Sunday Musings

This morning, our service differed from the norm. When it was discovered that we would need a substitute priest this week there were none available. So it was decided to have the service of Morning Prayer. And as a lay reader, I found myself leading the service.

I have lead Morning Prayer before, usually with someone else assisting, and providing a homily. This time I lead the service alone, with a hymn sing for the sermon. Since my various stints in choirs, I always have been blessed by the music. For many years, I often played guitar during services.

Although our songs today were out of the our new hymnal, most of what we sang were the oldies. The one exception, shown below was to the tune of "Danny Boy".

I love this song. The verses are a combination of stating that there are things we may not know but take on faith. Those thoughts are contrasted with what we believe and know to be true. Powerful words.

With that song, as well as "What A Friend We Have in Jesus" and "In The Garden" and more, made for a moving faith filled message.

I think everyone was blessed.

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A New Knit?

I recently was bitten by a new knitting bug. Big surprise, right? But I can't postpone this one. It is absolutely seasonal.

It's the Scoreboard Knit Along(or KAL). I am having trouble inserting a link with this app. So let's see if this works:

http://scoreboardkal.com/

It is a KAL for making a cowl that is reflective of your favorite football teams season. The pattern isn't available until 4 days 17 hours and 54 minutes and 44 seconds as I type this. The general theme of the pattern is that one row is knit in your teams main color every time they score for every point they score. The alternate color is knit for every point the opposing team scores, in the order that the points are scored. Then I decided to go for the option for a third color, separating each game. I will also use that for the cast on and grafting the two ends together, marking the beginning and end of the of the season with extra rows in that color.

Although I am not a huge football fan (we try to avoid it in our house), I decided to make one following the Detroit Lions.

This is as close as I could get to Honolulu Blue and Silver. I am going with a deep charcoal grey to separate the games. And I have a friend who watches the Lions faithfully who is going to keep track of the score for me, while attempting to crochet one of her own. I just need to keep up each week with knitting the previous weeks game. On with the Lions 2015 Scoreboard Cowl!

But one question remains. If the Lions are Blue, and the opponents are silver, should I have gotten an extra skein of silver?

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Family Fun

This past week, as I mentioned on Facebook, my favorite aunt turned 93.  As a present, her daughter planned on taking her to visit her "baby" sister in a nursing home.  They invited another cousin and I to ride along, as well as notifying some of her children.
Here some of us were waiting in the hall to get in to see her. The feisty aunt is the one in blue.

We stopped for lunch on the way, and were surprised by the handsome young man on the right. I haven't seen this cousin in ages to talk to, other than at a funeral. He wanted to surprise us and go along to see our other aunt.  (As always, I try to avoid using proper names here in bloggerville.)   A great meal and visit with him.  I rode along with him the rest of the way, since we had four in our car and he was alone.  A great chance to catch up on family news.

The cousin on the left and I are rumored to share the title of favorite niece of the aforementioned feisty aunt.  It depends on who she is with at the
time as to who is the undisputed favorite.   For this road trip, we shared the title.

It sure was good to see my dad's baby sister.  I hadn't seen her since she became unable to attend what I called "dinner with the aunt," our once a month get together and gabfest, now more accurately referred to as dinner with cousins and aunt.  Anyone who wants to join us, reply to me for details.
One other cousin missed my camera, the daughter of this aunt, who also works there for another month or so, until she retires.
All in all, great family time and visit with cousins and aunts.

How Did That Happen?

Was it just yesterday that I posted about how busy I have been?
Now I am busier.  Well, somewhat anyway.  With busier days to come.
Yesterday afternoon I met with someone helping to plan the sesquicentennial of my hometown.  She is in charge of the weekend devoted to family,and she wants to include a cemetery walk.  Another friend of mine on the committee knew Sandy and I had helped put one together in Fremont several years ago.  (I was Calico Jane, a fictitious lumber camp cook.)  I thought I had a picture of me in costume, but lucky for you readers, I cannot find it.)
Sandy was unable to make the meeting, but I gave her some ideas of what we had done before.
It sounds like it will be a fun time.  And I may have gotten myself into a possible spinning demonstration on another weekend.
Next summer promises to be a busy one.

Busy, Busy

Well. I have been keeping myself occupied. Beans insist on being picked, but at least Hubby was picking too.

And it has been cooler finally, at least outside. It is tough to rationalize running the AC when it is 68 outside, even though inside the house the temperature hovers around 78, well above my comfort level. As a result it is difficult to spend much time working on the Gray Spiral Blankie. And then I feel almost guilty working on baby sweaters.

Still, work has been progressing there too. My road trip last week to the 9th annual "Help Christy Get Her Classroom Put Together Day" in Berrien Springs and St. Joe area gave me plenty of time for plain vanilla stockinette stitch. And it is my main project for away from home.

Later this week, for my Aunt Glenna's 93rd birthday, I am going with her and two cousins to visit another aunt, her baby sister, Joyce. Should be plenty of knitting time on the road then too.

