Busy days!

My goodness! The days are flying by! Dennis said to me today, “How did I ever have time to work?” He’s right. The days are so full and busy between taking care of the lawn, the very, very small garden that I’ve planted, the house, and watching over Mom, I don’t know how we ever had time to do anything else. 

I have finished a little bit of knitting/crocheting that I’ll show you today. First a sweater for baby J. that I sent along with Mandy. I’m not sure if I showed it to you or not. If I did, please forgive me. I just used a basic baby sweater for numbers of stitches and then I made up the pattern for the sleeve cuffs and the bottom of the sweater.

The front:

The back.

This is just a simple crocheted  shawl I made from a Red Heart Super Saver skein I got in one of the batches of yarn from Facebook marketplace, but I’m not sure of the colorway. It is for the hospital cancer patients.

Then I needed to make another baby set. I had wanted to get this done in time to send along with Mandy also, but there was no way I could possibly finish it in time. Our daughter-in-law’s sister is expecting a baby girl at the end of June. She and baby J will only be about two months apart in age. They live within blocks of each other, so these two little girls will be able to grow up with each other. That makes my heart happy. I hope Mama likes the same colors as her sister, because those are the colors I chose. First is a crocheted blanket using the corner to corner stitch and a made up border. The border is two rows of half double crochet in each of the two colors of dark gray and cream and then a scallop stitch in light gray.

I also made her a sweater and hat in the 3 to 6 month size. I have not put the buttons on yet. I also haven’t washed and blocked any of the projects that you see in this post except the sweater for baby J that Mandy took with her.

One baby hat completed and another on the needles. These are for the University Hospital Medical Center. The completed one looks gray in the photo but it is really baby blue.

Brad, Mandy and Piper are in Paris this week and part of next week. They are staying with friends that have an apartment there. She sent me a picture of their room that overlooks Notre Dame but for some reason it’s not posting here.

Miss Piper is having a wonderful time. Here she is posing in front of the Eiffel tower. Look at those long thin legs! Grandpa says she’s 9 going on 16! 💜

And lit up at night!

They will go on to London next week to see Alex and family. I know Mandy‘s disappointed in not seeing the Queen’s Jubilee this week as she enjoys the Royal family very much. However, I think she’s just as excited to see baby J and hold her in her arms soon.

Meanwhile we have Lizzie while they’re gone. She and Zoey play and play and play all day and then fall into bed exhausted at night and don’t move until morning! It’s hilarious. These two love each other so much. Please ignore the dog hair on the chair. Even though they’re tiny, they still shed a little bit. It’s impossible to keep it all off of the furniture.

Meanwhile, Dennis spent a couple of hours at the camper yesterday putting in a fantastic fan and a few other small upgrades. Those things are great. It will help cool the camper off so much when we don’t want to use the air conditioner. We are planning to go camping in the Black Hills with Miss Piper at the end of this month. That is if the diesel prices aren’t completely out of this world. After Paris and London she probably won’t want to go camping with grandpa and grandma anyway. It won’t be nearly as exciting!

At the last minute I decided to plant a very small garden. The only place I could do it has about 8 inches of river rock in it. It’s about 8‘ x 5‘ and is taking a lot of work to get the rock out of there. Dennis has spent hours making a space big enough for me to plant three rows of green beans and four hills of zucchini. Today I planted a cherry tomato plant. We still have a lot of rock to remove in the next few days because we have to get a fence up around it on Saturday. My green beans have just started poking through the ground and the deer already ate two of them off last night. It will be a very, very small garden this year and maybe next year when I can get an earlier start I can organize it better and get more vegetables.  I sure miss the raised beds that Dennis made for me at our house in Spokane.

We have had the most amazing week of beautifully coolish weather in the 70’s and bright blue skies. We have had every window in the house open day and night since Monday. I love that. There’s nothing better than sleeping with the windows open on a summer night and waking up to the sound of birdsong in the morning.

It’s getting late and I need to go to bed before too long. I can’t seem to find time to post during the day anymore. It seems we are always doing this or that. Take care everyone I’m trying to keep up with all of your blogs. May God in his mercy bless each one of you.

Blessings and hugs,

Betsy