sherriknits

Does this sound convincing?  I’ll try again.

i.AM.a.knitter

I really had a struggle with myself this evening.  Yesterday, as I said, I started the first square of The Great American Afghan.  I thought it looked a little wonky but I convinced myself to not make this a stressful project by letting myself do the perfectionist thing.  However, I still don’t like sloppy.

Today I had so many interruptions and I watched Lauri pass me up even though she started hers today.  That was not a big deal because I was busy and I won’t make this a contest.  (for myself)  I also heard from the Diplady that she had finished the inner part of the square and was doing the outer edge. 

My struggle didn’t come from these two knitters, it was my own frustration at myself.  When I got home tonight, I was finishing the second heart which made the inner part 2/3 done.  It became apparent to me that I had skipped a row on the first heart and that was why everything looked odd.  I decided to do the easy thing and rip back to that (after a little struggle with myself).  After attempting to fix it several times, I was thinking about the first row that I fudged a little bit on (and really, it was no big deal because there is a little bit of stitching over the top of that row), but I just wasn’t happy with it, so before I knew it, I had this:

Now, this has become an all too common sight for me.  At first I kind of laughed and then I started to struggle with whether I really am a knitter.  I know that I am capable of doing things, but I think my tendency is to not pay attention to what I am doing.  Once I start making mistakes, I start to lose confidence.

I really feel like I hit a crossroad at this point.  Am I going to continue or do I just face the fact that I am wasting my time.

Suddenly, something started rising up in me.  Am I going to let this defeat me, or am I going to press through and become the knitter I want to be?  This afghan is a great opportunity for learning many new techniques ~ but MUCH more than that, I had to ask myself if I was going to choose to be a quitter or was I going to reach  for an opportunity to improve. I have learned that in many ways, knitting parallels my life.  Will I choose to push through the hard things, the hurts, the struggles, the things I want to see myself do better, or will I just choose to accept defeat and think I am who I am and I can not change it. 

I choose to fight the fight. I will learn the discipline of working with care and I will not make it a legalistic venture by putting unnecessary expectation on myself.  I am human.  I love talking to people while I knit and sometimes this causes me to make mistakes…but I do know I am capable of tackling difficult projects and doing well at them.  All I need to do is do my best.

That said, here is my second attempt:

The lighting is never great at night, but at this point, I need a record of where I made it back to.  I am much happier with it because I found that by missing the row on the first one caused everything to be backwards and there was another mistake I had made that was a simple thing to correct once I actually *read* the pattern.  And this one just knit back up quickly.

I do have a few more things to show.

I have no idea how to get a good photo of a scarf.  The color showed up better in an earlier post but I just can’t get a better look at it.  I have worn it 2 days in a row and I who do not enjoy wearing scarves really like this one and don’t want to take it off.

I knit a very few rows on the Fly*dyed Ruby Redmond sock that I believe will be a Coriolis at this point.  It depends on how the yarn behaves.  I had it with me at Barnes and Noble last night and knit while I read. 

This is the whirlpool toe and I like what it is doing to the yarn.

I finally remembered to get a picture of our Saturday sky.

Rain.

Have a great weekend!  I’m going to go look at Ravelry before I get myself off to bed.

It continues to rain and big brother had some fun with photoshop today.  This happened to make one little imp very angry because he is NOT superman, he is spiderman.

It gave the rest of us a good laugh anyway.

It’s been a totally lazy day.  I have accomplished some knitting on the Lucky Lurker sock but I won’t bore you with a picture of that. 

We’ve been discussing some tentative wedding ideas and doing some searching…and I’ve been reading a little bit.  I have a lot of bookkeeping to do in awhile but I just couldn’t do it earlier today.

The Mariners went out of the season with a win, which was really nice and a little emotional.  Of course the fiance was flipping back and forth between the Mariners and Seahawks so I didn’t see any of the post game show, which is really ok because I was distracted anyway, would have gone upstairs to watch if I wanted.  The bride-to-be was gone co-leading cell group for middle-school girls.  It was just a lazy, pleasant day.

And now back to that sock.

