Emma’s Homeday Today!

Three years ago today Emma officially became a part of our family after having spent a week’s trial with us. She was my Valentine.

So, Happy Homeday to you Emma girl!

This picture above is one from her first year with us. Her first day she never came out from underneath the dining room table. It took three months for her to venture to the basement and she only did so because I put pieces of cheese on the stairs. When people came to the house she’d hide underneath the dining room table where she could keep her eye on them.

She’s come a long way from the sad and neglected rescue dog we brought home. She has issues that will probably never go away, but she’s become much more friendly and we *finally* feel that she thinks of us as home. She barks about three times whenever anyone comes over or rings the door bell, but if it is someone who comes over somewhat regularly she often lets them pet her at some point before they leave. In December she actually asked FIL for pets and would come inside for him and he was one of her least favorite people when we first got her. Occassionally the meter reader will leave the gate open and she hasn’t ever left the yard! Not that I would tempt fate like that on purpose…

You are getting a little gray girl. We know you definitely were not 1.5 years old when we got you as they had told us. But we hope you have many, many more years with us, Emma!

About the Alpaca Hat & Gift Giving

When I was home I did give the slippers to my sister, the hat to grandpa, and the scarf to grandma. All were met with much appreciation and admiration (as they deserved). I have had a few people ask what I ended up doing with the hat dilemma. Well, I pull out the corrugated rib section and just did the i-cord bind off. It looked great. I think the hat is perhaps a little big, but grandpa loves it and couldn’t stop talking about how warm it was.

Unfortunately, whenever we visited with Grandma and Grandpa B it was sort of impromptu and I didn’t have my camera with. I’ve asked my sister to take some modeled shots of the items for me but it could be some time before I get those photos as she currently isn’t on the Internet at her new apartment yet. In fact, knowing her, it could have to wait until my next trip back to MN, LOL!

The day after they had recieved their items grandma couldn’t stop talking about my knitting. It made me blush with pride. She kept saying she never knit anything as fancy as me, LOL! She also kept saying, “Imagine what I would have made if I knew Kristi when I knit!” I love that she can appreciate my efforts and be proud of the results. One day we met them for lunch at a hotel restaurant that had free wi-fi so I could help my mom research some accessibile cell phones options for the visually impaired so I showed grandma my knitting blog and the gallery of hand spun yarns and she was very excited and impressed.

While home Mom and I also tried to go to a yarn/fiber shop in a small town near the farm. There had been a write up in the Willmar Tribune several months ago about this shop but she hadn’t been able to find a phone number for us to find out their hours. So, we drove over there and it ended up they weren’t open at all in the four days I was home. Mom said there was an evening knitting gathering which didn’t match up with the hours on the door to the shop, but with no business phone listing we couldn’t find out if it was a night I was there. But, I’ll definitely have to make the next trip land so that I can visit them. It was called Homespun Studio and it is in Lake Lillian, MN. Their hours as posted on the door are Wednesday - Friday 10am - 4pm and Saturday 9am - noon. It is easy to find as Lake Lillian basically has one street and it is kind of on the north end of the “business district” on the west side of the street. If anyone out there (I know I have some MN readers) have been there I’d be interested in what the shop is like. I decided in such a small town that it would be better to not raise suspicions and window shop, LOL!

Tonight is SnB night! Wheee! I’m gonna need it, I can tell. I heard last week was more like the former gatherings before we doubled our numbers after the new year. I suspect though that it was a fluke because I wasn’t there, LOL! We’ll have to see. As much as I love meeting new knitters and such there has been that missing element of *really* knowing the people there and being able to tease and joke and bitch without second guessing the wiseness of letting something blurt out of your mouth. Most of the newer people seem to be a good fit with the rest of us crazy, liberal, scientific bunch.

P.S. I know this is a monumentally boring post today since there are no pictures. I promise there will be pictures tomorrow! You can hold me to that too!

Wooo Hoooo!

You cannot believe how excited I am that we got snow last night. Yes, I just returned from MN which was white (though did not have as much snow as usual for February) and even snowed for my departure. However, while overall I love Colorado, I get soooooo tired of the brown. It seems like we’re green for about 2 or 3 months if we’re lucky and then it’s brown the rest of the year and it really drags me down. So, to see fresh white snow covering everything this morning with a clear blue sky was like being in heaven. Even though it makes it harder to be motivated to go to water aerobics.

