Ummmmmm…anyone still out there?

I started thinking that I hadn’t posted to the blog in a couple of months…but found out it had been since DECEMBER! DECEMBER! Why haven’t I posted since December? I don’t know: too busy, to lazy, nothing to say, nothing new to post. Probably a combination of all of those, but I’m going to try to do better because I should start to have a lot to post about starting in the near future as we are getting ready to start building out house on our land in Colorado.

I know that I’ve shown pictures of the area we are building in, but just to remind you I will post a picture of the mountains that will be out my kitchen window:

I think I’m excited about the house, but it has been in the works so long, I don’t know what will happen and when.

Since December we have been doing the same ol’, same ole, except we spent three months at my parents because my Dad called and asked my DH to come and work for him. It ended up being a really bad thing because they didn’t do much work, my parents had well problems and my mother and I got into it and it turned ugly. Over time, she made it very clear that we really weren’t welcome and then couldn’t understand why we were feeling that way. She said she bent over backwards to make us feel welcome (not), and got her feelings hurt when anything was said. Anyway, that won’t be happening again ever!

We are sitting in the convention center (McCormick Place) in Chicago waiting to get unloaded. We are one of seven trucks that has some kind of printing press on it. The guys that loaded it on us are going to run it for this trade show and then pack it up again and it goes to Tennessee to it’s final home. We won’t be carrying it, but that’s okay. We have a load that goes to the Kansas City area with 5 stops on it, but we should be empty on Monday.

I’m currently knitting a calpotis out of Brooks Farm Four Play. It’s 50% wool and 50% silk and is quite yummy. I love their yarns. I have several skeins in my stash and need to get the projects that the skeins were bought for done. DH is being very patient with waiting for the scarf that he picked the yarn out for at MDS&W in 2008. He wanted the Irish Hiking scarf, and I might do that, but he also wants a thread of silk that we bought to run with it and I don’t know if that pattern will work with that or not.

I signed up for the If it has cables and covers your chest KAL and I feel like I am falling woefully behind. I don’t even have my yarn yet (it is sitting in Colorado at the Post office) and haven’t started my sweater yet and some people are just steaming right along.  I bought the yarn for this and would love to knit it, but I might just be a little intimidated.  That’s a LOT of knitting and it feels kind of selfish to knitting just for me this close to needing to do Christmas knitting. I may also do this. We’ll see, but I am going to do a sweater!!

I think that this is probably enough post for now, and I will get some pictures of the clapotis up and maybe see if I can find some other pictures of stuff that was finished since December.

Thanks for stopping by again.

Another Unconscious Mutterings

1. Carpet ::  climbers
2. Bottoms :: up
3. Music :: Jimmy Buffet
4. Nails :: it to the floor
5. Watch it! :: don’t fall
6. Your life :: in slow motion
7. Candies :: Chocolate!  IS there any other kind?
8. Chafing :: dish
9. Svelte :: not me
10. Ding :: Dong, the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!

As always, here’s a link back to Claudia’s Blog to see what anyone else that is playing is saying about these.

We’ve been all over since the last time that I posted, although it seems that every place we go, we end up sitting for several days because freight is just so crappy right now.  We were sitting in Las Cruces, NM until Thursday of last week, and that was after sitting in Amarillo, TX for 5 days.  It’s like we are being punished, and I mean the whole trucking industry, because the fuel prices have fallen.  Shippers seem to think that because the fuel prices have fallen, they can drop their rates significantly.  We were trying to put some partial loads together to be able to get up the east coast so that we could be home for Christmas, and shippers were thinking that 25 cents a mile was a reasonable rate for shipping something 1900 miles….not.  That load is still sitting in that shipper’s warehouse!

I have been knitting, and not really stealth knitting, on some Christmas presents for the younger kids in our family.  All of the “little” kids are getting felted mittens this year and so I have been knitting on those.  I haven’t taken any pictures of them because they won’t be felted until after we get home tomorrow or Tuesday, and then I will try to get some pictures of them.

November’s post that never got posted

We are still out on the road…I know, big surprise.  This being out on our own is harder in some ways than we thought it would be, but easier in others.  I know that the paperwork is definatly way more than I thought it would be.  One of the problems that I have is that I find it difficult to do some of the paperwork as we are driving because the roads are so bumpy and I drop the paper work that I’m trying to enter.  Some of it might be that I am not really disciplined about my paperwork, as well, but I do get it done….sometimes just in the nick of time.  See the answer for # 3 in the list above.

