I Have A Crochet Hook And I'm Not Afraid To Use It!

Yup, the truth is out, I am a turning into one of those "fiber fanatics" I picked up the crochet hook after  10 year hiatus and after getting on some yarn webbie sites I have found a fun bunch of gals to "loop" with once a week. 
I mostly make scarves, and have been exploring new yarns, like this one which is almost all soy based. Imagine, the same stuff tofu is made out of! But I wouldn't go chewing on it, it's not that tasty, not that I would know ;o) .  

 I have started my first sweater it is the chevron lace cardigan from milobo: http://milobo.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/chevron-lace-cardigan.pdf

it is working pretty quickly, I am working it with washable wool. 

More about this stuff later.. gotsta go to sleep...

-gobie 

Entish thinking...

What is that? I think it's an Ent or someone swallowed up by one!  

While walking in a nearby park,  I saw at first the shape of one eye, then the smile, and it looked like it was winking at me! 

I spied this happy face peeking out from the roots of a tree as I was walking through a nearby park while taking m&j for thier first bike ride of the season. I happened to take my camera and found some excellent trees to snap pics of.  

Can you still see the face in the last picture I took as I stepped away from the tree? It is at the base of the tree.

   

 

 

My father worked as a tree surgeon, and could tell you the american name, latin name and whether you could eat any part of a plant or tree while we were walking outdoors. I like the way trees can look different even though they are the same species.  

This tree bark reminds me of

 yarn tassels on the end of a scarf or a cool head of dreadlocks.

At spring there are so many pleasant sights to see! I am so happy that I can start planting little seeds to hopefully go outside in the warmer weather. The parsley has come up, but is much too small to munch on, although it might get stuck between your teeth and leave you with that embarrassing green sprouting teeth look!

One thing that was surprising was the bagel tree, found on our school campus when we went for a walk this week. The birds seemed to love it, although when the summer gets hotter I'm not certain

 how the bagels are going to do, maybe they will fall off, sprout,  and that's how we get mini bagels.

Happy Spring! 

Music Moment

Were you ever in a public place, a restaurant, mall, or store and suddenly everything  glazes around you for a moment....you go someplace else for a brief second as the background song makes you 

1.Take notice - perk up you ears mentally

2.You must identify the song at least title. For some of us we MUST name artist and if at all    possible year too (this could be in your head or outloud - depending on who you are with)

3. Go back to what you are doing as if nothing had happened.

The whole sequence may take a split second or a couple of seconds but there you are staring off into space for a moment as your brain tries to pull out that saved music file from the music library in your mind. I thought it was only me but I was sitting in a diner the other week with the kids and the dh and I actually saw that look on his face. He had been in the middle of a sentence about I don't remember what but he stopped, looked up towards the ceiling and then said "Rock the boat"  which I answered "Hues Coorporation" and then he finished his sentence. We laughed that it tends to be a contest with us but that time he got that eye-looking away face so I called it a music "moment". I have been known to do this many times. But now it has a name.

what's this about a new year?

Resolutions!!

There are all different kinds of goals people set for themselves around this time of year. Being a teacher, I tend to set goals in Sept when school gets back into session.  This January with the arrival of my new day-timers set I thought I would look more closely at some goals.

Yarny goals

-finish the socks I started  crocheting they were fun until I got to the gusset now I'm so afraid of making a mistake I'm stuck. 

-Make a few "lapgans" to get through the pile of super saver yarn that 

we picked out as a family so everyone could have a blanket to curl up with while 

watching soccer outside or on the couch inside.

-Play with more expensive yarn.

Schooly goals

-never leave data for the next day.

-never leave for home with my desk cluttered (last year's goal and I only broke it 5x in the past year)

-Always have those tons of forms filled out weeks before they need to be! HA HA!

Personal Goals

-Get up early enough to do a bible devotion in the am.

-look at the daily planner and STICK WITH IT!

Yeeehaaa! that and a cup of coffee will get me some pep!

Ramblings off the topic of December Holidays

the Holidays are upon us.....looming ever closer. And what do i have to say about it? Run away! Run away! I mean don't get me wrong I would have been handing those Maccabees dudes rocks and I always known that Christmas celebrates the birth of the Messiah. I mean I don't know exactly what day Jesus was born on that night so many years ago but I do know he was born to a human mom and step-dad. I like Easter a bit better because we know that the Last supper described in the New Testament was a Pesach Seder (Passover Seder) so it has to coincide with the dates of the Hebrew calendar. Funny how the powers that be determine otherwise sometimes. (a-dohy). Well I'm stating to fell a bit rushed but it's just schoolwork and the kids driving me batty. I think I need to spend a bit more time listening to music as I work so I have something other than the news to concentrate on. After losing our house I don't want to hear how millionaires are crying. Sell your cars weinies ;o). I think of student's I taught in the inner city, kids who didn't have furnature to sit on in thier apt. and consider myself lucky to feed and cloth my kiddos. 

I think I'll post more often.

new place, new post

It's not in me right now to go into the list of why we moved. shall I play the innocent as I'd love to do, as one of my many friends would have me to do? Should I have fought harder against my dh, called people, taken days off of work, checked over everything I was told instead of believing blindly that i wasn't being lied to? Snooped around my own house, my dh's desk, ripped open mail, shown up at his job? I don't know. I just know we lost our house (not really lost-I know right where it is, the address is still the same) and we were three days away from living in a shelter. Yes peoples it happens, even to soccer moms who drive (although it's 12 years old) a van.We gave up all of our animals, my little dog had to be put to sleep because he was elderly and having strokes, falling down the stairs, walking into things, probably aggravated by the stress of us running around packing up. 

