Bragging :-)

These are my nieces singing "The B-I-B-L-E"...Sarah is 14 (and on the guitar) and Ricki is 4. Until I can figure out how to embed a music file, Click Here.

How cute is that? It amazes me that Ricki can keep going with a different beat and pitch in the background!

Breathe!!!!

With about 3 hours to spare, it's DONE!!!!

(Every single picture had an absolutely horrible flash off of my glasses. Hence, the cropping...) This is Louisa Harding's "Sloppy Joe" from her new book that's coming out next month; I used 11 balls of Wool of the Andes, and it took 18 days. It has to be in Washington very soon, so I'm going to block it out tonight and mail it Friday. It should be in the next KnitPicks catalog.

I am sooooo glad that this sweater is done! That's 2 big sweater projects in the last 6 weeks...

Aside to Bridget: I'm going to miss you!!! You always had confidence in my ability to get these projects done on a tight deadline, and I appreciate that!!

Now it's time to start my Christmas knitting...

Finally! An update!

Let's see, where to start...

The ball joints started going on the Durango last week. :-( Mom and Dad offered to get it fixed for me for Christmas (THANK YOU, Mom and Dad!!), so I got it down to their house in Canton. Dad picked up the truck from the mechanic last Thursday, and he parked it in his driveway. It was locked, and there was absolutely nothing in it, but that didn't stop some raging moron from doing this:

See all of that glass on the ground? That used to be my passenger side front window. Somebody used a crowbar to pry out the window, and they scattered the contents of my glovebox all over the front seat. Absolutely nothing was stolen, but it cost me $216 to replace the window. Of course, my deductible is $500, and the supplemental insurance policy that I bought only reimburses me if I actually *hit* the deductible. I may just have the adjuster out to look at the window frame - I have $284 to go until I hit the $500 deductible, but then I can actually get it all back under the moronic rules of the reimbursement policy. Grrr. The idiots that did this left their baseball cap on the ground next to the truck, though - if anybody knows someone in the Canton/North Canton area with the initals "S.U." and that person *used* to have a cap with the "U.S.S. Washington" on the front, please call the Canton police.

Kelson didn't have school Friday because the high school had a rather severe electrical problem. After digging up the entire football practice field, they found the burned wiring and fixed it. Tuesday, the busses were turned around in the parking lot because some idiot had called in another bomb threat. Lovely. At this rate, they won't have any snow days left by the time winter gets here!

In the meantime, I've been knitting...and knitting...and getting nowhere, it seems. I've had the yarn for this sweater for 12 days, and I'm only this far

(the top edging is rolled in on itself - it's not really that narrow on the sweater or the sleeve) I do have about 7 inches done on the back (or is it the front? They're both the same), but this sweater is sooooo boring to knit that I keep putting it down. Since it has to be in Washington on the 22nd, this is definitely a problem! I've been fighting a cold/bronchitis thing since Thursday, which isn't helping either. (Good old back to school germs! Gotta love 'em!)

Tomorrow night is Kelson's Open House at the high school, Friday night is a home football game, Saturday I'm taking the truck back down to Canton so the mechanics can redo the front-end alignment (please. Don't ask), and then I'm going to Kelson's band competition in Louisville, and Sunday we're going to the Yankee Peddler. If you happen to go to any of these events, I'll be the one walking around knitting...and knitting...

Long Weekend Ramblings

Our football team played Lakewood last night (and we beat them 42-8). The band buses were really late getting home last night because as our buses were leaving Lakewood, somebody threw a handful of rocks at one of them. The rocks broke one of the bus windows, and one of the rocks hit Kelson in the head. Luckily, nobody (including Kelson) was hurt, but they had to unload the bus, transfer the students to the remaining 4 buses, and wait for the police to show up. The problem was, the police never showed, (way to go, Lakewood!!) so they had to get permission to leave the scene. As soon as they finally arrived at the school, the fire alarm went off inside, and they couldn't do anything until the fire department showed up. There wasn't a fire, but it sure delayed things quite a bit. The game ended at 9:30, and we got home at midnight.

But we got up early this morning because...

Know who this is?

This is the University of Wisconsin Marching Band! The boys and I went to see them practice this morning - the Badgers were staying in a hotel in Strongsville, and they used one of the school football fields to practice. It was about 58 degrees and drizzling, but it was well worth watching. Wisconsin is playing Bowling Green today at Cleveland Browns Stadium. These are only the upper classmen; one of the U of W announcers was sitting next to us, and he said that the freshmen just tried out this past week.

16 tubas!

The drum major was really funny after the practice was over; he gathered the band around the ladder, stood up on it and starting giving a pep talk. He kept saying that the band should be prepared to be booed, mistreated and have garbage thrown at them! Yep, those garbage-throwing rabble-rousers from BGSU...you just never know when they'll show up!

I've started another sweater for KnitPicks:

This is going to be the Sloppy Joe Sweater from Louisa Harding's new book that's due out in October. I'm knitting it in Wool of the Andes Rain. The yarn came yesterday afternoon, and I have less than 3 weeks to get it done and out of here. The clock is ticking....

I've started spinning the Sweet Georgia roving

Boy, this is nice stuff!! The picture doesn't really show the color variations very well.

While I was waiting for the new KnitPicks project to arrive, I decided to be a lemming start another sock. I had a skein of Fortissima 1000 sitting around, so I cast on a Pomatomus. The jury's still out on this pattern; the design in the pattern actually shows up better than the picture would have you believe. If nothing else, I'll have another pair of socks...