After the New Year
Okay, so from the day after Christmas until the 7th of January, I didn't get in to post. I did get a class schedule done for the next 3 months and it should be on the web page by tomorrow. I have finished the Wrap and the afghan plus worked on Baby Bo's Teddy sweater and a couple of other things.
The class room is a mess and has to be cleaned up by tonight when the Monday Night crowd gets here. I have washed a sweater and the afghan and need to lay them out to dry too.
Jossie went in to the vet today to be repaired. She told me that she didn't know that she was broken and I told her that all Yorkie girls come broken and at about 6 months they get fixed. I am not sure that she believes me. SHe will come home tomorrow. In the mean time that other girls are alternating between being happy that she is not bugging them and looking for her to play with.
When we drove Jossie to the Vet this morning it was very icy. It was so warm yesterday that snow melted and then it froze over night. Ugh! The snow is melting on roofs and people are out using their snow rakes to clean off their roofs before there is leaking. Elisabet called yesterday because she had water coming in her dining room. She was up on the rool getting rid of the snow.
I have about 4 projects sitting around in different places and in different states of being done - okay so maybe there are a few more then 4. But I want to try all the new yarns and patterns and I get behind. Adriane just finished a very nice cardigan in Van Dyke. I need to take some pictures and get them in the computer so I can put them in the blog. It is such a nice yarn an Alpaca blend and it works up so nice. Since it is a 100 gram ball, people are a bit put off by it. It seems that many 100 gram balls don't get the attention that they deserve. I am not sure why that is. Universals, Classic and Deluxe come in 100 grams and they get noticed but others don't seem to. It maybe the way that the balls are wound.
I'll try and get those photos up today. So you can see what they look like.
Christmas is over!
It was nice but it is over. We went to daughter, Elisabet's house for Christmas Eve. A quiet evening with split pea soup and opening of presents. It seems that everything that kids get these days makes noise or flashes light - even gift cards. I will say that the kids were more excited over noise making, light flashing gift cards then they were of the amounts of money that was on them.
Christmas day we were back at Elisabet's house for puzzle working and turkey dinner. It is much easier for us to go to the kids then for them to come here. Our Holidays have calmed down as the kids have grown. We have also changed our gift giving a lot too. The little kids still get toys but we older folk don't give each other as much and look for some special personal gift or fun inexpensive plaything. I got a bunch of wooden games at Target's dollar department. Elisabet and the Granddaughters gave me Yorkie ornaments. Marion and her family gave me a design block set. We tend to give each other puzzles, books and things that the person collects. We did give Elisabet some good knives. Bo couldn't carve the Thanksgiving turkey with her old ones.
The girls had asked for snow globes and we found some nice ones and ended up getting quite a few to give to people. The two youngest granddaughters got American Girl dolls and Annika got a futon. I got some great dog training equipment - I ordered it myself. Although we give something to everyone, none of the items have big price tags. Bo and I tend to spend more on the grandkids but that is what grandparents are for! We have the most fun with stocking stuffing. We tend to buy inexpensive, silly things to put in stockings. I sure like dollar stores!
And we have snow! It snowed all day on the 24th, a little bit yesterday and even more today. It is great for those who got skates, skis and sleds for Christmas. The Yorkie girls are either extremely happy with the snow or don't want to get their feet in it. Emma loves the snow and always has. Winnie thinks that she is put upon about it. Josse thinks that it is awful and Lilly likes it if she can find something to do in it.
We did gett he girls pictures and a card made. They were pretty tired at the end of it all. Josse was exhausted! But it is done.
I am over half way done with the afghan. I am really excited about getting it done. I am excited about getting it done and working out a class timing to teach it.
Now off to shovel snow - our prediction of 1" has changed to several inches. I could have told them that a few hours ago!
Saturday Dec. 22nd
We are having a funny winter day. It started at at over 30 degrees at 5 this morning - the girls had to go out then - with rain. Our snow drifts had started to disappear. We had green grass in places. And it was this way until 11 or so when it turned to snow. Then it stopped. But we are told that it will start again this evening and continue to snow until Monday morning. I wish that the snow hadn't started to melt.