I have to say, it has been so much fun to have my little shop.  My customers have become my friends and constantly bless me just by being able to get to know them.  The other night we had our knit night and look what one of my friends brought me!

She knit me a bead bracelet and I just love it!

It’s so beautiful, I would have worn  this to the wedding!  All day yesterday, I just kept looking at it and enjoying it so much.  Thanks so much, Amber!

This is my latest sock using Cat’s new method.

Next sock, I think I will do single strand and make it for normal wear.  It’s just nice to do something quick so I can work through the different parts and try to get the concept to stick in my head a little more each time.

Last night we went on our mini-date.  We were on a quest for shoes for the little imp.  Who knew it would be so hard!  I couldn’t find any locally so we went to Olympia.  The first store we went to had nothing for him, but hubby and I both ended up with new shoes…it was buy one get on half-off and since I have found I can’t wear any cheap shoes but my Crocs any more, it seemed like a good deal.  I actually could have bought 3 pairs, but I resisted.

The one good thing is that I wear my shoes for years and years.

Then we went to Barnes and Noble and I could not believe what I found!  I was restless and couldn’t find anything to look at so I was wandering around and came upon a table of audio books.  I have looked and looked for this book on audio but could never find it for less than $30.  I could barely contain my excitement when I found this for $15 after our membership discount and an extra coupon!

I read this last summer, a few chapters at a time at B&N.  I knew I wanted to buy it but I wanted to savor it by reading bits at a time.  When we left on vacation last year, I finally bought it (the same copy I had been reading there) and made myself make it last.  I don’t know why it affected me so deeply, but it really did.  I will listen to it while on vacation this year.  Hubby and I listened to it on the way home last night and he actually enjoyed what he heard but I bet I can’t get him to listen to 16 hrs but we’ll see.  We have listened to books before together in the car and loved it.  He just can’t do his channel surfing that way.

This weekend or early next week, we’re taking off for a little bit on vacation.  The little imp is pretty excited because look what’s sitting in front of our house waiting to take us away.

We have some great friends who lend us this almost every year for the past 6 years or so.  This time it will just be the 3 of us taking off and then the older kids will come when they can.  Some of them will have to set up a tent because our family is growing.  We love getting to do this.  The little imp is hilarious, he thinks he owns this.  When we go to our friends’ house, he goes straight into it and sits in *his* seat…the passenger side.  Good thing I hate sitting there.  I get to do whatever I want, watch a movie, read, knit…and they navigate. 

It’s always fun trying to make something to eat while we travel, usually sandwiches…and not lose it all over the floor.  Our funniest experience was when we were trying to get to Ka-knee-ta (sp?) and it was so scary winding down or up on the narrow road.  I was just about to scream “slow down!” (we were only going about 30 but it was so rattle-y and steep) but before I could get the words out, the refrigerator door flew open and we had pop cans and fruit rolling everywhere.  The kids and I were laughing so hard and trying to gather it all up that we didn’t have to endure the rest of the trip.  I loved the campground there but never want to do that again, it was awful.

We leave this weekend and have 2 weeks off altho we won’t be away all that time.  Woo hoo!

Today I finished that quilt block ~ got it attached to the fabric and got our name on it.  Feels good.

Last night, I started my first full-sized sock from Cat’s new book.  I did the Tibetan Sock and got the toe increases done before I went to bed.  Today, I didn’t get to start knitting until probably 2 pm….and I am wearing a finished sock right now!

The sock is done double-stranded on size 5 needles…but it is all so strange compared to knitting socks the traditional way.  I think it is nothing short of amazing!  My sock is a little loose and I will make adjustments for that, but it is so comfortable, I love it!  The sock is intended to be a house sock but my friend said hers fit easily in her crocs.  

Look at how different it is.

Cat is a genius!  My book is already looking used.  I have post-it notes and tablet paper scattered through it with all my equations but she says you will come to a point where you do not need to keep referring to it all.  It is making more sense to me now, but I’ve got a way to go.  I do remember how confusing making a tradional sock was, though, soI’m must going to enjoy learning.

