Reactions: Part 2

Take one smelly dog, add warm day and a cool bath with tea tree oil shampoo:This activity was done to distract me from the inevitable return of the volleyball girl. But return she did and she collapsed in a heap in despair over her friend moving away. We spent an hour or so crying our hearts out. "I need her Mom; I can't do school with out her!" "She's the first real best friend I've ever had." "I know sweetie, I know." I must have said it five hundred times. Soon things calmed down.

And with a little of this .. . . . . . . . and a little of this . . .
. . . . and a new bed to snuggle into, things seemed a little bit better.

For now.

Reactions

Moment One:

I know it doesn't look much different but that's a full size bed replacing the twin bed and all new bed stuff. The bed has cabinets and cubby holes underneath to hide all the crap treasures associated with being 11. New curtains too- they might be a work in progress.

Add one preteen girl returning from a week of camp who instantly new something was up. I don't know how she knew, but she did. A dad strategically placed in the room with a camera was key to capturing the exact moment sheer joy was revealed.

"I'm never leaving." And so she hasn't.

Moment 2: Granddaughters presenting their Poppa with a home-made ice cream cake in honor of his 78th birthday at a party at our house last night.

Proudness is beautiful!

Moment 3: Stay tuned. Today Kathryn will get some news that her very best friend is moving away. This is is certain to rock her young world. I hope I have the strength to help her through this as I am also loosing abeautiful, trusted, dear, and wonderful friend.

Just Crazy

Big excitement yesterday! Yes, Jon came home and got right to work putting the bed together but my day was better. I had plans to meet up with Jeanne. You remember Jeanne don't you? You'll note the absence of a linky-link here because you'll no doubt recall that Jeanne has gone dark, as in blogless, a fact she rather shamelessly say she does not miss, not at all, not one bit (I'll pause for the collective gasps). Our plans were to lunch and knit and celebrate her new job which will give her a perk of being able to travel with reckless abandon - once she gets over her fear of flying. But in the meantime - doesn't she look happy? Say "Hi Jeanne!"

It's Crazy Days in Excelsior (otherwise known as "put all the stuff that hasn't sold in years on a table, under a tent, outside your store and see if the tourists coming in from the city will buy it now"). Jeanne arrived just as the gates of hell opened up and unleashed a wicked thunderstorm upon us; we waited for a break before heading into Excelsior for lunch at our favorite 318 Cafe.
Hmmmmmm. Something is amiss; this doesn't look so crazy. Where are the madding crowds and cars? The vast sea of humanity?
Or the vendor tables that used to be in this spot. Ah, the storm. Literally blew most of the tents and stuff away. Along with the power in many of the stores, including 318 Cafe so lunch was at Jake O'Connor's instead. I think we might have been the first ever knitters there. But knit we did until we could venture back out on to the street and survey the damage.
Oh thank goodness, the giant lemon survived - along with it's inhabitant.

I have the lemon's business card if you ever find yourself in need of a giant lemon for some kind of function.

Oh and look!! The power came back on at the yarn store too. Sale continues through Saturday!

Watch this Space

I've finally reached that place called lonely and I find I'm really looking forward to Jon's returning home this evening. He leaves for London on Saturday but by then Kathryn will be home so at least I'll have a buddy.

But while he's home, and before the camper returns, we're playing:

"Extreme Makeover: Pre-Teen Bedroom Edition"!

We've sent the occupant away to a swanky location for a week and in two nights we are going to transform this room (recently declared "baby-ish") into a pre-teen dream suite. The occupant knows nothing of this plan. "Nothing" as in she has been whining for months that she wants a bigger bed and if she promises to keep her room tidy could we please consider getting her one. It should be further noted the included in the "pre-teen dream suite" is one new bed with new bed linens, and one new night table. There will be NO new painting, NO new wall things, NO new fluffy things upon which we rest our butts. OK - maybe some new window treatments - but that's it. Further, this bed, the one she wants, looks a lot like this bed, so guess which one she's getting. In this version of Extreme Makeover, there is NO megaphone, NO really loud obnoxious guy with that weird facial hair just below his bottom lip (unless Jon has grown some in four days in which case he should just stay at the airport for that trip to London), and NO limo delivering the occupant back home to see her new dream suite. This sounds like a real labor of love doesn't it. Stay tuned!

