SPRING! (ish)

Oh my poor blog, how I've neglected you.

I've got excuses.

Good excuses, even.

Family life is busy, especially with all of Gillian's activities (and we won't mention mine, all right?), and then we all got sick.

I spent 10 days being totally, utterly worthless. I got the coughing illness that was going around, and *of course* it turned into a sinus infection. And of course I waited too long to go to the doctor (I get delusional that I can kick it without outside intervention, and it NEVER happens). So by the time I saw the doc, my left cheek was making this "crackle" sound and then a pain would shoot down the back of my neck. That's something new for me. I'm totally O.K. with it never happening again.

They X-rayed my face and pronounced my left sinus to be "severely impacted." Normally she'll push on my face a little to gauge the pain, but she didn't even come near me this time. It's not good when you impress the doc. Two steroid shots and a heavy-duty antiobiotic later, I'm feeling a million times better.

Just FYI, my daily routine includes a steroid nasal spray and a neti pot. I'm also a huge fan of Mucinex, and most of the time I can fight off sinus pain.

For those of you in my Facebook friends (those who haven't blocked me, anyway), I apologize. Apparently when I'm running a fever my whine filter becomes non-operational.


So, enough of that. On to spring!

We actually haven't had much spring around here. We've gone from winter to two days of "oh, spring is here!" then right back to winter for a week, and now we've slammed straight into summer. Like high 80s. And LOTS of wind.

:-(

I don't like wind. Or heat.

On the bright side, we have some absolutely gorgeous flowers:




Greg's woodworking project has been building a box for Ryan's toys. Ryan needed no encouragement to get in the box.


Here it is after the pre-stain, from the back.


Yesterday Greg mowed the lawn, and his shadow needed to help, so Greg let him steer. (I have no idea why Ryan is making this face, but I couldn't resist.)


Of course Gillian had to get in the action, and she actually pushed the pedals, too!


Things around here are really dry, but we're starting our garden. (That would be the royal "we" as I have almost nothing to do with it. I can't rake or till, so I'm not much help.)



Tonight we went shoe shopping, and I came home with these AWESOME shoes:


Greg is mystified, but he bought them for me anyway. :-) I love how steampunk-ish they are, and they're surprisingly comfortable! It's not often when I can find shoes like this that fit my huge, wide, Hobbit-shaped feet so I'm pretty thrilled. The cap on my bottle of happiness is that they were half off!!! There's no way I'd pay $80 for a pair of shoes, but $40 was totally do-able.

Greg keeps asking where in the world I'm going to wear them. My response: "where WON'T I wear them?" LOL! They zip up the inside of the foot, so they're fast to get into and out of.

That's it for my catch-up-post-of-randomness. I hope you're all having a great weekend!

No more snow!

Last week we were snowed in, and this week it's—literally—in the 70s. Yee haw for Oklahoma weather!

I didn't get a whole lot done during Snowmageddon 2011, unfortunately. You'd think being home for two weeks that I would've, but I got almost nothing accomplished. The kids got recharged, which is a good thing.

The one project I managed to do start-to-finish was a pair of chokers. I've been wanting to make this pattern for a while, and finally I just sat down and did it:

The top one is my handspun and the bottom one is some Koigu. I love that I used all stuff from my stash on these. The pattern is from a semi-local fiber friend, Dawn, and can be found here.


I finally managed to finish a pair of socks that I started back in September:


I got smart and measured the socks before I wore them so that I won't have to constantly try them on when I get close to the toe shaping. Yay for me! (You'd think I'd have figured that out a long time ago, but I've always been so stoked to wear them that I've never taken the time to do that.)

They're my standard 64-stitch sock with a Catherine Misegade's heel. I love that method!

Speaking of feet...
My MIL sent me some fun shoes! (She sent shoes for the whole family, actually, but this is MY blog so I'm showing MY shoes. LOL!)



It was actually warm enough to wear them on Thursday to pick up the kids. :-)
Isn't that a gorgeous color on my toes? That's Isla from Zoya, and I'm in LOVE with their nail polish. Not only does it *not* stink, but the colors are fabulous! It's probably a good thing that they don't sell it within a five-mile radius of my house. LOL! (Please ignore the pasty-white legs and bathrobe.)


My awesome hubby bought me some rings for a belated Christmas present, and they arrived today!!!

(I'm modeling them on my left hand since I'm right handed and I have a HORRIBLE time taking pictures using my left hand—the camera is definitely made to be held with the right hand and NOT the left.)


