Lots to Tell, No Excuses--Okay, Small Excuses

Sorry I missed posting yesterday but we were busy out and about.  Durwood had a gift card and wanted to cruise the aisles at Cook's Corner.  I wanted to go check out the pattern books at Hancock Fabrics right next door.  The original plan was for him to mosey through the cooking stuff and for me to fondle fabric but it didn't work like that.  It was a pretty bad breathing day (overcast and humid) so we limbered up the chair and I pushed him around *snort* until my sore ankle got sorer but not before he managed to spend his gift card on a crockpot cookbook with a lot of interesting non-American-ized recipes in it out of the clearance room and a few other things that caught his eye.  He even remembered what he'd gone for and got that.  We flung the bag into the van and then he came with me to look at pattern books and fabrics.  Well, he was less of a participant in the fabric store than I was in the cooking store but was a good fabric bolt holder for me.  He's a patient guy when we aren't shopping for clothes for him.  Who could ask for more?

I spent a lot of the day stringing about 650 tiny beads onto 200 yds. or so of yarn so I could cast on a Like Magic beaded scarf.  The magic part is you knit and purl along, regularly adding beads, then when you're almost out of yarn you drop stitches from end to beginning which makes a simple beaded lace scarf.  Since I'm using smaller yarn and smaller beads than the pattern calls for I consulted with LB at knitting last night and added a couple more columns and I'd decided on my own to double up the beads.  This is the first time I've really made anything with beads aside from a few accent beads I added with the crochet hook method so dealing with that many beads already strung on the yarn and having to be pushed down the yarn often is kind of a pain but I'm anxious to get to the dropping stitches part.  

The Friday Night Knitters were a big help figuring out what to do about the collar of my Red Marl sweater.  I took it, along with some Wonder Clips, last night, clipped the collar flap into place and tried it on for them.  With all of the rest of the sweater assembled the collar doesn't look nearly as awful as it did when it was sewed into the front and back flapping open so I'll sew it back into place, find a button, then weave in all the tails, and have a finished sweater.  Finally.  I also cruised the yarn table at Goodwill where I found a big bag of white acrylic yarn to make baby sweaters for charity.  I've got a pattern or two I want to try but don't want to knit things to give away in wool.  No new parents should have to worry about washing a tiny sweater when they've got a tiny baby to deal with.  This stuff should do just fine, plus I satisfied my yarn buying impulse for four bucks.  Such a deal.

It's raining today.  Boo.  It's supposed to be barely into the 60s for the weekend.  Boo.  Today's the first Farmer's Market and it's raining so I'm not going.  Boo.







Thursday night after supper I whipped up a batch of breakfast burritos for the freezer.  Durwood's a big fan and I'm a big fan of homemade ones that cost one-tenth of the store bought ones plus these have a lot fewer preservatives and salt in them even though I use brown 'n serve sausages in them.  We're refining the recipe as we go along.  Next time I'll dice and saute onions and bell peppers to stir into the eggs.

May 30--Kathleen Norris Cook, Rainbow Road.  Like a pearl floating above the far mountains, the moonlight pulled Sara up the trail.  She had promised herself that she would stop for the night on the ridge where she would be able to watch the herds moving in the valley in the morning.  Ordinarily she would have stopped for the night when it began to get dark but she was so close to the ridge that she pressed on.

I thought I'd confess that when I went for a haircut on Thursday morning I took a couple pictures of myself with my old "pixie" haircut and had Francis give it back.  I'm so glad I did.  Now when I look in the mirror I look like myself.  It's going to take quite a bit longer to get used to these naked fingernails, but I'll get there.  It's going to take a few months for them to grow out to their natural state but I plan to keep them filed and painted with some Sally Hansen nail strengthener.  Like I said, I'll get there.  And now, since it's a rainy day, I'm going to go read--a paper book.  I know!  Not listen to a book while I knit, just read a book.  How retro.
--Barbara