Some Finishes

I finished a lot of projects here at the lake over the weekend. My back was amazing! I certainly hope it stays like this. Although I tried very hard not to overdo it, I was able to take some walks and actually sit outside in my folding rocking chair with everyone. It was wonderful. Today I’m pretty much alone up here. Everyone went home in our area last night except us and Paul and Lori. Paul and Dennis went into work early this morning and Lori will go home in an hour or so. I’m planning to stay until tomorrow when I have a doctors appointment and then I’ll be back on Friday! Oh, how I love summers at the lake.

It is so quiet today after the busyness of the weekend. But, I do love watching the children on their bicycles and there were even some brave swimmers in the lake with the water temperature at only 61°. I can’t believe they weren’t blue when they got out!!!  I enjoy the bursts of activities of the families on the weekends, but I do love the quiet of the weekdays here.

Now for some of my finishes.  Another dish cloth from Hobby Lobby’s “I love this cotton”. I barely had it off the needles when Lori claimed it.  She’s already using it to wash dishes in her trailer! I absolutely love it when that happens.

I finished the border on another nine patch square.

And I finished another baby blanket I started when we were here last weekend. This is using the “Granny’s Favorite” dish cloth pattern, with size 10 needles and Loops and Threads Big ball of “Impeccable” yarn.  I weighed the skein before beginning and I knit until I used 1/2 of the yarn and then started decreasing for the other side. It worked out perfectly and I only had about a yard and a half of yarn left. I have to remember to do that more often.  I weighed it first because I wasn’t sure whether to believe what the label said was in the skein or not. It was correct though.

Dennis ordered me a set of Pioneer Woman mixing bowls off of Amazon. I have had these sitting in my cart on Amazon for probably six months or so, but didn’t want to spend the money on myself. I absolutely love these. There are five bowls all with different patterns and lids for each one. They are made of melamine, so I don’t have to worry about breaking them and they aren’t heavy at all. They are perfect for the trailer, but I will definitely be taking them home and using them this winter in the “big house.” The quality is very good on these, plus they have rubber grips on the bottom of the bowl so they don’t slide while you’re stirring. Yesterday I made a coffee cake for breakfast at the camper and it was so much fun to use these bowls. Isn’t it amazing how a simple bowl makes it fun to cook?

It finally stopped raining on Sunday and we were able to have a campfire.

The wood was so wet though, that it didn’t burn for very long. It turned into smoke signals going across the lake. :-)  Lori and Nita were determined to make a fire, but they finally gave up. They used bellows and lighter fluid and they still couldn’t make it burn. We really wanted to have a campfire this weekend while everything is so green, because we know within a month or so all campfires will be banned because of wildfires. It happens every year.  And we wanted Smore‘s. That didn’t happen either, the fire didn’t burn long enough and the coals weren’t good.  We still had a good time sitting around and talking.

I picked this bouquet of lilacs yesterday. They smell heavenly.

And guess who had her last day of kindergarten last Friday? Isn’t she sweet. I just love this little girl.

She also got a new bicycle this weekend. Look at that helmet! You can’t miss her coming down the road. It’s Poppy from “The Trolls” movie. She even has a baby carrier on the back to take Paddy along with her on her rides.  Would you be able to guess from these photos that her favorite color is pink?

Mandy and Piper took Grandma, Dennis‘s mom, to the cemetery yesterday to visit all of the graves. Mandy was sweet and sent us pictures of all of the gravesites with the flowers that she took decorating them. All of our family is buried there, except my grandparents who are buried at the Stateline church on the border of Kansas and Nebraska.

I hope you all had a good weekend and if you were in the United States, took the time to remember those who have died for our freedom‘s. It seems that it is getting less and less popular to honor those who fight for us. I think it is so important to remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice and also to honor our veterans who are still alive.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and are enjoying the spring weather if you are up north and for those of you down under I hope your winter isn’t too severe.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Second Corinthians 4:16

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7

Blessings,

Betsy

A Holiday!

I’m so excited! Dennis has Monday off. I stayed at the lake until yesterday and came home to do laundry and go to the grocery store. We’ll have Bible study at our house tonight and then I’m heading back out tomorrow.

For those of you who are interested in the saga of my back issues the paragraph below is for you. Otherwise skip on down for the yarn fun!

