Pumpkin Sunrise

Imagine me with a look of despair, I'm wilting from the heatwave that hasn't really even started.  My hair has gone wild with the humidity.  Truly I strive to not wish a season away but what I dislike most about summer is the heat and humidity.  We've only started summer!  Oh look, me grumbling away.  While I talk about my creativity challenges I'll be sharing with you some new garden photos.  I find them very pretty to look at inside a cool AC house. My watercoloring has been challenging.  I've been frustrated with so many aspects and my knee gut response is to not paint.  How sad.  Every stroke, every wrong color choice is a learning opportunity.  I know that and yet every single thing I paint I want to look perfect.  Being a perfectionist is not much fun.  At the end of a painting session I sit and think about what have I learned.  Sometimes this helps me center or balance my thoughts, my internal dialogue and yes the harsh criticisms.  This simple ha

Good morning! My knitting projects have been slowly coming along.  I started another cowl with the same pattern continuing my deep stash busting of partial fingering weight skeins.  These cowls are a perfect summer project, it's like sock knitting only no heel shaping and you wear it around your neck. My son is visiting for the week.  By the way his lasik surgery went swimmingly well!!  The electricity was on and stayed on ha, ha.  We were there for the morning and everyone was commenting on the bizarre event.  He had an appointment 24 hours after the procedure and he has normal vision (already!).  Ah, the resilience of youth! Back to the knitting, because my son is here, the knitting is seldom.  I did manage to give this banana leaf shawl some rows, when he leaves I'll have more time to focus on this project.  Also I have a super secret knitting project that one day I will reveal.  I have a hard time keeping secrets so maybe I'll spill the beans soon.  My m

Another weekend here then gone.  The days go quickly by, I'm half way through my summer break already!  Yikes and yes, I do miss work (after five weeks).  How are you?  How was your weekend? Yesterday started off fantastic.  Our son came home for the week (he is having lasik eye surgery tomorrow morning, remember when it was canceled in June due to a lightning strike??)  I had a slow day of doing a little bit of everything.  I started a new book, finished an old book.  I knit on a few current projects and I also painted.  I worked on color theory and mixing with my paints.  Overall, I had a great time.  You tube is a wealth of information and I keep saving more videos than I can possibly watch.  I also worked more on water control (this is a work in progress). Last night after watching the movie, Stranger than Fiction, I fell asleep reading a book in bed (my usual).  At midnight Frodo was digging at the bedroom door to get out.  I woke up disoriented and assumed  he wan

I have been patiently waiting for these flowers to bloom.  They scream 'summer is here!' and are a beautiful shade of yellow to behold.  The other reason that I love them so is because they are hardy, pest resistant (so far) and drought resistant.  Maybe they are so great because they are a native plant? This week marks the fifth week of my summer break, so I'm half way through?  Gah!  My happiness lies in the speed of which this summer season is going.  Summer is my least favorite season and every year I try my best not to hate it.  The humidity gets me every single time.  I end up being in the house the whole day just like in the winter months.  My RA flares up in humidity and so I hibernate and go outside for limited amounts of time. I've been faithfully spending time on my knitting projects in the afternoons.  Sometimes I'm listening to podcasts and other times I'm reading a book while knitting.  The simple projects like the cowl can be doubl

There are times I amused myself greatly.  Taking photos of this cowl was one of those amusing times.  In the photo above I'm being silly with poses and laughing while doing so.  Simple pleasures! I love this cowl pattern immensely for its versatility.  This time around, I used up odds and ends of half skeins of mainly super-wash fingering weight wools from my stash. The main reason I love this cowl is because when the winds are blowing or when rain is spitting at your head, you can pop the edge of this cowl up and over your cold head and still have a very warm neck.  I've done it many times while wearing the first cowl during the winter.  I enjoyed the challenge of using up scraps and getting creative when I was running out of mainly green and blue.  I'm an oddball in that I take great satisfaction of playing yarn chicken and winning through problem solving ideas. Ravelry notes

Another weekend has come and gone, how was yours?  Maybe just maybe the fireworks are over around here.  Every night since Thursday some town or family has been setting them off.  Luckily they are in the distance and I can sleep through them. My weekend was boring, isn't that wonderful? In a nutshell I did some knitting, reading, painting and all those pesky chores that demand my attention.  I feel rested and ready for another week.  On Saturday we stayed home, my husband did some outside yard work while I stayed inside with lovely AC and knitting. We went to Saturday night Mass then picked up our pizza.  Not only do the front counter girls know me but now the owner says 'your pizza is just coming out of the oven'.  We order the same thing every single week (large pizza with mushrooms and black olives).  Initially I felt embarrassed that I'm 'known'.  Now I don't care, I'm a regular - I am supporting a local business and eating yummy food.

Hello!  Can you believe that not only is it July but it's a hot and steamy beginnings of this month?  I'm wilting, no wait, I'm melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.  I would love Dorothy to come and throw a cold bucket of water on me.  Seriously though, if I could hug my air conditioning system I would.  Well most of our plants that we planted before our vacation have survived.  We have one butterfly bush that is trying desperately to die but we refuse to give up on it.  We have two columbine plants that are technically dead (!) but my husband insists that there might be growth deep down under.  I hope he is correct. During the past fall and spring when I was 'busy' with the gym three days a week and babysitting two full days, I was tempted to cut back on my three days a week of blogging.  I felt swamped and overwhelmed.  I felt something had to give in my days.  You see, on the days I babysit I could not do much else for the rest of the day becaus

I've been thoroughly enjoying knitting this  cowl in scrappy yarns.  However, I'm running out of all three colors so I'll be diving into scrap stash and see what I can unearth to finish off the cowl.  The above knitting project is the THIRD cast on attempt and right before bed on Monday night I thought 'this is it!  this is finally to my liking'.  Yesterday during my photo shoot of my projects for the this post my thoughts went to 'good gracious this is awful'.  I have dropped down two needles sizes and still dislike how loopy everything looks.  I believe this lace weight yarn has lots of sizing in it and makes the wool stiff.  I've knit with this before and vaguely remember thinking this.  Anyways...  I'm ripping the shawl out today and finding some other worthy lace weight wool in my stash to make this project . I'm enjoying A Gentleman in Moscow immensely.  The writing is lyrical and I find the Count delightful.  I ca