Pecans

We got a call from friends at church yesterday asking if the kids wanted to come pick up pecans. The storm we had this week knocked most of the pecans from the trees.



Within a half an hour, Gregory and Gabrielle picked up a full 5 gallon bucket of them!



Now I have to get them all shelled. But I have a new strategy this year so we will see how it goes.

While I sat inside by the warm wood burning stove in Mabel's house (which I will admit to coveting), I shelled pecans and watched Michael. Miss Mabel let me bring the pecans we shelled together home with me.



That was a huge blessing. I stayed inside with Michael because he woke up with the start of the croup Gabrielle had a couple days ago.



Gabrielle seemed to be miraculously healed overnight from her croup. She went from barely able to draw breath to completely fine. We had prayed for her to be healed, yet it is amazing how tough it can be to accept it when the healing takes place. How frail is my faith.

While not as sick as Gabrielle was, Michael feels pretty lousy. He had a temperature of 104º last night and ended up crawling in bed with me shortly after midnight. It is time to pray for him too I think.



Michael wanted me to take his picture yesterday. Here he is just getting sick. He has my eyes. They appear green when he is sick though they are normally a blue-green. Gregory has the same eyes too. Our eye color changes depending upon what we wear or how we feel. Weird.

Otherwise, I've been getting in some knitting here and there, but not much. Gregory has kept me busy with HIS latest weaving.



We finally got his floor loom set up and ready for weaving. (Gregory had been weaving exclusively on a rigid heddle loom before.) Gregory started with a sampler and fell in love with the floor loom. I know he wound a warp for a scarf yesterday. He is starting to make me look bad with his weaving accomplishments. I've been planning a scarf for awhile, but haven't managed to get to the warping board yet.

December Marches Onward

We've survived the first third of December and sort of survived Gregory's chocolate birthday cake.



In fact, we finished the cake yesterday. However, in the wee hours of this morning, Gabrielle woke me up telling me she was sick and couldn't breathe. The family always gets sick around this time of year after the kids start eating sugary stuff on Thanksgiving and it continues through Christmas until the end of January when Kurt and I have birthdays. I haven't faced the scales yet and hope not to have to do so for awhile. But I did finish 3 of the size large skirts I started.



They ended up being a bit too big and I like to think it means I am getting smaller. I took an inch off of one of them and wore it to church last Sunday. I would like to see the day when they are all way too big to wear.

Yesterday I managed to plow and disc up all of the weeds in the back yard gardens before it started raining. I'd like to start planting again in a couple weeks, but everything is very muddy right now. It seems things always end up very muddy this time of year. You would think all of the 4 foot high weed debris I plowed into the ground would improve drainage.

I finished another pair of socks.



These are a better size than the last ones and are to be a gift for one of my husband's friends. I decided I am probably not going to be able to knit Michael a sweater for Christmas this year since I haven't started it yet so I will be starting a hat for him soon. Red is his favorite color and I have a cone of red yarn in my stash. Considering how late I am in getting started, I suppose I won't be doing much Christmas knitting this year. I think the MS4 being so much later than other mystery stole KALs threw me off schedule this year. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it.

A Birthday and Lace

My little guy turned 12 today and can look at me straight in the eye because our eyes are at the same height.



His grandparents all sent cool gifts. He got a really neat musical instrument and some books from one and a compass and headlight from the other. He loves these gifts. He told me he would be wearing his new headlight to lock up the chickens at night. He never likes going outside across the yard in the dark. Of course with his light, he may see eyes in the woods and like it less.



We gave Gregory the Rip Stick he wanted since trying a friend's during the church camping trip.



Gregory didn't think he would get one of these after Kurt and I pointed out we had no concrete on the property nor anywhere close. But the boys play with them at church in the parking lot and we figured he would enjoy his present on Sundays.



Since we don't have concrete, Gregory practiced his balancing in the front room.



He got pretty good, pretty fast. We also got him safety gear, including an adult size medium helmet.



Unfortunately we are a big headed family and Michael was the only one who fit into the helmet.



Gregory will have to learn to ride without falling on his head until we can find a helmet large enough for his head.

In the meantime, I finished blocking my second MS4 stole.



This one will be a gift.



I made it from Zephry lace weight in the suede colorway. I love this color and the beads are so pretty against it.



In fact, I like this color so much I may have to find a new lace project I can do for myself with it. That is if I can complete some of the other projects I have on the needles.