The weekly mystery clue will be posted by the time I get up in the morning and then I’ll be back to that.  I’m so glad I got to feel like I accomplished something fun, though.  We only have 2 more clues, so next Friday will be the final and then we’ll see where we all end up.  It has been a fun experience for me. 

Hubby and I got away fairly early on Friday.  We got a 2 day date!  I think this is the first time either of us could remember getting away and actually having some quiet, down-time.  We got to Seattle in the early afternoon and checked into our room.  We went out and got a bite to eat and drove around downtown Seattle a little bit.  It was crazy….lots going on!  I took a few pictures, but none of them were really good enough to waste space here.  For you coffee lovers, though…here is the Starbucks executive offices.

I wanted to get a picture of the original Starbucks but the crowds were so crazy and we didn’t get on the right street because we were sick of waiting for lights to change.

We got back to our room early and spent an enjoyable time relaxing for awhile.  Then we had to drive over to Barnes and Noble to spend our usual Friday night.  :)  The difference was, we didn’t have to drive an hour home.  We of course had to visit Starbucks there…but it’s not a B&N Cafe as we are used to and we had to sit in there without anything to read.  (Although I have been to that one several times and never knew I wasn’t supposed to bring things in to Starbucks just to look at!  I’m glad I never set off any alarms!)

Hubby was pretty tired and went off to sleep at a normal time.  I could not quit thinking about my Mystery Stole so I got up and started working on it.  MS3 and I are  not on speaking terms at the moment.  What’s crazy is the this is not a difficult pattern, but why I spend more time going backwards than forwards is beyond me.  I decided to put it down for a few days.  I was up until 2 working on it!!!!

In the morning we went to breakfast and actually just sat around the room until 11!  We can’t ever think of a time we just did that rather than being out and about and barely seeing the room.  It was great! 

Then it all kind of changed.  lol.  I realized I did not bring any mindless knitting with me and we were going to have lots of time to kill at the stadium before the concert.  Soooooo….I looked up several yarn shops in the phone book and told hubby just one was fine for me to stop at.  He wanted to figure out the parking at the stadium….but he said we had more than enough time to do that.  Well, we ended up way off track on the first shop and had to call #1 son for driving directions.  Since we wasted so much time driving through residential streets trying to figure out what in the world we were doing….it was getting a bit tense.  I also asked for directions to another shop.  That seemed easier so we switched plans and headed to that one.  Wouldn’t you know it?  It was downtown close to where we needed to be…but no parking.  Hubby dropped me off.  I won’t say much about the shop … I was so excited to go there but I had a really hard time finding some sock yarn (do love what I ended up with) and needles..and they didn’t seem to  understand that when I said hubby is driving around the block and I need this wound quickly please that I needed to get out of there.  I was feeling sick over it because it took so long at every light and I knew if he had to go around too many times it was going to be stressful.  He finally appeared in the shop (BEFORE they started winding my yarn) and told me not to worry.  The shop was cute, though.

We then drove to Qwest Field.  We have gone to enough Mariner’s games that we knew where to look for free parking and it’s a good thing we decided to do this hours before the concert.  People were already heading to the stadium.  We didn’t have to walk far at all.  In fact where we parked by a business, they were renting their lot for $20 a space. 

It was hot, hot, hot.  We walked around outside looking at all the fun stuff.  They were giving out free hot dogs, water, and pop by the Brooks and Dunn truck.  We’d just eaten, but stood in line for water, it ran out right before us and we tried a Jones diet cola…not bad for free. 

We got in line as a crowd started forming since we’d been told they’d open the gates at 2:30.  Thankfully we’d bought water but it was so hot and I almost finished mine.  For some reason, hubby didn’t open his.  We stood there baking and by the time they opened the doors at 3…we were all pretty hot, but in good spirits.  I had to throw out the rest of my water because it was open, but he got to keep his.  Our tickets were on the 3rd level and hubby said we should just walk up rather than find an elevator.  I think he might have regretted that decision later!