And check back to see if Sammy ever gets out of the bathroom she managed to lock herself into yesterday. And again this morning. She loves playing with the door stop and manages to shut the door on herself a few times every day!

Ten Minute and Tour Spinning

Since I'm already participating in the 10-minute A Day Spinning Challenge, joining the Tour-de-Fleece wasn't much of a stretch. I've had plenty of time this summer so far to both knit and spin and I'm finding the balance of both to be quite enjoyable. Saturday I finished spinning, plying and washing and Merlot Sparkle super wash merino for 525 yards of YARN!Sunday afternoon I spent time at Open Spinning at the Fiber Studio. Lovely shop, lovelier people! While there I began to worry that I might run out of fiber to spin during the Tour. When I got home, I worried that I might run out of space to store the stuff I bought to overcome the above listed fear.Solution to Fear 2: re-purpose a storage unit tossed from Kathryn's room during a recent "I want to make my room look more like a teenager's room" event. Solution to Fear 1:


Buy stuff and put it in the drawers. Full details on the "stuff" in another post. Right now, I'm still just in awe of it.

But this, this I can show because I'm giddy in love with it. It's an Opalescence Fiber Cloud of hand-dyed mohair, wool, alpaca, silk and glitz and blended on a 100 yr. old carding machine! The colorway is Pretty In Pink. You grab a puff ball of the fluff and spin it - it's cheesy and sweet and I just love it madly. I'm more than half way through a 4 ounce bag of fluff in two nights of spinning. It's the first spinning project I've started where I actually have a knitting project in mind!How long is the Tour?

Did I Mention . . .

. . that Kathryn left on Sunday for a for one week adventure at camp? I opted out of the 3-hour drive up to the Northern Lakes area for the tearful good-bye. It was only when Jon was on his way back home that we both realized he would be driving home on July 6th - at the end of the 4th of July weekend, on quite possibly the most heavily traveled stretch of Minnesota highway, along with all the other Minnesotans who went "up north" to "the lake" or "the cabin". Took him about 4 1/2 hours to get home. Oops.
Did I further mention that upon his arrival last night, Jon packed a suitcase to go to San Jose for the week?

So here I'll be until Thursday night - just me and the animals. All by myself. People would be well advised to heed the large "DO NOT DISTURB" sign I plan to post on all my doors. I'm absolutely giddy about this time alone. As I draft this post, (2:00 PM on Monday afternoon) I'm still in my pajamas. I may not get out of them all week. OK, there are a few things I have to/ want to do in the outside world this week (Tuesday Knitting, piano lesson, lunch with Jeanne) but the rest of the time, I'm planning on being here. Being here and knitting and spinning and not thinking about what's for dinner! All day long, that's what I'm going to do - not think about what's for dinner. For instance tonight - don't know - don't care. Might be cereal; might be half an avocado; might be chips. Might be all three - or a roll of Oreo cookies.

I love freedom!

M

. . . is for MEMENTOS.

Somehow it became a tradition to bring back a shot glass whenever we traveled anyplace new. Wouldn't it be fun, we said, to have shot glasses from all the cool, new places we traveled either separately or together.

This soon devolved. I've never been to Seattle, although I hear they have a Space Needle there. All of a sudden shot glasses became the de-facto "Crap - I need to bring something back from this trip. Oh hey - I'm at the airport, here's a shot glass. Done!" I am WAY more guilty of this than the world traveller is. Then other people would bring us back shot glasses from their travels (Yeah - I REALLY want a memento of YOUR trip!!)

