Sweater

My mother decided to knit me a sweater. She had knitted socks before, before I was born. She had knitted slippers for me when I was in Nursury School. (That's what they called pre-school "back in the day") So this sweater was a huge undertaking! But she did it! I couldnt believe it! You would never guess from looking at the sweater that it wasnt made by someone with a lot of experience.


I wore it to the quilt guild meeting last Tuesday and brought it up for Show-n-Tell at the end of the meeting. Everybody I had spoken wiuth that evening was surprised that it was a hand knit sweater! "Look at those cables!" "Show the back!"

I held out my camera and asked "Could somebody take my picture so I can show her I showed it off to everybody?" Everybody cheered. Marta took the pictures.

There is a raffle drawing for everybody who brings something to Show-n-Tell. I won the prize. I knew I would send it to Knitter-Mama, but everyone made sure I was going to do that in case I didnt think of it.

Lindsay Wildlife Museum

Saturday we went to the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek. Barbara recomended it when we saw her at Mickey D's on Friday afternoon.
It was fantastic. They had more live animals than I expected. The owls were up high on a shelf without glass or wires between us.

All the animals were native to the area, and all were there because they were unable to be released due to injuries or the results of people tying to tame them.
The bald eagle had electrocuted his wing on a wire, the mountain lion had been declawed, a hawk had imprinted on humans instead of other hawks.
I liked the bats best.

Urniture

We bought new Uniture. Actually, just the sofa, loveseat and chair. Should have got two chairs, no loveseat. I said the room is too small, he said it will fit. Well, it fits, but it's more crowded than I like. Then we picked out a new entertainment center, one to match the sofa and fit around that old 61 inch TV. It's NOT a flat screen and it takes up a lot of space! We are still movng stuff around trying to decided on placement.

Then the computer hutch we had was all wrong, so we ordered a new one to match the entertainment center.

I went in search of an occaisional table. No coffee table, they just collect stuff and you have to walk around them. I hate walking around furniture. I found one that was OK, but the wrong finish. I would have had to refinish it. It was easily worth the $250 price tag, but I could see paying that much for one I had to refinish. So I decided to head on over to Cost Plus and see if I could get something wicker or what and paint it. On my way, I saw garage sale signs..............

The table cabinet I bought was definitely in need of refinsishing, it had the 70's heavy varnish and dark stain. $5.00. A good price even for firewood. Then the work started. Oh boy. But I got it to match the new entertainment center and computer hutch.

We are still moving stuff around........

Auctions

Pokes, just the pokes, not the hearts.


Nine auctions on ebay, I've never had that many at one time before. Of course, procrastinating on something else helps. This time it's Photoshop. But I think I'm getting the hang of it.

Lei Bear

Ice Box Magnets

Pokes


More pokes







click here for auction listings

Shopping

I have been wanting new furniture for the living room for years. The family room sofa is to old and soft, it hurts my back to sit in it and I haven't sat there with my family since Joe was in 1st grade, now he is in 5th grade. Dave has been putting off the expense, but I said it was time.

My friend Denise went with us, we left Dave at home. He shops by price tag alone, and I needed a sofa I could sit on comfortably. It doesn't matter if it has the best price, it is a waste of money to buy it if I can't sit comfortably. For anyone who doesnt know, my back is a major problem. I have had 4 spinal fractures at four different times in my life. I have lumbar fusion between L5 and S, and spondylolesthesis between L4 and L5.

See the sign that says ROCK BOTTOM PRICES? I asked Joe if those were different prices for people with rocky bottoms and did he think I qualified. He just rolled his eyes, like "I can't take you anywhere!" We took the camera shopping with us to take photos of sofas and the price tags, so Dave could see them and not feel too left out. We sat on a lot of sofas. I thought we were lost in IKEA, but Denise said they make you walk around a lot to get out, so youwill see something you can't live without. It didn't work.

It was a fun afternoon.

First of Fifth

Here are some pictures of the first day of 5th grade at Pomeroy School. Grandparents and other relations can right click to get the pictures into their hard drives.