It has been an interesting week and a half since I last posted. I got my Botox injection last Friday! They called me on Thursday and said the insurance had approved it and they had an opening on Friday, did I want it? Yes, I did! It ended up being eight injections total, on both sides of my back, into the muscles. Not a pleasant experience. Saturday, Sunday, Monday were all terrible. My back was worse than ever. However, this week the neurologist told me it would take 7 to 10 days before I noticed a difference. Then Mandy called and said the doctor that she worked with over the weekend told her the exact same thing and that I would be so glad I got the injection. That made me feel a little better, although the spasms were still excruciating. Then the spine clinic called to check on me on Tuesday and they said it always gets worse for several days after the injection. I sure wish they had told me that to begin with. I was really feeling quite depressed for those days. I was at the lake, but I was flat down on my back the whole time.

The good news is that I do feel much better yesterday and today. It’s still not great, but much better than it was over the weekend so I have hope! My friends, you don’t know how much this means to me. If I can get my back into shape, I can fly to go visit Mandy and Piper. I can fly to go visit Alex in Japan and Tara in England. I know that a lot of you are praying for me and I appreciate it. Compared to the things many of you and your spouses are going through this is “small potatoes and I hate to even ask. I appreciate each and every one of you more than you know.

And now on to the more fun things. 

I finished all 100 mini-stockings for the veterans home.  I was worried about having them done by Christmas and look! It’s not even the end of May yet.  Now I’m trying to find little flashlights to put inside them. I really like how they turned out.

Another dish cloth completed for the gift basket and I have another one about half done on the needles.

I am almost 2 months behind in my temperature blanket. I brought it out and I’m working on it today trying to get it up to date.  I’m really not crazy about this. I like the crochet linen stitch, but I don’t like the color sequences. I guess that happens when the temperature changes all the time! I’m committed to it though, so I will finish it.

My rhubarb has gone crazy. I have already harvested it once and gave all of it away. Three big grocery bags worth. It looks like it’s ready to pick again.  I should have taken a picture for you.  The one below is at the lake. They have four big tractor tires with rhubarb plants in them and anyone who wants the rhubarb is free to pick it.

This is one of our neighbors places at the lake. She has beautiful pots of flowers everywhere. Her tulips are lovely right now.

Just a few of the pots. It has just recently gotten warm enough for us to begin planting flowers. We are always told to wait until after Mother’s Day. We even saw a few snowflakes just last week!

I hope you are all having a lovely week. If you are in the U.S., do you have plans for Memorial day weekend?  When we lived in Omaha we spent the weekend visiting various cemeteries and putting flowers on relatives gravesites. Now, we have no one to visit and pay our respects to.  We will just have a quiet day at the lake visiting with friends there.

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”  Romans 12:12

I’m working on having patience.  :-)

Blessings,

Betsy

Home Again...

Happy Tuesday! We had a lovely weekend at the lake, although most of Sunday was spent in town between church, mowing the grass and meeting with our financial advisor. It was a beautiful, beautiful weekend weather wise, but that’s all changing this afternoon. Clouds have rolled in and the rain showers are about 50 miles to the west of us. According to the weatherman, once the rains begin it’s going to be fairly chilly and rainy for the next week or so. That’s OK. If it means the forest fires won’t be as bad this summer, I’ll take it. I thought I would share some of the work that Lori and Dennis did in the yard behind the trailers this weekend.

The geraniums are behind our trailer.  Yellow jackets already are terrible this year. We have several traps hung up around our campsite.  The area you see to the left where the stairs are, is a steep hill going down. You can’t really tell from the perspective of this picture.

We used to have matching beds behind Lori‘s and our trailers, but Mr. Vole ate all of the plants in my flower bed over the winter. That’s where all the brown grass is from too. He has dug lots of holes. He’s an ornery critter. We can’t seem to convince him to relocate and we fight with him every summer.

For some reason, he leaves Lori‘s flowers alone and just eats mine. I’m hoping he doesn’t like the taste of geraniums.

This is mini stocking number 99 out of the 100 that I need. Yay!

I’ve also been working on the baby blanket that  I started over, with Gracie’s gift yarn.

I came home a couple of hours ago because my back was not happy and it was going to begin raining anyway. After I unpacked the refrigerator stuff, I sat down in my chair for a while and turned on the Geeky Girls knitting podcast and knitted a bit on the blanket.

I thought I would share a picture of Piper in her costume for her first dance recital which will be in June. She is getting so big!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Tuesday and I’ll check back with you soon.

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”   Joshua 24:15

Blessings,

Betsy

HaPpY FrIdAy!

