Recent knitting projects ...

I finished my 3-way wrap a week or so ago. It's blocked and ready for buttons. I'm having trouble finding what I want. I've been to both local fabric stores and yarn shops with no luck. My next stop will be the Fabric Hut on Little Creek Road - it's been recommended. Hopefully I'll get there one day this week and find some that will really pop. (Update - went there and they didn't have anything either. UGH!) I'm working on Cari's 3-way wrap and will be looking for the perfect buttons for that as well. Hopefully, it will be finished and ready to give her next week when we go up for Parent's Weekend.

Here's mine - without big honkin' funky buttons ... still looking. :(
Cari's wrap ... finished!! :)

I've recently finished a couple of multi directional scarves. Love how both of them turned out! (Only took a photo of one ...)


I still have an afghan in progress for a Christmas gift. Will get cracking on that as soon as this wrap is completed. I haven't decided what's next after that.

That's all for now!

What fun!!

We FINALLY got our play time Saturday night!! Missy and I that is. It's been way too long - sometime in May - since we've played. Of course our "date" starts out with shopping. We always are short on some supplies for whatever we're doing - plus I always hoard some 40% off coupons that week too! Our list of choices is entirely too long to be sane. We discussed all these options:

• Scrapping
• Making cards
• Knitting and/or Crocheting
• Making Candles
• Making Soap
• Sewing (some fun projects in mind)
• Beading - bookmarks this time
• Xmas Gifts (can't tell you about them)

Scrapping and beading won out this time. We both bought some much needed paper packs, some new stamps, new ribbon and a few beads. So much fun!! We worked up an appetite with all of our shopping (Beach Scrapbooks, TJ Max & Michael's) our mouths were watering in anticipation of the delicious chicken nachos at Havana's. =:)

After a couple of brews and nachos, it was eventually time to head back and get to work. Opening and playing with all of our new loot (I think I used everything I bought except one stamp set!) was so much fun. Of course just being together was the best part. We lasted until about 1:30am and decided to call it a night. These are the beaded ribbon bookmarks I made:



Missy packed up about 10am in the morning and we headed to Panera for a breakfast sandwich and a wee bit more shopping. We've been doing this for many years now and we sure can tell when it's been too long. When life gets too busy and we don't get our time together we literally go into detox.

Oh I forgot! One of the things I found was my broom for Halloween!! It even has a purple band on it that matches my costume! :D Our Bunco group's next game is Oct 31 and we're all dressing up as witches. Yes, I will definitely have my camera ready that night!

Okay - off to do some domestic chores ...

Neptune Wine Festival ...

What a beautiful day we had for the wine festival!! It got a bit hot but the breeze off the beach made it bearable. Regina and I wasted no time making a bee line to Horton's tent to get another taste of that fabulous XOCO (chocolate wine). It was just as good as we had remembered from July. Yummm. Rick and Regina arrived about the same time we did ...

Mike, Paddy and Mr. Bill showed up a bit later on their bikes ...

Just sayin' ...

Slowly we made our way around to some of the booths. Bob really liked the Chateau Morrisette but I never did make it up to the booth for tasting - it was always too crowded. Surprisingly we found quite a few wines we really liked. James River Cellars Vineyards was one of our favorites - we pretty much liked all of their wines. During one of our breaks (the rest of the gang were off somewhere) Regina and I had our photo taken with King Neptune himself!

We all had a really nice time and are looking forward to going back next year, although we'll come a bit better prepared - we'll take our picnic basket full of goodies. :) I took this last shot from the parking garage on the way to the car.

... until next time ...

Baby Love ...

Went to see the smallest (although she sure is growing fast!) love of my life yesterday. We met at our old standby, iHop for brunch. I'm glad I only have one grand baby right now ... because I can truthfully and unabashedly say she it the most beautiful and sweetest baby in my world. It's really hard to accept how fast she's growing. It had only been a little over two weeks since I had seen her and I swear she grew a couple of inches! She's even more verbal than before and I'm so looking forward to hearing her squeal with delight!!

