Yarn Teasers

Ok...the promised pics of new yarn. First I'll show you the best kind of yarn....of all......Gifted Yarn!

My DD, Amanda took a trip to a Dr. in Texas and stopped in the Woolie Ewe in Plano. I had the kiddos while she was gone and as a thanks she brought me this beautiful stuff!!

First is the Aslantrends Class. Four yummy skeins of cotton/viscose at 240 yds per skein!! I'm not usually too big on cotton but this stuff is soft as a cloud and drapes like a dream!! It has a beautiful sheen to it that the pics don't pick up. I'm thinking maybe the Forest Canopy Shawl??? What do you think?

The next thing she brought me is sock yarn....girl can't have enough sock yarn, you know! Most of my sock yarn is in dark or muted colors so this will be fun!


Two skeins of Artyarns Ultramerino4!! Bright yellow with shades of peach and green. Don't these just scream spring? Not sure yet which sock pattern these should become...any ideas?

And lastly for today here is my Woolgirl Sock Club shipment.

I tell you this girl knows how to put together an exciting package. I couldn't believe all the stuff she put in it. Everything was in a clear bag full of punched out paper frogs and tied with a yellow ribbon. The theme was tree frogs and the pattern is called Froggin. Too cute! The yarn is Dashing Dachs...one I have heard great things about but not tried yet. There was also a calculator, frog postcards and pencil, frog notepad, frog sucker and the most adorable frog stitch marker and gauge gizmo...and more! Her packages are just so much fun!

That is the teaser for today....stay tuned for the booty that came from our trip to Austin. With the way that trip went, thank goodness there was at least some yarn goodness involoved!

Just too much!

Ever have one of those weeks that just has soooo much happen that you feel like you are on full-throttle sensory overload? That was last week! It was so full of happenings that it's still hard to keep them all straight in my head! Fortunately, there was some good tossed in there but there was a whole lot of "bad" in the mix as well.

Maybe by "blogging" it I can get it all into perspective! Might as well get the bad stuff over first so I can mentally leave the blog on a good and happy note.

I've already written about the loss of my precious, itty-bitty Gidget. That is still hard. So many little things remind me of her and I guess, will for a long, long time. The delay I talked about in the last post that kept me from being with her when she started failing was our trip to Austin.

It was supposed to be a quick weekend to attend a wedding. Well, I ended up being admitted to an Austin hospital through the emergency room and was there 4 days! Official diagnosis was Acute Diverticulitous. Had heard of it but knew virtually nothing about it. I certainly know more than I would like to about it now! IT HURTS! I don't remember much about the first 2 days because they kept me pumped full of morphine. Praise God, the mega-doses of antibiotics and a clear liquid diet seems to have taken care of it. From what I have been told I was seconds from rupturing internally and having to have surgery to remove part of my colon! Not a fun experience....then coming home and losing my little fur-girl......well.....

We also got the news that my darling daughter is having to have major surgery this week. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. Any surgery is hard and when you have Fibromyalgia like she does it doesn't make it any easier. I'll have Little Mr. Dax while she recuperates. My Savy girl is in Texas with her other Grandparents and we won't even go into that. I just wish she was here with me instead.

On top of all that fun stuff.......nope....bad stuff not over yet.....see what I mean about just too much? I don't know what we did to offend the Universe, but I'm sure hoping we get a respite from it all for a while. On the day we lost Gidget DH was beside himself to keep busy to keep his mind off of it. He decided to run down to the Aquarium store where he gets all his supplies for his Reef Tank and get some purified water to do a water change. He has just done wonders with that tank I got him for Christmas a couple of years ago. It was absolutely gorgeous....like something out of a magazine! It is his "knitting" if you know what I mean.....and is just as passionate and obsessed with it as I am my hobby! He equates what happened to having a fire in my yarn room!!! Not sure I agree with that analysis but it was really awful! Anyway, somehow, someway....the water got polluted with ammonia. We have no idea how....he keeps the jugs sealed between changes and I don't see how anything could get in them....at all! Of course, the Aquarium store gave him all kinds of objections and explanations that it couldn't have possibly happened there either....sorry....not buying it. All she did was give him 20 gallons of water.....precious little compensation considering what happened! We are talking thousands that he has invested....literally! Within 30 minutes of doing the water change the entire house was permeated with a horrendous "fishy" smell......and he lost approximatel HALF of his tank babies.....and the rest all looked sick! He had to do a mega water change to try and save what he had left. Thank goodness we haven't lost anything else since he did that.....but he's got to do several more major water changes in the next few days to get the rest of the polluted water out. Doing it that often stresses the inhabitants so we are just crossing our fingers that nobody else dies. And that....Praise the Lord.....is the last of the bad luck...hopefully for a long time!

