tons of photos

Well it is time to update this blog and I have a lot to say. October 15th Gail and I headed to Cache Creek for the Desert mesa retreat, which is hosted by Sheila and Donna............. see the photo below.These are the hosts of the retreat.............. our fearless leaders. They have to be fearless to be photographed wearing those hats ................... right!!!

The following photos are pictures of some of the show and tell at the retreat. There are many talented women in the group as you can see.
















Toni modeling the shawl Sheila made for her. It is the Peacock pattern but I am having a senior moment and can't remember by whom the pattern was written.
Some of the spinners and some of the different wheels.
The retreat ended on Sunday after much laughter, shopping at the vendors (four of them) and great company plus I did a whole bunch of spinning. In fact I spun almost everything I planned to do.
The retreat centre is now run by 4 Monks from the Phillipines. They had only been in Canada 3 or 4 months and were suffering a bit of culture shock. The Senior Monk, Father (I don't remember his name which is okay as I can't spell it anyway) told Sheila that he was amazed that there were 45 widows interested in spinning. Sheila laughted and said some of the women were widows but most were still married. He wanted to know who was home taking care of their Husbands....................... see what I mean about CULTURE SHOCK.......................LOL
The food was interesting as they served rice at every meal including breakfast. I guess it is a staple in their country like bread is in ours. It was good food though, mind you Gail said they could feed her peanut butter sandwiches for every meal and she would be happy as long as she didn't have to make them.

Sunday it was all over and after lunch everyone went home. Many hugs before we all left.

Monday was Shelby's Birthday and we went to Appleby's for dinner, complaints of DD, Cory.

Cory's friend Alaina and her son joined us for dinner. He had ribs............... can you tell????



Alaina after the waitress dropped her dessert down her back.
Jill and Shelby with the baby in the car seat................. can't see her? She is there sleeping in her car seat honest.
Shelby hanging on to her tickets to see Justin Bieber. Her Mom tool her on Tuesday. The tickets were from the whole family.
Shelby in the new outfit Cory bought for her to were to the concert.


So I unpack from the spinning retreat and pack for the Quilting retreat. You wouldn't
believe the stuff you have to take for a quilting weekend. I had books, projects, sewing machine, rulers, mats, snacks, wine, and clothes. Gail suggested I just go in my PJ's and not take any clothes at all. Fortunately I didn't follow her suggestion because we were told no PJ's at breakfast because there was a pastors retreat. Like they haven't seen women in PJ's. In fact my PJ' cover more than my clothes. The Father at the spinning retreat told me I looked like a Fairy in my long white flannel night gown.

This is Jocelyn who is always cold.
Inge makes the most amazing paper pieced blocks
Carol pausing for a photo.
Brigit being Tinkerbelles Grandmother and blessing all of us.
Margaret's Birthday Cake
Tracey's beautiful Cat quilt that taxed her brain.
Lisa finally finished her quilt for her Husband except for the binding. Margaret on the left and Lisa on the right.
This is the back of the quilt.
Tracey showing of the top of the wedding quilt for her son and his wife. She had the guest write on the white pieces. The pink, green and burgundy in the background is the backing for a quilt I am doing. I am just joining random pieces and it isn't working as well as I would like ..................
TOO MUCH PINK.
I won a door prize............... $15 at Wineberries, so I got this pattern that I really liked. Their fabric is getting more expensive all the time. Fifteen dollars won't even buy a metre of fabric.
I got 2 wonderful wee sock swap parcels. This one was from Gayle in Madison WI
This one was from Darcy in California.
This week I am looking after the newest granddaughter every morning. Usually she looks like this but ......................................



Some times she looks like this....

Well I think that updates everything .

Done

I now have two giant slippers ready to felt tomorrow when the family is here. Now what to start??? I do have Christmas knitting to do but haven't decided what to make. .....................
needless to say this makes it very difficult to start anything. I do have a cotton sweater started and only have the short sleeves left to do so maybe I will do that. Oh shoot .............. this is made of recycled yarn and I spun it and plied it to get the grist I wanted. Guess why I haven't started the sleeves................... I haven't done the spinning.
I also need to spin the sisalwe gotat lastfall's DSesrt Mesa retreat...................... I readlly wish I could type so I didn't have to keep fixing everything I do........... maybeIwill do some spinning or maybe I will jsut make some hot Chocolate and go to bed. (I hope you can read this as I didn't fix any of the mistakes just as a demonstration of my poor typing skills).............. I don't seem to spell very well either.