I’ve been doing some knitting.  Seems to be quite a bit of baby knitting because the projects are fast quick and in a hurry, but I’ve also been knitting socks.  Seems like I have socks on the needles all the time, with whatever else I have going.

I knit a hat for Taylor:  , I knit some socks for DH: (They are actually finished, and he’s worn them, I just have photoed them.   I made a second Grumpy Old Bear for Taylor and am going to give the first one to Taylor’s as yet unborn cousin:   and I started a Feather and Fan scarf for my mom’s birthday out of yarn that the grandkids kool aid dyed a while back.  Its a gift from all of us:  .  I”m hoping she likes it, as it is a bit bright, but I think that fact the kids dyed the yarn and I knit it will mean she wears it.  If not, no biggy.

Here’s a picture of the sunrise in Houston the other morning as we were going into town at 0′dark thirty and the sun was coming up:    This is what the road looked like in front of us:.  I know that a lot of people commute in traffic like that every day, but that’s not usually what we are doing…we normally don’t have to sit in stuff like that, but occasionally it’s not too bad, but some people in traffic like this are just flat out STUPID!!!!!

I have a bunch of photos of places we’ve been, snow we’ve seen on the mountains already this year, and I thought I had uploaded them to photobucket, but I guess I put them on my external hard drive and not on the photo site….grrrrrrr!  Now some are uploaded, but the bulk of them must still be on the external and I don’t have the wherewithall to mess with it right now.

Smoky fields in Oregon:    

  A beautiful sunset:

I am going to try to get  back in the habit of taking pictures going down the road.  We have a smaller camera that is ac

Unconscious Mutterings

Here are my answers for this weeks unconscious mutterings…if you participate, please post your answers on Claudia’s blog

 

• Zoo :: take a trip

 

• Neighborhood :: friends
• Salute :: the flag
• Immortality :: don’t want it
• Dominion :: over the world
• Rhonda :: Run, Run
• Parties :: don’t go to any
• Prince of Darkness :: Satan
• Garbage :: what we hear on the CB Radio
• Standard :: time

We are still running around the country and working…not much other things to show.

Looky What I Got

We were able to go home for a little bit last night to get our mail.  I went home looking for a package from my upstream pal that wasn’t there.  My sister picks up my mail for me, but she hadn’t picked that up, so I went this morning and picked up the package and my secret pal has come through again:

In this picture is what was in my final package.  There is a skein of Fiesta Ballet in a colorway called Pansies.  There are two skeins of yummy, yummy Crystal Palace Panda Silk, two more project bags, a very apropos book called Knittin on the Road, some very good chocolate pretzel bites, and some mints.  There was a small pad of sticky notes and a ladybug dispenser, but I will have to admit that I don’t know what it’s for.  Thank you so much, Vicki…you did an excellent job, yet again!!!!!  If you would like to go and see who my upstream secret pal is, go visit Vicki at her blog.  

That wasn’t the only package that I got…

The above is the first installment of the Wollmeise Sock club.  Claudia does some of the most amazing yarn that I have ever see.  I have never seen a color of Wollmeise that I don’t like, and I am not one to turn down Wollmeise if it’s offered to me, so when the question of a sock club came up, I jumped and put my name in the hat and was fortunate enough to get a spot in the club.  I was not disappointed in the least, and the yarn is amazing, the dpn’s are beautiful, and the pattern will make a beautiful pair of socks.  Thanks Claudia.

I also got the latest installment in the Perfect Day Yarns Dead Poets Sock Club….

Sarah does an excellent job of dying yarn, as well.  She mixes up colors in new and interesting ways that makes me look at socks in a new way.  LaLa did an excellent job on the pattern that we got this month, and I enjoyed the other swag, although it’s not shown in the picture, as well.  Good job, Sarah!

I got a bunch of other yarn….some Wollmeise that had nothing to do with the sock club, I just happened to catch one of her early Friday morning updates because we were driving really, really late on night and got several skeins:

  

I also was able to get the kit for the La Digitessa from Yarnissima with the Digitessa colorway from the Wollmeise herself:

I know this looks like a lot of yarn all at once,especially a lot of Wollmeise,  but you have to realise that we haven’t been home for a couple of months, and this is stuff that has come in the mail over that time.

Next post, I should have some pictures of some of the places that we’ve been in the last while.  I finally got them taken off the camera, but not uploaded to the net yet, but I should be able to do that shortly.