As Promised

Wow, a second blog post in the same week! It's getting wild and crazy over here. But I promised photos in the last blog and I wanted to make good. So first up, the Wander Corriedale. More than half of it is plied at this point, and it's coming out great.
To stay with the fiber theme, here's the progress on the February Lady Sweater (FLS from this point on, I'm lazy)
And the lace detail.
The color isn't very true in either of the photos. Sorry about that. I'm also being lazy about my photo shoots today. And now for the other craft that I dabble in. The scrapbook pages. These are all of the recent OBX Family Vacation. Click them to make them bigger if you'd like.
And that's about it. There's more pages to do, and I'll get to them soon, I hope.

Getting Caught Up

As you can see, I survived Two-a-Days. And so did all my athletes. Again. So, yay for me. It's been quite a while since I've gotten everyone updated on life though. So this may be a bit of a long post. Let's see, where to start...

It's been a very busy week. Football at 8am every day, and there were evening scrimmages every night except Monday - Tuesday and Thursday was boys soccer, Wednesday girls soccer, and Friday was an away football game. Drama in the land of girls soccer - the coach resigned after the game on Wednesday, after the parents and girls called him out on a few of his "methods". We'll see how it all plays out. And then Saturday both the boys and girls soccer teams had scrimmages.

That takes care of work for the week. So in real life, Tuesday was SnB night, and even though I didn't knit a stitch, it was good just to hang out with everyone. Wednesday night Mom flew in from her NJ trip. Thursday night was Tini night with Ellie and friends. For some fun pics, go to her blog. It was an unofficial birthday celebration for me. Lots of fun, wish my martinis had been better. Friday was my birthday - didn't do anything special - due to the afore mentioned football scrimmage. But here's a picture of my presents:From bottom left clockwise: a shawl pin that was my gift to myself from KotS, "A Fine Fleece", a bottle of wine, "Selbuvotter", giftcard for Half Priced Books and KotS, "Barbara Walker's Third Treasury of Charted Patterns", the new Gaelic Storm cd, and two "Amalfi Coast" scented candles. And up top on the right is the hand-made card from my nephew Charlie.

Saturday after work, Dad and I went to the Indians game. They lost, and it was "Turn back the Clock" day. Boo. The scoreboard was set to be like it was back in 1948 - no graphics, no stats, no nothing. The out of town scoreboard and the smaller side video screens were off. The music - all organ music of WWII era hits. Yikes. Not the best game I've ever been to. But still not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Spent Saturday night watching the Olympics, of course. Good stuff, although, my viewing will most likely stop now that they've moved onto all the track events. And, the LLWS is on.

Yesterday, we hosted a little get together for me. The Daleys, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Richard came over for burgers and brats, followed by cake and ice cream. I requested a marble cake with homemade chocolate frosting and cookies'n'cream ice cream this year. A nice change after a decade of DQ cakes. This is what I actually got:
It's not marbled, it's a checkerboard! Ellie outdid herself. It's so big, it won't fit in the cake-tainer. But it was excellent. So a big THANK YOU to everyone for my gifts and cookout and well wishes.

Alright, onto the knitting stuff. I cast on for the February Lady sweater. And am mired in the Land of Endless Garter - please someone rescue me!
This is a cardigan that gets knit all in one piece, from the top down. So what you're looking at is the front of the cardigan, with the neck line being in the middle. I know it doesn't look like much, but it will soon.

That's about all the knitting I've gotten done. I did manage to finish spinning up that Corriedale that I started forever ago.
Even started plying it last night during the Olympics. A pic of it plied tomorrow or Wednesday maybe. And because I finished a spinning project, and couldn't start plying immediately (I've learned that you're supposed to let the singles "rest" before you ply them, maybe that's why I've had so many issues plying in the past...) I started a new spinning project.
I pulled out my "Terminus" roving from Theytoldmesew on Etsy. It's 3.8 oz of Blue Faced Leicester - a new fiber for me, but I'm loving it. And I pulled out my Golding spindle. It's a .55 oz Purpleheart spindle. And oh man, looky.
I amaze myself at how thin I'm able to get this. Crazy thin. This will definitely take a while to finish. But wow. That's all I can say.

Alright, I think that's enough for now. Pics of the recent scrapbooking to come.