Last night DH declared it too cold for me to go out (which really was quite silly seeing as how the temp when he got home was still warmer than it was most of my time out in MN, though to be fair I didn’t have a spasm in full tilt until I got home). So, I ripped back my sock to the toe and began the instep once again while catching up on all my television shows I missed while I was gone. I’m not caught up on the shows yet, but I am caught up on the sock. In fact, I think I’m about 1/2 inch farther than I was before for a total foot length so far of 4.5 inches out of 7.5 inches. I’m suspecting with the opening ceremonies tonight I’ll get the heel turned tonight. That is if I’m not too busy eating antipasto and rissoto at our little party (little is right too, as only two couples are able to make it). And, while we’re celebrating the opening ceremonies, I am not participating in the Knitting Olympics. No need to pressure myself with that.

I do have a question though… Look at the photo of the sock and the ball of yarn in the photo above. Can anyone tell me why my center pull balls explode and look like &$)*?? I have kind of tucked some of it back into the ball so it doesn’t look quite as bad as it has, but the first ball was really bad too. Is there something I can adjust in the way I wind them to reduce that? It seems messier than store bought skeins to me and it is driving me nuts. Plus, it makes it a bit less portable than if it stayed relatively tidy. What am I doing wrong????

I’ve Returned!

With one more sock to my name even! I completed the vast majority of the leg on this one on the way to MN. I did little knitting while there, but did finish the remaining bit of leg and used the sewn cast-off to ensure enough stretchiness at the calf (though I used the cheat method of moving all knit stitches to one needle and all purl stitches to another in the back and then you kitchner - it’s the same effect and since I couldn’t be on the Internet while doing it to reference directions it seemed the way to go). I cast on for sock number two, but had put the completed sock in my checked luggage so couldn’t compare. I *thought* I had known all the important bits of how far I figured I could progress. However, upon my return home I discovered that I did an extra set of increases to swamp sock #2. So, I’ll be going to the frog SWAMP once again. I’m debating if I’ll just frog the whole darn thing as my second Turkish cast-on was not as tidy as the first one, I think because I was just doing it from memory and it was only my second time. Or, if I’ll just pick up the stitches two rows down into the toe and rip and go. I’m leaning that direction. The toe isn’t bad and it’ll hold, it just appears like some of the stitches are twisted or something. And, well, let’s face it - it’s at the toe! Who is going to see it except other knitters who decide to inspect the socks?

I want to thank all of you who left such wonderfully supportive comments about my grandmother and taking the quick trip. I haven’t had a chance to get back to you all individually and I have to admit it seems a bit of a daunting task. But, I’m very glad I went. Grandma didn’t seem well at all when in the hospital. But, Monday afternoon they moved her to the nursing home. She was able to get in on the first floor (Transitions it is called and is the area for people there for rehab rather than for staying permanently) in a private room with a phone and TV. Also, her remaining younger sister was there on rehab from a back surgery and they got to eat their meals together. She goes home today, but I’m sure it made the adjustment a bit easier. We saw her Monday before her move and then on Tuesday about noon before I left to catch my plane and she seemed really well. Well, as really well as an 88 year old woman who has congestive heart failure, diabetes, and renal failure can be. The renal failure isn’t too far advanced and they’ve taken away some of her oral medications and she will get them through injection instead which I guess is easier on her kidneys so there is not even any talk of dialysis at this point. As with every time I’ve gone home since my wedding I did still leave with that heavy feeling that this was perhaps my last visit with her. But at least the last visit with her was just my mom, my sister and myself. It was a bit more of a quality visit than those at the hospital where there were at least two of my aunts and often an uncle and sometimes a few cousins as well.

Also while home I guess my mom had ordered a book for me for Christmas that didn’t arrive in time. Amazon says it ships in 1-3 weeks, but mom had placed the order in early November. Mom had more or less given up and had told me so without telling me what it was she was trying to get, but, it arrived shortly before this trip so they had me open it while I was there since they haven’t seen me open a present from them since Christmas 1999. This was what it was…

It’s Barbara Walker’s Fourth Treasury. Reviews don’t look real good for this one, but a couple flip throughs looked somewhat interesting. I haven’t really gotten to look at the three prior volumes but I suspect this one is a bit different than the others as there were sections on using short rows to achieve certain shapes and other technical things rather than just stitch patterns. There are stitch patterns, but it seemed many fewer than I would have expected from a book of this size. But I haven’t really had a chance for quality time with it. Mom said she picked the fourth one figuring it was less likely that I had already gotten that far in purchasing them for myself, LOL! Well, I hadn’t gotten anywhere in purchasing any of them for myself :-) So, she could do this again for my birthday! ;-)

Well, it is time to get busy doing a bit of cleaning in preparation for our Torino opening ceremony party… I’ll probably work on fixing swamp sock #2 later this afternoon as a reward for cleaning :-)

About Grandma Schueler

I grew up on a dairy farm in west central Minnesota. It had been in the family since the early 1900′s. My grandmother’s aunt and uncles lived there when she was a little girl (only great grandma married of the four kids, I used her wedding picture in a collage this week). When she got married my grandfather bought the farm from them and they retired to the nearby town of Willmar. Grandma and Grandpa raised 8 children on that farm, my dad the second youngest and the youngest son.

