Category Archives: Just Stuff

The Dining Room Has Been Reclaimed

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AKA – What I did during my summer vacation.

When a kid moves out, you might have extra room. If enough kids move out, you really might have an extra room. As it happens, I did.

The dining room went from this:

to this:

The Wall Of Yarn ™ moved into the spare bedroom over the summer.

I bought adjustable shelves. This allows me to get into a tub at the bottom with out moving ALL of the tubs above it. Don’t you just love it when your yarn is easy to get to?

I created a cutting table out of an IKEA desktop and cube storage shelves from Target. This doesn’t exactly translate into having the sewing station completely set up, but there is a functional ball winder.  All the books from the dining room/craft room have also been moved.  I still have to figure out the best way to store the WIPs.  Another kid is moving out soon, so some things that ended up in the craft room closet will go in what is going to become a home office.  Once that happens, I’ll decide if I want my desk to stay where it is, or go into the home office with David’s desk.  One (or both) of the two rooms will have a daybed put in so we can have a guest room again.  It makes me wonder how we managed all of this in the townhouse with more people.  And then I remember, we only had two of the seven living with us full-time. It wasn’t until we moved that we got another of mine and two of David’s as well. We no longer have people sharing bedrooms, so it feels like we don’t have enough rooms, when in fact we have more than enough.

Other things that happened over the summer:

David’s birthday:  He’s a Star Wars fan.

Stanley’s wedding:

Isn’t my new daughter-in-law, Brittanie just too gorgeous for words?  Chynna was sick so I had to hustle her out of there just after the ceremony so I don’t have more pictures of the happy couple.  I seriously wish I had gotten a picture of her shoes.

Groomsmen, Stefan, Tim, a guy I don’t know, Joshua, another guy I don’t know, and Stuart.

Eliza, Joshua, and Stuart.  They’re darling.

Chynna and I made a few escapes to the mountains to walk, craft in nature, and get out of the city. If you are familiar with this area, you know that escaping to the mountains is just a few minutes drive away. I love this part of living in Utah.

And a mildly successful garden tower:

I got this for David for Father’s Day and it’s been a fun experiment.

What was I thinking?

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I went back to school.

It was great. It was hard. I loved it.

Someday, I’m going to appreciate that it wasn’t super easy. I’d just about given up on ever finishing my computer science degree. The thought would occur to me to try again every fall. Every fall, I would remember the many times I tried before and agonize for all the things I let stand in my way. Working full-time, raising children, limited resources, an un-supportive first spouse, I’m too old to learn, all came together and at some point I just gave up and said “I shall try again later”. The years came and went and so many doubts plagued me. Why should I bother? What will I use it for? It’s not going to make a difference in my career. The mommy tax was too high, I’m too old, I’m too out of shape, and so on. Still, my unfinished degree haunted me. Year after year, the thought would not go away that I regretted not finishing. I knew I could get around almost anything, but the idea that old dogs don’t learn new tricks seemed to be the thing that stopped me in my tracks.

Then, I ran across an article saying that it wasn’t true. There wasn’t any hard evidence that older people couldn’t learn new things.

I now had a supportive spouse, I now had resources, my children were grown, and with reading that article my last mental obstacle vanished. I enrolled in college with my two youngest children and we all went together.  They had been going for a little while already and my oldest has graduated.

I loved it. I got good grades. I may have cried a little. Okay, I cried a lot. But it was good, too.

Here, I am. I made it two semesters and I was going to take a trigonometry class during the summer but that didn’t work out.  I took a math leap class instead that takes what you know and pushes you a little farther. I don’t need/want to retake trig and calculus, I simply want to refresh my knowledge so that I don’t freak out again during my physics class.

Summer is over and I go back on Monday and I didn’t get anything done, crafting wise, that I wanted to get done.  I didn’t finish any socks, I didn’t sew pajama pants, I finish my shawl for fall.

So, of course, I started a sweater and bought more sewing fabric.

I may need help.

It was a beautiful day.

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David and I were sealed in the Mount Timpanogas Temple.  None of my family are members but my dearest friend, Wendy, made sure I was properly escorted and not alone. She held my hand, dabbed my tears, and dutifully took a lot of lovely photographs.

Except for this one, I hope it’s okay to take a selfie at the temple!

Thanks, Wend, it meant so much to me that you were there.

School and Knitting

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I started week 12 of school today and I see that I haven’t mentioned a thing here.  I made a big deal of choosing a new project to work on during breaks and at school and then didn’t really work on it.  I have been working on my shawl, but my knitting time has been so limited.

I finished a pair of Halloween socks.  The only bit left to do was the Kitchener stitch.  I really don’t like Kitchener stitch and it was this that put the sock back into the WIP pile. I had tried a few times, had to pick out the mess I made, and re-knit part of the toe. This is why I like top-up socks.  I did these socks top down because that’s the way it had to be done because of the yarn I chose. Since I adore this yarn and I have several others like it, I’m just going to have to suck it up and get better at Kitchener stitch.