My brain is on sabbatical

I am trying to do the second slipper from the pattern "Felt Clogs" by Fiber trends. I started the sole four times and the numbers did not come out right. I asked Doris and Gail if they had trouble when we were at Knit Night. Then I came home are read the pattern , including how to do the increases...........................DUH............ no wonder it wasn't working. I was doing kfb instead of picking up thread between sts............................. OKAY I am happily knitting away and every thing is fine. OR SO I THINK ........................... dun dun dun (scary music) ........................ I go to change colour and there are two strands together in the lighter blue ............................... OH SH@#$^T.
I read the pattern AGAIN and sure enough I am supposed to be using 2 strand of yarn ..... YES TWO................. NOT ONE BUT TWO!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH ........................ I need to do it AGAIN. Maybe the fifth time I cast on I will get it right. I want to have this done before Monday ........... next Monday that is Oct. 11, 2010

Want to see how big these are before felting????







I want to felt them when the family is here for Thanksgiving so my Son-in-law can see how big they are before I felt them and let him take them home.
Well time to try the slippers again. I have 2 DGD here one happy one and one who will never like me again. Their Mother and a friend are moving furniture in the living room and it is much easier with no dog and no kids under foot. Shelby wants to go home and is not happy with me
at all because I won't take her there.

aaaaaaawwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhh

It was a lovely weekend. Three of us gals from our dinner group went to Whistler for the weekend sort of. Margaret picked me up Saturday morning and we went to Sherri's house. From there we went to Sherri and Larry's condo in Whistler. Lisa could not join us as she was suffering the after-effects of oral surgery and a case of the flu. We did pull a photo of her up on the computer and then tried to take a picture of the four of us with the Iphone. This was fun as we couldn't see what we were aiming at. We finally got photos to e-mail to Lisa. The three best photos were the one above and the two below.

The following two photos were taken with my camera.

We drank wine, ate wonderful food, watched movies, visited, dyed my hair Burgundy.................. not that I wanted Burgundy hair but I had forgotten that colour comes out Burgundy on me........... I wanted RED hair like I used to have before this aging process. Anyway I am going to see if my daughter can fix it for me.
Back to the topic we also had a pedicure ; Sherri's toenails, Margaret's toe nails, My toe nails.
We wandered around the farmers market and got a few things, then lunch and home in time for Sunday dinner. All in all a wonderful restful weekend.

Below is a photo of the elephant I made for Shelby months ago. I borrowed it back to take the photos.

My socks in Opal yarn; Hidden Lace Socks by James G.Davis
I goofed on these as I made them in medium instead of small because when I initially tried them on the cuff was too tight. I should have done the foot in the small size. Am I going to frog them and redo the foot ................... are they that much too big???????? NO NO NO I DON'T WANT TO ........................... but I might have to DARN DARN DARN

Bright spots

I think I love the Mailman. He brought me a card from my youngest sister, a book I had ordered and a parcel from Melissa. She and I were partners in the wee sock swap this month.
Just look at the treasures I received...........................






I also had another treasure arrive today for a while.................

The sky is falling

Well it sort of is falling as it raining outside and dripping on our bed. The Light shade is full of water. Not only am I sleeping with Bill and Charlie but now there is a large pot in the mix. It is 4:45 on Saturday night ( or more correctly Sunday morning) when this happens. I try to get some more sleep but after waking at 5:00, 5:15, 5:30and 5:45 I give up and get up. Do some dishes, vacumm the living room, clear off some of the dinning room table so Inge has some room to sew................. ...... meanwhile it is pouring rain outside............... yes the sky is falling. Then I go into the ROOM to get something ..................... can't remember what but does it really matter now............. THE SKY IS FALLING IN THERE TOO.....................#%&%E&%&T%E$^$%*&
The wicker suitcase full of photos is under the drip plus the box below it full of framed pictures. Bill helps me rescue everything. We figure the electric fireplace is okay so I put a bucket on it and an other one under another spot and start to rescue the wet items. Bill phoned Inge and asked her not to come. Now comes the problem of trying to find enough flat spots to lay out towels and dry photos.Those of you who know us realize how difficult this is.............. we don't have empty flat spots. So now there are towels on the counters, the dish washer, the stove, the table, the floor and the bench by the door. Photos spread out every where, fortunately Bill says the negatives should be okay. That is good because some of them were my parents and I don't have the photos.
Scanning these negative into the computer to get the pictures is one of the many projects on my long list of things to do..................... There isn't really a list as that would be too daunting and use way too much paper .
DD Jill comes over with a young friend who turns out to have roofing experience.................is there a young man these days who hasn't done roofing????? Any way he goes up in the attic and finds THREE leaks. Two leaks are due to missing shingles but ONE is a hole compliments of the local squirrel population. Justin tarps off the areas that are leaking and now we have to get a hold of the land lord to give him the bad news.
All can say about this crisis is it doesn't involve any family member and the emergency service or Doctors......................... mind you if any thing else happens they maybe getting two Drs. to commit me............. shit never mind the DRS.....................I will do it myself if things don't settle down.