woolythyme

weekending..... family style

 

 

Road tripping!!!

 

It all began with about 10 hours of playing with these people...

::impromptu piano concerts (5 play...2 are advanced players, passing their Daddy's ability years ago; Rach is limited now only by the size of her hands. Her brother has perfect pitch.  Where did this musical ability come from?  I can play the radio.)

::a soccer game (We won....I think)

::a homerun derby contest that only made two cry

::stargazing...we saw Saturn's rings, and Jupiter's moons, and declared Mars actually RED

::a pizza party

....and lots and lots of hugs and giggles and cousin-bonding.

 

It was hard to move on.

 

Next stop...

Ohiopyle

and a tour of Fallingwater (Frank Lloyd Wright's home built for the Kaufmann family)

We met some friends from high school and had a perfect day...mine probably the most perfect, since Bonney shared some of the booty she received from one of her friend's yarn shop closure.

I'm still hyperventilating when I get it all in a pile.  A ton of linen---the rest, dk weight wools and wool blends.  

Our last day....was family reunion day....the reason for the trip.    

Hubby's side of the family, but since we went to high school together,  I know a whole lot of these folks, too! Many spouses and second and third generations we 'met' for the first time, though.  They came from all over the world.  We were color-coded (our family 'branch' is in white; as is typical, one bro is off riding his bike and missed the photo-op)

We had to divide up generationally.  Wishing our son and his family could have made the trip to add 7 to the chaos.  It was much fun.  In fact, so much fun, my knitting never came out of the bag!  (All arranged by the cousin who just retired from event coordinator for LPG events, so she knows her stuff!!!)

In total, we spent nearly 24 hours of the weekend in the car---daughter driving (since she declares me 'scary driver' and her dad a 'speed demon')

You can get a whole lot of knitting done with that kind of uninterrupted time...

• finished birthday socks
• hat for seaman's church institute, Christmas at Sea charity
• 3-colored cowl
• fingerless mitt (minus the thumb) and started the second
• washcloth (from a bit of cotton in the goodie pile)

    Daughter was a real trooper doing all that driving, especially since the last leg of the trip was in a horrible thunderstorm.

She wants payment in yarn.

home.....

12 10 hours of car knitting (I actually drove a couple hours!!) and we're home.

 

 

Home...less than 24 hours

and missing them already.

Beach-y yarnalong!....

Two days down....two books done.  That's got to be a record!  Blue Shoes was all Anne Lamott; a great read that I didn't want to end.  Catcher in the Rye leads me to believe that I really must reread most everything from that infamous high school/pre-college best-lit list.  I remembered a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y NOTHING.  Madame Picasso is next....

 

The knitting is Neep heid by Kate Davis.  If I had been paying attention, I wouldn't have had to do severe frogging....somehow, when you overlook the 88 st. increase after the ribbing, you don't exactly get a beret look.  Back on track now.

 

The weather and the beach have been perfect....the water, not so.  We've found ourselves nestled on the North Carolina coast between the two front page shark attacks.  There was rumor that the whole Brunswick County beach would be closed to swimming, but that hasn't happened....yet.  The beach is being patrolled heavily, both on land and by air.  I'm still a Nervous Nellie.  

Sand sharks abound.  Our next door neighbors caught a baby swimming pool full of them. Sand sharks aren't the worry.  Bull shark?  Tiger shark?  !!!!

 

 

We're still having a ball!

weekending...

 

I left my SD card with my DIL...it was First Communion weekend and it was only right that she have the photos loaded on her computer before they got loaded onto mine.

So, here is what you missed....

 

:: a very, very quick overnight visit from a fraternity brother whom we hadn't seen in 35+ years.  (How do guys just pick up where they left off? No matter the elapsed time??)  GREAT visit!

:: JayBob's 10th birthday party...30 of his closest friends at the roller rink.  All well behaved boys, no one broke any important parts, and much fun had by all.

:: experimenting with a new point-and-shoot camera, which will NEVER replace the DSLR but which will be nice to carry in my purse (when I figure out how to work it.)

:: a road trip to see our son and his family....and to celebrate his middle child's First Communion.  She was beautiful.  The service inspiring.  The day perfect.

:: two baseball games and a softball game (we arrived too late for the soccer game and missed seeing Granddaughter#3--the First Communicant-- score twice and Granddaughter#4 score once.)

