  because of it. Might be able to get disability because of the depression caused by constantly being in pain, but not for the pain itself.   Makes sense, don't it?  

Anyway, I decided to finally mark all my bloglines as "mark as read", cause I figured it would take forever to get caught up on over 800 of them.  Of course, I have read most of your guys blogs, plus the Yarn Harlot's and Crazy Aunt Purl's, but that is all the knitting blogs I've read.  I think I'll start weeding out some of the 150 feeds I have, so it isn't so overwhelming.  

later, gater

Is Anybody Out There?

Hey, everyone, sorry I dropped off the face of the earth for so long.  Thanks to everyone who emailed or left a comment wondering where I was.  It means a lot.  Since I want to finish this post while I still feel like it I'm going to copy an email I sent to Dana.

Ok, apparently I can't paste it, smeggin' thing!  I switched over to a mac so blogger probably doesn't like it.   I'll try to post again soon with a pretty good excuse as to why I've been gone.  Well,  it at least is good for the month of December! 

Till then here are some Nathan pictures from my birthday in November.  

Nathan and his daddy, my big brother.

And Nathan and Grandma, my mom.

Why yes, we did buy a new camera.

Why do you ask?
Here is the afghan, Zoey thinks it is comfy.


So pretty!


It is kinda hard to see the basketweave, but it sure is pretty, though the 8 ends I had to weave in sure wasn't!


Love this one too.


Zoey was holding the afghan down for me, she is such a helper!


The back side, you can clearly see the whip stitch.


Front side, doesn't look to bad I think.


Weasley sweater ornaments, this one is for Dad. I plan on making 20 of the little suckers, good thing they are so quick!


Mom's ornament.


Left to right: my brother(Nathan's Daddy), our Dad, our Mom, and she is holding Nathan of course.


Mom and Nathan. Miranda had a party for her mother's 50th birthday. We all had lots of fun and chocolate cake.





Chewing on the camera strap.


Techpriest found a cat website, that is a little bat flying around.


Who threw out a perfectly good kitty?

How funny

Saw this over at Twosheep and thought I needed to post it. I've been wanting to figure out how to post youtube videos anyway. I might just have to go grab a couple of Nathan videos from Miranda's blog.





These two are the funny ones, the ones you just had to see.

Edited to Add:

Dana successfully showed off two youtube videos also! If you are into knitting go check them out! In the comments Marianne asked how she did that, so I thought it might be a good idea to put some instructions up.

If the video plays on the blog: after it is finished there will be a button that says embed, click on it and a new button will come up that says copy to clipboard. Click on that button, then paste into your blog post. ctrl+v is the easiest way to paste.

If it takes you to the youtube website: after it is done playing to the right of the video in the top box it will say embed. You need to highlight the words next to it(make sure you get them all) and copy them. The easiest way to copy is to hit ctrl+c. Then just paste it into your blog post by hitting ctrl +v (don't ask me why it isn't ctrl +p, that makes more sense to me too)

Hope this helps, any questions or advice is welcome!

Long Time No Blog

Sorry it has been so long since I've posted, over a month! I had two emails waiting for me the other day just to see if I was ok. Seems that Criquette over at Prairie Gumbo, Marianne from Marianne's Knotminding and Dana from Blue Ridge Knittery had noticed I wasn't around much and was concerned about me.

Half of it was I felt more like reading some fan fiction (no, not THAT kind! :)) than of keeping up on blog reading. I do tend to go through phases of what I read online. My husband has been sick with strep AND mono the last two weeks, and though I have managed to not catch any of it, I have been worn out. Taking naps in the middle of the day worn out. I've also been busy doing some volunteering for the McPherson Scottish Festival. Plus, my headache has been a little worse and I suppose I have been a little depressed. There are some signs that I'm coming out of my funk though, so let's hope! I have been knitting though, and even took a knitting class. Actually have a couple of FO's to blog about too. I'll try to get a post up about them over the weekend.

Once again ladies, thanks for emailing, it helped get me out of my funk and back in the mood for reading some knit blogs! I'm down to 268 on my bloglines!

If you like my Nathan pictures you have to see Miranda's Nathan videos, they are so cute. I think there are 4 short videos in all. Make sure you don't miss the one of him blowing raspberries, it is the absolute cutest!!

New look

Hey, like the new look? Miranda made me a very sweet header, didn't she? I picked out the pictures, but everything else she choose for me. Does she know me or what? Someday I might search for a good Firefly quote. Specially as now that I think about it, I seem to recall seeing this quote on some other knitting blog. I'm not really going to worry about it though. I will feel like reading Firefly quotes sometime.

Speaking of Firefly quotes, has anyone noticed the quote widget at the bottom of the blog? It is only one a day though, I was looking for one that refreshed, oh well.

Techpriest doesn't seem to think that is a very good picture of Nathan, says he has weird shadows on him because of the angle, what do you guys think? Course, Techpriest also says Nathan looks like MiniMe from Austin Powers, so you have to take what he says with a grain of salt.

