Questions, questions

I've been asked to do an interview for the newsletter of the shop where I teach. The idea is that potential students will be able to learn a little about the teacher of the class that they are considering taking and realize that we are real people and will be approachable. Anyway, I thought to myself, self, I don’t want to do that I like to be anonymous. I’m just a shy person. But then, it occurred to me that I could use these questions as blog fodder and maybe come up with some ideas for this blog that has been rather neglected lately.

So, lets start off with the first question. What’s your background? What should I tell you here? Let’s see, almost lifelong Twin Citian, grew up in a northern suburb of St. Paul. I do like living in Minnesota but the winters do get long. I’m very active in my church and have a deep Christian faith. I have a degree in Dietetics and am retired from a career in food service management – I was a lunch lady and proud of it. I’ve always been interested in things “domestic” as one of my school girl friends accused me of. That was an insult – I grew up when it wasn’t cool to be interested in those things – one needed a career. Hmmph. I had a career and I stayed home for 14 years when my kids were growing up. The lunch lady career dovetailed nicely with being home when my kids were off of school in the summer and all those other days off in the school year. Anyway, I love to do crafty, fibery, homemaking kinds of things and I’ve tried many of them. One could call me a jack of all things domestic and master of only a few – to paraphrase a cliché. I’m mostly self taught but have taken some classes over the years. I’ve taken china painting classes for about 6 years but I’m still a rookie at that – some things are fun just to do even if you’re not that good at them! My grandmother and aunts on both sides of the family were interested in knitting, sewing, crafty things but my Mom not so much, although she did sew a little. So my interest in fibery things could be considered genetic!

And because every blog post needs pictures – here are some grandbaby pictures.

First up - Abigail with her new little brother, her "baby".

Next up, Jordan is 6 weeks old and smiling! I got to play with him when Anita came over yesterday. Oh, the joy of having a grandchild nearby!

Our Family is Growing

We welcome another new addition to our family! Elliott Joshua was born yesterday and joins his big sister Abigail! Everyone is doing very well and this Grandma is very jealous of their other Grandma who is with them right now. I really can't believe that I now have 3 grandchildren. I'm too young for that!

Living Green and Frugal

I’ve been working toward living a more frugal life. Not including craft supplies and yarn! Wouldn’t want to give the Compadre any ideas! As a result – we’re living a more “green” life too. Some of the things I/we have been doing for a long time and some we’ve started more recently. We try not to waste food, we drive small cars, we wear our clothes until they wear out, we grow some of our food (sometimes successfully, sometimes not!). And now that I’m retired and we don’t have kids at home I have more time to do some things that I just couldn’t have done when the kids were all home and I was working. I’ve been washing our clothes with homemade laundry soap and for more than a year now we’ve been hanging them to dry – outside in the summer and inside on a wooden drying rack in the winter. The Compadre isn’t fully on board on this – he’s been known to dry the clothes in the dryer when he does the laundry and isn’t fully supervised. But I can’t complain – I’ve got a husband that does laundry!!

This Christmas I tried something new in the frugal department. I wrapped many of our gifts with fabric squares in the furoshiki method. Basically if you know how to do a square knot you can wrap gifts in fabric squares. There are several good websites that show how to do it. I made my fabric squares by using my serger and doing a rolled hem edge on all four sides. I found that the most useful sizes were 28 and 22 inches. I made one that was 37 inches for a bigger gift and a few that were 18 inches using fat quarters. The advantage of using 22 inch squares (if they fit the package) is that you can get two pieces from the width of standard fabric. Of course this method is more expensive in the short run but over time I expect that we’ll reuse the fabric many times and it will be free from now on. I told the giftees that they could give me the wrap so I could reuse it myself or they could reuse it themselves. That of course makes it part of the gift! I stocked up on Christmas fabric after in the after Christmas sales – 75% off!! So I’m all ready for next year. One hint about the sizes of fabric needed. If you’re making the squares as you’re wrapping the gifts – check to see what size you need before cutting it. It’s surprising that I didn’t need many large pieces. Oh, and here’s a tutorial for you if you don’t have a means to make rolled hems. A little more time consuming but it works too. I think that wrapping gifts in fabric is easier too – I never was much good with square corners and tape and all. By the way, we really noticed that the Christmas garbage was much less – I’m sure the garbage man was happy with our house!

Of course there are many more things that we could do and I’m sure I’ve got my blind spots about some ways we live life, but I’ve got some more ideas for things that I could do to live greener and more frugally. First up is composting kitchen scraps. Let’s see if I can get the Compadre on board!

I'll leave you with a cute picture of newborn baby Jordan in his car seat.

Grandma again!

It's been a long time since I posted and I joked to my daughter Anita that it took another grandchild to make me start posting again! Yes, it's true, Anita and Dave had their baby early this morning 2 1/2 weeks early. So meet Jordan!

And here is the proud papa!



This grandma got caught without some projects done! I never believed that he would come so early. So I'm off to do some knitting....