That top one has a lot of neat sparkle. It's definitely more flashy that the next one:

I think they're so cool! They came from this Etsy shop, and he was very patient with me when I asked him a really stupid question. (I was so excited about getting these rings that I forgot how to read. ROFL!)


Greg has been trying some new things in bowling and they're really helping his game. My game continues to plod along in the 130s-140s, but I'm pretty happy about that. One of these days I'll get a 500 series and they'll be able to hear me squee-ing from the moon. :-)

Greg's project for the weekend is building some cabinets in the garage to replace the plastic cabinet we've been storing paint in, as well as creating some lumber storage. He's got a pile of gorgeous wood from his Dad and we need to have a better way to store lumber so that it's usable! Here's the start of the project:


He's going to get a planer and then look out, because I'm expecting some beautiful wooden things. :-)

Yellowstone slideshow

I've just made a slideshow of *some* of the pictures from the trip to Idaho--this is mostly just the ones from Yellowstone. I promise to do a summary post (or five) soon!

For now, the slideshow:



If you click on it, it'll take you to Picasa where you can see them embiggened. (I highly recommend that!)

Happy Holidays!

The kids and I are in Idaho, and my parents' house, as is my sister. It's darn cold here--around 20 degrees F at the moment--with lots of snow. The kids are loving it! (The pic above is my parents' British phone booth that they brought back when they moved back from England.)

The day before yesterday Gilly made a snowman:


and Ryan had a good time investigating the tree:



Yesterday was the Great Dyeing of 2010. Last year Karen and my Mom helped me dye the roving that I spun into yarn for my Bono Kimono (which just needs to be blocked and then seamed), so this year I told them I'd help *them* dye.

We dyed six pounds of roving.

The four braids on the left are my Mom's Polworth roving, and the three on the right are some of Karen's Polworth.


The pink/orange/purple on the left are Karen's merino/mohair roving, and the ones on the right are the rest of the batch of Karen's from the pic above.

Here are the rovings before we braided them:

And another gratuitous shot on the drying rack:

We've been busy indeed! :-)

ETA: I've gotten a couple of questions about what rovings are. They're basically long lengths of fiber that's been cleaned and the fibers have been aligned so that they're (mostly) going in the same direction. The proper name is actually "top" but "roving" is a more commonly-used term (although it's not correct--"roving" has the fibers *not* aligned). Here's a good explanation.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I'm so full I can barely type. :-)

Greg made an amazing turkey, as well as really, really, really good red-skin mashed potatoes from our garden!

I hope all of my fellow Americans have had a fabulous meal with great friends!


Yesterday I looked out the kitchen window and saw a cardinal. It wasn't bright-bright red yet, but it was still very pretty.


The kids' project for yesterday was to decorate the tree (which they talked me into setting up Sunday, the stinkers). Ryan did most of it, and he did a darn good job!


It's a little early, I know, but the kids are trying to squeeze the most out of the holiday season. LOL!


Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Halloween!!!

Family Calendar Picture

Every year the Allred family puts together a family calendar. Since there are six kids (the "kids" are all grandparents at this point), each kid gets two pages, which means that my family gets one page. Here's ours:


Hopefully it'll be big enough to see details if you click on it.

Tulsa State Fair roundup

This morning we loaded up into the truck and make the trek up to the Tulsa State Fair!

Five hours later (!!!!) we trudged back out to the car, but we had a good time.

Of my eight entries, I got two first place ribbons, four second place ribbons, and two third place ribbons. That mean everything placed, which is great.

The first-place items:


This was the ONLY entry in the "lace" division, which didn't surprise me *at all* since the rules specified that it had to be made from size 20 thread or smaller. That's totally ridiculous, and since we have multiple lace items entered in the knitting category, I'm hoping we can get that changed next year. At least this little doily didn't take me long. LOL!

I got four second-place ribbons:


My socks are the grey, blue, and brown striped ones at the bottom.

My Stor Rund Dug is the cream shawl behind the gorgeous blue one. I'm rather surprised that my shawl didn't do better, but oh well. Denise's blue shawl is stunning, so that softened the blow. :-)

If I enter another ornament, I'll be sure to put it on a stand of some kind since it doesn't look as good sitting on a shelf. LOL!

And finally, I got two third-place ribbons:



Not too bad!

The kids had a great time on the rides, too.


All in all, we had a great time, but my feet sure hurt. LOL!

Gilly's bed is finished

Greg couldn't stand it any more—when he went to check on how the paint was drying, he declared it set enough to assemble the bed in Gillian's room!


