The wedding

I've been sick for days, but with the help of my whole family - we pulled the wedding off.

The weather was great, the house was decorated, the out of town guests arrived safely, Grandma got ordained so she could perform the ceremony, the cakes were baked, the dress was perfect, the groom was sober and not hung over, the family and friends were mostly on time, the bride was beautiful, all in all - not bad for a wedding pulled together in 5 weeks.

I put captions on most of the pics. Here is a small selection from the over 400 pictures taken by DeVia and I. I'm hoping to get copies from everyone else.

Catching up

Ok, there's a lot going on in my family and around my house...

I'm going to try and catch you all up in one post with lots of pictures.

Halloween - we had lots of kids this year - went thru 2 large bags of candy and had to shut our porch light out at 8 pm. Here's a cute pic of Summer and Zach - niece and nephew




I finished three shawls.
Another brown handspun Forest Canopy for my sister Juanita,


a commercial yarn Forest Canopy for Mom,


and my Kiri out of handspun exotics for me me me.







Here are some gratuitous cat pron... We have 4 cats - a 14 year old long haired calico - Cameo - my sweet old gal.


Two adults - Candy



and Stormy,




and a youngster - Baker Baker.



Here's a shot of them all on the bed at once - this rarely happens. Cameo is picky and doesn't like any of the others to come close to her.




Here's the reason we bought the new couch - Maegan and Sarah spend the night at our house almost every other weekend - this new couch gives them both room to sleep on it


The couch also got put to good use on Thanksgiving - the reclining feature was appreciated by all - my son and some of the girls


My mom and a couple of sisters



The kids had a good time at Thanksgiving - look at them playing fort under the table.



I have to finish the last minute details for my sons wedding this weekend. I'll probably have more updates soon.

News - not fiber related

My oldest son is getting married - in 4 weeks. I am working on the details required to pull this all together.

At first they were going to just go to the JP, but have now decided to make it a little more of a wedding.

My youngest sister has volunteered her house for the event. We will do a small ceremony and then a reception. Even if we just invite family - there's going to be about 50 people.

Yikes! I have so much to get done - find a minister, rent tables and chairs, figure out what to do about food, decorations, dress for the bride, dresses for all the little girls who want to be flower girls. There will be at least 5 flower girls - probably no other attendants.

My son's father and his brother have to be gotten down here - I already booked the ticket for my youngest son - now I have to figure out how to get his dad here - he doesn't fly and lives in Wyoming.

Lot's to do - not very much time to do it in.

Warning - family members do not read

Yes, that means you, too, Bonnie.


My sister and I just sat down and figured out the Christmas list and I'm going to be very very busy between now and the end of the year.

Yikes - I have at least 11 felted bags to make and only 95 days to do it in. That's just about one a week.

Luckily, Juanita will do all the finishing - make the linings and attach the handles.

I am going to use the one that is already felted as one gift - only 10 to go!

They don't fit

Sarah tried on her socks yesterday and she cannot get them over her heel. They are the right length and fit her foot - but the heel and arch are too small.

So I am keeping them for me and will knit her another pair.

Finished Socks

My sister Juanita spotted this yarn as soon as it came into my house from Ray and put her name on the ball band - so here are Juanita's socks...

Superwash merino and nylon - toe up with the figure 8 cast on and the YO short row heel - my standard sock recipe - the stitch pattern is an offset broken rib that I unvented to show off the colors. the instep and leg are knit as follows: k2 p2 for three rows, k for two rows, p2 k2 for three rows and repeat. The gauge for this stitch pattern kept the yarn in stripes rather than any pooling. Juanita really likes them, she put them on even though it was 110 degrees yesterday. Said they are the most comfortable socks she has ever worn

Another pair of socks

My sister Bonnie is such a little foot and her feet get cold easily, so even though she lives down here in the desert (or HELL as I usually call it) I made her some wool socks



The yarn is Noveau Riche from Knitivity and the pattern is a chevron with an eyelet rib. I liked the look of the chevron on the Jaywalker sock, but I knit socks toe up and that made the chevron point the other way. I also wanted a more open look, so I changed the increase from a Kfb to a YO which created a wonderful eyelet rib running up the center - but you can only see it when the sock is on the foot.



It's knit over 60 stitches, toe up, magic cast on, YO short row heel.

Part 2 - Sea World Trip

4 adults, 3 children, one minivan, 4 nights, 800 miles, two motel rooms = one glorious trip.

We really had a blast. I think all the kids had a great time, I know that DeVia, Juanita and I did.

Melody was miserable for part of the trip, but she had a much better time than last year.

Here is a slideshow of some of the over 400 pics from the trip:

Sisters

I have 4 sisters and it's a blessing in my life that we are all close. I also have 4 brothers, but that's another post.

It's two groups of two, separated by 8 or so years in age. Their names are Bonnie, Belinda, Juanita and Michelle. I'm the oldest, Bonnie and Belinda are in their 40's and Juanita and Michelle are in their 30's. Michelle is only 6 months older than my oldest son.

Belinda lives in Missouri in the same town as my mom and the other three live here in the Metro Phoenix area.

About once a year, I make the trip to Missouri to spend a week with Belinda and Mom. This year, Juanita was there for a visit right before me and we overlapped for one day. Here are a couple of pics from that day.

AIDS Lifecycle

I can't tell you how proud I am of my friend Janisis. For the second year, she is a roadie for the AIDS Lifecycle ride. Here is the page where she describes what this entails and what it means to her.

I wanted to insert just a small quote from her description

"I want to tell you about how much fun it is, but the term 'fun' doesn't begin to cover the emotion ... it's so much more than fun... it's deeply rewarding, enormously satisifying, hugely gratifying... joyous service."

