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