When dad was attending the local community college in preparation for going to a 4-year college for an agri-business degree grandpa had yet another heart attack and was told he had to retire. Dad ran the dairy and attended school for the remainder of that year, but it was too much so he just took over the dairy. Mom and dad got married and grandma and grandpa built a house across the street from us. I grew up in the same house that all my aunts and uncles grew up in. My dad has never moved, except down the hall from the smallest bedroom to the master bedroom. I inherited a bright bubble gum pink room (including a slanted ceiling that was painted to match the walls) from my youngest aunt, as the room had been hers and she had chosen the color. I spent most of my time trying to paper the walls myself with photos from teen magazines because I was never a really big pink person.

Most people don’t grow up in such proximity to their grandparents. Being so close geographically meant we were very close in our relationship as well. Grandpa still had his wood shop in the other half of our garage. Grandma had the hill on which to sled which meant every time we went sledding we were invited in for hot cocoa and cookies. But, with my mom being blind grandma also servered a parental role in many respects. She often took me to my dance classes or picked me up from volleyball practice (she shared that duty with my other grandparents who were in town), she helped me memorize my catechism in preparation for my confirmation, she helped me with my spelling lists. She taught me how to pop popcorn on the stove top and how to make good mashed potatoes. She taught me how to make great apple sauce. She taught me how to dust properly by hiding money under things so that the better I dusted the more dimes and nickles and occassionaly quaters I had in my pocket. She was a parent (not that my parents weren’t as well) but without the nasty disciplinarian role. She let me stir my ice cream and chocolate sauce until it was runny chocolate ice cream (dad said that was playing with our food and wouldn’t let us) and when I went along grocery shopping to help with the lifting she would buy me bubble ice cream cones.

She has had many health problems. She has been on medication for diabetes for as along as I can remember and has been insulin dependent for many years now. She has also had congestive heart failure for over 20 years. She has had both hips replaced over the years. More recently she has had a wound on her leg for many months now that isn’t healing so I knew things were going down hill. However, yesterday I got notice that she is in the hospital again. Her heart has weakened so much that she has fluid not only around her heart, but also around her liver. That is a sign that the heart is weakening very drastically and possibly rapidly, though medications should be able to help somewhat. She will be in the hospital through the weekend to drain the fluid and improve her strength and stamina and then she’ll be moved to a nursing home once again.

How well she does will be drastically affected by who her roomate at the nursing home is. The last time she was there her roommate was unresponsive which meant my very social grandmother had little stimulation and it made her depressed. If that happens again it is unlikely she’ll hang on for too long. Really, at age 88 and as a widow for 3.5 years (grandpa died on my wedding day) should she hang on? Grandpa was controlling so she has gotten to live a bit of a different life these 3.5 years, but her health hasn’t really allowed her to maximize that experience.

All this is leading up to the fact that I decided I need to go home again to visit her. I’m sure that seems rather drastic to many people for me to rush home to visit her. Especially when they aren’t saying that death is imminent. But, I want to see her and hug her and talk to her when she’ll remember my visit and this could be my last chance. There is also the advantage that my sister got a job that isn’t at the farm and now has her own place in town and she is having a house warming party on Saturday to which I was invited as a bit of a joke. I’m going to surprise her. No one but mom and dad know I’m coming home. Not even my mom’s parents. This also means that since I was so lazy about getting to the PO and making a decision about grandpa’s hat that I’ll get to give these things to them in person and take pictures! And, size grandpa’s hat properly with a touch of felting.

I leave very early tomorrow morning and return very late Tuesday night thanks to a great airfare deal. So, I likely won’t be posting again until possibly as late as next Thursday. I’ll be knitting away on swamp socks (which haven’t grown too much since yesterday due to all this last minute travel planning) and *should* have at least one finished sock to share with you upon my return.

EDIT: 9:26pm 2/3, Amber called to give me an update. Grandma also has renal failure so time is *definitely* limited at this point. When she got the news from my aunt while visiting grandma they did not know how advanced it was so there is no word on the approximation of time left and they are still talking nursing home on Monday at this point. But I am *really* glad I am making the trip now. Also, Amber has absolutely *no* clue I’m coming. Mom said Dad is also trying to come up with excuses to crash her party but mom has given him orders that he cannot as it is a “kids” party, LOL! I’m glad there will be a balance to this visit.