Checking In

I made it to Seattle (just a tad bumpy flying over the Cascades) and am rested and ready for my week of nursing duty with my poor crippled sis. She has a big knee brace and lots of pain meds, plus doc's orders to stay put for at least a couple of weeks after her ACL surgery. Not an easy task for our Busy B.

Mostly I think i will be carrying plates and cups and fetching stuff. Which is probably all I'm capable of nursing-wise. Plus driving her on outings, as her right knee is the injured one, so no driving.

I'm glad I was available to help out, sisters need to stick together. Miss my little gang at home though!

It Doesn't Take Much to Make Me Happy

Which is why I was giddy with joy when Pooh brought home a new HP printer/scanner.  I've been fighting with my old printer for weeks.  It got some paper or gunk stuck in the rollers and it's been nothing but print fail after print fail.

And we actually got the wireless thing working so we can sit upstairs and print stuff off of our iPads, iPhones, etc.  Ain't technology grand?

We So Crafty!

Pia's birthday is coming up.  What do you get the gal who already HAS EVERYTHING!? (except very expensive lenses for her camera -- sorry, P, you're not getting those)

I came up with this sign for her classroom.  She's the advisor/teacher for the Freeman Highlander newspaper.  Which we think should be retitled "The Tattler".  Way better name!  So we took a trip over to Joann to get all the supplies for making her a Tattler Sign.

Which of course took an hour of browsing and about 8 different plans of how to create this wonder.  We finally settled on stick-on letters (note to self: next time, count how many letter T's there are in the packages) and a cute Scotty dog stamp.

Voila!  Perry White has nothing on Ms. L!

Here's a Cute V.D. Project

because I'm a spaz, and need very simple projects, I tried this Victorian Valentine Heart:

I conquered it after 2 attempts (when they say the slits have to be the same length and width, they are NOT kidding.  Measure, shmeasure)

Your average 4 year old should be able to whip one out in 2 minutes.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Whenever I see one of these 60s era Valentines, it takes me right back to Maywood Hills Elementary School and the crepe paper decorated boxes we always made for our class Valentines.  And going to Sidies or Merediths to buy the box of cards, punching them out (and you always had to cut out and glue the envelopes together, a real pain), and addressing them to your classmates.

I suspect that in those less kind days, we did not have to give cards to everyone in the class.  And left out the kids we didn't like.  I apologize 50 years later if I snubbed you.

When Good Projects Go Bad

Here at Fluther HQ, we know well the sting of a Good Project Gone Sour...however, the newer knitters in the group are not yet used to the Epic Fail that happens sometimes.

Tony was all pumped over the magnificent blanket he just finished (pictures soon!  This project requires better than my cell phone), and was calling for KOY (Knitter of the Year) to be bestowed upon him without further ado.

Then he ran afoul of the Bedrock Hat...A fail on every level.  Brim was to be worked flat -- fail, he knit it in the round.  New complicated stitch pattern -- took a few tries to get it perfected. Decrease for the crown -- fail, the instructions were wrong.  Attempt #2 on the decreases -- fail.  Tried it on -- fail, you see the results at left.

Onward and Upward, my friend.  Onward and Upward.

Poor Zaide!

So The B called me last night to report that she is scheduled for ACL surgery next week, due to a cross country skiing mishap. I couldn't get the gory details as I was at a Zags basketball game and it was noisy. So do tell, Zaids. Did you have to crawl back to the cabin or did Ryan pull you on a toboggan? How exactly did you wreck your knee?

Maybe it's time to scale back on the winter sports, what with last year's sledding disaster (jk, but start wearing a helmet at least)

I will be going over to help after the surgery. She's been warned of my 3 Day Rule for nursing care, but says to come anyway

Ps do NOT look at google images of ACL surgery

An Unhappy Ending...

to our British holiday...

Just got a whole bunch of emails from Paypal about tons of charges from Britain...which I didn't make.  Hundreds of dollars (lucky me, I didn't actually HAVE hunskies in my paypal account so the really big ones didn't get authorized).  But now I have the hassle of waiting for my replacement debit card to arrive, which always takes forever.  And a little bit of a bad feeling about the trip :-(

Done!

A week of frustration and our puzzle is done. Hadley, can you send us a hundred piecer? I think that's more our speed.

Knitting Boy

Wow!

Knitters are saucy!

This hat pattern is featured in "Hot Right Now" on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ola-3)

I might sell some cowl patterns if I'd thought to photograph it like this :-)