Hello my friends! It’s Friday! I have made it back out to the lake and so far so good with my back. A quick update for you all because you’ve been so sweet and concerned. I saw the spine doctor on Wednesday. He had no answers for me, but he’s going to have his assistant call the neurologists office and find out what the holdup is. That’s it. But miraculously, I woke up Wednesday morning and my back felt fine. Past experience tells me that can change in just a few minutes time, but I’m going to enjoy the reprieve why I have it. I am trying to be good and not lift very much, otherwise my husband yells at me. Just kidding. He has never yelled at me in 41 years of marriage, but he doesn’t want me to lift anything.

Today I thought I would share some photos of our lake cabin (trailer), to share with those of you who have never seen it before. I just took these pictures a few minutes ago. It is 72°F  and bright blue skies. Perfect lake weather.  The trailer itself is 29 feet long and is a 2012 Jayco Jay Flight.  This summer is our eighth summer here at the lake enjoying this beautiful trailer. It’s just like new to us.  We have it semi-permanently parked at Granite Point Resort on Loon Lake, Washington, which is about 25 miles north of our home and nestled in the mountains of northern Washington. I say semi-permanently because the sewer and water connections are put in but we can disconnect them at any time. We haven’t moved the trailer for eight years, but we’re trying to decide what we want to do in retirement. Start out with this trailer and see how much we like traveling before we buy something different? We have thought about a class A motorhome which is one the driving ones and we have also thought about a fifth wheel, which are the trailers that the front end sits in the bed of a pick up truck. Usually the bedroom is in the front part, but they are making different floorplans now. Our thought is we would start out with this trailer since it’s paid for and so is our truck.  Here are some photos for you.

Here I am sitting in my chair looking towards the front of the trailer. I have pictures of family by the TV along with some other decorative things sitting out. After all, it’s our summer home.

Standing by the television looking towards the back of the camper. Outside that window is a beautiful view of the lake.  We have a love seat that has a recliner on each end and two lazy boy recliner’s.

The dining table with a vintage tablecloth I found at an antique store several years ago. That little sliver you see clear to the right is the hallway that leads to the bathroom and bedroom.  You can see the hallway a little better in the first photo.

Our rumpled looking bed. It’s a queen size and perfect for us. I would love to get a new bedspread and prettier pillows for here, but since Chloe jumps on and off quite a bit, sometimes with not quite clean paws, I just keep this one on that’s easy to wash

Next to the bed is a small slide that contains a haniging closet, linen closet and six drawers.  There is a sliding door into the bathroom here also.  One of the things I like so much about this trailer is that it has real doors blocking off rooms, just like in a house, not just curtains. There is both a door in the hallway and the sliding door from the bedroom into the bathroom, and also a solid wood door in the hallway into our bedroom. That way Dennis can go to bed at night while I stay up a little later without the noise disturbing him.

Now I’m standing by the linen closet taking a photo into the bathroom. This door goes into the hallway, which leads to either the bedroom or the kitchen/living area

And my outside view right now from the rocking chair I’m sitting in.

I took this photo from by the gravel road looking into our space. Larry and Nita‘s trailer is on the left in this picture and ours is on the right.

Today was Pirates day at school for Miss Piper. She sent me this picture. Isn’t she the cutest little pirate you ever saw?

Well, if my back cooperates, we’re planning on spending several days out here. We will go home on Sunday for church and then back out late Sunday afternoon and I hope to stay until the middle of next week. Dennis commutes back-and-forth to work.  Since that had been the plan for this week, I know that plans can change in a moment. I am grateful for every day that I get to spend here and I have a lovely home in town too, so I’m trying not to complain.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend. 

Happy Mother’s Day to each and everyone of you!

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  Galatians 2:20

Blessings,

Betsy

May Days

Happy Tuesday!

It is so beautiful here right now.  I absolutely love the spring. We went to the lake on Friday and got ours and Larry and Nita’s trailers all opened up and ready for the summer. Dennis even has the gazebo set up. Unfortunately my back did not cooperate and I was confined to a recliner from Friday afternoon until this morning. It’s a bit better today and I have an emergency appointment tomorrow at the spine clinic. I sure hope they have some answers. It was bad enough to be laid up in the winter time but now that spring is here I have lots to do!

We have the deck all set up for eating our evening meals outside.

And I have my rocking chair where I can sit and read my Bible in the mornings while enjoying a cup of hot tea. Spring, how I love thee.