I didn't know what dire straights we were in until we had two weeks left in the house, then it was just a constant state of panic, looking for an apt, packing, moving stuff into storage unit but trying to keep some semblance of normalcy for the two boys. I know I was a little wild - eyed. My gal's Sunday School group really helped put things into perspective. My sister showed up  the last weekend driving 10 hours to to help pack during the last weekend along with friends from church who had a pick up truck and together the three of us man-woman handled furniture over to the storage place. My sister then took the boys back with her because we weren't sure of where we would be sleeping for the first 4 nights locked out of the house until the shelter opened up. I found an apartment right after that but it didn't matter because we were flat broke.  My MIL (God bless her) came through with a depo and rent money only because the dh told her what was up, he was too embarrassed to tell her everything before and she was was sick right when the poopie hit the fan. She had a big long talk with the two of us, telling us "no more secrets" Already he brought up stuff at that meeting he hadn't told me..aaaahhh, same old, same old.

Well, I met my sister 1/2 way over to pick up the boys and I will have to see how they cope. One week they have a house (a broken down, drafty, falling down one), 5 animals, have to wear uniforms (public school), and all the stuff that school entails and after staying with their aunt and cousins for two weeks they have to share a room in an apt (a very nice apt, i think- I'm thrilled!!) no animals (1 cat 1 dog went to friends for "fostering", 2 cats went to the cat animal shelter),  new school (but no uniforms).  the younger kiddo keeps talking about getting a new pet, but there are NO animals allowed here, as a matter of fact I kept looking for SOMEPLACE that would allow any animals and it was near impossible.

I had to get this out of my system and now I did.  Finished.  

Soccer seasons past

Watching my two sons play soccer this past weekend and going to a local high school soccer game brought me back to the first season my older son and played while my dh coached the sport. The caliber of the team was something out of  the  "Bad News Bears" if you are familiar with the movie.  No, the coach didn't drink, and no, there was no swearing on the field, but there were definitely moments of cringing and turning away as we parents watched our kids flounder on the field. 

First of all My dh was coach by default because the year before the regular coach tended to be late or not show, so the dh would have the kids run around the field, and do some basic stuff.

The following year he decided to coach a team. The other coaches in the town picked thier players which really wasn't in the spirit of a  recreation league but his team took on all kids. As you can guess the first practice was quite a sight. I was hanging with the parents a couple of whom said they had signed up their child so that he could get some exercise because they were always in front of the tv or game. As our kids were huffing and puffing around the field for their first lap we were starting to yell out encouraging words "Go ____ Go!, Run! Just DO IT!" Then one of the parents made a comment that she thought her kid would run faster if she put his Nintendo on a stick in front of him, that had us laughing, another mom was thinking about tying Kentucky Fried Chicken to a piece of string on the ground and pulling it. We were in tears. I didn't comment on what would have made my kid go faster - the latest installment of the Harry Potter book he was completely immersed in them at that time.

Well, the season went on and the kids learned skills, they never won a game, much as we parents tried right up until that last game! I'll never forget the score was 0-8 and our team had the ball. A bunch of us parents were running down the field pointing to the goal. "Over Here! Over Here! Kick the Ball OVER HERE!!" Sounding like lunatic cheerleaders, soccer moms and dads gone w-h-a-k-o, trying to stop another game from being a washout but .. but.. tweeeeet! The referee blew the whistle and the game was over. One more game we picked out every thing that our kids did right and pointed it out on the was home, and this time instead of wait 'till next week it was wait 'till next year.

Yeah for school! Yes I did say that!!

School has started, for me and the m&J boys. Yes, some normalcy WILL return to this house if i have to force it ovr it's head with a shovel. Surprised there was very few school items to purchase. Now it's just the energy factor - do I have the inner energy after a day doing a job where I am on my feet, teaching, keeping peppy, physically lifting and troubleshooting to come home and now rev up my 13 year old who is disorganized and ritually against doing homework? Plus cook, and all that other house cleaning paraphenalia? I guess that's why God invented the tea leaf and coffee bean. And don't forget music....yes music. But that is for another blog because my relationship to music is too deep to just touch on here.

Yarn Won and Lost... 8.10.08

A not so stretched tale of yarn and boys....
This tale starts out like many others, happy and looking up but aaah, there is evil ahead, and let you be forewarned, it ends up becoming a twisted knotted bed of lies and intrigue.
There once was a happy crocheting mommy who was creating an afghan for the family couch during her two son's soccer games. The younger son seeing the blanket being made asked (as was his usual - being the younger, more demanding) when are you going to make ME a blanket???? So after a time they went to the large craft store where after 45 minutes the son could not make up his mind on a color ("whatever color YOU are happy with mom sigh..."). A search through mom's Harmony stitch dictionary and he becomes inspired for his mom to make him a blue tunisian stitched blanket with white pinwheels throughout so he then could have a dragon stitched in red over that. Back to the Local Yarn Store for supplies and home to have them wound on the wool winder. Everybody happy? Good the end for those of you who like happy endings.
The following Saturday the two happy sons wake up before their parents and have cereal, watch some t.v. and play with the family pets. That's the story they are sticking with. What their mom found was numerous balls of yarn thrown around like basketballs, now some unwound, tangled, other yarns mixed in and two boys pointing the finger at each other saying "he did it!" So that is the whole frayed tale. I may use the yarn for water bottle carriers, I really want to make one. hmmmmm.