Please take a moment, go to her page and write her a note of encouragement - donate if you can to support her in this effort.

Socks for my sister

This is a chain plyed BFL dyed by Spunky Electric that I spun up last year. It knit up so nicely for these socks. I used my toe up recipe and did an interesting pattern on the instep and legs.

It's a K2P2 rib for 3 rows and then 2 rows of plain knit - repeated

This gave an interesting texture to the socks and made them very stretchy - I didn't get a close up of the pattern, but should have.

Renn Faire

We had an amazing time yesterday at the Renn Faire. My sister Juanita made all of our outfits, the weather was good (not too hot and not muddy) and the crowds were not too bad.





Maegan rode a number of the rides for smaller kids - here she is pulling on the rope for all she is worth.



Sarah and Melody rode the elephant and were very excited about it. Mel is 17 and it is so cool to watch her go from sullen teenager to excited child about 20 times a day. It's a hard time to be in her shoes - I hope it gets better for her.

Sarah is on the brink of adolescence, I hope she doesn't have as hard of a time as Mel did.



Maegan rode the camel instead, cause the line for the elephant was too long by the time she got done on the swing. Here she is with the princess wave - even from the top of a camel - she has the princess thing down. The girl in front is a stranger, but when I yelled "princess wave" she got into the spirit of it with Mae.



I love this picture of all of us together. Sure can tell that we are related - eh?

first pool party of the year

The pool is too cold to swim, but they had to get in the pool anyway. It's still pretty green from the winter, but we tested the water and it's fine.

Saturday - Art in Action

The mermaids had a school event this Saturday that I offered to take them to. The older one is getting to almost be a teenager and is shy about having her pic taken - but she mugged for this one.

From art in action

From art in action

here's my little cutie pie -

From art in action

And here she is again - getting ready for the program that the 3rd grade put on.

Family is everything

Yesterday was Sunday again. My favorite day of the week. It's family day at our house. That means that at a minimum we have the following people over for early dinner. My son and his girlfriend (and sometimes her 3 girls - 5, 3 & 10 months), my sister Juanita and her two youngest (and sometimes her teenager), my brother in law, his wife and their 2 kids (3 and 18 months) - so from 9 up to a possible 13 regulars. We are also occasionally joined by another sister and her 3 children or my 2 grandsons.

D cooks a big meal and we all hang out for a couple of hours. Yesterday my son and the brother in law and their respective partners/kids all went to the park for a pick up game of football. They came back hungry and worn out.

I have a lot of regrets when it comes to the mother I was when my kids were small, but I know now that it's never too late to become a good mother. And the Grandma thing is very cool.

I didn't have grandparents - well ok, I must have had them, but I did not know them at all - no contact after age 6 or so. I'm learning how to do this blind.. I must be doing soemthing right.

Why I stay

Diane's post this morning got me to thinking about why I live here in Phoenix and I thought I would go ahead and post my comment here for you all.

I miss San Francisco and Berkeley so much - for all the same reasons she listed. I lived there for 14 years before moving back to Phoenix.

There's only one reason I stay here instead of moving back. Only one reason, but it's a big one. I hate the climate, the traffic, the desert, actually everything about the place.

Ok, maybe there's two reasons to stay.

The first is the best one and it keeps me here when I long to get away to anywhere but here - and that's family. I have 3 sisters, my son, 7 nieces and nephews, two grandchildren & 2 cousins that all live here.

No one is more than 20 minutes away. And we do things together, we love each other and are close knit. When I lived in California, I didn't know how that would feel to be so close to them - I cut myself off from them and I didn't know that'w what was missing until I moved here and found it.

The second one is my little guild. I've become good friends with some amazing women and we feed each others fiber addiction.

So I stay. It's a trade off that's worth it.

What trade offs do you make and is it worth it?

NO fiber content whatsoever

I saw a great quote today on another blog about consequences and it struck home for me today especially.

My 34 year old son has been living with me since he was released from prison last August and recently he stopped doing what he was supposed to do. You know - see his parole officer once a week, keep a job... etc.

It's always hard to watch those we love act in a way that we know will bring them nothing but trouble and will break our hearts. I know this first hand

Just a little while ago I got a call from D saying that my son was in an accident and she was going to see what he needed. Still not sure what happened, but the police ran his record and his parole officer already had a warrant for his arrest out there - so back to prison he went.

I am destroyed......

Thanksgiving

It was great to have Bill here for the holiday. Here he is holding Zachary. The guys on the couch are my nephews Tyler (on the left) and Matthew.






My sister Juanita has lost a bunch of weight and looks great here with my best friend Jackson.







Patrick and his father - really the reason I brought Bill down here was so that he and Pat could have a little time together












Sarah looks so cute wearing Melody's hat







My family - That's D on the left, my son Patrick, me in a hideous dress and Bill.

Maegan's shrug

Juanita made this little shrug for Maegan out of a pretty merino tencel roving that I got from Winderwood on ebay. It's spun to a baby weight yarn and then crocheted .


How cute is she?

Who needs an electric carder...

...when you have Maegan to help?

This is my practically 9 year old niece. She comes over almost every weekend and one of her favorite things to do is help me with my fiber stuff.

She is learning to spin and has felted soaps.

One of the things that Maegan does best is work the drum carder. She is very careful and turns at exactly the right speed for the fiber we are working on.

She wants to learn how to pick the fiber in prep for carding, but I have to have some control over my prep batts.

When she is drum carding batts from the dreck fiber, she gets to do it all. Pick, turn the drum and lift the batt off.