It’s a long walk when you’re hot and tired.  He wanted to walk around a bit but for some reason, I got concerned about our seats.  I am horribly afraid of heights.  He said he thinks all reason left me.  lol  

I wanted to go find our seats and let me tell you…they pointed up the highest section and said follow the alphabet until the double letters started, then find our seats  (we were ii)  As he started climbing, I fought panic but stuck with him.  Gosh… 35 rows up and it was already high.  I’m not sure if it was good that there was really no one else there yet or not.  Here is our view:

Please note the fact that the roof is hanging right over us.  I managed to take this picture after I finished bawling from being so freaked out.   I do have to laugh.  Poor hubby had a permanent crease in his shirt from me grabbing it when I felt like I’d spill out of the seat.  It really IS better when there are people sitting in front of you.  He is so patient and talked me back to rational thinking.  I was trying to figure out how in the world I was going to get back down, though, I didn’t think he’d enjoy seeing me crawl or go down backwards.  LOL

I was more than grateful for sock yarn at that point.

Sorry it’s blurry but I was not done shaking yet.  I don’t know how I managed to get that much knit, but by then people were coming up and I felt more secure in my seat.

A little aside, I am sick of this kind of thing ruling my life.  I had to rationalize my thoughts and looked around at everyone else laughing at how high they were and actually run down the steps.  If I believe God is in control, then I need to act like it even when I don’t feel like it.  I hope that’s progress.

Hubby really wanted to go walk around and convinced me that to sit in that seat from 3 until 11:30 pm was not very feasible.  Down we went.  I can do it easily if someone is walking in front of me.  We enjoyed roaming around but there is something I totally regret.  There were seats outside the food area that we think now were not ticketed seats and we could have easily had one!  I was kind of ticked that our tickets were NOT the cheapest ones and I couldn’t see how any seat there could be any worse than what we had.  I later met a lady who spent even more than we did and she was on the other side in about the same place.

This plane flew in circles around Qwest Field for hours. Someday I will think to zoom in so you can actually see what I’m trying to get a picture of.  It said “KC 2nite  and the name of the radio station”

When we made the climb back up, I told hubby I wasn’t going to do that again.  It was too much in the heat.  I would rather stand than climb all those steps again.  We stayed up there for 1 1/2 groups and then he wanted to go get dinner.  We took all of our stuff and ate down there and then found a great place to stand.  It’s good it was great (although it was behind those seats that we could have had) because we stood there for over 3 1/2 hours!  My legs ached so bad all the way home and all day today. 

We went to see Kenny Chesney but enjoyed much of the rest of it.  What I forget about events like this is that many people get pretty rowdy and it can get a bit much to deal with when they start knocking in to you.  It was still fun. Hubby was a professional musician when we got married and he just loves all the lights and equipment and everything about the production.  All our friends laughed when they heard what we were going to…because now all hubby does is worship music but that part of him will always be there to see the big show so the kids gave him tickets to The Flip Flop Summer tour.  Here he is looking at all the equipment down below where he wishes he could have walked.

 
We loved when Brooks and Dunn did “Only in America”….they had several video screens behind them of differnt flags, and then at the end of the song, different members of the military came out and stood across the stage.  I’d have gotten a picture but they got a standing ovation and it was way too cool to think about taking pictures.  Hubby sang that song at church several years ago when the whole worship team wore cowboy hats and stood behind a scrim so we could only see the outlines and red, white and blue shirts. 

Anyway…Kenny Chesney really knows how to put on a show and appreciate his audience.  I love that.  Look how beautiful it was.  (my Saturday sky picture)

See that bright spot down on the floor?  Here’s a closeup.  He came up out of the stage and played for a little while. 

 It’s pretty awesome seeing a show like this.  Outside, warm…lots of energy.

At the end, he signed a guitar and gave it to a little girl in the audience. 

When it was all over, the crush of people leaving was incredible.  We walked down the ramp and hubby had someone step on the back of his sandal and loosen the strap.  If he’d tried to stop and fix it, there would have been a domino effect of people falling so we just kept moving.  I tried to take a picture on the last round before we hit the street…the camera was over my head and I just clicked…and missed the mass of people, but you get the idea.