I pulled out another pair of Halloween socks and will be working on those, but knowing how seldom I knit, I don’t see these getting done before the end of the month.  It’s just a project to keep me interested during the Halloween season. They are adorable though!  This pattern is a mash up of toe up sock patterns from some books, and Nancy Bush’s Fox Face socks.  The yarn is Salvia. My feet are cold on campus, so I have a lot of incentive to finish a pair or three of wool socks. From there, I’ll move on to a more Fall themed sock projects. Being in school tends to cut into one’s knitting and blogging time.

Halloween on campus was a blast. My costume even got a few nods of recognition. One fellow student commented “Sick Doctor Who costume!”.  I was pleased.  The dancing T-Rex and the Darth Vader with theme music were among the best things I saw that day.

CookAndCleanGiving is coming up and I think we’ll do ours early so we can get most if not all the kids there.  I would be looking forward to the break if holidays were really a break for homemakers. Whoa, negativity, did I say that out loud?

Look! Pretty fall campus!

School has been going well.  So well, in fact, I might not have to retake a class I thought I was going to have to retake. I was pretty excited and relieved. My brain isn’t as old and crusty as I thought and here’s to all oldies going back to school! We’ve got this!

 

 

 

A new project is like a new notebook

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There is something magical about a brand-new notebook. It’s crisp and clean and full of potential. I won’t lie, I may be a little addicted to school, office, and stationery supplies.

So much potential. This project is so new, it hasn’t had time to give me grief. Oh, I know it’s coming. These will be my at school project.  New school year, new project, new notebook.

Two at a time, toe-up socks in Felici Time Traveler.

So, I’m back

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The IT professional I lovingly refer to as DH has finally put the things back together that made the blog possible.

I blogged a couple of times on my other site. A post over there reminded me that I was blogging over there because the IT professional nearest and dearest to my heart had taken the blog down back then as well. I could have, maybe put it back together myself but the times I tried I ran into snags that I needed help with and frankly I was just too tired to get it done.

While I was gone, a new spindle joined the collection.

And little bits of quilting are starting to happen.

I had better get started.

A small tradition but a sweet one

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Our fairly recently established tradition for Valentine’s Day is chocolate covered strawberries.  David has decided that traditions are important. To me, traditions are perfectly fine, as long as someone else does the work. When you are consistently running short of spoons, traditions fall by the wayside in favor of what is easier and more restful. I do sometimes try to be supportive so I brought home chocolate and strawberries on Monday so I could make a batch.  The strawberries were not going to cooperate and last until Wednesday, which is fine, I wanted to make them while Joshua was still here. On Tuesday, I melted the chocolate and dipped a few dozen strawberries. I think they turned out rather nice.

The last time I tried to melt chocolate, I made rather a mess of things. This time, it worked perfectly. Chocolate is a fickle thing.

 

Not a creature was stirring

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Well, there was this creature…

Christmas Day passed super quietly with almost no company. All of the kids were elsewhere and we enjoyed a lovely quiet day. I still had to cook and clean, but one never gets away from that, does one? Our celebrations were a few days later which means I still had time to finish knitting.  After more cooking and cleaning, of course.

In addition to a few knitting projects, I did a little stirring myself. The sourdough experiments continued and another batch of peppermint sugar scrub happened.

Still, I was a day or two late finishing the boot cuffs. I was anxious to cast off the last one when this happened:

I know I’m famous for losing at yarn chicken, but that’s not what happened here. I cut the yarn before casting off the stitches on the last needle.

Merry Cook&Cleanmas, everyone!

 

 

 

We pulled off a wedding

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In October, my daughter got married and it still doesn’t seem quite real.

Wedding manicure

Wedding day breakfast

Wedding day hair

On our way to the venue

There was very little that I had to do. The heavy lifting was done by the venue, caterer, photographer and Danica herself. Danica did the center pieces, bouquets, and corsages. A seamstress (that turned out to be a cousin) made her dress. I’m exhausted, but that’s mostly mental trying to wrap my head around having a married daughter. I ran a few errands and picked up a few things, but my job in this thing was relatively small. The biggest thing I did, aside from giving birth to her, was to make her a shawl.

Everything was wonderful, everything was beautiful. I got to socialize with friends and family. I got to walk my daughter down the aisle and I got to sign the marriage certificate as a witness. It was a beautiful evening. I sat beside my mother and watched as my husband did a fabulous job officiating the ceremony.

I’ve laughed and cried as my daughter embarked on this new stage in her life.

Then her new husband whisked her away for a honeymoon in Paris and my brain stayed firmly stuck overseas wondering and worrying over their safety until they finally landed back here.