:: an outing into their neighborhood sewer; hubby dropped his favorite pen in while trying to fish out the wiffle ball.  (The pen was rescued, the ball ended up down the sewer, but since the sewer was declared home-run territory in the front-yard pickup game, no one was too upset.)

:: doing some serious mending on a crocheted afghan I had made for Granddaughter#1 years ago; nothing makes my heart sing more than to see something I've made loved almost to death.  It gained several more years with the repairs.

:: some serious road trip knitting on Magrathea.  (Yarn from Mountain Girl Yarns.)

 

joining Karen for weekending.

 

weekend birthdays....

 

 

Birthdays...X 3.  Hubby, son, and granddaughter.  ????, 42, 12.

 

It's a travel day to get there.

 

Clothes...check.

Presents....check.

Talking books.....check

Wheaten, rill, mitered cross blanket....oh, wait, I think I need to toss in some dishrag yarn......check, check, check, and check.  (We'll be gone almost 48 hours.  I need choices, right?)

Birthday cake.  Birthday cake??  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

 

My son has had a 'hamburger' birthday cake since he was a little boy.  We've gone through many cake designers...one died, two retired, and this was a transition year once more.  I talked to the owner of this new-to-me cake shop.....she was excited about making his cake (especially with its 30+ year 'tradition'). I had talked to her again last week, so you can imagine my surprise when I stopped to pick it up right before leaving town to find......she forgot.  FORGOT?!!!  And she didn't even offer a substitute (not that we could have had a substitute, but still.....)

I hustled home, scoured the internet (I love you, Internet!!!...love love love!!!) for custom cakes in HIS hometown, made a quick call, and secured a cake for the next day (Valentine's Day, his birthday).  If this call isn't made months in advance in MY town, between weddings and Valentine cakes I don't have a prayer of a chance of getting one.  (Obviously, this year even that didn't matter.) The few minutes of utter panic was worth the silver lining ......  we found a very convenient, very delicious, very artful 'hamburger' (and at a third of the price, but that really was simply the proverbial icing on the cake this year) from a well respected family-run business minutes from his house. (I now have them on speed-dial.) 

We had a lovely visit, in spite of the fact that son had to work most of the weekend, and our grandson lost his basketball game by only four points (two points if you don't count the basket one of his teammates scored for the opposition....we're still at the age where this 'uh-oh' caused unrelenting tears).

We had piano concerts, mini knitting sessions (consisting  of primarily untangling yarn, but it was still yarn-worthy time), some cooking with the 12 year old (she cooked, I was simply sous-chef...how quickly our roles have reversed), a marathon game of Charades that lasted nearly the entire two days (although at times we found the 4 year old playing by herself), and a belated birthday lunch with the now 8 year old (we missed being at her birthday party this year).

 We made up for it.

And---we made it safely back home before the winter storm hit.

It was a very fine weekend.

 

 

joining Karen for weekending!

Grandma got run over by a reindeer....

It started as a drippy nose.  Then a 'culd inb by hed'.  Then... here comes the cough.  Then my whole face started to ache.  DUH.  How long can I be in denial?  I really am sick.  

In lieu of being the Grandma who gave everyone a cold for Christmas, I'm staying home while the rest of the family travels to continue celebrating the season.  

One sick Grandma vs 7 sick grandkids.  It was a no brainer. 

 

Freddy was thrilled.  (He wasn't invited on the trip.)

 

* * * * * * * * * 

Queen Street Mitts using Miss Babs cashmere.  (Iknow how to pamper myself.)

 

favorite things.....

My daughter made a favorite things cowl last year.  She whipped this thing up in no time flat....while mine lingered (and lingered).

I think hers turned out great; what you can't see is how extremely wonky the fair isle is.  I think it would block out, but her knitting motto is...'whatever!' and in this case, she's right.  Unblocked, it still looks good.  Puckery....it's still great.

She was wearing it this weekend and I had immediate cowl-envy.  It made me think about mine that's been in hibernation since I got really really bored with it, tried to finish it fast with assorted stripes...

and pretty much ruined the look and the whole purpose of a 'favorite things' cowl.  Yesterday morning I ripped out the stripes.

Much better.  I'm not quite to the half-way point, but it might actually get finished this time.  Mine is wonky and puckery.

 

Whatever.

 

I'm going to have to figure out how to add some books to the mix, because they rank pretty high on the 'favorite things' list.  And to be sort of timely, they might have to be Agatha Christie ones.  For some reason, I'm still on the kick with her mysteries.  Just finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  WHOA!  I did NOT see that ending coming!!  I just picked up Ordeal by Innocence, another that the Queen of Mystery considered among her personal favorites.*  Haven't even opened the front cover.  I'll let you know.