We got home at 1:30.  Hubby had to be at church by 7:30 this morning and the middle kids were playing on the worship team this morning also so they had to be there early too.  This left the little imp and I home to get there by the time 2nd service started.  I got up at 8 and could not believe how bad my legs hurt.  When I decided we should start getting dressed and maybe make it to first service so we could have the rest of the day home…I couldn’t find the little guy.  He was asleep in our bed after getting up around 6!  He slept until 11:30 and I gave up and zoned out on the couch.  That’s a rare occurrence but I just didn’t have it in me to drag him out of bed, get him dressed (tons of verbal reminders) and figure out how to get myself ready too. 

The day was relaxing.  I worked on my new sock yarn a bit.  Can you guess what it is?

Pretty, eh?

Before  I show you…here is the boy doing his sprinkler imitation.  LOL  Big sis didn’t get the whole picture, but you see the fun he has.

Here’s hubby convincing me he should go to Stitch n Pitch on July 26 to see the Mariners…

He didn’t want me to put this on here … but then said I could.  He’d been sleeping and had put my knitting on his chest so he didn’t mess it up.  I asked him if he was knitting and he showed me he was.

Here’s the evidence that I did the work.

The daughter was taking pictures of me unbeknownst to me and I am not sure I really even combed my hair today so this is all you get to see.

And here is what I’m making.

If you’re still here after such a long post, thanks for sticking it out.   I’m finally making a Jaywalker sock…a few years behind everyone else.

ps.  My computer has been repaired and should be home Tuesday!!!!  No word on that blessed iPod.

I hope you had a good day.  We did.

I put all my woes out of my head and enjoyed the day with the love of my life.  :) 

We went to first service at our church today … our middle two were on the worship team so we stayed through second service worship.  What a joy.  We were asked to gather around the dads and pray for them.  Every single year, I cry and am completely incapable of praying for my hubby.  I had to ask the kids to do it.  Why?  I am so, so grateful that my children have what I never had.  They have a father who loves them is there for them.  I told him on the way home, when I started crying again, that it isn’t out of sadness that I cry but sincere gratitude for who he is.  Another fun thing is that our daughter’s boyfriend’s dad did the sermon today.  He did an awesome job on sharing the importance of being a daddy. 

On the way home, we stopped at the meat market and fruit stand and bought dinner…steak, baked potatoes, and fruit!  Yum!  Lovin’ those fiestaware dishes!

We surprised hubby big time this year.  We all went together and got him tickets to Kenny Chesney and Brooks & Dunn.  He was so shocked and soooo excited!  Too bad I have to go with him….haha!  Actually, our oldest daughter, the bride, really had her heart set on taking him by herself but the concert is the day she gets home from her honeymoon, she’ll be in the air during the concert.  She apologized for me having to go.  lol    I am really excited about it!

We have more than one imp:

After dinner, we drove an hour and a half to see the house the newlyweds will live in.  Once again, we went in 2 cars…no options there…and I wish I would think to take a picture of the little imp twisted around smiling at us.  I had to call Dad and ask him to make him turn around because the mom in me said this was totally not safe!

The house is pretty cool!  It’s an older house with lots of quaint touches.  The bride is not excited about the green carpet, though!  Anyway, there is a floor vent in one of the bedrooms and the groom said he’d go down and talk to the little imp through the vent. 

Waiting….

Here’s where it gets silly.  We waited, and waited.  No groom.  Finally I went downstairs and hollered to him, he was somewhere else in the house, so big brother and I went under the vent and talked to the boy.  He got so excited, he wanted to come down and do that himself.

Ok, then we started trying to find the groom.  When we called him again, he answers us from the basement!  We asked him why he was down there?  Trying to find the vent!  LOL  He had no clue that we were already done playing the game.

To be fair to him, he hadn’t looked down it, so he had no idea what was underneath and in an older house, it’s kind of funny how many directions you can go!

Anytime the imp sees a closet, he attempts to visit Narnia.

All he managed to get was a dirty face.

Tomorrow starts the crazy week.  The bride and I head out of town at 8 to get some ribbon … we have NO craft stores here and get to drive an hour to find one!  We have a few quick errands to do, then get to my sisters to do the table decorations. 

