Zoey, Lizzie & Piper

Guess what this post is going to consist of? Mostly puppies and Piper. We have the girls with us this week until at least Thursday, maybe longer if they want to stay longer. Our camping plans were disrupted when they got Covid. We were in London for two weeks, then they went to Paris and London right after we got home. The day after getting home they tested positive for Covid. Then, when Mandy & Piper started getting better, Brad got it. So here we are with the summer going quickly and we hadn’t had our girls to stay with us yet. The outside of their house is being painted this week. Mandy is trying to work on the phone and we figured Lizzie might be barking at them so here we are.

So far we’re having a fun time. We went to the zoo yesterday. It was HOT but we still had fun. Piper talked Papa into climbing to the top of the tree fort. It’s higher than it looks. I’ve zoomed in on them. Here they are, three stories high.

Just before we left we decided to stop for the bird show. To our surprise it was not a bird show. At the last minute they had to change it to a reptile show because it was too hot to bring the birds out. We saw a giant tortoise and a snake, I don’t remember what kind, and a skink. After the zookeepers told all about each animal, the children were able to go up and touch them all. Of course Piper was up there with all of the other kids. Dennis and I stayed where we were sitting and reminisced about when her mother was the same age. Mandy was so shy she would have never jumped up and ran down there right away. She may have taken Alex by the hand and led him down there, but never on her own.  Piper is very outgoing and self-confident and Mandy was always very shy. It’s funny to see how different our grandkids are from their parents. Jamie‘s kids are the same way.

Either Mandy or Piper took this picture of the girls on Sunday when we were visiting their house. Isn’t it sweet? They hadn’t seen each other for over two weeks because of Covid. They were so glad to see each other. Doesn’t it look like they’re hugging? Sorry about the lighting, I don’t know what was up with that.

Miss Piper has spent a lot of time giving Papa and I foot rubs, especially since our trip to the zoo. She is very good. She massages lotion into our feet and then she puts plastic bags on our feet. I’m not sure the reason for the plastic bags, but she has tells us that they are necessary, so of course we comply.

Here she is this afternoon giving you an idea of the size of the blanket that I am crocheting. It’s almost the same size as she is and it’s still growing!

I have also started another pair of socks with Knit Picks Static yarn. It is a simple cast on of 64 stitches with a  K1P1 ribbed cuff and then K2P2 for the leg. I really love these colors.

On Monday I got this beautiful package of treasures in the mail from Tammy, who lives in Kuwait. You can find her on my side bar at “T’s Daily Treasures”.  Tammy has been back in the States taking care of her mother. She has lived in Kuwait for many years and has the most interesting tales of her adventures there. I have followed her for many years and always enjoy her posts. Thank you so much Tammy. I will treasure your gift. Obviously you remembered how much I love snowman!

Tomorrow is grocery day. Mom‘s leg has really been bothering her, so she’s not sure she will be up to going with me. When she has days like that I usually take her grocery list and shop for her and Dennis buys the things that we need. Tomorrow will have the added adventure of having Piper along. With Papa and I, it will be no problem but if I’m trying to herd Mom it could be interesting with both of them. I’m always a little bit afraid Mom will walk out the door without me, but she doesn’t like me staying with her the whole time. She feels like I don’t trust her or that I’m spying on her.

My best friend Jenny is taking a road trip beginning this weekend. In two weeks so she will drive from Spokane to Maine and back again. Her aunt in Maine is turning 95 years old and Jenny wants to make sure she’s able to see her one last time. She will be stopping along the way at various relatives homes to visit them. The first place she stopping is with us. She plans to be here on Sunday and we have the honor of having her stay for two nights before she continues on her way Tuesday morning. She says we are the longest stop of her trip. That means she’ll be with us for the Fourth of July. I am so excited to see her, as it has been over a year. That’s a long time to go without seeing your best friend, although I guess it’s not technically true. We do see each other most Thursday nights on ZOOM for Bible study. Then, July 14th Dennis’ three cousins and uncle from Minnesota are coming to visit. Two will stay at mom‘s house and two will stay with us. We’re looking forward to that visit very much.

