Wonderful DH and Unsung Heroes

Last night was definitely a "Monday after work" kind of night. By the time I got home I literally headed straight to my bed and was sound asleep before 6:00. My beloved woke me up with dinner in bed, which is one of the many reasons that I love this man. He even sat on the bed with me watching tv while I ate. Good times....

Of course, when it was 7:55 I went into the living room with my knitting and sat my fine self on the sofa to watch Heroes. Lynne' brought her knitting and sat next to me, while Keith put a pan of brownies in the oven. This fabulous man even served us a plate of brownies and cold glass of milk when it was done! Now really, can an evening possibly be any better than this? (And as an aside, when I saw the previews for next weeks episode of Heroes it just got me all excited - looks to be a really good one!)

Unsung Heroes
Cool segue!

This morning I couldn't help it...I pulled into the McD drive thru for breakfast on the way to work. When I got to the pickup window, the gal inside and I exchanged some pleasantries and off I went. It hit me several blocks later that I still had a big grin on my face from the conversation I'd just had and that got me to thinking. We hear so much about the "big" heroes - you know the kind...the 12 year old girl that gets with her friends, sets up a lemonade stand and next thing you know she's on the news presenting a $3 million check to her favorite charity (story exaggerated just because I can).

But what about the people going about their everyday business that bless others just by doing their everyday business? This gal put a smile on my face and a spring in my step to start my day. The way I see it, she is a very big hero. And I think I might start sharing stories of these people on my blog as a reminder to myself. Even little things can sometimes make a very large impact on others.

A Knitty Daughter

I have exciting knitting news - my daughter is knitting - woohoo! She's 21 and just was not interested, though my mom taught her many moons ago. Last night she was at one of her friends' apartment and a bunch of them apparently pulled out their knitting. Daughter mentioned she used to know how and they got her started again. She came home and asked if I "had some needles and yarn that I wouldn't mind if she used." I zoomed down the hall to the magic closet and showed her several options, giggling inside the whole time. She settled on size 15 needles cause that's about what she used with her friends and some pink yarn. Amazingly, this child isn't normally fond of pink!!! But she said she wanted to do a scarf to get the knit stitch down pat and I did mention that if she did it in pink and didn't want it afterwards she could donate it to the pink scarf project and that appealed to her greatly.

I cast on for her and she started knitting while I sat next to her reveling in the moment. She struggled at first and it's certainly not second nature to her yet. Halfway through the first row I said "See, isn't knitting relaxing?" and we both burst out laughing! When she got up this morning she showed me the five rows she'd completed and it really does look good. I'm happier than a tick on a hound dog that she's doing this!

And as you can see from the picture, Meeko enjoys it when she knits as well.

Smile Card

Phrase and smiley face stamps by Stampin Up (Smile) and background stamps are by Stamps By Judith.

Joan's Socks

Knit with 2 strands of Natural Heather Wool-Ease - these will be used more as house socks than socks with shoes. Pattern can be found here.

1 on 2 Socks

Friday night Dawn taught me to knit socks on two circs and here's my progress as of Sunday afternoon. Since I'm still learning the method I decided to just use a straight ss pattern for the socks and let the yarn do the talking. This is Lorna's Lace Vera and is in my current favorite colors - pink and brown! I'm using size 3 Addi's and getting a perfect 8 stitches to the inch.

Friday Night Frivolities

I am finding that the adjustment to working full-time with an autoimmune problem is a lot more taxing than I thought it would be. Most nights I pretty much come home from work, eat dinner, clean the kitchen and go to bed. And that's one of the reasons that last Friday night was special to me.


Dawn came over, heaving a big bag filled with stuff. She had warned me that she would probably wear her pajamas and sure enough she did! This shows just how comfortable it was. :) First we set up my winder and swift and started winding yarn. The picture above was at the end of the night and shows just how beautiful all the yarns were. Each yarn cake that came off the winder was sufficiently oo'd and ah'd over before setting aside. Let's see if I can remember what they are: Upper left is Candy Corn by an Etsy vendor (I'll look it up later); under that is Violet's Pink Ribbon by Lisa Souza (soooo worth the wait!); very top center and top right is Lorna's Lace Ice House; middle center is Socks That Rock Fairgrounds; bottom center is something wonderful from an Etsy vendor; bottom far right is a Sunshine Yarn from Etsy. And I am so not telling how many of them are mine and which are Dawn's!!!

Next she pulled out some beading supplies and off we went. The clever girl had looked up a stitch marker tutorial online and made a couple at home and that was all it took! She shared this knowledge with me and I really enjoyed it. I would say that I hope I don't have another hobby in the making, but need to add that I did notice that Hobby Lobby has their jewelry making things and beads on sale half price this week. I'm not sure I'll be able to resist all week. I do know that other friend Dawn makes jewelry, so if I do go to the dark side at least I'll have somebody to play with - LOL!


After the stitch markers Dawn showed me how to knit socks on 2 circs! I don't know if I'm ready to give up my beloved Lantern Moon dpn's, but I do enjoy learning new methods.

Joe started out the evening underfoot and in the middle of everything we did. And he happily dispensed wet doggy kisses to Dawn, though I'm not sure she really appreciated it much! But as the picture clearly shows, by the end of the evening he was pretty bored with us. :)