Laid up

Saturday I had a minor procedure done to my foot. (Hence the black and white picture) Today it's better but I'm still hobbling around. So basically I have sat around and yes it driving me crazy. :)

Finally

I finished something. Yes I'm in complete denial that today is December 13

So freaking close

And then I discovered I screwed up way back with placement and had to undo two days of work. So I pulled it out (painfully mind you) and set it back up -the correct way this time. Ugh!!

Adorable (test video)

Yeah it worked! I think anyway I can see it. Its from the Dominican College (local college) and their fall festival fundraiser.

Picture catch up

Its been almost a month! Seriously with this whole back to school thing back in swing it like non stop around here. So to catch up- pictures!

 Bubba boy has been skritched

Murph has become jealous

My kids may have lost their marbles (what little they had) BTW from left to right is Ang, MJ and Kris

Getting lots of tomatoes even with the number the squirrels are eating.

Pumpkin cookies. Kris made these. She likes to bake to bad shes not such a big fan of cleaning up after. Then again I completely understand that.

Thriftbooks.com got me again. The pile of books i have to read is crazy I really need to get going on that. Also stopped into Barnes and Nobles. Turns out perfect timing. When a paperback version comes out the hard cover gets reduced. I paid less for Harper Lee's book in hard cover then what they were charging for the paperback.

Of course there was decorating

MJ's little village.

The arms on the tree actually "grab".  They move  open and close.

Framed my knitted doily.  Need to change the background. The paper I put is shifting even though its glued down.

Went out to check on the garden today and one of my parsley plants was covered in "Parsley Worms" aka black swallowtail caterpillars.  They love parsley. So we read all about them and these guys (counted 9) will most likely winter over. I didn't have the heart to evict them. I have already harvested plenty of parsley this year so I don't mind that much.

More has happened just didn't take pictures. I really need to get better at that.

=)

15!!

As of 7:19 pm my Kris is now 15!! This girl is amazing and I am so proud of her.

Shes not a fan of cake so she asks for brownies, gooey ones.

Aaaannnnd my attempt to get a picture with the kids. Its hard someone is always making some sort of face.

First Day

First out the door today was Ang my 8th grader

Then my MJ sniff sniff. He went off to kindergarten.

Then went my two off to high school. Kris is in 10th and Dillon is now in 11th! Holy *(*& 

School was pretty much the same across the board. How was school? - fine. Learn anything? - no

Busing on the other hand. The middle school pm busing was basically FUBAR with over 30 kids left behind without a bus and who knows how many one the wrong bus. I had to pick Ang up from school.

I was told the wrong times for Mj and he was a little late but it is the first day and a child was missing from our stop. I can not even imagine.  Not shockingly I could not get in touch with transportation to fix Ang's problem. They just had it loop back to the main menu. Its not rocket science here people.

Anyway. I was a complete wreck all day until all of my babies were home. Not sure if tomorrow will be any better. To all the school districts out there - these problems with transportation is the reason why so many parents drive in their kids. This year they are encouraging parents to use the bus system but yet its so f*&^ing messed up. We are seriously thinking about driving Mj in. I walked my kids to school in Long Island for this exact reason. At least Ang is old enough to help herself. Mj is 5 and still trying to remember my name.UGH!!!!!

One day I'll learn

So today I woke thinking that it was a nice day and nothing was planned maybe I should block and wash the knitting that has built up.

This is what was in the Lowe's 5 gallon bucket I use. Its a lot. 3 shawls, 1 cowl, a scarf, several hats, almost all of my socks and a bunch of little things.

Ok and 1 not so little thing. My knitted doily that almost 2 feet across

Blocking pic

ornaments I made last year and just never washed. Still need to stiffen them.

The hats and socks are down in the laundry room drying. They were just washed nothing new to show. I KNew there was a lot but boy was there. It took me hours just to get everything washed and what needed to be pinned out pinned out. Only two things that were drying on my bed (the ceiling fan helps a ton to speed things up) were not dry so they are now in my closed closet. A certain furry little girl loves to lay on the knitting. In fact the moment i opened my door that is exactly what she did the little stinker. 