And here I am counting the days until I get to love on her again ...

The Mortal Instuments series

I just finished The Mortal Instruments series (City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass) by Cassandra Clare this afternoon. This is a basically another teenage fantasy love story with warlocks, shadowhunters (demon hunters), vampires, werewolves and of course, demons. Not usually in my normal range of fun, fictional reading material ... but I made it through all three books and they kept my attention. I wouldn't call them "must reads" but they are certainly good stories. After going to the website I discovered there will be another book in the series, due to come out in 2011. Here we go again. At least this one didn't leave me hanging over a cliff by my fingernails like Dream Fever did.

Haven't decided what's next yet ...

Morgan is growing SO FAST!!!

What fun Mom (Nana) and I had visiting with Heidi and Morgan last week! She is getting so big! At her checkup the week before she was up to 11 lbs and had grown 3-1/2 inches!!! She is smiling so sweet and has found her voice, talking and cooing up a storm. I can remember when my girls were little and how difficult it was to get anything accomplished because I wanted to nap when they were napping and play with them when they were awake! Here are some new snapshots from last week.






Now that Cari's back in school, she really missing her Morgan time. I guess I'll just have to pick up her slack until she can get back. :)

July/August FO's ...

This is the infamous multi fiber wrap Regina and I took a class to learn how to make. I love how it turned out. I'm now looking forward to making one from my stash using some funky fibers. :) I should get lots of opportunities to wear it. FRONT:

BACK:

CLOSEUP:

My FIRST pair of socks!! :) I've been wanting to learn how to do socks for quite a while. It just seemed that every time I started a pair something more important came up and I would end up aborting them. I have two sock books, so one day decided to get them out and learn how to do them on my own. I chose regular old Red Heart worsted weight acrylic so I could use larger needles and be able to learn the construction and finish them quickly. And I made them one at a time. I now have my first pair of two at a time on the needles but haven't gotten back to them in a few weeks. Since these are worsted weight they turned out more as slipper socks instead of socks you can actually wear with shoes, but that's ok. I learned the basic construction! I'm so tickled! LOL


This is the green scarf I finished for Cari. It's very soft and the perfect weight. I'm very happy with the results but I will have to say the pattern got pretty boring after a while.


This is the latest FO - just last night. It still needs to be washed and blocked - it needs some serious stretching. I would've made it longer but ran out of yarn - it needed at least one more rectangle. Oh well, hopefully the blocking will give me enough length. Oh and BTW the pattern is in the "Luxury Yarn One Skein Wonders" book. Be sure to check the errata page for any pattern in this book. There was a couple for this one as well.



Still OTN (on the needles) is a 3-wrap for ME!; a black gray multi directional scarf and a pair of socks.

Have a great day!
QB

DreamFever ... UGH!!!

OK so after finally finding the thing at Target on Tuesday, it was really frustrating to not have time to read it! Somehow I did manage to grab very small windows throughout the day and night. Same thing on Wednesday - Cari and I shopped all day for last minute loot she needed for her dorm. Still, I managed to grab a bit of time that evening and before bed to get a few more pages read. Thursday greeted us with more shopping and killing time since we had to put her car in the shop for an alignment before taking it to JMU. At least we got home earlier though, around 2:30pm. I think I had the book finished by 6pm!

Let me tell you I was one frustrated reader!! Obviously the book was just as awesome as the other three (if not more so) for me to have devoured it in a span of three incredibly hectic days. But, and that's a BIG but ... it left me hanging from the cliff by fingernails ... AGAIN! AND after reading the author's note in the back I discovered we still have to wait for the fifth and final book in the series! OMG! This sucks. If I had only known, I would've collected the books and waited until the fifth one was released to read them all. I HATE waiting! LOL I know, I know. I need to have a little patience ... well I don't have a choice do I? Still don't have to like it.

If you'd like to read a bit about this book (or any of the "Fever" books) check out Karen Marie Moning's website.