At least we did have some good times to help counteract all that stuff!

We had Daxton's 2nd birthday party! I can't believe that little stinker is 2! Time does fly. DH did his cake, of course! My darling Hubby is so talented! All you ever have to do is give him a theme and he comes up with the most amazing creations! This year Dax is obsessed with Elmo from Sesame Street. Everything is all about "M0-Mo"....better known by the world at large as Elmo so that was the theme of the party!

Here are a couple of pics of the cake!

Amazing isn't it! And trust me....the pics don't do it justice! Every adult at the party just raved!

And here is the Birthday Boy!

He's gonna be a heart-breaker with those big blue eyes, is he not?

The other goodness that, thank goodness, came my way comes from yarn....lots of yarn :-)

I got a sock club shipment, my sweet Amanda gifted me two beautiful yarns from a trip she took to Texas and I at least got to do some yarn shopping before I landed in the hospital in Austin! I'll do the yarn Pron in the next post....just a teaser to keep you comin back...lol! No, really I'm just getting a little tired....haven't come close to getting the energy level back since the hospital stay so I need to stop for a bit. Will post pics of the fun stuff later!

Goodbye little Gidget

Gidget Faircloth
February 20, 1991 - June 20, 2008


We lost our tiny, precious little Gidget today. I can only hope we gave her as much love, joy and happiness that she gave us while we had her.

She has a remarkable story, our little girl! I can't bear to repeat it now but if you are interested in knowing her story it is posted in the archives here on the blog in the February 6, 2007 post.

She was so old we knew her time with us couldn't be much longer but it is never easy..... and it all happened so fast. We were delayed in Austin for six days and had all the fur-babies boarded with the vet. She evidently started failing while we were gone. We only had two days left with her when we got back. I'm so very thankful that we made it home to be with her when it was her time to go. I had her in my arms when she went just loving her as hard as I could.

We will miss you, Tiny Little Girl!

Stash Enhancement :-)

Short post this morning. Went over the The Gourmet Yarn Co. on Wednesday to see the debut of The Naked Sheep yarns and roving they have started carrying. Yummy stuff! No way I could walk out of there without bringing some home with me...lol! The stuff was literally flying off the shelves.......the "yarn vultures" were definitely circling!

I ended up getting two hanks of the fingering weight.

This one is called National Champion. I just love the color hues in this one!

The other one I couldn't resist is called Bed of Roses. It just made me smile and looks like fun!

I also picked up two skeins of Jojoland Harmony. Working on the MS3 again has me all in a lace mode! That is one area that my stash is sorely lacking. For some odd reason lace knitting never really held much interest for me until I started that Mystery Stole. All it took was that one project to get me hooked...lol....isn't that the way things go in the knitting world! So far I'm still resisting the idea of spinning and dyeing.....there isn't enough money lying around to start splitting up the yarn budget with other interests...lol!

I am almost done with chart 3 of the MS3 and I'm still enjoying it. Will post pics later on when more progress has been made.

I did have one one pattern literally screaming at me this week. It doesn't happen that way often. Oh, there are multitudes of projects that are in the que that I really want to do.....but you know how it is when one particular pattern just won't "go away"? I just kept thinking and thinking about this one for some reason. I could not stop thinking about it so decided to give in and just cast the silly things on!

It is the Handsome Devil Socks from the Six Sock Knit a Long. I have no earthly idea why these kept nagging at me....but they did. Here is the first one.

I grabbed some Opal Uni in dusty rose and some of the Vinca fingering I had in stash and started them. The first color combo I chose looked kind of neat, but the colors were so similar you couldn't really tell that I was using two different yarns...it just looked sort of like one heathered yarn so I ripped them out and picked a totally contrasting skein of the Vinca. Fun pattern to knit and they are going pretty quickly. Of course, since I have a mountain of wip's going....weird for me.....it may take eons for me to finish anything!