Somewhere in there, I hope to get a call in to get my laptop taken care of.  This is awful, I keep realizing what I have lost access to….like email addresses (help me!)  I can’t get in to my business email account until I call the provider because I can’t get the setup to work.  Gosh, what a pain!

Sock progress:

I am almost done with the heel flap.  I knit in the car but slept part of the way.  I was also getting multiple text messages that were greatly interfering with my sleep. 

I do hope you had a great day!

Well, today we finally made the trip to try on the tux for real.  It is on it’s way for alteration and to get the ivory shirt we had ordered.  Big brother went along and the little imp really loves to imitate.

He loves his new ’suit’

He worked hard at cooperating. 

Let’s see, what else is going on today.  I did lots of forward-backward-forward knitting on the sock.  I am ready to be doing something else, but I did start the heel flap tonight.

And the weather today?  I hope it changes by next weekend or we’re having an indoor wedding!

I came home from work and found this in the refrigerator.

It was just so colorful, I had to take a picture.

And now for the sad news.  Right now, I am on the new computer we got yesterday for my work.  That in itself is exciting but I had to find all my disks to get any photo editing software on here.  I also found the kids had not put any anti-virus on here so I did that, too.

But why am I on this one?  I left tonight for a short time to take the little imp to buy a Father’s Day card and when I came home, my laptop was DEAD!  Nothing I do will make it start.  It did this same thing when it was a few months old and they sent someone to fix it.  Now it is in the extended warrantee and I bet I get to send it to them now.  I did all kinds of bookkeeping today and I did not back up my work and to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I did.  Shame on me, I know.  I am so bummed out.  Do you realize how much stuff is locked inside your computer?  Not to mention I had to figure out how to get into my domain stuff since they give me a bizarre user name consisting of very random letters.  I can’t figure out how to get into my shop’s email so I’ll have to call them on that one.

And to add to it, I am really mad about my iPod.  They are in no rush to get my mailing label e-mailed to me so I can return the defective iPod they sent me.  I have been without it for over a week and whenever they decide to send me the label, I am looking at a week’s wait.  So much for the quick turnaround they told me about when I bought the extended warrantee on that one.  I use my iPod to fall asleep to, I have pretty big sleep problems and have found listening to books is the ticket for me.  I finally had to resort to the Ambien the doctor gave me months ago.  I do not like taking sleeping pills at all and was so happy with the solution I had found.

I am just a bit melancholy tonight, but I need to step back and count my blessings.  I know I have a lot to be thankful for and I need to choose to look at those things instead. 

At least I started knitting on the sock instead of playing with my laptop!  (although if the truth were to be known, I am pretty good at doing both at the same time!)   lol

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

The wedding date is coming fast (next weekend) and in one way it feels like things are under control and in another…yikes! 

In sock progress, I am halfway through the cuff and this time around, the pattern just ‘clicked’ and I don’t have to give it much thought any more.  I can’t really knit it without the chart in front of me, but it makes sense now.  I am not going to post a picture here because the progress isn’t enough to really waste the space.  I am enjoying it, though…but I’d really like to see this pattern in a solid color because I think it’s too pretty to be lost in the multi-colored yarn.  I am convinced, though, that I won’t knit Tofutsies in anything bigger than a 0.

Yesterday afternoon, I had the surprise opportunity to knit for awhile with a friend.  We didn’t have too much time, but I really enjoyed it.  That’s one nice thing about my ‘job’, I get to sit and knit with people.  Then today, 2 more friends came and spent the afternoon with me.  I am not sure I even knit one row even though I started to.  I think we were trying to solve the yarn problems of the world, not sure if we did or not.  All of us were so tired that I’m sure we made sense to each other.  lol  I like being able to just ‘be’ with people.

I don’t have much to share today but last night, I tried to snap a picture of the sunset through the car window.  It doesn’t really do the sunset justice.  I was knitting on the way home in the car (an hour ride) and I started noticing how beautiful the sunset was.  I told hubby that I see life so differently since I got my new camera.  Maybe some day I will learn to take better pictures.  This one doesn’t qualify but you can still tell how pretty it was.