I think it's absolutely wonderful, and so does Gilly!

It took her about 20 minutes to completely cover the top shelf with animals (just as I predicted). There are a few animals in the side cubbies, and a hardback library book fits perfectly too.

I'm so proud of Greg!

Quilt Machine Monday (a day late)

I've been trying to get pictures of what's on the quilt machine every Monday, and obviously I've been failing miserably. :-)

I did manage to get a pic yesterday though, as well as the finished (quilting, anyway) quilt:

The color is off in this pic, but you can see the quilting really well:


And a detail pic:

This one is Teresa Marler's, and it's fabulously scrappy! (I love scrappy quilts--they go with everything and they're interesting to look at. I have a hard time making non-scrappy quilts any more.)

As well as quilting like a mad woman, I've been working on stuff for the Tulsa State Fair.

I'm making a Christmas ornament, and these are two of the 12 flowers that will make up a hanging ball:



I'm also working on finishing up my Hey Teach sweater (it's only taken me a year!) and a small doily. No pics yet.


Greg has continued to work on Gillian's bed, and now it's primed! The next step will be the glossy white paint, I believe. It's coming together, and it's going to be beautiful!


Now it's time for me to go shower--it's almost 2:00 P.M., after all. LOL!

A Bed!

Greg has been working on building a new bed for Gillian, and today it all came together.

The kids are quite excited (and being total hams!):



Greg bought some neat hardware about a decade ago and so the side rails fit into the head- and foot-boards and should be *very* sturdy but still come apart.

He put some neat storage boxes on the sides and Gilly is already planning and plotting what she's going to store in them.

The plan is to prime it (tomorrow perhaps and paint it a nice glossy white.

SewFlakes!

One the local quilt shops, Sew Flakes, is having a Great Sewing Room Tour, and I (as Pieceful Stitches Designs) am a sponsor. I've donated two copies of each of my patterns as well as a gift certificate for $25 off machine quilting.

Go check them out!

Speaking of quilting, a while back I made a slideshow function of the customers' quilts I've done this year, which you can see here.


Every so often I get the urge to dye my hair and I did it again yesterday:


You can also see the blue pearl necklace that I made yesterday. It's a single strand, knotted between each pearl, and long enough that I can wrap it around as a choker. I see more like that in my future.

I think this hair color looks more natural than my natural color with my skin. The really funny thing is that the kids didn't notice until Greg said something. LOL! [This stuff is supposed to wash out after a month or so.]


Speaking of Greg, he's started building a bed for Gillian and she's been helping.


Greg has developed an allergy to sawdust, and I'm thrilled that they're wearing masks and safety glasses. YAY!


I'm terribly behind on my blogging, and so I'm going to continue with some catch-up stuff.

Last week was the annual scrapbooking convention, and I took two classes. The first one is called "Boxerpalooza" and is where they give you lots of scrapbooking stuff from their company (Boxer Scrapbook Productions) and show you ideas to use it. I got a lot of excellent tips as well as cool scrapbook supplies. One of the owners is a quilter so we chatted about fabric after class.

The other class I took was "Four Pages, A Bazillion Photos" and it was neat--they had some good ideas for putting lots of pictures on a page. Here are two of the four pages (without pics--I haven't gotten that far yet):



I also did a Make and Take from the Tattered Angels booth, using Glimmer Mist:



It was really cool, and I now understand more of the appeal of Glimmer Mist.

I also did some shopping. I couldn't resist a bunch of clear stamps, especially since the big ones I got were $3!!!


Now I just need to *use* them. LOL!

On the knitting front, I finished a pair of socks:




The yarn is some that my wonderful Aunt Louise sent a couple of years ago (I don't use sock yarn all that quickly, but I sure enjoy making socks!).

I also made a headband to use up some of my leftover sock yarn:

That's Mountain Colors sock yarn and it bleeds read like nobody's business, which is why I didn't send it to my Mom to use in her sock yarn blanket.

And I finally found a project that would successfully use the Disco yarn that started to be two different pairs of socks:

That's the Lacy Baktus, with an edging I stole from something else (I think a stitch dictionary--I'd have to look to be sure).

And last up on my catching-up list, this basket that we made in spinning guild at the August meeting:


It was fun to make! The teacher had the bottom and first round one for us or we would've been there all day. :-)

I think that's about it for the moment. I've been doing customer quilts but you can see those in the link at the top of this post.

I hope you're all having a great weekend!