After two days of being packed in like sardines in a car, followed by nine days of being in close quarters with my parents and sometimes sister and nephews, followed by another two of being packed in like sardines in a car we are all in separate rooms in the house reveling in our personal space.
I find that I am okay with this.
Also, I am ecstatic to be reunited with my very fast internet connection and my cats.
Hopefully in the nick of time I finished the first part of Quidditch challenge for HPKCHC. They’re supposed to be baby socks, but they look more like toddler socks to me. at do you want to bet that since I would like them to be smaller I won’t be able to block or felt them to be a little smaller? That’s okay, babies do grow and they’ll fit one at some stage or another. The pattern is Tiny Toes made with leftover Dreamsicle from Knitter’s Brewing Co. And I STILL have enough left over to make another pair of baby socks.
We leave for home tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to the very long drive. I plan on taking plenty of ibuprofen and tylenol this time so that I won’t be so miserable and we’re not going to drive straight through. We plan on spending the night in Albuquerque.
Tonight we had dinner at a really nice sushi restaurant to celebrate my parent’s 50th anniversary. I’m kinda sad that I won’t have one of those, but being with David totally makes up for it.
This has been a great trip. I wish I lived closer so I could get the benefits of seeing my family a lot without the drawbacks of being in someone else’s space for any length of time. I like my mom’s house, but well, it’s not MY house. I miss my cats and my screaming fast internet connection 😉 Then I could hang out and not be annoyed at my sister for choosing to go shopping for a desk instead of coming over to visit with me on my last day in town. Because, you know, the furniture and office supplies stores are far more likely to still be here tomorrow than I am. *frumple*
I’m bringing home even more cross stitch stuff of Mom’s, so I’ll have even more stash to try to go through before I’m too old to craft. 🙂 I really hope I don’t live very long after that point. If I haven’t gone crazy by then, not being able to craft would certainly push me over the edge.
Hubby has picked up his mom’s car from the shop, it’s all fixed. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope that we don’t do more damage to it before we get it back home to her. That was an expense that we really didn’t need. Sigh.
Thursday we headed out to a couple of Museums. At the Houston Museum of Natural Science we saw The Titanic and The Warriors, Tombs and Temples exhibits which were fabulous. I may or may not have gotten a little emotional during the Titanic exhibit. At the beginning of the tour you are handed a passenger ticket and at the end you find out if you were one of the survivors. The girls and I survived, Joshua and David did not.
At the other exhibit we saw some of the terracotta warriors, including this gentleman who was nice enough to pose for us. He looks great for his age:
Joshua and Chynna went on a little ride at the museum entrance. You get strapped into this round thing and then spun around in all different directions. There is no way in hell I would get into one of these. My father and husband agreed with me. Danica kinda wanted to try it but was feeling sick. That left only Chynna and Joshua to prove we weren’t an entire family of wusses. Here is Chynna at the beginning of her ride:
Afterwards we spent a small amount of time at the art museum, where Chynna, Joshua and I sat in some comfy chairs and waited for Danica, David and Dad to get their fill. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the art museum, but my feet had reached their limit and were cursing at me in several different languages. As I sat knitting a lady approached me and commented on my knitting and we chatted for a few minutes about different styles of knitting. While we were in line to get tickets for the first museum I saw a lady with a t-shirt that said “Hell yeah, I knit sweaters”. I just had to wander over and tell her how much I loved her shirt and showed her the partially knitted sock I had in my purse. I wish I had taken a picture of her.
On Friday we got pictures taken of us along with my sister and her children. They turned out okay. My older nephew Adrian took great delight in trying to ruin the pictures by not smiling. He grinned like an idiot between shots and looked really nice but refused to smile otherwise. Whatever. I picked shots that the rest of us looked good in. I’m going to hit a Hobby Lobby or Michaels today and get some frames and voila! 50th wedding anniversary present for my parents.