Joseph's class is a mix of 5th and 6th grades. His teacher, Ms. Maultsby, is really on top of things. I helped in her classroom a little last year. Mrs. Torres drafted me for an art project.

The truth is out there.

Very busy here. New furniture, old furniture moving around, computers turned off and moved, power outages, road repairs and walking home, first day of school, PIQF entries, making curtains for three rooms.......
Mary Shelley looks like I feel.

Do-Dads

This is my recent listing on eBay. They are kind of silly, made on impulse. Well...... the idea was an impulse anyway. They actually took much longer than I thought!
Do-Dads on eBay

Just the four Do-Dads are for sale, all the other stuff is just for ideas of what to do with them.

Of course, I made more than four. The other ones will be available at Doublecatbatik.com soon. How soon? Good question!
Click on the sign to go there.

Another thing that has recently occupied my time -or my mind, anyway- is the demise of an eBay Group, AKA message board, that I belonged to. The group was originally set up for communication among members of a Folk of Art.com. I joined the group, then became a selling member for 5 months. Even though I was no longer a member, I stayed with the group, about 80% of which were not members either. It was decided that the members needed to have a site for their own use. Rather than one faction or the other leave, it was decided to disband and form two new groups. They are Beneath The Attic Eaves, or BtAE, and TWOTH. I now belong to BtAE, which you can search on eBay( not a case sensitive search) or click on the new link that you can see on the right. Searching TWOTH will get you some nice primitive folk art things too.

For my Family

These are from our recent visit to Sparks.

Ironed Curtain

These are some boring pictures of ongoing projects. I am making tab curains for the window by my dinning table. I have started with osnaburg fabric, and batiked stripes with wax, then dyed light brown. Now I am ironing the wax out.

The top picture is the waxed fabric before ironing. The bottom one shows after ironing.

Next comes boiling water and Synthropol. I have a huge stock pot that I boil water in to remove the rest of the wax. You swish the fabric in the boiling water, then weight it down to the bottom of the pot while the water cools. The wax floats to the top and hardens.

I have to take the wax out because these will go in the window and get hot. Any residual wax would then soften in the heat of the sun and rub off onto other stuff. And, cat hair would stick to it.

Osnaburg may not have enough hand for curtains, so I have Stiffy to add to it after.

Here is a quilt back that I made yesterday. The top came out bigger than I thought it would, so the piece of fabric I bought for binding was too small, and I had to use some other fabric instead. The back, of course, needed a bigger piece of fabric than I bought, so I was going to take the piece I had intended for binding and add it on, but that was still to small. In the end, it has more of the fabric that I used for binding, and some pieces that I had left over from the top. Something that should have taken maybe 15 minutes ended up going on for an hour and a half.

Raingutter Regatta

This is an annual Cub Scout event. They make the boats from kits, according to specifications, and then they race them in Rain Gutters. Each has a spotter(unrelated) to keep the boat upright. The Scouts themselves cannot use their hands.


It takes a lot of air, but they got "breathers" between heats so nobody passed out.



There were lots of trophies. Even the moms had their own race!

Climbing the Walls

While in Downtown Sparks for the Hot August Nights cruising, we scanned the farmers market and craft fair booths and saw the rock wall. Grandaddy sent Joseph up. He was doing very well, but came to a place were he could not reach the next hold.

The wall seems to be made for the average adult reach, but at 4'3", Joe's options are limited. Since he was doing so well, the attendant let him come down and start over, beginning with the other hand/foot, and he made it to the top easily.

By ringing the bell at the top, he earned a certificate for a free giant cookie at a local bakery.

A couple of other kids saw him go up and they decided to try it. Without two summers of experience at rock climbing camp at City Beach in Fremont, it was harder than it looked.

Emigrant Gap

Here we are, at Emigrant Gap crossing the Sierra mountains from Sparks/Reno to California. Don't lean back, they'll never recover the body.

The camera was sitting on top of the car, and I figured out how to set the delay so I could run around and get in the picture. Of course, by the time I figured that out, Joseph was bored.