Gracie gave me some beautiful Redheart yarn when I saw her in Oregon.  I started a baby blanket and had about 18 inches done when I realized that I had made a mistake back at the beginning. Rip! This is all I have done since I restarted it.  Thank you Gracie for this beautiful gift.

While we were in Depoe Bay, Oregon, Dennis saw this cute little llama in a shop and bought it for me. Jook at that sweet face!

He is joining my little menagerie of sheep. Now if I could just shear their wool for yarn!

Here is the Jade plant that I bought in Troutdale, Oregon. I have re-potted it and it seems to be doing well so far. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I don’t kill it before the end of the summer.  I don’t have a very good track record when it comes to Jade plants.

I bought these DVD/CD cases over a year ago but I had no idea how to begin organizing our DVDs. I wanted to get rid of all of the cases and consolidate them into one spot so they would be easy to take to the trailer for rainy days and that we would also still have them if we end up moving somewhere smaller after retirement that doesn’t have as much storage as we have here at the house.  My sister Melanie had consolidated their collection of thousands of DVDs recently and while she was here she showed me how to organize them.  Within one hour by working together, we had all of our DVDs in these two cases. They are all organized by genre and I am so glad we did this. We went from having over eight bookshelves full of DVDs to having them all in these two small cases.

Well, I was so encouraged by that success, I ordered two cases for our CDs on Amazon last week and yesterday I did the same thing with our CDs. In both the CD cases and the DVD cases there is plenty of room to add more movies or music CDs.  I left plenty of room between each category so we can add to our collection.

It’s amazing how many plastic cases we got rid of. I filled our huge recycle container twice! And now everything is in one small spot.  

I have also been knitting on the little Christmas socks. At last count I have 74 finished! I’ve been looking on Amazon and asking for suggestions and I think I’m going to order some mini flashlights to put inside each stocking. What do you think?

I’m wishing you all a wonderful Tuesday.  I’m trying to remind myself of the Bible verse below when I start whining too much about my back. I want to remember to retain my joy and think of others.

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”  Romans 12:12

Blessings,

Betsy

A few finishes

I have a few finishes to show you, but I also have a few little gifts to show you too. I neglected to share the sweet things that Becky and Gracie shared with me when we met them for dinner last week.

First of all Gracie made me a beautiful purple washcloth and also gave me a skein of purple cotton yarn. We share a love of the color purple. That Easter card was very special to me. Thank you Gracie!

I have a confession to make about Becky’s gift. There were two delicious chocolate eggs in this basket but I neglected to take a picture of them. Dennis and I ate them while we were driving to the ocean on Sunday afternoon. They were delicious Becky. Thank you so much. She also gave me the sweetest little bunny lotion bar.

In the mail yesterday was this beautiful Easter card from Vicki who is “Stitchy McFloss” over on my side bar. I have no idea why it took so long to get here. Our mail seems to get slower all of the time. What a beautiful card, also in my favorite color of purple. Thank you for thinking of me Vicki.

I made two wash cloths while we were gone last week

I had both of the cuffs done on these two socks before we left on vacation and I actually managed to finish them as we drove home.  They haven’t been washed yet but I put them on the blockers to show you. They are made with Knit Picks Felici yarn, but I’m sorry, I forget the colorway and I threw the label out.

I started this crochet baby blanket on Sunday morning. I finished it on Tuesday! It is so fast. It is 33” x 33” square and it is called, “Call The Midwife Baby Blanket”. There is a YouTube tutorial online.  It is super easy to just add as many square motifs as you want to make the blanket any size.

A little closer look at the detail.

I thought I would share another picture of the beach with you. This was the day before we left, so it would have been last Thursday.  It was ridiculously windy that day. There was no one walking on the beach and while it wasn’t very cold, the wind made it impossible. You can see how it drifted the sand over even the little rocks on the beach. Look at that log! It had just come in on the tide that morning.

We had to go buy a new faucet for the bathroom sink in the trailer. Something happened to it over the winter. So Monday night we took another load in the truck up there and dropped it off and Dennis replaced the faucet. It works perfectly now. All that’s left for Dennis to haul up there is the grill and the cushions for our chairs. It’s a big job, closing up and opening up. But once it’s done it’s so easy to just go up there with the food and the clothes that you need.

Wishing you all a lovely Wednesday.

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith. For the joy set before Him, he endured the cross, scorning it’s shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  Hebrews 12:2

Blessings,

Betsy