Breakfast Ride

4/20/08

We took advantage of the second nice day in a row and rode with a group of friends to a little town about 30 miles away for breakfast. Good home cooking, bottomless pot of coffee and lots of fun. Came home and worked in the yard. Hubby mowed and I trimmed up rose bushes, cleaned up plants and took some of the houseplants outside. They were very happy as they just don't winter very well in our house. They love the back deck and will be beautiful by mid summer. Assuming the cats leave the poor plants alone.

This and That - Has Spring Finally Sprung?

4/5/08

It was a cold and blustery day.... We were at the park photographing a high school senior and these balloons were stuck high up in a tree. I want to believe it was a balloon release at the end of the party to celebrate. My fear is they escaped in the wind and there were many tears shed by the birthday child.

4/6/08

I officially started the Mystic Light KAL. I keep reminding myself this is my first true lace, my first real cables and my first KAL. The KAL part isn't turning out so bad. Of course I would like to be keeping up with the clues but that was never a real part of the plan. I simply don't have that much knitting time and truth be told, I have way to many projects on the needles at any one time. As of today I am all the way up to Row 17 but I have an uncrossed cable 2 rows back. I need to talk my courage up to tink those four stitches back and fixing the cable. Something I have never done. Wish me luck.

4/7/08

I married out of a family that doesn't cheer for any team past the local high school level into a family of diehard Kansas Jayhawk fans. When the Jayhawks and the Wildcats play each other I cheer for the Wildcats and become rather obnoxious about it just because it stirs up so much trouble in this family. But when the Hawks are playing anyone else I support them 100%. The final four was particularly exciting this year. This is a screen shot off of my TV. I did a fair amount of knitting during those games but it had to be mindless and on big needles.

4/13/08

The 13th was my birthday. One of the big ones that everyone seems to dread but I was kind of excited about turning 50. I'm not sure 60 sounds so hot but I have 10 years to sneak up on that one. For my birthday I chose to go to Manhattan, home of the K-State Wildcats, where my two kids attend school and/or work. My son works at a printing company and has a new press that he wanted to show us. He handles all those buttons quite well. What he was printing surprised me a bit or rather seems quite odd. He was printing door hang tags for a famous pizza company. They use them for when they deliver a pizza and the person isn't home! It reads some thing like "Sorry we missed you. Call the following number and we will redeliver your pizza". Do people order pizzas and then leave? He was doing a run of several thousand so this must happen at least occasionally. While in Manhattan we ate at Old Chicago, met my son's girlfriend (very sweet girl. She gave me a bouquet of flowers for my birthday.), had ice cream at Dairy Queen and in general enjoyed the day with my kids.

4/14/08

I won't go into the long story of why my husband has to dig this area out to fix a leak around the sewer pipe but it involves two dead squirrels and rain. We need to relandscape the front of the house anyway so here he is tearing out the bushes. What does he find under the bush he is working on here? Four newborn kittens. Mama had been at supper the night before but not at breakfast so I wasn't surprised that there were baby kittens but now what? I put them in a cardboard box and brought them in the house while the digging was going on. When he finished I sat the box back where he had found the kittens. By 11 pm they had all been moved to an undisclosed location. I am pretty sure there are more than four as Mama appeared to have swallowed a medium size mixing bowl and she is historically a rather prolific Mama. Would anyone like some cats? Please.

Prayers, positive thoughts, whatever you have, please, send it.

 

In case you have not read my blog before I recently had a cancer scare. You can read the posts by clicking on those last two words in the previous sentence. I thank God I am cancer free.

In late March a 26 year old co-worker was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has now undergone a double mastectomy. Today she found that she has at least stage 3 cancer, she has probably had it for over a year but was told it was probably fibrous and not to worry. She will have chemo, radiation and cancer drugs for at least 10 years. This means no babies for at least 10 years and if the tests done on Friday reveal the cancer has spread, it was found in 4 of the 12 lymph nodes, then she cannot have her eggs frozen and there will never be babies.

Also today we found out about a recently former co-worker. She is 31, has a child approximately. 2 years of age and will have a double mastectomy on Tuesday due to stage three cancer.

What in the hell is going on?

PLEASE check the girls every month, PLEASE insist that a palpable lump is biopsied and PLEASE don't think you are too young, too old, too healthy, too anything to have cancer. I now personally know three women under the age of 35 with stage three breast cancer.

First Flowers

These were the first flowers in my flowerbeds this spring. I now have more but there is too much wind to photograph them properly. I worked in the beds for about two and a half hours this afternoon and everything looks much better. All the broken limbs are picked up and most of the leaf trash is gone. The wind was helpful in that it was blowing new leaves in as I was removing the old but that is always a problem when you have as many trees as we do.

Mystic Light Swatch

4/2/08

I haven't started knitting the Mystic Light shawl yet but I have reknit the swatch a couple of times. This is my first attempt at what I consider real lace, my first provisional cast on and my first time reading a chart. I missed a cable, changed needle sizes a couple of times and made a few unintentional design changes but other than that I think I am ready to start knitting the shawl. I found in knitting the swatch that I need the house quiet and maybe even empty to do this very well. That may mean this is a very long term project.