Shortly after that we will leave for our trip to Spokane. We will be camping along the way and hopefully will not have to take out a loan for diesel to get us there and back! That’s not as funny as it sounds. I cannot believe the price of gas and diesel right now. It’s absolutely ridiculous and there’s no real reason for it that makes sense to me. We plan to be gone somewhere around three weeks. It will take us almost a week to get there because of a stop in the Black Hills and then at our son’s house in Montana. We plan to have about two weeks in Spokane before we make our way back to Omaha. We’re thinking about coming back through North Dakota instead of our usual route across South Dakota. I have never been to North Dakota before and it sounds like a new adventure.

Sorry. I seem to have written a novel. 😍 Take care and have a wonderful week my friends.

Blessings,

Betsy

Change Of Plans

Hello everyone. How is your week going? We’ve had very hot and very humid weather here, but it’s supposed to cool off into the 80s beginning tomorrow for a few days. We are all looking forward to that.  We have been basically hibernating in the basement. Dennis goes out and does yardwork in the early morning and then we have been making our way through watching the “Midsomer Murders” series on YouTube. We have watched them all before, but we’re enjoying seeing them again. I guess a benefit of getting old is although we remember the individual episodes, we rarely can remember who did it!

I have been busy with various types of needles while in my cool cave. You might remember this photo from my last post. I had started a blanket to replace the afghan on our bed that is pretty old. Dennis didn’t care for this one very much so I ripped it out and let him choose the pattern.

My cute little assistant is showing you the pattern I’m working on now. It’s called the modern granny rectangle blanket. It doesn’t take a lot of thought, although I often forget to do the connecting round between the “cubes” and have to rip it out. Regular granny squares don’t have the chain going around the entire blanket that you then double crochet into on each round. It is fun and I’m enjoying it. As you can tell I’m using five different shades of brown with the cream in between each one.

I also finished cross stitching all of the Christmas ornaments for this year. I still have to do the finish work, but I feel like the most time consuming part is done. I am not a neat cross-stitcher where the back of the work looks as nice as the front. Don’t judge! Ha ha!

I showed you this first picture in my last post also. This was my Hobby Lobby clearance yarn haul

 and the total I spent was $39.56. The original price was $158.80.

Two days later we found our self driving by a different Hobby Lobby and Dennis suggested we stop. I love that man! This is what I came home with that day. They had completely different types of yarn on clearance at that store. Now I wish I had gone to the third Hobby Lobby in our town, but I restrained myself. The total I spent at the second store was $38.27 and the original price was $157.80. So close to the first haul! It was not planned at all. With the second store I was able to find a lot of “I Love This Cotton,” which is my favorite for making dish cloths. They also had quite a lot of baby yarn which the first store didn’t have, so I stocked up on that.

I had been using up a lot of yarn and had some empty cubbies. Now they’re all full again and I’m ready to go. On the top left shelves the two top cubbies are sock yarns. On the right top six shelves are baby yarns. The rest is a mix of specialty yarns, mostly worsted weight yarn and my cotton dish cloths yarns. I don’t think I will need to buy yarn for a long, long time. The two bins on the far top right have completed projects in them for charity. The middle one has mittens and the one on the right has shawls and baby hats and blankets.

And speaking of my cute little helper, today is her birthday. She is one year old! How did that happen? I honestly don’t know what we did without her. She is such a loving dog. She’s always by our side and is kind of like what they call a velcro dog. We love her.💜

These two sisters have brought so much joy into our lives. They are both equally loving and affectionate and happily shower you with kisses. They both love to snuggle up in your laps, either alone or together. I can’t believe that the two of them are as sweet as they are. How lucky are we? We gave Zoey a new bag of mini tennis balls this morning and she is in seventh heaven.  She throws them all over the place on her own and plays soccer with them too by kicking them with her front feet. Of course she also loves to play fetch with us.

