Happy holidays to all

Mom is here, alive and healthy. Good Friends came to spend Christmas Eve with us. It was a very good night. Merry Christmas.

PS snow flurries are falling!

We made it to VA

We left early (5am early) and drove up to Delaware, over and down the eastern shore to virginia. We got here in time to check in, add layers and go fishing. It was actually a very nice day, about 50 degrees and barely any wind. Yippee! That did not help us to catch fish, however, and the striped bass eluded us. We felt somewhat better after talking to many people and finding out that no one was catching fish. The theory is that the water is too cold (42degrees) and the fish have stopped feeding.

We had a great dinner in Cape Charles and hit the bed early. We got going at about 8 this morning, trying to get in some fishing before the rain. We fished for a few hours, didn't have one bite and came in when the rain started. Again, no one else has reported any fish catching. Bummer.

I am now sitting in the hotel bed having finished browsing my favorite blogs and getting ready to knit for a bit before bed. It is amazing how early I want to go to bed after a cold day on the water. Tomorrow we head home. I forgot my camera, so no photos of not catching fish. No great loss there and with the weather being dark and rainy, there isn't much scenery to photograph, either.

I am off to knit further on the vampire boyfriend sock. Have a great sunday.

Shhhh, don't tell anyone

We hope to try the fishing think this weekend. Don't tell anyone so the wind gods can't jinx us.

I spun tonight, found patterns to go with the man friendly yarn and plan to knit on the vampire boyfriend socks until bed time. Have a good evening.

Plying. I did plying!

I finally got around to starting the painful process of plying my 3 singles together on Saturday night, did more on Sunday (between other activities). I have about 120 yds of yarn that I like a lot for youngest son. Once I have the total yardage I will decide what it will be. I feel good that I got a start on it and will have an easier time finishing now. Also, I discovered that while I can not spin and watch TV at the same time, I can ply and watch TV ( if it’s not a gripping show). I am anxious to get to other spinning – the Wool of the Month group on Ravelry is doing a month of either catch up or blend of your choice. I have a merino/tencel blend that I might want to play with …..

The Spindlers Study group (on Ravelry) is working on llama and/or soy silk and I have some of each. In fact, I have 2 spindles partially filled with llama and this might give me the incentive to finish that up. There’s some Icelandic that is patiently waiting it’s turn …

I worked on the Vampire Boyfriend sock and the sweater last weekend in my knitting time. I couldn’t do any spindle spinning because I had right shoulder and back spasms after my efforts in the yard on Saturday. That’s better now, was better yesterday but I didn’t want to push my luck. I’ll limit myself to 15 minutes/day on the spindle at least until I don’t feel any more twinges. Meanwhile I plan to work hard on the sweater – sleeves are being knit now. ; ) Within a week or so I might be joining front to back!

I really want to finish up some WIPs. Usually the number of WIPs doesn’t bother me. Right now, however, I crave finished projects and fewer things on the needles. I plan to finish up the sweater ASAP as well as the Vampire socks. Then I will get after the neck band on Slinky Ribs and complete that sweater. I’d like to concentrate on lace after that for a while because I have 3 lace projects in the works and would like to get one or more of them complete. There are more things on the needles but these are my pressing projects right now.

We bought an I Pad last week and have been fighting to get it up and running. I think we’ve done it, finally. The apps work, the wi-fi in the house seemed to be working last night and it was fun to browse and play on. DH is able to read on it – he read an article on the Time magazine web site. We haven’t decided yet whether to buy the electronic issues of Time – they have the nerve to charge $5.00 per issue for them! They have no postage, handling, paper or other such costs. I’d like to know how they justify it. I hope that our library soon works out compatibility issues with it. It would be great to be able to borrow PDF books from there. Right now we have to buy books. There are a few free book sites, but they have no current books on those sites. Mostly they are what they call “classic”. That’s OK for some reading but not exclusively.

DH is legally blind – he has low vision. The I Pad, which is *much* more expensive that other readers, is the only one that has enough contrast for him to read. He tried the Kindle, Nook and Sony) We had no choice. His limitations are in both sight and hearing, so audio books don’t work well for him. He has a cochlear implant and everything sounds rather tinny. That’s not a pleasant way to experience a book. Imagine, if you will, Minnie Mouse reading aloud to you …..

