What was Riley up to this summer?

Sailing camp, for one thing:






Pictures of Riley at 2:57, 3:05, 3:20 and 3:25, and then several from 8:55 to the end. You can skip some of the middle bits unless you are really into seeing pictures of other people's kids sailing. (It gets a little long.)

Big Ball in Melfa

Well, there we are. On our way to, yes, an actual ball. Take a picture, we may never look this good again!

It was a charity ball for our local hospital - at the "Country Club" right up the road. It was actually a lot of fun. I might let myself get talked into going again next year. If someone buys us tickets (again)! (I am such a cheapskate)

Back on the 4th of July

More catching up here. This is Levi's friend John, after the 4th of July parade in Accomac. They were so happy to see each other, they were actually walking around holding hands!

OK, now I have to get some pictures of Riley up here!

That other video I was talking about ...

They did 6 or 7 songs - sang the words, did the hand motions. It was all quite amazing. Just to get that group of preschoolers to stand in an orderly manner onstage for that length of time would have been amazing enough!

That reminds me..

Levi's preschool graduation ceremony - back in June. It was such a hoot!

That is just the first one - I have a couple more videos to show you. Next post!

Well, of course

First day of school!

2nd grade for Riley, and Kindergarten for Levi! All went well - even the bus ride over to the babysitter's house. The afternoon buses were running so late, with all of the first-day-of-school confusion, that they were only at the babysitter's house (her name is Amanda, by the way!) for a few minutes before I arrived to pick them up. They were disappointed, but I consider that a very good thing.

(That's it - short and sweet - it's all I can muster tonight)

Earl

We are (maybe) about to experience another hurricane here on the ESVA, and it has made me remember Hanna of 2 years ago, and my blog posts about it. (Here is where I would provide a link to my previous blog posts, if I could remember how to do such a thing, which I can't, but I am trying not to get bogged down in the details here!)

So anyway, I looked up my blog and re-read the whole thing - (It is very slow at work this week.) (Don't tell my boss.) and it has made me wish that I had continued writing here, just for my own enjoyment if for no one else's. Lot's of fun stuff has happened in the last year, and it has gone mostly un-documented. I hardly even take pictures anymore! It makes me sad.

So I pulled up the blog, did a quick and modest re-vamp, and a little post. There. I feel a little better.

Dang, I have so much to tell you!

Is Levi still ... Levi?

Oh, yea.

How was the first week?

Good, quite good. I am enjoying the job - the people I am working with are really great, and it is actually nice to be back to work and using my brain again. I keep telling my coworkers how quiet it seems to me in the office, and they think I am saying that the workload is light. "Oh, just wait until tax time!" they say. But I mean it is quiet, like, no one is screaming, no TV's are blaring, no toy trucks are roaring. You can hear a pin drop in that place.

The boys are adjusting quite well so far. Riley was in a "camp" at the YMCA last week, and this week he will be with Nini and Poppy. The next week he will be in 1st grade! Levi is already doing preschool all day - he is the easy one to take care of, at least this year. And boy, our evenings are short. By the time I pick them up and get home, if I fly, it is 5:30, and they are supposed to be in bed by 7:30! It is barely time to fix and feed them dinner - God knows how we will ever get any of their homework done. Or anything else, for that matter.

I have decided one photo per post is not too much trouble. Here is Riley wearing my glasses upside-down.

TTFN!

I've been one poor correspondent,

I've been too, too hard to find.
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind.



It sounded lame when America sang it in nineteen-whateveritwas, and it sounds lame now. But so be it.



So what happened? Well, Riley got out of school, and lots of fun summer things started happening. We went to Iowa over the fourth of July for a family reunion to celebrate my grandmother's 100th birthday. We had family visiting here from Iowa and Richmond and Charlottsville and Washington. The kids had lots of various "camps" and such.

Oh, and I got a full-time job, for the first time since becoming a mother. It is the end of an era for the whole family.

So anyway, good and bad, life gets in the way of blogging. My plan is to write more frequently - maybe shorter, less picture-filled posts. Little how-are-you-doing sort of posts. Because I have lots of news to share, but less and less time to share it.

Is anyone still out there listening?

Hello, again.

Some quick craziness to brighten your day

I think I posted a similar video last summer, but here are the guys jumping off of the dock into the mud/water. Just wanted to share!

Kindergarten Graduation

Now, I am sure I never graduated from anything before graduating from high school, But these days, in this part of the country at least, there are preschool graduations, kindergarten graduations ... I believe there is a 5th grade graduation ... it goes on. And on.

