Our version of Down on the Farm, plus knitting and other needlework

Lauren is so good to make sure I get my physical exercise. It's the only way I'm going to continue to be able to walk. Twice a week, he walks with me up the hill on the dirt road around the county dump and back - about 45 minutes; and he tries to find manual labor for me to do over at our church, Mt. Olive. In the last few weeks, he's given me the courage to learn to drive the tractor and to use the riding lawn mower. But I don't just sit and drive these things around all the time. Today, for example, I dug up a pile of dirt and shoveled it into the wagon behind the tractor, and then I drove to the back of the church lot, shoveled the dirt out of the wagon, and filled up a low place. Lauren trimmed vines and branches, and I loaded those into the wagon, too, and then took them back to the dumpster and tossed them in. We were over there for about 1-1/2 hours - a nice workout.

Hooray for Lauren! After 42 years together, plus our dating time before that, after all the ups and downs, happy times and sad times, struggles and smooth sailing, we've come to a good place. We are thankful that we have both lived long enough to get to this part of our marriage and lives together. Not all our friends were as fortunate. I am thankful that he takes care to do physical workouts with me, ones that aren't boring!, several times a week.

Baby cap and sweater for Lydia project
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

Although I've made some headway on my big quilting projects, I'm in another interlude where I'm finishing up my Lydia project knitting (I had two sweaters in progress), and I had a big urge to get those crayon tests incorporated into bags. I have about 11 bags now almost finished, and six more to get to the same stage - and I hope to finish them all by this weekend, and then I'll take photos.

I posted pictures of both sweaters on flickr, but the one I linked to, above, is my favorite. This is Bernat's Satin yarn, and it's so soft and nice. This is the third one I made with a slip stitch pattern and the fourth sweater I've made using Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop bottom up formula. Probably the only reason I made this sweater is because I made that little cap out of this yarn when I was with Donna and I was playing with things you can do with a slip stitch, and I liked it so much that I knew it needed something to go with it.

My next baby sweater will be a hoodie. I found a basic top down (the hood first) pattern, and the only seam, I think, that's required is sewing two edges together to make the top of the hood. I like working on circulars, and I like having a garment that doesn't have side, shoulder, and sleeve seams. The pattern is free from Knitting Pure and Simple at http://www.knittingpureandsimple.com/babycardi.html. The pattern is at the bottom of the page (requires scrolling down) and is in pdf form. I'll make it plain, the way it is, before I begin to experiment with it. One of the big advantages of this pattern, in addition to the fact that it meets my "no seams" criteria, is that it uses ties instead of buttons. It has no gender! That's a definite advantage when you're knitting for those you don't know and will never meet!



Hugs I
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

I've had some success working off my UFOs (unfinished objects) and so I'm stretching my luck. I picked up a doll, much like the one in the picture above, that I started during my first retirement - maybe sometime in 2001 or 2002, and I'm going to finish it. The one I'm working on has maroon hair, and I just about have all the hair in place. I have a little blue smocked dress UFO that I'll need to finish, too. I'm hoping that effort will get me back into smocking. I really enjoyed that when I was doing it. I made smocked dresses for several of my friends little girls, from new born to age 4, and I even made one for Donna.

Bread's baking, and it's just about time to take it from the oven. Ymmm. It smells good! Tonight, I'm hoping to have some success with Steve's pizza recipie - dough ripened in the refrigerator over night and pesto for the sauce. We'll see. When he and I made it together in Pagosa, it was one of the best pizzas I've ever tasted!

Thursday, May 8, 08 - Aberfeldy, Scotland

It's day 20 of our UK travels.

Psalm 16 has been our psalm for this trip. It seems to sum up everything this trip means to us - celebrating our love of seeing new places, our anniversary, our birthdays. Here it is from the NIV:

Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I said to the Lord, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."

As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips.

Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Wednesday, May 7, 08 - Day 19

Happy 42nd Anniversary to us. It's hard to believe that we've traveled this far together - both in years and in miles. It's been quite a journey.

We will be celebrating our birthdays in a few days, too, and this trip is quite a present. Last year, we were in Russia; this year, in Scotland and England.

Forty-two years ago, we only dreamed of days like this; and we were realistic enough to know that all dreams don't come true. We had only a few stated goals as we entered our marriage, and one of those goals was to travel the world a little bit.

Early on, when we were in aerospace making more money than our parents could understand, our friends were buying nice properties. We bought a small house and used the excess to buy a red Ford van. We built some plywood benches into the van that we could make into a bed, and away we went.

Our initial trips were composed of trips to see our families in West Virginia and Minnesota, and then we branched out to take side trips. We eventually started meeting my parents in places other than West Virginia and then taking off from there to places none of us had been. On and on it went, and we have since been in all but a few states, the Baja peninsula, and many parts of Canada, using our own wheels to get there.

What good does travel do? We're not sure that it has any grand purpose, but it's satisfied our desire to see what's on the other side of the mountain, plain, the river or the ocean; it's given us a greater understanding and appreciation of the cultures around us; it's provided challenges that have made us grow, both as married partners and as individual human beings. There's really no lasting value to travel in a grand sense, but the lasting value to us, with our short human lifespan, is immeasurable.

After 42 years, we have learned that marriage is more than that initial attraction that brings a couple together. It truly is a journey with as many rough spots as beautiful ones. We have been together 2/3 of our lives, and we have learned that each of us is the person with whom we would most want to argue and to love. Thinking about it boggles the mind. One wonders how this can happen - 42 years with the same person. Life is a mystery, and allowing it to be a mystery is perhaps one of the best things we can do.

We traveled a circle route today from Aberfeldy, south to Crieff on A826 and A822, west to Lochearnhead on A85, north to Killin, still on A85, and back east again to Aberfeldy on A827. We found the stones. They are on farm property, but we had limited access and got some pictures. I posted them on Flickr. Open the UK 08 collection and then the Aberfeldy set.


Crieff is a really nice town, and it seemed to be one of the largest towns we've visited (not counting those much larger ones we drove through or around, just out of necessity). We thought Pitlochry would be the largest (we visited there on Tuesday, coming back from Loch Ness), but our impression was that Crieff topped it.

Killen was about dead. A lot of the shops were open only a few hours in the morning, and there were very few people there. We went in one restaurant to see if we could get ice cream, but the had run out. Kenmore is a nice small town, with the beautiful lake side (Loch Tay) park where we ate our lunch on Sunday.

We will just hang around the resort tomorrow and relax, and then we'll head south on Friday. Beautiful country, this is!!! What a place to spend our anniversary.


As an afterthought, hat number 4 is about 2/3 done. It's burgandy and white.

Whatta mess I create!!!

This seems to be my style of working - have it all around me somewhere and grab it as I need it.

I clean up my messes from time to time, depending on whether I think I'm about to start a new project or continue a current one, but this is the way my sewing room (also known as the back porch or porch room) usually looks. There's no getting around it, and I have to admit that I tend to live in clutter.

Multiply the view in the picture by the thought that I also have at least one place where I knit or do hand work, and I have another place, where I am right now, where I spend time blogging, writing e-mails, or looking up things on the Internet, and I have a music place (the same place we play foos ball many mornings, formerly known as our living room and library), and ... just fill in the blanks. I am all over the house. My surroundings are chaotic, and I tend to thrive in my chaos. Unfortunately, it makes the house unfriendly for others, especially for my significant other, Lauren.

Occasionally I vow to clean up my "stuff," and I on even rarer occasions I succeed - for at least a day or two. But it's not long before it begins to appear again - a little on a table, where it spills to the floor and soon begins to creep into other rooms - and I'm back where I started.