And now, hours after I started this post, I am trying to wind down for the night but I just got off from a 3 hour phone conversation and then about an hour of talking to hubby.  Right now, I feel like my life is such a journey.  We are healing for a very difficult time in our lives and because of the wedding, I got a phone call from a dear friend needing to find a ride so she can attend.  In talking to her, I was able to see the tremendous healing that has happened in my life over the past 6 months.  God is good and He knows what we need.  The journey that I am seeing is so positive because I can actually measure growth in myself and see that a sense of value is returning and a peace is settling over my life once again.  I know I have a long way to go and so many people I know also are walking that road, but healing is coming and I love the idea of walking forward together.   Isn’t that what life is about, though?  Always walking along the road of life, ever seeking to be better than we were before?

So, in life, I also have to tink and sometimes frog…but I can still move forward, enjoying the journey and coming out with a finished product, persevering until I get it right.  Will the parallels between my knitting life and my life in general never cease?  I love that. 

Ok..2nd try.  My internet connection broke when I was trying to publish my post so here I go again!

Tonight was knit night and I finished my first Tofutsie Limited Edition sock!  They are short, but that’s what I like in a summer sock.  It was a fairly easy pattern, just enough to be interesting.  The chart was easy to follow, though.

I always enjoy visiting with friends and tonight was a smaller group.  I thought we got pretty philosophical.  My conclusion is that we are pretty complicated beings. 

When I got home, I was looking at some blogs and when I visited Mary’s blog, I got so intrigued with her strawberry trick.  I was wishing I’d have stopped at the strawberry stand when I drove by and thought about it.  Get this, about 10 minutes later, my daughter said, “Mom, did you know we have strawberries in the refrigerator?”  So, I found a straw and played with them myself!

How cute are these?

Mary ate hers with chocolate ice cream, but whoever was so kind to buy strawberries also bought chocolate dipping sauce!

I’m still loving my new dishes!

Other than that, I got my replacement iPod today and guess what?  I cannot get the computer to recognize it, it was on the charger all day and towards evening it went dead.  It had this sad little face on it and when I went to their website today, it said that is almost always an indication of a hardware problem.  I tried calling the help line and got all these options that did not apply.  Then the recording said, if none of these things apply, call this number.  I called that number and got almost the same options…and then it said, if none of these options apply, call this number…and it was the first number they gave me!  I emailed them today and have not heard back.  I am kind of not happy about this!

We had #2 daughter’s graduation party yesterday.  Gosh, I am so tired!  We had a good time, though.  We did nachos and the obligatory cake.  The turnout was great and I was ever so proud of her for taking time to talk to everyone there.

Her brother and his girlfriend made the board and it was sooo cool.  They really managed to capture some of the funny, unique things of her growing up years.

That’s him with the camera around his neck.  The groom-to-be is on the left side of the futon facing.

I totally forgot to take pictures when the biggest crowds were there, but I’m sure those pictures would be boring on here anyway.  The ones I do have, I’m sure I’d be in trouble with someone if I tried to put them on here because you know how it is on those candid shots…someone is always doing something funny.  I’m often that one.

One of my friends gave her this beautiful little tea set.

When everything was over, look what I found.

Her boyfriend…doing the dishes!  He’s a keeper, but I already knew that.

What was she doing?

I think she deserved it.  Her cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

And the other kids?

One of her gifts was a Dr. Seuss book, to remind her to keep life simple.  The friends who gave it to her are always so clever, she also got oreos and one of those tree fresheners for the car.  Why?  So when she smells it, she will remember that they are praying for her.  :)  Anyway, the little guy read all 62 pages to big sis.

I can’t leave without showing what he was up to Saturday night.

And the poor dog had to get into it, too…

Sock progress:

I was almost ready to close the toe on the sock today until I noticed I had done extra decreases on one side and was off 4 stitches after I started the next decrease.  I decided to do it right and tink back to the mistake and so far I have gone back at least 3 rows and the mistake is still there.  I have to be close because I remember counting previously and being on.  No big deal, I’ll finish it tomorrow when I’m not so tired.