Our State Fair

I'll take a little break from catch up posts to tell you about our visit to the Minnesota State Fair. We think it's the best state fair. Certainly it ranks right up there and it sure is fun. This year I entered 3 things in the competitions. Two pieces of tatting - I won a first for the wreath Christmas ornament in the upper right hand corner (picture taken through glass so it's not very clear) and a second for the earrings in the lower right. I also was brave and entered the very competitive knitting category. I knew that there were so many entries in knitting that my chances of winning anything were slim to none and indeed I didn't place, but I'll be interested to see what the judge says about it. I entered the Vine Flower Dress that I made for Abigail. I didn't even take a picture of it at the fair. It took me a long time to spot it and it wasn't displayed so you could see it very well - understandable when you saw how much knitting there was to display. The yarn that I used was hard to splice without it being obvious and I'm sure they'll note that. Here is Abigail wearing it. It turned out so cute - of course the model helps too!!


The fair is a good place to people watch. I spotted this young man - think he's a little bitter?


And of course there is the food. My daughter suggested we try the deep fried "gourmet" pickle chips. I'm glad I shared them with the Compadre. I'm sure that my arteries will thank me! This must have been the year to go to the fair (staycations and all that) because it was more crowded than I've ever seen it. When we went into the food building to get the pickle chips it was so full that we couldn't move. More than a little claustrophic! I wonder what the fire marshall would have said. I was glad to get out of that building.

We go to the fair every year. I don't always enter my things in it but it's always more fun when I can look for my entries and see them displayed.

Catching Up

I've been wondering how to get all I have to catch up on in one post. Maybe I'll just have to catch the highlights! It's been such a busy summer and I've been neglecting my blog.

So, before my son's wedding, in early July we went on our 2 week vacation to Colorado. I had gotten a cortisone shot in each knee and I timed it perfectly so I was able to do a lot of hiking. I also made an attempt to hike up a mountain again. Did you catch that? I attempted it. No, I didn't succeed - and I decided that I like the valleys just fine! The mountains towering above us in the valley are beautiful and much easier to enjoy!! The guidebook said that the hike up to Mt. Sherman was "easy". Ha!!! For a billy goat maybe. We lost the trail at one point because of snow fields and ended up on an area of scree. The rocks were largish and unstable and I am afraid of heights. At one point I almost sat and cried - I was afraid to go forward and couldn't go back. Yikes. We met several people that were just picking their way along without hesitation but I just couldn't do it. I ended up crawling along until we found more stable footing. While we were doing that we observed other people hiking across the snowfield to avoid the rocky area and that's the way that we got down - still not easy but more doable. I hiked up to the pass or saddle area of the mountain to humor the Compadre. This is a picture at the pass - as high as I got. He claims that the best part of hiking in the mountains is seeing the other side. Oh, I didn't mention that there were gale force winds blowing up there too and it was cold. We weren't the only ones that didn't continue.

We did do many, many enjoyable hikes during our trip. I logged 34 miles of hiking. I had great intentions of continuing to walk when I got back but....


On our way to Colorado we visited Pete and Carol, some good friends who live in Texas. Yes, I know that Texas isn't really on the way to Colorado from Minnesota but they live in the panhandle and it wasn't really that much out of our way. We really enjoyed our visit. While we were there we were able to see the church that Carol is pastoring and meet some of the people from the town. The town was getting ready for their annual festival and they had a fund raiser that I had to participate in. It was called horse drop bingo - and it is played just like it sounds. The field is marked out in a bingo card and a horse is let into it and the first place he, er, drops his load so to speak, is the square that wins. I didn't win but it was fun just imagining the game. I wish that we could have seen it! Rural people have a different perspective than us city folks!

After we got back from vacation we had to hit the ground running. A wedding happening in two weeks and....we had decided to have almost all the windows and the front door in the house replaced . What were we thinking!!! That meant of course that the workers had to get to all the windows. And I have stuff!! So we moved and cleaned and shoved the piles into the areas that didn't need to be accessed and somehow it got done. Then of course after the job was done I needed to move it all back. I took the time to organize the "fiber room" and now I can actually use it! And since I had to move all my fiber related books out of the bookcase that they were jumbled into I organized them and even entered them into Ravelry. At least all those that Ravelry currently has in the system. I found a couple of duplicates that I gave to Amy. What I should do is print out a list of my books and carry it with me so that I don't by duplicates any more. The downstairs family room/sewing area is still a disaster area but I'll get to that the next time I have some panic deadline - maybe Christmas. I know myself. In the meantime I'm enjoying the newly clean areas and hoping that I can keep them that way.

Amy, Eric, and Abigail came for the wedding and we had to try to babyproof this house. It was next to impossible so we blocked off areas and did a lot of supervising of Abigail. This is getting really long so I'll catch up on their visit in my next post.

Excuses, Excuses

I've been taking some flak because I haven't posted much lately. I've got some good excuses! Here's the first one. My youngest son got married on August 1. Granted, as the mother of the groom I didn't have quite the responsibilities as when my daughters got married but nevertheless I'm using it as excuse number one.

Megan and David's ceremony was a beautiful outdoor one. It was a perfect day - even the weather cooperated! It was actually "cold" on August 1 in Minnesota. And no, for those of you that don't live in Minnesota, it's not always cold here - usual temps in August are hot and humid!

Abigail was a very cute flower girl!!

I wore the shawl that Amy made for me and Amy wore one that I have that Kelly made as a shop sample and that I bought. I don't know what pattern Kelly made but I do know that it took only 100 gm. skein of sock yarn.