We took a few candid shots of our own while waiting for the proofs to be ready:
On the way back to Mom’s house we stopped by the Houston Temple and took a couple of pictures and got to chat briefly with a local missionary couple who were from Salt Lake. This was taken at a fountain on the temple grounds. The place was so beautiful.
Today, Mom and I took the girls to the mall to have a girls’ outing. Chynna found a really cute outfit at Macy’s and Mom and Danica got some goodies at the Clinique counter. I snagged the summer duffel bags that came free with their purchases as my treasure of the day. They’ll make really cute project bags.
We enjoyed a tasty lunch at Sweet Tomatoes where I may or may not have had some really good bread. And cornbread. And a brownie.
After we got home Chynna amused herself by playing with some of the local fauna.
Tomorrow we are going to take Chynna to visit a bird store that we enjoyed visiting many years before on a previous visit. We also have a trip to a different mall planned so Danica can see if a jacket that she took a liking to could be found in a different size. David is going to take his mom’s car in to get the bumper fixed. He put a dent in it when we visited Four Corners on the way down here. Oops.
On Wednesday we are getting pictures of all the grand kids taken as a present for Mom and Dad.
On Thursday we plan on visiting the Space Museum, Museum of Natural History and/or an art museum. There should be something for everyone.
I’m so tired from just thinking about it that very little knitting happened today. I got a few rows done while watching The Bee Movie. I got a few giggles out of that flick but mostly it was really annoying. Butch, jock-like, male pollen gatherers? Seriously? As a bee lover, I’m trying really hard not to be offended.
I was really looking forward to seeing some old friends on Saturday but very depressed over why it was going to be possible. I stressed about the upcoming trip and not just because it was going to be 22 hours in a car packed with people. A friend of the family passed away and I did a major part of my growing up with his sons. Two of my best friends lost their father and that makes me very sad. It has been apparent for some time that I’ve reached that point in my life where the people of the older generation in my life is on its way out.
Galen Grimma, Jr. passed away April 19, 2012 and the funeral was held May 19, 2012 in McDade, TX. It’s because the funeral was a month later that I was able to attend. I was friends with this sons, John and David. David taught me how to drive and was a partial contributor to my (mostly harmless) juvenile delinquency. Mr. Grimma was an interesting neighborhood dad, was a math genius and worked and carpooled with my father at Shell Oil. He collected coins and would always buy any wheat pennies that the kids in the neighborhood found. He always addressed me as “Sweet Patricia”.
It was wonderful to spend those few precious hours with David (John lives in Colorado and had come just after his father passed but runs a jewelry store in Colorado Springs couldn’t come back) and see that although older and wiser he’s still the same wonderful person I remember. I got to meet his grandchildren and great grandchildren and see that he is happily surrounded by the large family he always wanted.
This is Betsy (John and David’s sister), David and their mother Joan. Joan is an amazing woman and one of my very favorite people in the world. She was always one of the cool moms in the neighborhood and was always passing on information about her love of plants and animals. Her backyard was a wonderful paradise of trees and plants, rabbit hutches and a pond with turtles. The year that she and a few of her friends turned 70 she went on a backpacking trip around Guatemala. I find that amazing since there is no way I could do such a thing at 40 something!
The trip down to the Austin area was long and very uncomfortable. We borrowed my MIL’s car and while it’s a nice car, something about the seats left me almost paralyzed with pain. We had made the trip in April and although the monsoon that we drove through was horrifying and left me scarred forever, it wasn’t nearly that painful. The kids did really well but were also uncomfortable and I really don’t think we will ever attempt a straight drive through again. I’m just not as resilient as I used to be.
I was so uncomfortable that I barely got a few rows done on the baby blanket I brought with me. I got more done during the two hour drive from McDade to Houston than I did during the 22 hour drive from Orem to McDade. I’m not super thrilled with the yarn. It splits and catches a lot and I can’t whip through it as fast as I’m used to. The skein was one huge skein and so loosely wound that I knew it was going to be miserable to work with once a little was used out of the middle, so I wound it into a ball. A very, very large ball. Oh well, less ends to weave in can’t be a bad thing, right? It’s Bernat Baby Sport in the Pyjama Party colorway. Love the color but I will be very glad to get some of the Red Heart baby yarn that I usually use for baby blanket gifts.