By Necessity

It is a week past Thanksgiving, all the left-overs are gone and I bravely faced the scales the night before last. Normally I would have continued to ignore the silly thing until after the holidays, but I had a bit of a reality check Tuesday evening. When I tried to put on an outfit to go out with my husband, it was too small. This same outfit fit only two weeks ago. So I got on the scales to ascertain the damage.

I have blood sugar issues. With diabetes on both sides of the family, gestational diabetes diagnosed during my last pregnancy and other signs of a present problem, I really do know better than to eat sweets. But Kurt suggested cinnamon rolls for breakfast Thanksgiving morning and he asks for so little. So I made them. Homemade cinnamon rolls. In addition to homemade pies. And ice cream. Once it was in the house, I had no ability to resist. I can usually resist store bought stuff, but I am helpless in the presence of homemade treats.

All tap dancing aside, my little confrontation with my scales revealed a 15 pound weight gain in less than a week. Now I know most people simply cannot gain this much weight in so short of a time eating a normal holiday diet (i.e. I truly did not over eat, well not much, really). I am different. I really do gain weight like this when I eat sugar. It is real. It will come off over the next couple of months if I am very careful and if I am not careful, it will attach itself permanently. Of course Gregory turns 12 on Saturday and wants a chocolate, homemade cake. And then there is Christmas. And then Kurt and I both have birthdays in January. . .

I have a problem in the short term. I have no decent clothes to fit me at this weight. (I lost almost all of my clothes in the hurricane and then ended up pregnant a couple of months later. Literally 70% of the clothes hanging in my closet are maternity clothes. After my pregnancy I never quite lost all the weight I wanted and never bought clothes as a result.) Bottom line? I have to go to church this Sunday and literally have nothing to wear.



Yesterday I came to terms with my problem. Today, I cut out the fabric for four new skirts. I have some turtle neck shirts I can wear still and with some new skirts, I will be able to manage for awhile. As long as I do not repeat my Thanksgiving mistakes I will be okay.

I've been knitting for consolation. (You'd think I'd exercise, but instead I engage in more sedentary activity.) After my last sock issues, I thought I'd do some real basic socks for a break.



These are for a friend of my husband's. I won't finish them until I have my husband's feet for measuring. I also cast on another pair of socks to keep me from mindlessly allowing the others to grow beyond human dimensions.



I started some mittens for Christmas awhile back and haven't touched them since.



The patterns are different on front and back.



I had intended them for Christmas for my daughter. But after she threw all the hand knit woolens I made for her last year into the washer and dryer and after Gregory lost the hat and gloves I knit for him last year, I told my kids they would get no more hand made presents from me. Now I have to decide if I mean it.

In the meantime, the house is strewn with half done projects and I just got a call from the real estate company telling me someone wants to see our house on Monday. Uh-oh.

Mysteries

Broadband. Wow. What a great idea.

Kurt takes classes at the university and they expect students to access the Internet. Gregory and Gabrielle have a computer based curriculum which requires Internet research for projects. Dial-up made school more and more difficult for everyone. Excuse enough. A quick trip to our new super Wal-Mart brought wireless broadband Internet into our lives and we may never be the same. Right now we're still updating our computers. Nothing could be automatically updated with our slow Internet connection.

To celebrate our technological advancement, I updated my blog template. I started blogging in the beginning of time as far as blog technology is concerned. So many advancements had been made since then. I generally don't like change, at least not since Hurricane Ivan made me deal with so many changes all at once, but I like this change. But change brings struggle and I keep struggling to figure out how to make things work. My blog template now makes things easy yet I only know how to work with the html I needed before. More growth and learning are in store I suppose.

I've been knitting mysteries lately. I finished both of my MS4 stoles and have blocked one of them.



It is pretty enough. It is quite long and plenty wide for a stole so I might actually wear this one. The color is lovely and I like the beads.



I have a hard time adequately photographing lace. It can be challenging to display it and not photograph little messes around the house at the same time. Oh well.

I finished another mystery too. I'm not sure what I was thinking as I knit Kurt's Christmas socks.



But my husband does not have big feet. These socks are a good 2 inches too long. I knit these while boiling cane juice into syrup and perhaps the fumes affected my judgment. Or perhaps the Lord thought my brother David in bible college in Germany needed them more. (He has big feet.) I had planned to make socks for my brother and worried about having enough matching yarn. I had actually selected some other yarn for his socks. But now it looks like the problem is solved and I am finished.