So now the shot glass collection is out of control, especially for two people who really don't drink all that much and if they were going to fix a mixed drink would never dream of being limited by the boundaries imposed upon them by a shot glass. Especially one the size of Mt. Rushmore, shown here next to it's full size cousin, Wall Drug.There are some in the collection which really speak to me, such as this one which says "Perhaps this is how he got his name" or "Really - Goofy advertising booze? What's next - The Olson Twins in a sex scandal?"And then there's this really clever one. Wow! No wonder no one lives there. "Come for the shot glass; stay for the fun."

Seriously, what were the requirements for this prize?

But my all time favorite - from Jon's time at Caterpillar, in the category of "Why Bother" . . .

Most of these have very special memories for me; we can trace career paths and vacation cycles through these tiny mementos. Some have been places I've never been and some have come from places Jon & Kathryn haven't been. Maybe we'll all meet up together someplace and make some new memories.

. . . is for MEMENTOS.

Flag of My Family

Being a sucker for all things patriotic, I managed to drag myself out of bed early enough this morning for the annual 4th of July flag raising ceremonies here at Casa WTT:

Oh, the drama in pajamas. Have a safe and Happy 4th of July! See you next week.

Today

• . . . will be much cooler than yesterday; however, I will, for the first time in married life, win the battle of the air conditioner. I have always set a goal to not turn it on until after the 4th of July. I hate to jinx myself, but I've looked at the forecast for the next five days and am CONFIDENT that we will not be required to turn on the beast until - Labor Day!


• . . . Kathryn has her first babysitting job. I hope the two girls aren't very loud or they are apt to wake her up as this is her current state as of 9:30 AM CDT. She is scheduled to be at dance in 2 hours and then at the "gig" at 12:30. It's very hard to be 11 years old I guess.

• . . . Since I want to be home and available during the babysitting time, I get to sit quietly on the porch working on

Hand-spun "Double Vine" (from Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, Barbara G. Walker) scarf. Oh, how come no one told me how wonderful knitting with your own, hand-spun yarn would feel. Seriously, I wept!

. . . or . . .

This which started out as a swatch and just kept going because it looked like it would be cute and oh.so.fast. and maybe make my boobs look like hers.

. . .or . .

And then my 10 minutes which usually works out to be about an hour or so - Man I love summer!

What's going on in your life today?

10 Minute Tuesday

I'm really loving Carole's 10-Minute a Day Spinning Challenge. I had a lot of catching up to do after being gone for 10 days but I had pre-spun before leaving and then managed to find a bunch of time over this past weekend too. This is one of the small projects I finally finished up. It's a lovely merino/silk blend that sat on a bobbin for a few weeks while I decided what to do, what to do.
Since it broke it many places as I plied it, that was obviously the right choice. It would never have held up as a single. It's soft and lovely and definitely not this orange-y. . .
While only about 210 yards, I'm thinking I should be able to eek out a nice little lace scarf for a new sister-in-law. Don't ya think?

L

. . . is for LOVE!

There have been seven weddings in our family (six kids, seven weddings - I had the mulligan!) Dennis and Helen's was by far, hands down, the best! Perhaps because I'm older and wiser, more likely because they are older and wiser - but this event was fabulous. Even the record breaking 115 degree heat of Calabassas, CA didn't wilt the smiles, flowers or spirits of anyone involved.

Weddings always bring out the lovely girls; these are seven of the loveliest - Dennis and Helen's combined niece set!Their dance cards were quite full most of the evening. In fact, the one in the blue dress had to be carried to the car and into bed! (As did her mother - not so much from dancin'!)

Much love poured out from the new parents-in-law who adore their new daughter-in-law and she they! Can you tell?

It was grand! I loved every minute of weekend. But who doesn't love a good wedding - especially one where your own true LOVE is the officiant and presides over the ceremony of your little brother and his true LOVE.

L is for LOVE.