Tomorrow is Winnie's birthday. She will be 2. She is still such a puppy. She thinks like a puppy and acts like a puppy. I think that she will always be like this. Josse is a real puppy but I can see her growing up, but Winnie is our blond, cheer leading Yorkie. She does well in school but her attention wanders. "Gee, mom there is a new dog coming in the door, I have to go meet him." During sits and downs line, she gets bored. She doesn't break the sit or down but she starts to whine. She loves school but she is one of those kids who goes to school to hang out with her friends. What a joy that she is. She is such a fun little girl. And she hates cold, wet weather. She makes short work of her trips out. It messes up her hair.
I found my Clover J hook. I like the Clover Soft Touch hooks for big hooks. Maybe my thumb will quit hurting now. And I finished a hat in Universal's Duet yarn. I am almost done with a felted bag and I am going to ravel out the button band on one of my baby sweaters and redo it in a smaller needle. I thought that I could get away with using the same size needle as for the rest of the sweater but not this time. I have 3 projects using Art Yarns to finish. Maybe Christmas day I will get to work on them. But then it is puzzle day.
We usually do a Jigsaw Puzzle on Holidays. Everyone can do it and we all enjoy them. I get them from Bits and Pieces when they go on sale. The only conflict is that we all like different kinds. Last year I got glow in the dark ones. The rest of the family said that they were too dark. So this year I got a bunch of American Primitive art ones. At Thanksgiving Elisabet said that she didn't like them. But it is that or watching a flick and then we really have choice problem.
Now I have to stop and close up for the day. Tomorrow is another day and I have bathe the girls before we open.
Drive carefully!
Hey, I just found !
I just found out how to allow people to post comments. Okay, so I am slow but this blog thing is some what a mystery to me.
I have my crochet afghan almost to where it was before I raveled it. And it looks much better. I find that crochet is harder on my hands then knitting. My right thumb gets sore.
Hopefully, I can get back to my other projects now that I am comfortable with the hook and the crochet pattern. I have another new baby sweater started. I am using a sock yarn from Universal and am finding it quite nice. I will wait until I am further along on it to tell you more about it.
We have heard that we may have some nasty weather tomorrow through Sunday. It is funny how quickly we hear about storms coming. I rather liked it better when it was just a surprise when they came. And I find that this early warning causes a lot more talk about what weather might be then what is really happening. But it is in the 30's today and the Yorkie girls have been out and out and out. Emma loves to dig in the snow. Winnie doesn't like to get cold. Lilly will stay out if she thinks that something exciting is happening and Josse isn't sure what she likes but will stay out if someone else will. So they are in and out over and over again. During the summer they have their doggy door and can come and go as they like. But when it is cold, they have to ask to go out and some one has to go and open the door for them. Now that Bo is retired, he is often in with the girls and does door duty. I am not sure just what he does think of this retirement business. I don't think that I would like it.
Today is the Winter Solstice. Locally it has become quite a Holiday with a big bonfire in Two Harbors. I always like to take the evening and knit for someone else. I usually work on a prayer shawl. There are so many people that I know that could use one right now. My friend, Brad Nelson lost his dear friend Lena the Black Lab. Lena was such a lady and so smart. It was very hard for Brad to say goodbye to her. Brad needs extra love right now. Gail Mathers has a breast biopsy today and needs extra thoughts. And there are a couple of my Fibro friends that are in special need. My bookkeeper has a angegram next Monday. Spell check didn't give me the correct spelling for that so you have to figure it out. When bad things happen it is always so much harder near a Holiday.
We have been receiving Christmas card and we have still not been able to get a picture that will work for ours. Cards have taken on a new meaning over the last forty or so years. It used to be that people sent tons of them, okay so several hundred weren't unusual - maybe not a ton, And they were all either religious or Santa types but wishing someone a Happy Holiday. More and more they have become a way to keep other abreast of what is happening in your life and include family pictures. I used to not like that but as I have gotten older and don't see many of my old friends as often and we don't write like we used to, I find myself looking forward to the family catchup letters. Bo and I pour over the pictures and comment on how kids have grown, our friends have aged and are excited to hear what people are doing. It is rather funny as we email a lot and keep in touch more then we used to because of email. But there is something about the letters and the photos that seem so much more personal and connecting. I guess that we better get the girls lined up and a picture taken so we can send ours out. But the reality is that we have a new camera and we are still learning how to use it. Too many menus for us I guess.
Stay warm, keep your feet dry and your needles clicking and enjoy the first day of winter!
Day ??? so I'm behind! Make it Day 10
Okay, I have fallen behind and for no real good reason, just work, dog training, shopping and wrapping gifts. Also, come to think of it, starting new projects, restarting the same project and now I have to restart it again.