 

Joining with Ginny for Yarnalong.  Wonder how to put that on my scarf, too.  Truly, one of my favorite things!!!!

 

 

 

 

Agatha's personal favorites include:

Murder on the Orient Express

The Moving Finger

And Then There were None

Towards Zero

Crooked House

A Murder is Announced

Endless Night

Murder of Roger Ackroyd

 

family.....

Family......the best!!!

We had the most 'funnest' weekend E*V*E*R!!!

 

with a little knitting thrown in for good measure.

a (knitting) grandma's dream weekend.....

We went to visit our son and his family.....our daughter and her two boys came with us.  Our whole family (minus our SIL who had to work...bummer) together for 48 hours.  

We went to a ballgame....

where we knitted....(she's very well trained...never leave home without your knitting)

where my embroidery got taken over by another knitter who left hers at home....not so well trained....

I found a home for my shwook...

we had piano concerts, birthday cake, some impromptu Halloween scary plays.....assorted knitting that needed rescuing since our last visit, and the now-4-year old birthday girl's declaration that she was now old enough to knit, and she did (sort of).

I'm 5 for 5 (knitters) in that family.

 

On the way home (a long 5 hour drive in the car)....my remaining two non-knitters decided they were finally bored enough to give it a try...

(note the blue lips sort of match his shirt....he actually put his slurpy down long enough to learn and knit a bookmark!)

(I showed his brother how to hold the needles and move the yarn....he asked to see it again....then promptly devised this bizarre technique and literally flew through two skeins of yarn and made a scarf for his mom.)

Seven grandchildren.  Seven knitters.  

My stash will be in good hands.

Playing Grandma...

It's been an exciting week around here...first off, the dehumidifier went kaput (in the scary cellar), taking the humidity level up to 98% and quickly turning things moldy and fuzzy.  Lucky for us, the CandyMan and JayBob were around this week....

I heard PapaGeek and the CandyMan talking about ramps and pulleys and the next thing I know, the old dehumidifier (that weighed about 2 tons) was tumbling into the kitchen.  (I think they would have had an easier time if the 'ramp' was a bit bigger and a whole lot sturdier than a little sheet of plywood that had to be moved from step to step, but it was a lesson in perserverance and creative problem solving and all ended well.

At least it ended better than the trip to Home Depot for a new dehumidifier.  The automatic exit doors didn't open as fast as the CandyMan thought they should as he hit them with the cart at warp-speed, sending both the inner and outer doors off their tracks.  We decided this was not the first time this has happened, since a) no one came out screaming at us, b) the check-out guy popped them back on track without using any x-rated language, and c) the glass is quite obviously tempered glass and didn't even crack.  Phew.  

While the CandyMan and I made chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread...

PapaGeek and JayBob experimented with the water-powered rocket ship.  They got banned to the backyard after PapaGeek launched the rocket in the kitchen...lots of water, but no fatalities.  double-phew.

somehow we managed to NOT land it on the roof or rocket it through a window or lose it in the flowerbeds.  It was a good toy.

 

 

The boys decided the 'pond' needed some fish---so off we went to stock the pond.  Two goldfish...one named SunKissed (she's white with an orange spot on her head) and the other, Bertha McDonald (don't ask), are now living with the resident frog.  They had been swimming no more than an hour when the CandyMan came tearing in the house yelling that there was a rat in the pond.  After the snake last week, I was ready to believe anything.

 

After much discussion, inspection, and a near dissection the consensus was a drowned baby mouse.

Hmmmm...let'see.... what's  up next?  I should have felt a little guilty as I slipped into my Tom Sawyer persona....waving pruners and snippers like they were the best outdoor toy/invention EVER....(but I didn't!)

Everyone had way too much fun to call this 'work'; the asparagus bed got cleaned out (leaving the asparagus), and the group vote was to put in blackberry bushes.  My job....to FIND some blackberry bushes to put in.  

The rest of the week...

:: swimming at a friend's neighbor's pool (we were invited, I think?)

:: miniature golf (I won!  Most strokes wins, right?)

:: geocaching x 5

:: nature center

:: screaming monkey contest

:: dismantling the treehouse (yes, this also involved dangerous tools that the boys said they weren't allowed to play with)

 

 

We all need a nap.  

And we're all r.e.a.l.l.y missing our buddies already.