About 4 or so years ago my brother and sister-in-law moved to Tyler, TX. They met and became friends with a couple they worshiped with. This couple had a little boy and had another on the way. Then a little over 2 years ago this same couple moved to Lufkin where my parents live. They began to worship where my parents worship. My parents pretty much took them in and began to babysit their boys from time to time. At some point Kim and I met and became friends. For me, it was an instant thing. She's so easy to like! There have been lots of times that we've been at my parents and we'd get together with Kim and the boys or Kim, Jesse (her husband) and the boys. During one of our earliest visits I was knitting (because I knit all the time) and for some reason it attracted Kim and she decided she wanted to start knitting. (She already knew how to crochet) She taught herself and learned amazingly fast!! From there she went to the last two WHIBSIBs and the Knit Out in Austin in between. (I'll discuss WHIBSIB in another post) She is an unbelievable knitter!! She knit a sweater for her younger sister last Christmas that was difficult and it turned out beautifully!!!! During the whole time I've known her they've been in the process of adopting a little girl from Vietnam. It was a long drawn-out process. While they were dealing with all that Kim found out she was pregnant. So, in September she had a baby girl and a few weeks later her husband and mother-in-law went together to Vietnam and finally came home with Maya!! So now they have their complete family - 2 boys and 2 girls!! Kim handles it all beautifully!!!
The reason for this post is that I got to spend a couple of hours with her this afternoon before we came back home. While I was sitting there talking and listening I realized that just being around her makes me a better person. She makes me feel like the future is going to be wonderful. She takes the stress of having four wonderful children 5 and under in stride. She laughs at things that are irritating. I'm about 13 years older than she is, but I consider her to be one of my best friends and she is such a wonderful influence over me! I feel so fortunate to have her in my life and I'm thankful that God has allowed our paths to cross!!
Thank you, Kim, for being who and what you are and for being my friend!! I love you!!
On to knitting related things...I was looking back at my last blog post and realized I made a mistake. I was talking about my Horcrux socks and said something about the lightning bolt scarf pattern. What I meant to say was the lightning bolt lace pattern in the sock. I've turned the heel on my first sock, picked up the stitches on the heel flap and I'm working on decreasing back down to my original number of stitches. Next time I'll post a picture.
Last night my Mom and I drove from Lufkin to Houston for my once a month sewing group. I started this with a group of women from church. Last night my Mom and two of my cousins were there, plus a woman from LSSK that lives in Austin. We had a really enjoyable time and I'm beginning to get to know some of the women from church that I hadn't previously known very well. Mom and I had a great adventure going back to Lufkin. I took my Austin friend back to her son's house and we were going to take an alternate route back to Lufkin. Somehow we missed our exit and ended up in Huntsville where Sam Houston State University is. It was dark and drizzly and as we were coming into Huntsville on I-45 I saw this HUGE white creepy thing that looked like it was in the middle of the road. I asked Mom what she thought. She had several ideas including smoke from a factory. However, the closer we got to this scary thing it turned out to be a gigantic statue of Sam Houston himself. I found out today that it is one of the largest statues in our country!!! Giant Statue of Sam Houston, Huntsville, Texas It is an amazing sight!! That would only happen in Texas!!! I LOVE this state!!
I'm sorry for the lack of pictures. Next time I promise there will be pics and more fun stuff!!
Knit On and More Later,
Shama D
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Happy New Year and Some Resolutions
Happy New Year!!!!! Today is the start of 2009 - DUH!! It's official and I can't pretend anymore - Logan's going to graduate this year!! How did the last 17 years and 10 months go by so quickly?? I will say that I'm so thankful that I had the privelege of homeschooling both him and Kelby from beginning to end!! I taught them to read, write, and do math. We've all learned so much together and I'm thankful I didn't have to turn them over to someone else to get the joy of all those firsts!! Now comes the time to start getting ready for his graduation reception. We'll have a come and go reception from home. I need to scan ALL of our pictures and my brother and I are going to put together a slide show to music. Plus, Logan is going to play some guitar and maybe sing with a friend of his! It's going to be beautiful, but so sad!!
As far as school we're going to start back on January 19th. Kelby has 12 math lessons left in this book. Once we finish this book we're going to stop math for the year and concentrate on finishing up history. We had a mix-up in our histor curriculum order and are getting a late start. Math takes up a lot of our time every day.
As far as knitting goes my first big project for the year is a Harry Potter blanket for Logan's graduation!! I'm going to use the myriad dishcloth and other HP patterns on the internet. I've printed out many of them and I'm always getting new ones from my friend Always Alice!!! She is a master pattern finder. She's always sending them to our online knitting group Lone Star State Knitters. I save those emails and save them to the end of the day like a special chocolate treat.
This year I'd like to learn to spin. I'll start drop spindling, but I'm far more interested in a spinning wheel. And, as usual, my taste is far bigger than my budget. I found a beautiful handcarved oak wheel. I can't remember the website, but I saw it on the Let's Knit Together video podcast. I also plan to start dyeing yarn. I have the Knit Picks sock blank and several pots of their dye. I so love to knit socks now!!