A pouting QB signing off, for now ...

PS - on a happy note, I'm going to see my gorgeous grand baby tomorrow! :D

Books, books and more books ...

I just finished "Knitting Under the Influence" by Claire LaZebnik. I'm not really sure where the book came from or who loaned it to me, but I discovered it while digging through one of my stashes. I'd never read anything by the author before and have not enjoyed several of the last off the wall authors I'd picked up lately. Anyway, on a whim I decided to pick this up and see how far I could get with it. I was delighted and surprised to find myself looking forward to having the time to get back to the story. Even though the author incorporated the girls' knitting group into the story, it was really the story about three girlfriends sticking together through thick and thin while learning various life lessons.

Another recent book I was really excited about picking up was "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. Boy was I disappointed. Apparently my standards are just way different than the majority of the entire reading population. I managed to make it through 162 pages. At that point I decided I simply couldn't take any more. UGH! What didn't I like about it? I would be easier and quicker to say what I did like about it - no wait, there wouldn't be anything to write. I know quite a few people who have read it and liked it. That's why I say it must be me - it can't be everyone else! Sometimes when I read a book I can't get into, I know it's my mood or frame of mind and not because the book isn't good. This book, I can honestly say, just wasn't for me. For me, it was about 70% fluff and maybe 30% meat. I'm a meat girl, not a fluff girl. I don't need to know every tiny detail about each particular situation - especially when the situation isn't pertinent to the story!

Since it is a time travel book, I did expect the story to go back and forth between past and current situations - and it was a LOT, sometimes every couple of pages. But that combined with the constant going back and forth between Henry's point of view and Claire's point of view and all the bloody details that had nothing to contribute to the story ... ??? AAAAHHHH I had had all I could take by page 162 and I closed the book. I hate to give up on books once I've started them, but this one was a complete waste of time in my opinion.

Before I picked up "The Time Traveler's Wife" I tried to read "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming" by Joshilyn Jackson. Again I am in the minority of readers (on amazon.com anyway) reviews on this book. This one, too, failed to capture and keep my attention because of too many details that did absolutely nothing to contribute to the main story. I made it to about page 150 in this book before giving up. So much for trying new authors. From now on I will stick to my tried and true authors who never fail to keep me interested and turning pages.

On the other hand, I did find a new author I like. After discovering I had the first and third books in the "Fever" series by Karen Marie Moning, I went on a mission to get the second one and excitedly started the first one, "Dark Fever," on Friday, Aug 7. By Tuesday, yes four days later, I had finished the third one and was dying to get my hands on the fourth one, "Dream Fever" to be released tomorrow! Each book leaves you wanting more and is like the ending of a chapter, not a book. I'm glad I just recently discovered this series and didn't have to wait long in between each of the three I just read. So I'll be off tomorrow to pick up the new one and fly through my chores just to have time to read a bit.

Life has been a bit crazy this summer and will be even crazier this week. We're doing last minute shopping and getting everything together to move Cari back into her dorm on Saturday. It's going to be bittersweet leaving her again. We've had a lot of time together this summer. I'm going to miss her. She's off tonight seeing her beautiful niece and sister one more time before leaving. I know it's going to be hard for her to let Morgan go tomorrow night before heading home again.

Until next time,
QB

WIPs ... a couple of scarves

Cari picked out this beautiful Misti Alpaca green sock yarn for a scarf last week. It's a very simple (boring actually) pattern but works up beautiful with this variegated yarn. It's worked on size 6 needles - she's expecting me to have it finished before she leaves for college next month - we'll see:

And below is one I've started for me (hopefully) with some beautiful Crystal Palace Mini Mochi self striping yarn. I've been wanting to do this Multi Directional Scarf pattern for a while now and this yarn told me that's what it wanted to be. :)

I have my Berroco Bonsai on order for the multi fiber off white summer wrap I want to do. I swear by the time I get the yarn and start working on the wrap I'll have to wait until next summer to use it! UGH!

That's all for now ... until later,
QB