Riley's Kindergarten Graduation was a pretty big production - mortarboards, gowns, a play, several songs, awards, a poem ... etc. I went in thinking "Why are we making such a big deal of this?" and then spent the whole program with misty tears in my eyes, so proud and amazed to see my little boy looking so grown up. Here he is getting his diploma - the first woman you see is his teacher, Ms Gendron (I just missed her saying his name) and then the principal, Ms Anis, handing him the diploma:

And then the finale, "Skidamarink". Earbug warning: I have been singing this song ever since!

You may notice, Riley has lost one of his front teeth, and the other one is on it's way out and poking out a bit crooked! I can't wait for the big new teeth - he is going to look so different!

Lucy

Our church was having a parents-night-out event on a recent Friday night, where you could drop your kids off at church for the evening, and the youth group was doing the babysitting. We took advantage of this and went out to dinner with some friends. As we were all leaving the house, both of the dogs ran outside and off into the neighborhood. We had been planning to leave them inside, but decided to just leave them out, since they were not heeding our calls and we were keen to leave. Oh, they will be fine, I said.

But while we were out, a thunderstorm came through the area, as they do this time of year. And little Lucy is one of those dogs who is afraid of thunderstorms, and generally hides under the bed trembling until they are well over.

When we got home, Beale was on the porch, but Lucy was not around, and she did not appear as we turned all of the lights on and called around the neighborhood. Steve stayed up for awhile to see if she would come back, and I tried to sleep. About the time Steve gave up and came to bed, I was unable to sleep anymore, and spent the rest of the night hoping that when it got light, she would come out from wherever she was hiding and come home.

At about 5:45, it was light, and she was not back, and I threw on some clothes and went outside to walk up and down our road - I didn't know what else to do. Not finding anything, I was headed back inside, when I saw one of our neighbors driving up the road. He paused at his driveway, and then I suppose saw me on the porch, and drove up our driveway. He had Lucy - all covered with burrs (and a couple of ticks, I found later). He had found her a couple of miles away in Harborton!

I still can't quite believe that she made it all the way through a couple of miles of woods - alive - and then (miracle) ran into someone who recognized her and knew where she lived. But I am so grateful to have her back, I can't tell you.

Happy BELATED Mother's Day

It was a milestone for me.

I received my first, lumpy, hand-made in kindergarten clay bowl. Doesn't it just warm your heart to see it? He chose purple, because he knows it is my favorite color.

I will treasure it forever. Thank you, Riley!

Tara's Alpaca

Oh, man! My "I need to get this story/these pictures on my blog" list is getting long - I really need to make some time for this! I have many stories to tell you about the last few weeks, but first, as promised, the alpacas! Or is "alpaca" plural, also? I should look that up, but it would only slow down the process.

Anyway, let me tell you something about Blogger/Blogspot (whatever this thing is called.) When I add pictures to a new post, it always adds each successive picture to the TOP of the post. Very annoying. So each time, I have to select the picture and move it down to the bottom of the post, where I want it. And when I select a bunch of pictures ... I want to write about this one ... and then this one ... they show up in the opposite order on the post. BLEH. If any of you out there know how to fix this (or what I am doing wrong??) do let me know.

In the meantime, these pictures are all backwards, but I am not fixing them, because I am tired and I don't feel like it!

So first, here is a close-up of the lovely fiber on young Aspen, Tara's cria. (Cria = baby alpaca)



This fiber has been shorn by now, and is all in a one-gallon ziplock, since he was just a young-en.

Here is Tara and Aspen, held by (dang, can't remember his name now) the Mr. of the farm:

And some of the other critters:

And finally, a couple of clips of Baroness and Aspen:

Tara's animals are still up in Maryland, but she is getting her property ready for them, and they should be down here in November or so. Very exciting!

MD Sheep and Wool

So, Tara and I drove up to Maryland on Saturday evening and stayed at her father's house there. (Tara's Dad, if you are reading, which I suppose you are not, thank you so much for your hospitality!) We got up fairly early on Sunday to drive over to West Friendship - and we kept trying to be positive about the weather we were encountering, but ...


It was a very wet affair. See the river of muddy water running up the left side of the picture? It was like that all day - at times it sprinkled, and at times it poured, but it never stopped. Dedicated fiber lovers that we are, we had a great time anyway. We ducked under the sheets of visqueen (does anyone outside of Alaska call it visqueen? I don't even know) to get to all of the lovely fiber - and it was lovely. And there was lots of it.



We happened to catch the sheep-to-shawl contest just as this piece was being cut from the loom:




and whisked off to the stage area:



where they were tying off the fringe just as fast as they could, to get their project to the judges first - or at least, quickly!