I had wanted to leave Sparks by 9:00, and we almost made it. I just didn't want to miss out on too much camping stuff. Of course, everybody in Sparks thought 9:00 was way too soon! But since we had missed Thursday entirely, I wanted to get as much camping as possible.

Of course, Jospeh had so much fun camping that he wished we had got there sooner. It did no good to remind him that he had not wanted to leave Sparks as early as we had.

Our Trip, well...Some of it anyway

Here is a picture of my mother, Jana, AKA Grandmother, at Hot August Nights. She says she had a car like this, but it was a different color.

It is a relief to get home. I went to the movies yesterday, just to make myself hold still and not do too much. All the driving, less than friendly bed (air bed on sleeping bag on nearly flat ground!)and the day in bed with a migraine was not nice to my back. If I had stayed home, I would have had to live with all the unpacked stuff and I would have messed with it.

I went to the barn and saw Janow, but didn't ride. He needed grooming badly, so I took him for a walk and groomed him. He did the horse version of "oooh, aah!"


I saw The Listener, with Robin Williams. It was OK. I also bought the game Tripoli, and we learned to play it last night after dinner. I got a tri-tip roast and cut it into small pieces and cooked it with garlic and a sliced up lemon, then put it on salad. I had some black grapes and I cut up peaches and mixed those for desert. Everybody ate everything and nobody complained. Then we got out Tripoly and Dave and Joe learned to play it. We had a really nice family time. That was the best!

We're Back!

We got back yesterday at about 12:30 in the afternoon. I got a migraine in the wee hours of the morning and by 9:00, I knew it was going to be bad. If we had stayed for the entire clean-up and left at noon, as planned by the camp leaders, I would have been too sick to drive, but would have had to cool our heels at a coffee shop until we could check into a motel at 3:00, the usual check-in time. So we left early, I felt bad about not helping with the camp sweep, but I was really sick.
Good thing too, because traffic was already getting bad from people returning to the bay area on Sunday. Our first slow downs and a complete stop happened before the Altamont Pass. Joseph fell asleep before Lodi. He didn't even know he was sleepy!

We had stopped in Placerville because I needed something really cold to drink(helps the headache) and we needed to call Dave, no cell phone reception in Coloma because of the mountains. When he fell asleep, his drink tipped a little and spilled on his pants, but he decided he could live with it.

The camp was fun, but it would have been more fun if my foot and back had not hurt. We had a tour of Sutter's Mill and the museum. There was a pool at the campground and the boys spent a lot of each afternoon in the pool. The American River was beautiful. You could go rafting on it, and tubing.

Jeremy said you could go tubing for free if you started after the resort ended, and that if you stayed on, you could go all the way around. "Around?" I asked. I clarified: "Back where you started?"

"Uh-hunh." He confirmed."That's funny, I replied, "I thought this river went all the way to the Pacific Ocean."

The boys went on a hike to see John Marshals grave. I decided not to go, but I gave Joseph the camera so he could take pictures. He filled up the card. It already had a lot of pictures on it from Hot August Nights. He had the camera for that too.

All in all, it was a positive experience, but I wouldn't recommend the camp ground. Sure, it had flush toitys, but there were two, for about 50 women and girls, and two sinks and two showers. We had to walk quite a ways from our site. It was icky dirty.
The campers were packed close together and you could smell their cigarette smoke and hear their snoring at night. Many of them had music.

Many of the scout families camp all the time and they are used to it. We only camp at the scout camp-outs and we are not used to it.

Raingutter Regatta is nest Saturday. I have a book to give to Jerry. Maybe I can get it to him there.

You Can See Sparks From Here

I am in Sparks for a few days. After our heat wave in the San Francisco Bay Area, this is not too hot. Reno is hosting Hot August Nights this week. It's a huge classic car show. We are going to go watch cruising tomorrow night.

The old joke is that Reno is so close to hell that you can see Sparks from there.

On Friday Morning, we leave here to go to a Cub Scout camp-out that is about half way between here and home. Two nights of camp-out and then we head back to the farm. By then we should be ready to sleep in our own beds and potty in our own litter box.