Speaking of socks...My parents gave me a skein of Harry Potter sock yarn. It's the Harry and Ron colorway. They also gave me a set of Knit Picks Harmony dp sock needles. I love them!! I've started the socks using the Horcrux Sock pattern. I would link you to that pattern but the only way to get it is to join the Six Socks Knitalong yahoo group. I'm enjoying it so far. It's basically a knit 3 purl 2 rib. Then there's the lightning bolt scarf pattern. It's neat.
I got no knitting done for Christmas presents. I did, however, do some just for fun knitting. I knit two reindeer from Mochimochi Land. She has the cutest and strangest stuffed creatures!! I really want to knit nearly all of them!! Here are the 2 reindeer:
They were lots of fun to knit and I learned some new things!! I will probably make more of these!! I also knitted some turkey hats for my nephews for Thanksgiving. They were silly but really cute on them!!!
Then I knit a couple of things for me. A couple of years ago I knit Santa hats for my family of 4, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Then they had their first one, Alton, and I knit his for Christmas 2007. Then this year I knit one for my other nephew, Kaden. However, my brother and sister-in-law forgot to bring their hats this year and we didn't get our usual family picture. I decided I wanted some matching arm warmers to go with mine because I wear my hat a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I finished them on the 23rd but it warmed up and I only got to wear them for this picture:
The other thing thing I wanted to share today is this slouchy cabled hat I knit last week. It's from the cover of the new Knit.1 mag.
I knit this using Bernat Softee Chunky double stranded in the Blue Denim Heather (I think) colorway. The only change I made in the pattern was to do the ribbing on size 10's instead of 7's. You're supposed to cast on 50 stitches and do your ribbing. Then you change to size 11's and knit into the front and back of every stitch to get the slouch. Well, I must have a fat head because 50 stitches on size 7's squeezed the crap out of my head!! I'm very satisfied with this hat, but it hasn't been cold since I finished it, either!!
Well, I could go on and on. But one of my resolutions is to blog 2 or 3 times a week this year!! So I'll be back very soon to gab incessantly!! I need to scan in a pile of pictures and try to get some sleep!!
Knit On and more later!!
Shama D
As far as school we're going to start back on January 19th. Kelby has 12 math lessons left in this book. Once we finish this book we're going to stop math for the year and concentrate on finishing up history. We had a mix-up in our histor curriculum order and are getting a late start. Math takes up a lot of our time every day.
As far as knitting goes my first big project for the year is a Harry Potter blanket for Logan's graduation!! I'm going to use the myriad dishcloth and other HP patterns on the internet. I've printed out many of them and I'm always getting new ones from my friend Always Alice!!! She is a master pattern finder. She's always sending them to our online knitting group Lone Star State Knitters. I save those emails and save them to the end of the day like a special chocolate treat.
This year I'd like to learn to spin. I'll start drop spindling, but I'm far more interested in a spinning wheel. And, as usual, my taste is far bigger than my budget. I found a beautiful handcarved oak wheel. I can't remember the website, but I saw it on the Let's Knit Together video podcast. I also plan to start dyeing yarn. I have the Knit Picks sock blank and several pots of their dye. I so love to knit socks now!!
Speaking of socks...My parents gave me a skein of Harry Potter sock yarn. It's the Harry and Ron colorway. They also gave me a set of Knit Picks Harmony dp sock needles. I love them!! I've started the socks using the Horcrux Sock pattern. I would link you to that pattern but the only way to get it is to join the Six Socks Knitalong yahoo group. I'm enjoying it so far. It's basically a knit 3 purl 2 rib. Then there's the lightning bolt scarf pattern. It's neat.
I got no knitting done for Christmas presents. I did, however, do some just for fun knitting. I knit two reindeer from Mochimochi Land. She has the cutest and strangest stuffed creatures!! I really want to knit nearly all of them!! Here are the 2 reindeer:
They were lots of fun to knit and I learned some new things!! I will probably make more of these!! I also knitted some turkey hats for my nephews for Thanksgiving. They were silly but really cute on them!!!
Then I knit a couple of things for me. A couple of years ago I knit Santa hats for my family of 4, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Then they had their first one, Alton, and I knit his for Christmas 2007. Then this year I knit one for my other nephew, Kaden. However, my brother and sister-in-law forgot to bring their hats this year and we didn't get our usual family picture. I decided I wanted some matching arm warmers to go with mine because I wear my hat a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I finished them on the 23rd but it warmed up and I only got to wear them for this picture:
The other thing thing I wanted to share today is this slouchy cabled hat I knit last week. It's from the cover of the new Knit.1 mag.
I knit this using Bernat Softee Chunky double stranded in the Blue Denim Heather (I think) colorway. The only change I made in the pattern was to do the ribbing on size 10's instead of 7's. You're supposed to cast on 50 stitches and do your ribbing. Then you change to size 11's and knit into the front and back of every stitch to get the slouch. Well, I must have a fat head because 50 stitches on size 7's squeezed the crap out of my head!! I'm very satisfied with this hat, but it hasn't been cold since I finished it, either!!
Well, I could go on and on. But one of my resolutions is to blog 2 or 3 times a week this year!! So I'll be back very soon to gab incessantly!! I need to scan in a pile of pictures and try to get some sleep!!
Knit On and more later!!
Shama D
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