Speaking of audio books, I fried both of my MP3 players inadvertently this morning. Apparently my car charger shorted out (or the fuse didn’t do its job) and both are not usable. I cannot do without my player and audio books, so I searched on line first thing. I found the brand that I already own with more memory, for less than the cost of replacing both smaller ones, and purchased one for me, one for Mom. I’ve been trying to use an I Pod that my brother sent to load books for her, but the library system doesn’t like his I Pod. It’s a painful process to load books onto it, and I just gave up. I’ll be loading lots of books onto these two players as soon as they arrive. (soon, I hope)

I searched my sock yarn stash last night for man friendly yarn and found enough to make at least a half dozen pair. At the rate I knit socks, that will take all year. Now I need to search my books and the web to find patterns that I can match with the yarn. Fun!

We decorated the outside of the house this weekend (since we were not fishing). It’s just about completed. Lights have been placed in the bushes, around the bench and up the bird house pole. Little red bows have been placed in the smaller tree branches and I made swags for the front windows with free live greenery, then added big bows that I kept from last year. It looks good. DH has to work on one string of lights in the tree that doesn’t want to work and we’re done. I think we’ll just do the tree and a wreath this year.

How many layers can one person wear and still move?

The start of this post was written on Wednesday:

We are going fishing this coming weekend. DH gave me the option to cancel, but we are going. I will not wimp out. I have a lot of Hot Hands and Toasty Toes (those warmer things that you can slip into gloves/socks), a lot of gloves and mittens (hand knitted, of course), long underwear, wool socks (again, hand knitted), head/ear coverings and a water/wind proof jacket. No, it’s not predicted to be below zero. Yes, it is much colder on the water than on land. The forecast temps are in the high 30s to low 40s, and the wind is forecast to be in the 10 mph range, which adds a bit of a chill factor. There’s only so much you can move around on a boat under way, so there’s a limit on exercising to warm yourself up. But we’re going and I. will. Enjoy. And we had better come home with at least one fish, darn it!

I spindle spun some Wensleydale last night – that stuff is so nice to spin! I’ll put less on each spindle this time, though. The last batch I spun was hard to fit on the plying spindle. I still haven’t plied the 3 ply. : (

DH got a flu shot on Monday. He felt it on Tuesday. Thankfully it only lasted a day or so. I don’t take them any more. I get the flu (fever, aches, cough) for 3 days, so it’s not worth it to me. I haven’t gotten the flu since we lived in Colorado. Watch, this year, because I put it in writing, I’ll be sick.

I am planning to bring some fibery stuff with me on our fishing trip. Depending on my weather tolerance, there may be a day that I send DH on the boat alone, I may be able to pull my fingers out of mittens (leaving the fingerless mitts on) and knit while on the boat, and there are evenings. I draw the line at night time fishing in December. I’ll bring my spindle spinning (Wensleydale and llama). Both of those projects are nearing completion. I’ll bring eldest son’s afghan (that’s for on the boat knitting), a sock (for meals) and a lace project (for alone time, if any). Maybe the double knit scarf I’ve been working on for 2 years will jump in the bag, too. I’d really like to finish that and wear it.

I really enjoy reading the yarn Harlot’s blog. She is so funny – often she gives me a much needed reason to laugh. I don’t usually get caught up in what she is knitting other than admiring it – her tastes and mine are not all that similar. One thing she did this year that I am contemplating copying is the self imposed sock club. The difference – mine will be mostly mens socks. I will go through my stash and pull out everything that is man friendly. Then I will search the web and my books for man friendly patterns and match them up. When I run out of man friendly yarn, I’ll plan out socks for my female family members – mom, SIL , aunt, etc. This, I think, is a worthy imitation.

Written on Saturday:

I was at work on Friday instead of heading to VA for fishing. The forecast changed, the winds were forecast to be 15-20 mph with gusts higher than that. Waves were forecast to be 3-4 feet. In the summer that might not be as significant, but in the winter, with all of the layers we would have been wearing, we would have been less agile making a fall overboard in rough waters more likely. Water temps in the 52 degree area do not make falling overboard a little thing. We opted out for safety reasons. Darn! I was really ready to go - I had a bad day at work and every little thing that went wrong was even worse because I "shouldn't have been there".

Today we started the outside holiday decorating, trimmed a couple of bushes and a few other chores. Fishing would have been better ..... To make matters worse, the winds were much lower than forecast, so we cancelled for nothing. Grrrr.

Tonight is shopping, then collapse and knit until bed. Tomorrow is more outdoor decorating and then football. GO RAVENS!!!!