Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

I finished the book last Wednesday. Now back to REAL life!

I was so psyched to spend Saturday reading Harry Potter. My sister had come down to pick up my nephew and they left our place. My nephew had spent the last week at our house trying to see if he could eat all of the food in our fridge. He darn near succeeded. That's my Sister in the front and my Nephew and My Son in the back, riding up from the Barn with some more boards. About 45 minutes after she left we get a call; her truck blew a rod. My husband took the call and got directions to where she was. We took off without a thought to bringing a cell phone, or anything like that. This is probably where we should've started using brain cells. My Sister, love her to pieces but her directions weren't even close! She said she was outside of Oregon, but she was actually in Verona. It took us 3 hours to find her, plus three phone calls. On a side note: if you need to use a stranger's cell phone....ask a guy. The ladies we asked got this vague, flaky look on their face and said,...

A few years ago, I was at my Sister's house and suffered what my husband and I thought was a very mild stroke. Sitting on her couch, my face felt odd-hot, tingly, flushed. My vision became tunneled, and everything looked as though I was looking through the wrong end of binoculars. Then I got up and went to my Sister's computer to fix some program that had a CD for it. I kept dropping the CD. My hubby got concerned. I said screw it, took an Imitrex and then headed for a bedroom to take a nap. Now mind you, I was probably about 34 or 35 at the time. When I woke up a few hours later, I felt drained, but that was about it. Since that time I have had issues with what they call Nominal Aphasia. I can be talking about some object and cannot bring the name of it up. It's easy stuff: like refridgerator, door, radio...and today Clothes Basket. I needed my son to fill the basket up with clothes from the dryer but I couldn't remember the word "clothes basket....

I received a message asking if I can make bigger bags. My brain starts bubbling like champagne just poured into a flute. Oh I like challenges! The criteria was that the bag needs to be large enough to hold 12" size 15 knitting needles. My brain added a few more criteria: More Pockets and More Sturdier Drawstring. So this is what I came up with: The bag is made out of a jungle print cotton and a dark green satin interior. I noggled my brain for a bit on the pocket closure. It obviously needed one, but I didn't want to use velcro. I have a bag I carry projects in from time to time that once was a diaper bag. It has a velcro closure and it keeps catching all my yarn on it. So I settled for a button. Harder to open/close, but it won't snag your stuff. I was ticked off when I put a pair of needles in the slots. I thought the needles I was using were 12". They were sticking out of the top of the bag and I didn't like it. BUT, I measured my needles, and they were over 13...

I'm done with Chart A and B. I've been working on Chart C but it's been uncooperative. That's the stole in pink. I've been selling my bags on ebay again, so I thought it would look nice next to them. Pink is not my color either so why am I knitting in it? Not a clue. I picked up a ball of yarn out of the stash and started with it out of simple frustration. The other tries at the mystery stole weren't good.

Last weekend we took a mini-vacation and headed up to Perrot State Park in Wisconsin. Nice views of the convergence of the Trempeleau and Mississippi Rivers. It was blasted hot, I mean like Africa Hot, but not Saudi Arabia Hot. We did some canoeing, some fishing, some swimming and some sight-seeing. Up the way a bit is Merrick State park, which is also along the Mississippi, but would be better for fishermen. Ah well. I spun and knitted up a coffee cozy along the way. It's in the van right now, wrapped around my cuppacino glass. There's also another bag or so that was knitted. This morning I was spinning and thinking of what needs to be done today and this week when my mother called about her computer again . So I went down and looked at it. It refuses to talk to the modem, and I hate fussing with it. This time, I just took the CPU with me back home. Back at home, and just in time to dodge the rainshower, I wanted something done to prove I could be productive. So I grabbed some...

It's the lineup of bags: There's about 8 bags done total, but one of them is holding my Mystery Stole in progress. The ones above are about 8 1/2" tall and 6" in diameter. Each have an inner pocket divided into 5 slots for dpns. Ok, well here let me show you: The cord that is the handle also lets you loop the bag through a belt or a beltloop. Slip the cord through and then put the end of it on the button and you can knit without holding onto the bag! That Mystery Stole is giving me fits. It's my first time reading and knitting from a chart, so it's going slow. The original idea was to knit it out of cream -colored cashmere. Um yeah, that didn't work out so well. I goofed it up and had to frog it 3 times. So I went with some of my handspun instead: It's a nice pattern so far. The main concern with knitting from a chart is to use the lifeline. See the white yarns going through it? When you get done knitting a row, the yarn is slipped through the stitches...