*  I am never, ever going to plant cantaloupe again.  I have not ever had one ripen enough to eat.  I started this years plants in the house and transplanted them with care.   Since cantaloupe likes warm weather I waited to plant it outside.  Good thing too, since it snowed on Mother's Day.  It was 33 degrees last Friday morning.  The leaves got frosted.  I'm going to leave the plant in the ground and hope that they might ripen.  Although I'm not holding out much hope.   We just don't have a long enough growing season here.


* This week is Yarn Along The Rockies.  Twenty-Four yarn shops along the front range from Colorado Springs to just north of Denver.  If you visit all 24 and get a "passport stamp" then you are qualified for a grand prize .  Each shop has it's own basket as a prize.  I was able to visit two shops... Tea for Ewe on Tuesday and The Lamb Shoppe on Wednesday.  Tea for Ewe is in the 'hood and while I don't frequent it, I have been there a couple of times.  The Lamb Shoppe is a new to me shop and one that I really like and will go there again!  A couple of people I know were able to make a two day trip out of it and hit all 24 shops!  Damn the work thing for getting in the way of a good yarn crawl!

Happy Thursday my friends.

It's Wednesday again and that means it is time for the weekly yarn along.  I'm joining with Ginny and everyone to share yarn and books.  Last week I started my Hitofude and joined Karen and Steph in their KAL.  I counted and counted and counted some more, each stitch.  I did the two set up rows.  I knit the first row of pattern.  And was off FOUR stitches.  What?  How can that be?  I counted and counted.  I debated just making it work to the end.  But I was only three rows in, so I ripped it all out and started over.  UGH.   So I have worked on my two at a time-toe up-magic loop socks, Hitofude, and the woven scarf.  It doesn't feel like I've made any progress on any of my projects.

I have been reading Home Front by Kristin Hannah.  A good friend gives me all of her books when she is done reading them.  In fact, I've got quite a nice stack of "to be read" books.  She also puts a little post it with her thoughts on the book.  This note on this book says "I cried through the whole book."  Great.  Home Front is about a female army helicopter pilot who is in the national guard and gets called up for a year long tour of duty in Iraq (not too long after September 11th).  She and her husband haven't been getting along too well and just before she leaves he tells her that he doesn't love her anymore.  I have teared up a little bit, but since I'm reading it at work on my downtime I am really trying not to cry in public.  (Not that there is anything wrong with that).

Happy Yarn Along Wednesday!

* Today I will fly, not in fear, but in remembrance of the events that happened on this date in 2001. I will remember those who lost their lives during that day...those in the air and the rescuers who followed.  Today I will proudly do the job I love and am blessed to have.  I will fly.  Never forget. 

I'm excited!

The 52 Project- a portrait a week for a year.  These are the pictures for August.  Wow.  August.
 33/52- Using her Craftsman tool chest to help put bookshelves together.
Is it me or are the months going faster and faster?

It's Wednesday again and that means it is time to share yarn and books with Ginny and everyone.  This week was a full week of knitting and reading.  Although not much progress was made on the former, but started a new book in the latter.
This is a woven scarf that I started a month or so ago.  The yarn I ordered finally came in so I've picked it up again.  It's a pretty easy knit which means I can take it to crafting and sitting in the wait area at ballet.  It's a garter stitch base with five 96" knit tubes that are woven together and then another garter stitch band at the end.  Easy Peasy.  I've also been working on my two at a time-toe up-magic loop socks.  I won't bore you with the small progress I've made since last week.

I also spend hours on the computer this weekend looking for yarn so I can knit Hitofude with Karen and Steph in their loosey-goosey Hitofude KAL.  Hours spent on Etsy and the Webs website.  After hours yarn tends to look the same but I am very excited about the yarn I purchased.  More on that after it's delivered.

I finished reading Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham.  I am enjoying the Fiona Griffiths books because I love a good murder mystery and she is not the typical female detective.  I started reading Home Again by Kristin Hannah.  It grabbed me from the get go.  I have to say that I was enjoying the book until the plot twist that I kind of predicted and then because I did predict it, I wasn't so enamored with the book anymore.  Sometimes I feel that if there is a plot twist that is so predictable then the author should do the complete opposite.

I also started reading Las Hechizadas.  This is the book a friend of mine from high school wrote last year.  It is currently available on Amazon for $.99 for the Kindle.  I've just started it, so have not formed any opinion yet.

One of the things that drew me to my house when I first looked at it was the kitchen.  And not because it was modern with stainless appliances and granite countertops but because it was vintage!  It is a very small  orange kitchen with 1950's era cabinets.  The appliances were all from the 1960's!  I loved it.

The refrigerator was made in 1967 and was probably state of the art when it was new.  I thought it was pretty state of the art in 2004 when I bought the house.  It was a coppery brown color with a freezer on the bottom and the fridge itself had a pole in the front left side with swing out shelves!  I cried when the repair man said he couldn't (and wouldn't) fix it.  Luckily it still partially worked so we had a small amount of time to find a new fridge.  Meaning I was 7 month pregnant and I had Mercedes dreams on a VW budget.

The stove was also of a mid 60's era.  It was a pull out stove with the oven on top (like over the range microwaves) and sat on top of a cabinet.  One burner only worked on high so it was the tea kettle burner.  The oven temperatures were not consistent so I had to put a thermometer so I could maintain an semi-even baking temperature.  If I wanted to bake at 375 I had to set the oven dial to 325.  Towards the end of the oven life it would shoot up to 500.  My clue the oven was on its last legs was when it took three hours to warm up to baking temperature.  The repair man said it wasn't worth it to fix.

The problem though was it was not a standard stove/oven.  It sat on the cabinet under it.  I lost a whole cabinet!  Bryan had to remove a whole cabinet in order to put the new oven in.   He took it apart very carefully thinking we would flip it around to the other side of the kitchen and install it there.  All of my pots and pans were put in a cupboard in the basement for the time being.   They remained in the basement  (except for the three that I use most often) for six years!

Too make a long story even longer, I just got a new cabinet!  A friend of my dads just started his own cabinet making/woodworking business.  He took the pieces from what we took apart and was able to use the cabinet doors and he made me a brand new cabinet!  Plus it has a butcher block counter top.  Oh.  My.  My pots and pans are in their new home.  No more going up and down the stairs in order to cook dinner!  You know you're getting older when you get excited about what basically amounts to wood!

Isn't it gorgeous?