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the summer, or winter if you’re down under. I also hope you are managing to find some peace in this crazy, mixed up world we’re living in. Although the price of groceries, gas, and diesel, along with everything else is completely out of control and skyrocketing right now, there is somewhere that we can find peace for our souls. And that is with the Lord. I know that when I leave this crazy world, I won’t have to worry about any of those things anymore and that He will ultimately sustain me.

Have a wonderful week my dear friends.

Much love and many blessings,

Betsy

Stormy Night!

Boy howdy, we sure had a stormy night last night. Tornado warnings all around us and lots and lots of rain. We have had so much rain this year that so far everything is very green. I wish we could share the bounty with the drought stricken areas.

Dennis wanted to mow this morning because it’s the only day for the next 10 days we’re not predicted to be in the upper 90s and over 100. Everything is so wet though, I don’t know if he’ll be able to get it done.

 Last night we went to see “Top Gun Maverick” with Curt and Barb. We went on our first date with them almost 44 years ago! I highly recommend the movie if you enjoyed the first To Gun. It was excellent. I usually don’t care for movies when they try to re-create the parts of the actors years later, but this was done very, very well. The flying and dog fights in the air were nail-biting.

I finished my “Monkey Socks” and kitchenered the toes about midnight last night. These will actually be for me. I used Knit Picks Hawthorne fingering weight yarn in the Willamette colorway. They are actually a bit more purpleish than is showing in this photo. None of my pictures turned out very well this morning because it’s so dark and rainy. I apologize.

Val, from Wandering Cat Studio, told me there wasn’t much Static yarn left at Knit Picks so I placed a small order. The two skeins on the left are actually green but in the light this morning they are showing blacks and grays. What’s up with that? The skein on the right is very true to its color. I do enjoy knitting with Static. It feels very good in the hands and yet it makes a fairly hard wearing sock.

I was reading online about the clearance sale at Hobby Lobby, so while dropping some things off at Mandy‘s house, we decided to take a peek and see what they had. Hobby Lobby is very close to their house. This is what I came home with. I was very, very pleased. When I added the prices up, the original price for all of this yarn was $158.80 and I only paid $39.56. I think that was quite a bargain. I got lots of Kroy sock yarn and various other skeins. Dennis is quite the enabler.

I began a new blanket for the end of our bed. I made one years and years ago and it has developed a rather large hole, courtesy of the puppies. 😍 In all honesty, there was already a small thin spot because it was so old and the babies just found the weakest link and made it bigger!  I began this very late last night and only finished three rows. Here it is in my lap. Zoey is sleeping under the blue blanket!

Here is a little section straightened out so you can get an idea of what the pattern is.

Based on the prices at the grocery stores these days, I thought maybe this chart would come in handy for some of you. I know a lot of people think things need to be thrown out by the date on the item, but that’s not true. Many things can be saved and eaten long afterwards.

Dennis picked Brad, Mandy and Piper up at the airport Saturday night in the middle of a thunderstorm. They had tested in London on Friday before leaving, as required to get back into the US. All three were negative. By the time their flight landed in Omaha, Mandy had 103F temperature. Monday morning, both she and Piper tested positive for Covid. Brad had his booster just three weeks before they left home, so we’re hoping that will protect him. We have dropped some things off for them in the front door without being near either one, except through the window to wave. They both have bad coughs and just plain aren’t feeling well. I would appreciate prayers for both Mandy and Piper if you would. So far Alex and his little family are doing fine. I was worried about the baby getting it because Piper was so good about taking care of her while they were visiting, but so far so good. We all managed to avoid this plague for so long. Mandy even worked with Covid patients. And now they get it.🤷‍♀️ 

I hope you are all well and surviving the wacky weather that has been hitting for the past several months. Take care of yourselves. From the sounds of it, it wouldn’t hurt to buy some extra food and anything else you might need.

Blessings and love, 

Betsy