The new Crochet Today from Vogue came out and there are some terrific projects in it. Now I readily admit that I am not the crocheter that I am a knitter or weaver or spinner or a few other things, but I do crochet. There are two really good afghans in the magazine and a cute dress and some darling baby hats. But the afghans grabbed me. They also grabbed Carolyn Bergman who teaches classes here. So I decided to start one. And miracles of miracles my swatch came out perfectly. So I started the afghan, Then decided to switch the color order, so started it again, realized I miss-counted rows and started it again. Then my gauge seemed to tighten up. When Carolyn came today, we discussed it and figured, 'oh, well'. I chalked it up to my hands and the cold, Sounded good, anyway. Then today I was looking for something and there under something else was my J hook. Seems that I put the project down and when I picked it up again, I took a smaller hook. So tonight I will unravel what I have done - almost half the afghan - and start again with the J hook.
I have also started Josse - Josephine, our baby Yorkie - in Cyberagility classes. I guess that I did write that we were going to start. I am a clicker trainer, which means that we work with positive reinforcement only. Our first lesson was on targeting. For you non-dog trainers out there, we teach targeting so that the dog will go to a certain spot and touch it either with a nose or a paw - at least that is the simplest way to describe it. To move to step 2, the dog has to be able to touch the target held in the hand 10 times in 40 seconds. As they touch each time, I click and produce a treat, all in the 40 seconds too. At first Josse was unsure of what I wanted but she soon caught on, the trouble was the Cheerios that I had broken into 3s and was using as a treat. Josse had lost all her front baby teeth a couple of weeks ago. The new ones are coming in but she is now losing the back ones. And Cheerios maybe be okay for coming in from outdoors but now for real work. So I switched to the good stuff - cheese. She quickly went from 10 clicks in 1 minute 10 seconds to 10 clicks in 42 seconds - I dropped a treat so she had to look for it. And then 10 in 30 seconds. You see when the reward was good enough the performance improved. And today she happily showed Carolyn how she can do it.
Our next step is to change the position of the target. Now this all, rather, reminds me of my afghan. I have had to progress through steps to get the stitch right and then the gauge to having a successful project. It didn't all happen on the first try and I had to see some reward in the process. In my day teachers understood this and we got gold stars on our papers. As we got older the reward grew until it was the grades that we earned. But there was some reward for a good job and for increasing our ability. No increase, no reward or at least less of a reward. It works the same for me today but I set many of my own goals and I set the reward or aim for a reward determined by others. I grew up in an atmosphere where often the reward was pleasing our family, no fancy treats. We never received money or presents for good grades or doing household chores but we did get the positive approval from our family. I sometimes wonder if we haven't stretched the reinforcements to the limit at the beginning and we get to the cheese too soon. Maybe that is why we feel that we have to make the Holidays into an orgy of buying.
I need to chew on this for awhile, maybe while I am unraveling my afghan tonight. But in the meantime, I have learned a couple of new crochet stitches, seen how two of my color choices work together, learned a whole lot about crochet gauge and I can now do the afghan pattern without thinking - at least to where I am now! All in all not all that bad but it sure puts me behind in my other projects. And by the way, I love my throw and I have received a number of positive comments on it, including hearing that it is much more attractive on my body then it is laying flat.
So keep reaching out for new patterns and stitches. Playing with yarn can teach us all sorts of new things.
Day 10 - Christmas is coming and my projects need to get done!
I have one sleeve to finish for the baby sweater model, the wrap is done and around my shoulders, I finished 2 hats, and a purse but I haven't worked on either of the sweaters for the two grandkids that have sweaters promised, haven't worked on my socks, haven't done any doll clothes yet and there is less then two weeks to go.
Josse starts her Cyber-agility class this week. And while she is taking the class, I am going to be working on the same exercises with Winnie. Winnie needs a refresher class before it is time to move to Modular 2 in Cyber Agility. Helix Fairweather has this Cyber program and this is our fourth dog to go through it. It is a clicker training based program and we have good results in using it as our agility foundation program.
In January we start back in Obedience and Josse will go to kindergarten. Hopefully it will be a warm winter for going back and forth to school. Dog training is really people training. The dogs have a very good idea of the moves, people need to learn their part and how to turn it into a 'dance'. When it finally works that trainer and dog work together as a team, you can feel it and it is grand. But we, humans, are the weak link in the partnership.