My sanity

Ok, so this is my new weaving. It may be hard to see, but in the bottom part are what are called pinwheels.  

There are several problems.

1. I don't think my yarn contrasts enough to really see them. Of course you can only really see this after the loom is warped and you start weaving. I was NOT going to waste the yarn (Periwinkle Sheep in Goth Girl and 11 Ways to Dry a Chili Pepper- that's the lighter orangey one)

2. There are 8 row to a repeat. Nothing really hard but 6 of those rows I have to sit there and go under and over individually with the yarn. It takes time a lot of time. which leads to...

3. Its taken me 4 days to just get 21 repeats done!

4. The pinwheels don't even look that great because I am pushing down to hard and it seems the more I try not to I wind up squishing them even more. ( Here is to hoping a nice blocking helps)

So, to save what little sanity I have left, I have switched to plain old weave. That's the top part of the weaving. Still keeping 8 row repeat just plain weave and just changing colors every 8 rows. Took about 5 minutes to do 4 repeats. Much quicker. Now I may throw in a pinwheel row here and there or I may just wait until the end and end with 21 pinwheel repeats. Well That I most likely will do. At least that way the ends are the same and it looks like I designed it to look like that.

The reason why it takes so long long is my loom only has 2 positions - Up and Down (or more technically open and closed) The pinwheel pattern was originally made for what is called 8 harnessed looms.  Basically instead of me weaving those 6 rows each time those warps are attached to a bar and you just lift that one bar depending on the row. 

For example The first pattern row goes over 4 under 4 across 104 warp threads on my loom.  An 8 harness loom you just have to lift one bar and boom the threads are up that you need and weave.

I don't know why I thought this would be a quick weave.

Weaving and a miracle

This above is me finally going beyond just plain back and forth weave. I read and then read some more -patterns blogs and articles. I am very much new to this even though i have had my loom for years. It seems that I do this. Hop around learn something move on then come back and learn something new and repeat. Well it turns out that not only knitting patterns lie so do weaving ones. I wasn't even close to having enough yarn for the blue one. =(  I'll make it into something from it. The color is too pretty not to.(BTW its Periwinkle Sheep aran in Grace.

This is the same pattern in a different yarn. Its in black and white. Hopefully a Christmas gift. Now I actually finished the weaving and its off the loom (weaving is very fast compared to knitting) half the ends are finished off. Of course it still looks the wrong size. To me it looks to short but we shall see after a nice soaking and blocking. One more thing to block-ugh! I have literally a Lowe's 5 gallon bucket full of blocking. Probably should do that soon.

This is the miracle. Only Mj knew I was taking the picture ( hence why it not a great picture). This is proof that my 4 wonderful kids can actually be in a room (Dillon's) and get along!!!!Yes the 3 older ones are on their laptops playing Minecraft together. For almost 2 hours!! Together the 4 of them!! WITHOUT FIGHTING!!!!!! They were being nice to each other!!!

I'm sure you can tell by my wording this is not something that happens in this house. I just had to mave some sort of proof. I'm thinking of having this picture printed and framed. It give me hope that it can happen. Fingers crossed.

Don't mow your phone

I know its common sense =). Honestly I don't even know how it happened. I only knew something happened because the song changed. I looked down and no phone.  Thankfully my case saved my phone from becoming trash. Just needed a new case.. Thank you Otterbox.  Worth the money.

I spent yesterday harvesting from the garden again. I feel like i just did this.

TOP: peppermint and regular basil

BOTTOM: thyme, parsley (not so much this time - a caterpillar found my parsley last week and got nice and fat. Said caterpillar has been relocated) lemon basil (not so much this time because the regular basil over crowded it out. That has been fixed) and purple basil.

My peppermint. Tea anyone?

The tomatoes are starting to turn red.  I have a feeling that they are going to turn together and that will be a lot of tomatoes from only 4 plants.