Lauren knows me well. It's not that I have to have a pass to enter his space, the bedroom we've reserved for his hang out, but I think there's a silent timer running each time I visit.

Without even realizing what I'm doing, those times when I feel especially chummy, close, loving, cuddly, warm, and fuzzy, I'll plop myself on his Lazy Boy sofa so I can be in the same room with him. (He's often on his computer or he's watching a show he TIVO'd.) That part is ok, but then I'll bring in my knitting, and then maybe a book I'm reading, and once, I thought he would faint when I carried my laptop into his room. It's not long before I start seeing worry lines around his eyes and the air begins to feel a little stressed. Shame on me. Without realizing it, I've started moving in. Not nice of me!

The one room that I try really hard to keep sacred is our bedroom. Although I can sleep with stacks of magazines, samples of cloth, papers I've printed from the Internet, and whatever else I collect around me, I know that too much junk in a bedroom prevents a good night's sleep. Even so, I do have a little cabinet in our room that holds my many needlework magazines. I don't always put them away, but I sincerely try to at least keep only a small (and neat) stack on top of the cabinet, if any at all.

I think it's time again that I go through a "stuff" cleansing, though, throughout the whole house. I need to collect the bits and pieces of myself and put them away, out of sight. Going through that exercise even helps me because it gives me a fresh start. This first week of February seems to be a good time to do that.

Yeh, I think it's time I got it all together again - at least temporarily.

But then, I want to make four more quilt tops for the Martha Circle project before I do ... hmmmm ... I just finished my 4 for March this morning. The pieced blocks are all from scraps. I have four more to do from scrappy patches, and then I think I'll go for another traditional block - except this time I'll cut the pieces the right size!!!

I bet if I work fast, I can do both things - all four of the tops and pick up the pieces of myself! Yeh, I can do that!

The Rules of Ping Pong

(Disclaimer: These rules do not apply if you play ping pong as a game-competitive event. We play the game most weekday mornings, competing point-for-point, with an objective of exercising our bodies and having a ton of fun.)

- General Rule: Most standard rules of ping-pong apply, including the rule that (most of the time) the person who reaches 21 points first is declared the winner.

- Double-Back Rule: If one player achieves 10 points above his or her opponent, then the player with the greater number of points forfeits those 10 points. This rule applies only if the opponent with the fewer points has less than 10 points. This rule prevents the game from ending prematurely and thereby circumventing the goal of exercising the body. There can be only one Double-Back per game.

- Backtrack Rule: When both players have in excess of 10 points and one player reaches 21 points, the player with the fewer points may call for a Backtrack. In that case the player with 21 points must subtract 5 points from his or her score, and then the game continues until one of the players then reaches 21 points from the new starting point. There can be multiple Backtracks per game. This increases the self-esteem of the player with the fewer points.

- Redo: When one player reaches 21 points and it appears the game is won, the player with the fewer points may call for as many Redos as desired, giving the player with the lower score more opportunities to increase his or her point count. In this case, the player who first reached 21 points still claims the game. This extends the game and increases the enjoyment for both players.

- Lousy Serves: No player will lose or gain a point when his or her opponent makes a lousy serve. A lousy serve scores zero points.

- I Meant To: Players may declare a missed point as an I Meant To event and receive sympathy and understanding (but no point) from his or her opponent.

(BTW: That player with the fewer points? Well, that would be me!)

Lauren's present to me, quilts, and cappuccino (latte?)

I was just sitting at the sewing machine, sewing together the strips I cut out this morning and minding my own business, and in walks Lauren with his little thumbnail drive telling me he has some pictures for me. Well, we've had so many pictures over the last couple weeks that I can't imagine what he has, but curiosity gets the better of me and I find myself plugging the thumbnail in an open USB slot.


Look at this! This is from our front yard! Every day when I go out there, I say either to myself (when I'm alone) or to Lauren (when he's with me), I need to get a picture of that. I love the leaves! They remind me so much of my childhood.