And we can compare our different ways of working The Improved Allen Cousins' Method of Knitting.

Should be fun and educational.

 

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Finally!

It seemed like all the rain was forever passing us by.

There were some great clouds, like these from this past weekend.

But no rain. It kept going around us. After taking Younger Son to work tonight, I noticed these clouds to the east of us.

And these to the north.

It even looked like a hint of big billowy storm clouds to the west.

Passing us by again I thought.

Finally, an hour or two later, the TV dish went crazy. And we got rain! Enough for brief puddles. Maybe not enough to uncurl the corn leaves, but it is a start.

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Purple Knitting

While I have been continuing to work on the Gray Spiral Blankie, I have also been able to make a bit of progress on the Purple Swing Cardigan as well as on the Lavender Lace Cardigan,

I love the moment on top down sweaters when you separate the sleeve stitches from the body stitches. Suddenly it starts to look sweater-like. There are still a lot of stitches on the needle, but not nearly so many as there were. It is in a good place for my road trip on Thursday down by St. Joe. Straight stockinette for several inches. I think now this project will be sitting out week, waiting for the ride down to help my friend prepare her classroom for this year's crop of first graders.

The Lavender Lace Cardi is going to be my "go to" knitting for this week, supplemented by either my car sock project, now on magic loop, or the Raspberry Creme shawl. That hasn't see a loft of action with the baby knitting going on, but it is also easy and would be a good back up knitting for Knit Nite or road trip. The Lavender Lace requires a bit of concentration and is sometimes a bad choice for Knit Nite.

As the mother of the forthcoming grandniece said today, I hope the sonogram tech didn't misread the signs. Me too. I don't think a little boy would be able to pull off the purple and lace.

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Keeping Busy

Between the heat and life, I know I missed posting for a stretch, up until yesterday. I hadn't been knitting a lot, because the weather was cooled enough to turn off the air conditioning. But it was still too warm to stand a lap of wool. I am so ready for winter.

Progress is being made though, on both purple sweaters, as I mentioned yesterday. I need to count stitches right now on one to see how close I am to dividing off the sleeve stitches. Progress!

But the main reason for few posts was the fair. The good old dairy show was last Thursday.

I always get there in time for the last minute grooming, and of course the showing. So many families that I know and love had children out there leading their cattle.

Tiny ones making their first appearance in the show ring and old hands at showing.

And so serious.

Many with cute little Jersy cattle.

Others with big Holstein heifers.

They did great all through the dairy show.

I may have found time for a farmers muffin or two as well.

Yum.

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Quick and Easy

I needed a break from all the purple of this summer's knitting. The placemats are done, but the baby sweaters continue along. And the gray blue Spiral Blankie is not a big break from purple.

So I turned to something I had been thinking about knitting for awhile: a soap sack.

It was definitely quick. I finished the whole thing yesterday from cast on (twice!) to cast off. And that was after tinking back to fix a lace mistake in one sweater, and switching my car sock project to magic loop.

After poking around, I found this in my stash room and decided it was the perfect worsted weight for my soap sack.

I rifled through my patterns and found Sudsy Soap Sack on Ravelry. It called for size 10.5 needles but I really dislike knitting on large needles. I used size 7 needles, and cast a extra 4 stitches to compensate. Well, I first tried a extra 8 stitches. And after a couple inches, decided that was too big. So I ripped that all back and started with only 4 extra stitches. I also grabbed a bar of soap to measure it by.

It went much better the second time. Magic loop again. I decided I really do like that method.

I may make more. They would be nice gifts with a bar of fancy soap, but need to tweak the pattern more I think. It drives me crazy that the stockinette strip on either end spirals around the bag. I know, as someone said at Spin Guild today, that it is just going to hang in my shower. But that spiral is driving me crazy. I may also try a finer weight yarn.

The finished sack shown above has a bar of Dial, and two more soap slivers. It's is a bit long, but bigger bars of soap may need the length. I think I can live with it. If I don't look at the spiral.

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Summer Under the Stars

My favorite movie time of the year is August. Turner Classic Movies spends an entire month devoted to one star a day, 24 hours each. Yesterday was Gene Tierney all day. (The Razor's Edge, Laura, The Ghost and Mrs Muir.). Today is all Olivia De Havilland. (Robin Hood, Dodge City, Elizabeth and Essex.).
Upcoming stars include Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Groucho Marx, Monte Woolley, and 27 more.
For an old movie buff like myself, crazy good times. I'm almost giddy.
And luckily I am able to multitask, watching movies and knitting at the same time. August is a good month.

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Summer Goodies

The garden is starting to produce.

Yummy! Cherry tomatoes. Sun ripened and sun warmed. One of them even made it into the house. Um, that would've been the one Hubby picked.

We also found this.

It may have been a bit small, but I couldn't resist picking it.

And we will have fresh green beans for supper too!

Only thing I really like about summer. Fruits and veggies.

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