In Loving Memory

Mama Fox passed away Tuesday. She wasn't strong enough for surgery, and chemo was not an option due to an infection the doctors couldn't get under control. The family decided it was better to let her go peacefully, surrounded by everyone she loved. And she loved so many, and was loved by so many more than I think she knew.
This is how I will remember her. Dancing with her girls - because even though she had only one daughter, she treated the rest of us as if we were her own. I never saw her without getting a big smile and open arms for a hug, asking "How's my girl?"
Godspeed Mama Fox.

Let the madness begin

Greetings from Slap-Happy World! Well, ok, not this morning anyway. But the last few days I've been wandering around that strange wonderful for nearly all of my waking hours. That's right, it's football season again! Modified two-a-days started at 8 am on Thursday. So it's been a few long hot days in the life of Annie. I'm not complaining, I'm really happy to be back in my little world of high school sports, just trying to convey the full experience for all of you.

So, in the celebration of my life getting back to it's normal, crazy state, let me show you my training room. My training room in it's "this is as perfect and clean and wonderful as I'm going to be, so you better take a picture before the children come through and ruin it" state.

And this is from the other direction, just to give the full effect.

And the glorious-ness that is a fully stocked and organized training room. Oh tape, how the kids will try to steal you.

Seriously, that's 1280 rolls of pristine 1.5" tape, and though you can only see the one large box in the bottom right corner, there's 20,000 8 oz Gatorade cups crammed into my tiny office. What's sad, is that I'll probably run out of cups before the school year is over, and the tape will hopefully just get me through. Which is why, to the bewilderment of the athletes, I hoard them.

And a nice stocked and organized field kit before I destroy its beauty by having to rifle through it to find a particular size band aid in the 2.2. seconds before the bleeding kid has to be back on the field for the next play. sigh

And on an icky note, this is the stack of medical forms that I spent several hours inputting into the computer, sorting, alphabetizing and filing.

The icky part? This probably isn't even half of them. The really icky part, those are all the ones that I've received to this point. Which means that I will have to tell kids that they can't practice on Monday because I don't have their forms. The really really icky part, that's not supposed to be my job, it's supposed to be up to the AD to do this because it's a matter of eligibility, not medical reasons, that we have to have them.

So, as you can see, my job isn't glamorous all the time, in fact, it rarely is. I so happen to have an amazing training room. Seriously, I've worked out of broom closets before (literally) and been at colleges that hadn't updated the training room since the 50's. Maybe I'll take some pictures of the other training room I have, once I get it cleared out of all the junk that has been dumped in it over the summer. You'll see the difference.

Moving on, I've spent some good quality time with Kaylee this week, which has only added to my adventures in Slap-Happy world. BFF Bridget's mom has been in the hospital since last Thursday night with some issues that are related to the uterine cancer they diagnosed since she's been in the hospital. So, I've been trying to help out with Kaylee duty as much as possible for Bridget to be able to spend some time with Mama Fox. Yogurt popsicles make for excellent blog fodder.

The illness of Mama Fox leads me into my new knitting project. A comfort shawl for her.

It's the Tri-Aran-Angle from Knitty. For those not acquainted with the concept, a comfort or prayer shawl is knit to give comfort in a time of need, to be knit with prayer and love in every row and every stitch, nothing but good thoughts for the recipient.

Something that non-knitters usually don't realize, is that in knitting something like this, we knitters also take comfort. It gives us something to do in a situation where we feel helpless. It goes down to the reason that we knit. It allows us to put all the love we feel for the people we knit for into what we're knitting, so that we know, even if the recipient doesn't, that every time they happen to wear that knitted item, they are surrounded by that love, those good thoughts and well wishes and prayers. So to all you non-knitters out there, remember that the next time you receive a hand knitted item. That in all those hours that it took to make, the knitter was thinking of you, loving you, wishing you nothing but happiness.

Alright, I think that's enough of Mushyville in the land of Slap-Happy. Let's see if we can find something a little less emotional. How about a dishcloth?

My first attempt at anything resembling entrelac. It's the Garterlac Dishcloth. Out of some self striping kitchen cotton. Love it, as much as I can love a dishcloth anyway. Made me feel very clever. And here's a shot of where I'm at on the Spring Forward sock.

Close to the end of the leg. I'm hopeful that my motivation to knit will return after the insan- I mean two-a-days, have ended. The real fun starts tomorrow, when all the rest of the sports show up. Can I get a woot?!?