Here is another team, still working on their weaving:

Anyway, my feet ended up soaked and dirty and cold, but it was a day filled with spinning wheels and looms and fibers and fiber-bearing animals and a good friend plus crowds of other people all interested in the same oddball stuff that I am interested in - so a great day.

And that was not all! When we were done with MD S&W, it was off to see Tara's alpacas!

Next post!

Yay, I finally updated my blog!

I have not forgotten you

I've just been, uh, busy. I have not stopped blogging, I just ... paused. Like, for a month.

I don't have any excuse, only that writing is hard for me, and sometimes I am just not up to it. But I have been knitting and spinning and having fun with the boys (all three of them!) and the extended family - and I will be filling you in shortly.

Next up, pictures of the MD sheep and wool festival - if anyone is still interested!

I'm off! (Must be the weather ... )

Off, that is, to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival with my friend Tara!

Very excited.

No time to blog.

Will fill you in later!

Big thanks to Steve for giving me the "kitchen pass"!

FO Time

If I haven't mentioned it before, FO = Finished Object.

I have mostly been a one-project-at-a-time knitter lately. That is, until this spring, when I have been starting knitting projects right and left, spinning, felting, generally having a great time, but not finishing much. And as these things go, that can only go on so long before I start feeling the burden of all of these half-finished projects, and I go into finish-it-up mode. We begin finish-it-up time with a project started and finished on the same day.

I really shouldn't be posting this, as I am planning on gifting this, and I may be ruining the surprise. Looks familiar? It is very similar - not quite an exact duplicate - of the scarf I made for my Mom's birthday. I started it at the knitting group on Thursday, to show everyone how to use the Ashford Knitter's Loom, and I finished it before I went to bed that night! It turned out just as nice as the first one, I think. I did a lot of measuring and counting for the first one, and then I made this one sort of off of the top of my head, so it is a bit different.

I should be an Ashford dealer, as now everyone in my knitting group now wants a Knitter's Loom.

Levi looks a bit like he is being forced to model, but he was happier than it looks.

It (the scarf) is very nice, if I do say so myself, and I may just have to make a third, as I still have (probably just) enough yarn to do so.

Levi seems to be getting more blog-coverage these days, so here's a little Riley to even things up, taken during spring break at the playground in Wachapreague.

Other updates for this evening:

-The weather has been HOT (like 90 in the shade!) here, but I believe a cold front is coming through tomorrow and it is all going to change.

-We were all well for several days in a row (a first in the last few months!) but that is over now, too. Levi has had coughs and a fever, Riley just coughs so far. I'm hoping Levi can go to school tomorrow, but we'll see ...

Thanks, Mom

I used the idea from that magazine article you sent to make these "cozies" for the set of glasses that Steve gave me for Christmas. I think the design was intended to be used for hot drinks, but I hope that they will work for cold-beverage-sweating, too.


Other fiber updates:


-no more progress on the lace circular shawl. I started the lace border three times and had to rip it out ... having trouble reading the chart. Who designed this thing, anyway? Oh, right.

-Finished the baby sweater for my WA friends - finally! Now I need to start one for our new family baby ... waiting to find out if "it" is a boy or a girl! (That would be Tom and Amber's)

-Started some fingerless mitts to match a scarf I wove quite a while ago. Thinking I might either sell the set, or gift them to someone. I owe Terri something, but she says she doesn't like wool, and I just don't know what to do with that ... hmmmm. I'll post some pictures when they're done.

-My friend Amy aquired three Navajo-Churro fleeces from her sister, who raises the sheep, and together we have been washing and carding and sampling them. I have a few photos of the fleece I have, in the washing process:


Above, the whole fleece as I received it. There are two distinct "layers" to this fleece, with a long, grey/blonde course outer fleece:


and a shorter, softer, brown layer next to the skin:

and it was dir-ty! Holy Cow:

That's from the first cold-water soak - in our bathtub. Isn't my husband a dear for putting up with this kind of yuck in his bathtub, all for the sake of his wife's peculiar hobby? I think so.

OK, I guess that is enough for now. I have a bunch of projects going that I haven't even mentioned here yet. This spring has been all about starting new projects - I haven't finished very much lately! But I am having a great time letting the creative juices flow, enjoying the process, not worrying too much about the finished product. I would like to catalog everything I am doing on this blog, at least for myself (not sure if my readers are interested or not!), but I am too busy Doing, to take the time to Photograph and Blog about everything. But it's all good, as the kids say.