I've ripped back past the heel of Miranda's sock, but haven't started knitting the heel again. Haven't knitted at all, I'll get back to it soon. I decided to start reading Harry Potter OotP and HBP so I'm ready when the next book comes out. I'm wondering if I'll get them finished in time.

Well I think that is all I have for now. I'll leave you with this picture of Nathan that hubby really thinks looks like MiniME. It is kinda funny, he looks soo pissed!

Stupid socks!

These darn socks of Miranda's are going to kill me, I swear! I found different short row heel instructions here worked pretty good, I'm happy enough with it. So I started cruisin up the cuff with my little cable pattern happy as a clam. One minor opps, 4 rows down I forgot to cross a cable, no big deal, dropped the four stitches down, crossed them, brought them back up, no problem. She only wants a 3 inch cuff so finished pretty quickly and bound off.

Now, the last time I knitted a sock toe up(magic 8 cast on with a reverse gusset/heel flap) I had a problem finding a bind off that was stretchy enough for me. I don't know how many I went through, but do you think I would be smart enough to print it off, bookmark it or something? Anything? Nope, not me, apparently I never thought I would want to knit a sock toe up again, or even more unlikely, that I would actually remember the silly thing. So I go a googling, find one that seemed familiar and started. No....it wasn't EZ's sewn bind off, though I had tried it the last time around. How about the next one? Nope not that one either, though that one was a down right bugger to pick out. Finally I find the right one (4th post down by Spinnerella)I am postive that is the same one I used last time, but the stupid sock still won't go over my heel.

What in the world is wrong with the silly thing? Does the cable pattern make it too tight? Should I add more stitches after the heel? I put it down before I would have to hurt somebody. I tried to complain to Techpriest about it, but it just isn't the same when they have no idea what you are talking about. I put it out of my mind(as much as I could) until I was reading my bloglines and I came across Wendy's post today(July 3, 2007), where she answered a commenter's question that had the same problem I do. The heel isn't deep enough, the solution? Frog all the way back to the start of the heel and do one of three things. Knit a gusset heel, a short row gusset, or knit a short row heel over more the half the stitches. Did you catch the part about ripping all my hard work out? Including the heel I worked so hard on three different times?

I'll get over it, I try to remember that I like knitting, so this just gives me more to knit right? I try to forget that if I had done a traditional heel I most likely would have finished this sock already. If I don't try something new I'll never learn anything. You all should feel sorry for Miranda, who knows what these socks are going to look like by the time I'm done?

Friday was fairly bad for me, my headache reached a 8 on the Richter scale. It took till today to get almost back to normal levels. I still went to Hutch Saturday to see Angie and Pearl, two friends of mine that I don't see enough off. Wait, that is would be all of my friends, wouldn't it? I see these two even less. It probably has been years since we really have gotten together and talked. I enjoyed it, but with the headache I really couldn't relax and enjoy it like I wanted too. I had to leave early too, before I couldn't drive the 30 minutes back home. Been having problems going to sleep too. I really don't want to get back in the habit of staying up late and sleeping late, I never get anything done.

Enough with the bitching, yes? Tomorrow we plan on going to my mom and dads to bbq. Brian, Miranda and Nathan should be there too. Baby time! I plan on making deviled eggs, yummy.

Hope everyone has a good 4th of July!



Cute couple aren't they? That's Miranda by the way, the new mommy with the stupid socks! :P

Warning: Random Post Ahead

Hello, I know it has been a while, but there hasn't been a whole lot going on. Last Saturday we celebrated DH's 34th birthday with his mom and nephew(she is his guardian) by eating at Cracker Barrel, good food. We had fun.

Earlier we had bought me and her new cell phones. I had been using an old brick that was a few years old. DH is a computer tech and is fairly savvy about any electronic gadgets so mil wanted his help too. We both ended up getting a motorazr, so we can use it as an mp3 player as well. Pretty neat phone, I spent all of an evening downloading pictures and adding them to everyone's contact info. Haven't quite worked out how to convert songs into ringtones, but working on it.

Speaking of DH, I'll probably start calling him by his online handle, Techpriest, because he fixes it and prays it works. He has been going by that now for longer than I've know him. Actually, I've been going by Faren online for longer than I've known him too. While reading Robert Jordan's Eye of the World I came across the mention of a farmer who had my last name (maiden), his first name was Faren, loved the sound of it and decided it use it.

The place seems quieter without Tika around, even though she hadn't been able to get into trouble in quite a while. Raffles is doing good, still sleeping all the time, just wakes up to eat and poop seems like. It will be really quiet when he is gone.

Marianne had asked a couple of days ago whether it had rained much here lately. I told her no. It seems as soon as I said that it started raining. Yesterday it poured down. Hard enough to flood the apartment. Again. This has apparently been the wettest spring in thirteen years here. All the rivers are still very high from the last series of rains. Everyone's basements have flooded, I just happen to live in one. Hutchinson has flooded even worse, two of my friends have had two and four feet of water in their basement. Both lost their water heater and one lost the blower to the central heating unit, which means no air conditioning. So I suppose I could have had it much worse, but it is hard to remember that when all the rooms in the apt. have water in them and you have to keep going from one to the other to keep up with it. Yesterday I was ready to move, but we really can't. The rent is cheap, we are in a good neighborhood, the neighbors in the other apartments are nice, and we can keep Raffles here. It is a pain to find somewhere that will let you keep pets. And we are hoping next spring isn't quite so bad.