My garden this year has already been a bigger success then last year. I really need to clean up the flower bed and replant some plants before fall gets here. Just need the be a little cooler for me to get out there.

Next time - Weaving! Yes I dug my loom out and finally got around to learning more then just plain weave =)

Sometimes you just have to stop

It has felt like the only time i seem to be not doing something is when I'm sleeping.

Tonight dinner ended early enough and it was nice out, so I figured before everything becomes a muddy mess (lots of rain due tomorrow and our soil here is clay and there is underground streams which makes for a messy yard for a few days before it dries out) we would have a fire.  

Of course you cant have a fire without marshmallows, and then you need chocolate and graham crackers

We just sat and s'mored until Mj's bedtime.

It was just what i needed.

Random stuff

My two Marcs

Ang teaching an old cat new tricks

the only teacher gift I made. Tissue paper flowers. They actually look amazing in the vase. (bonus - i bought everything in the dollar store )

My MJ being himself, hamming it up at his pre k graduation. ( I am going to be a mess when this one goes off to kindergarten)

Kris and her special effect make up. She is getting really good and she doesn't use anything special. Just things around the house and regular make up.

This is Hubby's signed Jason mask. He wanted to display it but keep it safe. We saw one similar displayed in a shadow box. Well for that to happen it would have had to be a custom box and they get quite pricey. Well a trip to Lowe's and AC Moore and a couple of days later -TA DA. I made one for him.. The front opens and mine lights up. It is kinda creepy in the dark to see it there. Of course this opened up a can of worms. Hubby has and actual signed piece of a zombie from the Walking Dead show and he wants something for that. Isnt he lucky I am crafty.

Harvesting

So this year I made a raised garden (last year i used pots and well that was a bust) with just tomatoes, peppers (red and Jalapeno) and of course parsley, basil (3 different ones) and thyme. That was it until well spring fever really got a hold and I have strawberries, cayenne and a pepper called dragon - its basically a full size red pepper that is supposed to be really spicy and in this house we love spicy, and peppermint. Those are all in big pots on the deck and doing really well. Thing is my herbs are doing a little too well and almost two weeks ago we had a freak cold rainy day which was perfect to dry herbs in the oven without baking us in the house.

So low temp (my oven goes as low as 170) and tossing every 20-30 minutes I made a little dent. The picture is of 2 full sized baking sheets. I did seven. Today you can barely tell i cut so much.

Top Pan: regular basil on left, purple basil on bottom right, thyme all the way right and lemon basil is the middle top.

Bottom pan: parsley I had lots of parsley 3 pans by itself

Left to right: Parsley, Peppermint, Basil (both green and purple), Lemon Basil  then Thyme on the end

I see lots more in the future with the way things are growing out there.

16

Crazy how time passes. It sure didn't feel like it was 16 years ago at 9:05 am* that i was handed a crying bundle. Oh my baby boy you have broken me in in so many ways. You were the hardest pregnancy, scariest infancy and after countless (yes I have lost count on how many times over the last 16 years i have taken this boy to the ER) ER trips it takes a lot to get me to panic these days. Which I guess is a good thing with your siblings.

You always make me laugh, especially when i should be mad at you. I also know you completely take full advantage of this fact. You're changing so fast. You will be a junior in HS in September and I don't even want to think that college is just around the corner.

I love you my baby boy. I am so proud of you.  Happy Birthday!!

*Family story. My mother's watch stopped at 9:05 when you were born. She was at work and had no idea.  She still has that watch. Its also on video somewhere of her visit to you and telling and showing us the watch.

**Another little story. His birth was scary. Very short umbilical cord, and meconium in the amniotic fluid and he was stressing big time. I was given one last push before being rushed to the ER. Doctors where on stand by because they expected him to be in bad shape. Out he came screaming bloody murder and absolutely healthy. When the nurse went to take his footprints he manged to get ink all over her. His birth also showed me how strong I was. I was scared and so afraid for him that I used that last push while they were getting the ER ready and got my baby boy out. Granted I needed, according to the dr, about a hundred stitches to put me back together again. I never would have believed I was capable.