Teaching knitting is often the same. A knitting teacher's first job with the students is to figure out how each learns and then how to explain the system to them so that the student can learn with as few restarts as possible. It is such a joy to find a student that learns as I do. I am a visual person and it is so easy for me to relate to another visual person. It takes work to explain to other learning modalities. But after some 50 plus years of showing people how to wrap string around sticks, I have learned a lot about how to explain to people how the string becomes fabric. I haven't had any where near that amount of time working at learning how to be a team with a dog.
I haven't had any where near the 60 years of knitting experience that I have as a knitter, as a crocheter. I have always done a bit of crocheting but the last couple of years I have been trying to increase my crocheting ability. The last couple of years the yarn world has made that easier for me. Besides joining the Crochet Guild of America, I have signed the shop up for carrying a number of crochet magazines. We also get the new crochet books from a number of publishers and the selection of both have increased and improved. Today the new copy of Crochet Today came. This magazine is published by the Vogue knitting folks and is very good. It has inspired a number of crochet classes for next year. I can hardly wait to be able to teach some. Of course that adds projects to my already large pile. So it is off to the rocking chair in the corner with my hook and a ball of yarn.
Have a warm day!
Day 8/9 ops!
We were in shopping yesterday among other things and missed getting anything written. W spent a great deal of time looking for what I had thought would be an easy task, finding a set of plastic stacking cups for our grandson. Who would have thought that some thing that simple would be so hard to find. It seems that he loves other kids sets and wanted some to play with. When our kids were little they were a standard toy at every house. We had two sets for the kids, one was round and he other pentagon shaped. After having no luck at the Duluth toy stores, I went on line today. I did find some but it would be hard to get them here to ship to Texas in time. And I do like to see what we are sending. I called our local Pamida today and they have two sets in stock so tonight we will head to town to get them. At least I hope they are what we are looking for.
But I guess, these are todays that don't talk, play music or move around - in fact no batteries involved at all. It is very hard to find toys that kids have to provide their own sound and movement to. Every things talks, makes noise or moves on it's own. All that the kids need to do is press a button. Rather sad, I think.
Today is a day of remembrance in our household. It is the anniversary of my Grandmother's birth. A date that she shares with Frank Sinatra......but much earlier then his. I am a very lucky person, my grandmother was my best friend much of my life. Grandma took me to baseball games, taught me to do needlework, played cards with me, allowed me to pluck her chin whiskers and listened to me. She is a person that grows wiser every day that I live. She had an eighth grade education - not all that uncommon in her day - but kept on learning until the day that she died.
Grandma was a great ball fan and would take the streetcar to the old Nicollet Avenue stadium where the Minneapolis Millers played. Wednesday was Ladies Day and women would get in free. Much of the time she took me with her. Grandma would coach from the sideline and tell umps just how blind that they were, all the time wearing a hat and white gloves. But then all the ladies wore hats and white gloves. She also would have 'a little glass of beer' while we sat in the warm sun. Grandma never drank a big glass of beer, at home she had a small jelly glass, but she did have more then one of those 'little glasses of beer'. She never drank enough for it to 'go to her head' but she did like her beer. She loved to tell about the great Giant players that came through the Millers including Willy Mays. When the stadium moved to the Bloomington and shortly after the Twins came to Minneapolis, Grandma still went to games but it wasn't an easy streetcar ride any longer and they played at night so she went with Grandpa. Once in awhile they took me but it wasn't the same as being in the old stadium in the sun.
Grandma also took me to the Minnesota State Fair, parades and the circus we would take the streetcar and off we'd go. One year at the Fair, it rained and at that time Daytons had a store under the grandstand ramp. We went into Daytons, bought new clothes, skin out, sent our wet clothes home with the Dayton's delivery truck and we finished doing the fair.
But Grandma was also a sly one. I love polishing silver to this day because Grandma made it the reward for being good. Only 'good' children were allowed to polish silver so on a rainy day Grandma would bring out her very ornate Sterling Silver and we would be allowed to polish it, if we had been good. And she would have us polish with our little fingers to get into those groves and swirls. The smell of silver polish still makes me feel so happy.
Grandma would take a nap and she would lay on the couch with her head in our laps and we would use the tweeters and pull out her facial hairs.....for a penny a piece. At other times she would sit on the couch and we would use her foot stool and play shoe clerk with her shoes.
So today I remember and celebrate my Grandma's life - Mable Winnifred Loberg your are still loved and missed but I revel in memories of you. I love you still and you are still one of the most important people in my life.