It is also very cool down here, I've seen it be 10 degrees cooler than it is outside. But sometimes I swear everything is just slightly damp it is so humid. That has been getting on my nerves too, but Techpriest borrowed a dehumidifier today and it has already made such a huge difference! I'm amazed. So yeah, I feel better about the place than I did yesterday, what a difference a day makes. There really are many pluses to this place.

Sunday I cleaned off the sewing cabinet, one set of crafting shelves, the computer room closet, and a set of shelves in the kitchen. These spots just collect junk that don't belong there. So I got them under control for a while.

Techpriest bought me a couple of Red Dwarf books, so I've been reading them. They are good, but I think I like the TV show better. If anyone is interested, let my know and I'll let you have them for what he paid for them.

Not much knitting going on. I finished using the leftover yarn from Nathan's sweater for squares for Greensburg, and I just haven't moved on to anything else. I found some different instructions for short row heels, but just haven't sat down and got it done. I'm going to have to really pay attention, and all I've really wanted was mindless knitting while watching tv. I plan on doing it tomorrow, but we shall see.

Gratuitous Nathan Picture of the Day!

I love this picture of Nathan with his Daddy(my big brother)

Can't sleep, the clowns will get me!

Well, I finished Nathan's baby sweater this weekend. It would look better on a model, but I made it big so it would fit him this winter, so it wouldn't fit anyway, even if he was around.
Project: Nathan's Baby Sweater
Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Jelli Beanz
Pattern: Plymouth Yarns Hooded Baby Sweater
Needles: size 9 KnitPicks Options
I made this through a class offered by Yarns in Salina, very helpful, I learned a lot, I also forgot a lot. There are still plenty of mistakes in it, but I'm not going to tell! That way Miranda might not notice them. She is a crocheter though, so she might figure some of them out. It is still cute though, and wearable, so that is all that matters, right? The buttons are adorable too! They have a black outline of a car on them. There certainly were a lot of ends to weave in, it will be awhile before I make something that is more than one color!




I finished this not to long ago, love the celtic knotwork. Isn't the piping pretty? It would hold a checkbook or two. The only problem is the cards keep falling out, any ideas? Either how to fix this one or for future wallets?

I was able to finish the sweater because I was fed up with Miranda's sock, actually the heel. I've only ripped it out twice, compared to the toe's 3 times, but I just couldn't take anymore! I thought I had it figured out when I noticed one side has holes...just one side. If it had been both sides I might have left it, they aren't very big holes, they are almost decorative. They are on the side where I knit the wraps with the stitch. I was looking at the Sockapalozza site and noticed that a lot of the short row heels have them. So any idea on what I should do and how I should do it? I intend to look it up on the web, I just haven't felt up to it. Ignoring the sock has allowed me to finish the sweater and another square for Greensburg so that is something.

Today was laundry day again, no horrible parents today, though there was some circus clowns...actually I don't know if they were clowns, but they were from the circus. Across from the laundromat they were sitting up the big tent, I think the whole town came out for that because the elephants were helping. Anyway, the laundromat was full, apparently the circus does it's laundry on Tuesdays too. I had to wait for dryers, but not to big a deal. Then we went to the afternoon show. I was surprised McPherson could get such a big circus. They were really good, acrobats, high wire acts, horses, and the elephants of course, it was a long show too. In the petting zoo they had some llamas and alpacas too, and even a hippo, though you couldn't pet him.
We had a good time.

Gratuitous baby picture

Sorry this post has so many run on sentences and who knows what else, but I wanted to post, and my brain just is not working very well right now. I think it might be time to go to sleep!

Sorry!

Sorry it has been a few days, I got distracted. Wed. was Knit Night at the Salina yarn store and I just didn't get around to posting in the afternoon. Everyone thought that Miranda's sock was turning out good. I'll probably end up having her try it on, but just in case I'm not posting a picture. I'm ready to start the short row heel, so time to see how it works!

These are the blocks I've made for Greensburg. The two pink-purplish ones on the left are made out of yarn I received in a swap and I can't believe how much straw was in it! It did look handspun. The purple yarn is Cascade 220, and the little bit of blue in the purple block is beautiful handspun yarn from another swap, it was my first taste of handspun. The block on the upper right I made ages ago for practice out of Red Heart, so between the two I don't think it is up to snuff. Occasionally, I do use Red Heart, like the Dr. Who Scarf, but I just don't like this block.




The pattern for these two blocks(and many others) can be found here. I really like the way they turned out, specially after blocking.

Thursday I went to Hutchinson all afternoon and saw my nephew Nathan(tadpole), and since Miranda said it was ok, here is a picture of him. My dad is holding him either the day he was born or the next day. Oh, he was born on his Daddy's birthday! Isn't that neat? I always think of this picture as Grandpa's Hands.
Then last night we watched Ghost Rider, pretty good movie.
Talk to you all later!