We stopped in Four Corners, took pictures and looked at all the vendors selling inexpensive Indian style jewelry and crafts:
We got to the hotel in Austin around noon on Friday and spent the rest of the day sleeping and recovering before heading out to the funeral in McDade on Saturday. After visiting for a bit we continued on to Houston where we will spend a week or so with my parents to celebrate their 50th anniversary. The weather has been great, not too hot and not too humid. I’m enjoying not having flaky, dry, itchy skin and smooth heels. I had been a tiny bit worried that I would be too miserable in the heat and humidity but it’s been lovely so far.
Today I started some baby socks out of some Dreamsicle from Knitter’s Brewing Company left over from the socks I made for Chynna last year. These will be for the first part of Quidditch in HPKCHC. I haven’t made baby booties or socks before and oy, are the first rows fiddly. It’s going much more smoothly now that I’ve finished the tiny toe.
I hope to get a nice chunk of knitting and crocheting done during the rest of my stay. Hopefully I can finish the pair of socks that I brought with me and if I’m really brave I will start on Mom’s shawl.
I had a great time crafting for Nerd Wars although I didn’t finish nearly as many things as I wanted to.
Just to show that I love putting myself under stress I joined another Ravelry knitting group:Â Harry Potter Knitting Crochet House Cup. My friend Janalee plays there and it sounded like fun. I will join Nerd Wars again in June and hopefully I can get on the TARDIS team which is made up of Doctor Who fans.Â
I finished a few small projects in answer to the HPKCHP challenges.
A spider washcloth, pattern here.
A Doctor Who logo washcloth
And then I dyed some yarn.
I started out by rewinding the skein around two chairs placed at each end of my dining room table. I originally was going for longer color repeats and then changed my mind. Or more accurately couldn’t quite make the system of putting a section of yarn in 3-4 canning jars.
I couldn’t find 4 canning jars all the same size. I will be fixing that problem for future projects plus I ran across a blog that shows how to do the multiples in a slight different way. This time I snaked the yarn in the casserole dis, filled the dish with water,
and sprinkled the Kool Aid straight on top of the wet yarn without mixing it with water first.
I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but it turned out kinda fun.
I went for a solid color next. This was dyed with Ice Blue Raspberry Kool Aid.
Sadly, I ran out of bare yarn to dye. I’m going to have to order some more 🙂 Meanwhile I have more projects on the needles and in the planning stages to work on.
Today was pretty much like any other day and any other Mother’s Day. I had cereal for breakfast. I got a nice card from my mother-in-law. A small difference in the day is that Joshua gave a nice short talk at church. It was the first time I’d heard any of my children speak in church. We left right after the talk as Joshua wasn’t feeling well, he’d been fighting a cold. Later in the evening I gave up on waiting for the dinner fairies to arrive and ordered a pizza. I figured if my blood sugar was going to be too high from eating only carbs (remember the cereal? I had that for a late lunch too), it should be carbs that I really, really liked.
I may go really wild and watch a few Robert Downey, Jr. movies and start a new knitting project. TARDIS mitts anyone?
Happy Mother’s Day, y’all.
I was out searching for my favorite baby yarn and wasn’t able to find it at Michael’s, JoAnns, or WalMart. I was met with yarny failure. I loved that yarn. It came in great colorways like Tropical Punch and Rainbow Sherbet. As I was driving away from the last store in bitter defeat I was instantly cheered by this sight:
I was stopped at a light and she walked through the crosswalk in front of me. While knitting. It made my day. It’s nice to know there are other knitters out there and that I’m not alone 🙂
I have one more store to check and then I guess I’m going to have to find a different (inexpensive) baby yarn to love.