I grew up in an apartment building on Indiana Avenue, in Charleston, but not far away was Elkview where my grandparents lived. I spent a lot of time with them; and in the fall, we would always gather up the leaves in their apple orchard and they allowed me to jump in them and make a big mess. Sometimes, Grandpa would load a bunch in the wheel barrow and then put me in on top of them, and he'd push me around the yard. I'm sure leaves and these warm memories go hand in hand in my thoughts.



Interestingly enough, our leaves are from an apple tree, too. Our apple tree isn't nearly as big as the one at Grandpa and Mammy's house, but it is a real apple tree and it produces fruit. Lauren gathers the fruit during its harvest season, and he makes apple crisp for us - and it's even better than his mother's! Like all recipes Lauren adopts from others, he works on them, making improvements until the recipe is his and his only! Yummm! When he has extra, he gives them away. Sometimes he leaves a bag on the front wall near the mail box for whoever wants to take them.

Needless to say, I love Lauren's present to me this morning. He did some weeding, at my request, in the back yard today and then snuck around front to capture these images for me.

We have flowers along our little front wall, too, which Lauren planted. It's amazing to me that we have daffodils right now, but here they are!


I planted some paper-white bulbs in a pot a month or so ago, just for fun, and they're producing the most delightful flowers now.

When a flower blooms, it's like a gift! I am always delighted! Our pinks along the west fence in our back yard are blooming, too. Living in more southern climates has its bonuses, for sure!

I remember (again) when I was young and we lived in a house on the hill in the Montrose section of South Charleston, I used to take walks in the evening, and when it was snowing, I loved the feel of the snow on my face and the way it sparkled in the street lights. And then in the spring, the first buds always made me laugh. For a long time, I missed those changing of the seasons; but in my older years, I have really come to enjoy the benefits of having a garden year around!


After yesterday's fiasco of wasting time trying to create an album of our Israel photos on my computer so I could burn a slide show to disc, I decided I would get up this morning and do something constructive. I'm starting the first of four military quilts whose theme will be strips, just to see how many different ways I can use a limited number of fabrics stripped together. I'm going to sew the strips and then top-stitch them because I worry that these quilts will be tied instead of quilted (lots of sewing on them to hold them together). I think it will go fast. I'm glad to be doing something constructive today! I'll take a little break (as though blogging weren't a break) in a little while and go to the grocery store for some pantry items and then the library and get bag full of needlework books of whatever kind they have on their shelves today.

About the cappuccino, I think I had a success this morning because Lauren liked it. Here's my recipe so I don't forget it and I can make it more than once. (You gotta hate it when you create something someone likes and you can't do it twice because you didn't write it down!)

For two cups:
- About 1 heaping teaspoon of espresso in the espresso maker (this is about half what the espresso book calls for)
- Enough water to make three cups of espresso (one cup is expended for the steam for the milk)
-About 1/3 cup of milk in the metal steamer pitcher
In each of two cups, put:
- About a tablespoon of no fat, no sugar hot chocolate mix (I use Swiss Miss, I think)
- A sprinkle of cinnamon (probably about 1/8 teaspoon)
- About a tablespoon (plus or minus) of honey
Start the espresso (I turn it off and turn the espresso maker to steam when the carafe is about 1/3 full), steam the milk, finish the espresso, pour half the espresso in each cup, and then finish by pouring and dolloping the steamed milk on top. Lightly stir.

I love that European white coffee, and this isn't quite it. I need to play around with some different coffees to figure out how to get that flavor I love. AND, I think I can make Mavash's steamed milk with my espresso machine by not using any coffee when I create the steam. Now talk about Yummm!!!! YUMMM!

I'll post some pictures of my success when I make it next time. This is the first time, ever, that I've figured out how to froth that milk so it looks really nice. I'm hoping I can do it again! I think it was because I put the steaming spout in really close to the top when I started the steaming process.

Back to sewing!!!