Bombs Bursting in Air

Yesterday, the church we go to (Faith Promise Church), had a Field Day for July 4th. They rented out the campus of Pellissippi State Tech College at Pellissippi Parkway and Hardin Valley Road in Knoxville, TN. The event was from 5-10PM but I am sure there were people there from the crack of dawn.




The kids and I went a little early, and helped set up the Snow Cone and Popcorn booths.




We found a nice shady area under a tree and set up camp. Here are Veronica and Josiah next to our real estate, and Beverly, studiously ignoring Mom and the camera.



There were plenty of things to do, like this climbing wall from Knox Rocks.

There was free food for everybody, including Coca-cola soft drinks in cans, bottled water galore, hot dogs, pulled-pork barbecue sandwiches, bags of chips from Frito Lay, popcorn bags, cotton candy, and snow cones.

I ate part of one of Josiah's pork sandwiches (I swear that kid eats like a HORSE), other than that I drank LOTS of water and ate cotton candy. I LOVE cotton candy.

Everyone seemed to be having a good time, like this kid with a monkey on his back. I didn't have permission to post his picture, so I put glasses on him to make him incognito. Shhh!

There were bouncers for the little buddies, from 1 year to to 6 years:

There were bouncers for kids from 6 to 12 years:

There was even a section which had a couple bouncers and a couple obstacle courses, for kids from 12-20 years. There was a HUGE bandstand. This pic also shows some of the people who were there:

Here are more people, with another view past the kiddie bouncers and over the lake:

and even MORE people. Last time we had one of these events, in the sizzling 97 degree heat last September, there were about 4500 people who came. Since it was a balmy 87 yesterday (30C), AND it was a holiday, I can only guess at the head count. 5000? 6000? Maybe...

Here are shots of the Popcorn, Cotton Candy, and SnoCone booths:








There was live Christian-rock music all day. The kids ran around doing whatever kids do. B and I spent some time on the quilts, she lolling around and Mom knitting.

A little later on, she had a nap. The kids got her a temp tattoo, which appropriately, given her mom's penchants for string and pointy things, and her own idea that she knits (which is thinly disguised as tangling up my yarn), was a sheep.

It wasn't all fun and games. Well, yes it WAS... but...
The church did hire a guy to come up and preach, from Texas. He was very funny, starting his short sermon out with a stretching exercise and a turn-and-rub-someone's-back deal.

His sermon was very relevant for a public crowd, and very moving. When he gave the invitation, there were about 100 people who came forward.

After the preaching, the bands took the stage again, the field lights came on, and the games/bouncers reopened until 9:45 pm. DH made an appearance (he had to work until 9 PM), and he and the kids and I walked around talking to people and picking up trash. Then the evening ended with a bang. Thought I would share:


































Beverly kept bouncing up and down, clapping and saying, "Awe-tum!"
One last, which truly was an AWESOME special effect: a Lake of Fire.

Whatever, Whatever, I Do What I Want

That's not really my attitude. I hear you laughing. No really, I do have some restraint. But the block today on my calendar was a Swamp Angel, which I have done already. No sense being redundant. So today I set together my Sally Sweet quilt top. Here it is! Tada!

I hit a couple thrift stores today and got some yummy sweaters to recycle. A silk, an Ecuadoran wool, some angora, and others. And, my daughter and I walked Walmart. I was doing that last year but gave it up over the holidays... too crowded. If one walks every aisle of our Walmart, it is about 3 miles, and takes us almost an hour. Physical fitness, here I come.

I had a kid throwing up for about half the day today. He managed to take a bowl to bed with him, in my room, since it is the closest bed in the house to a bathroom. The bowl was in case he didn't make it. He used the bowl. Then promptly spilled it on Richard's Chocolate quilt that I made him for his 60th birthday. So today I got to wash a quilt too! Oh and fold 3 other loads of laundry.

I made a Bacon Mushroom Quiche for supper, with some sauteed onions and chopped fresh tomatoes in it. And then my kids sat down to eat and put KETCHUP on it. Even the kid who was throwing up just 8 hours earlier. Whaaaaa? Man, why do I bother to cook? Why not just buy ketchup and bread and let them make loathesome ketchup sandwiches?

Other than this, I got nothing done today except make my husband happy. Hey, I made chocolate chip cookies for him to come home to. What were YOU thinking?

Who the HECK is Squanto anyway?

My latest yarn series is Squanto and The First Thanksgiving. Why would I choose that? I have some GREAT ideas for yarn series for Christmas... why not go on and get those up? Some reasons:

I LOVE Autumn! For those of us who are Olfactory learners, it is a Smell-O-Rama!

I LOVE Thanksgiving. Not only is it a uniquely American holiday, but how can you go wrong with an entire holiday devoted to eating? Break out the Maternity pants and pass the yams with marshmallows, I say!

I LOVE the idea behind Thanksgiving. Most of us aren't NEARLY thankful enough. No, let me rephrase that. Most of us don't give a minute of thought to anything we have to be thankful for. In fact I would venture to bet there are a lot of us out there who think we don't really have anything to be thankful for.

It irks me that our Major Retailers skip right from Halloween (news flash, not all of us "do" hell-oween) to that Major Moneymaker, Christmas.

Every one of my kids so far has loved the book Squanto and The First Thanksgiving.

So who was Squanto anyway? He was an Pawtuxet Indian brave (hey, I know the Politically Correct term is Native American, but as a partial Native American, I don't take offense to the term I grew up with, Indian. Besides, you expect a woman with 7 kids to be politically correct? HA!) under the leadership of Samoset. Their tribe befriended our totally discombobulated Pilgrim ancestors and kept them from starving... teaching them to hunt like snipers, plant a dead fish in with their corn and bean seeds to fertilize them, showing them how to survive the drastic climate changes of our Northern Atlantic coast. (For more info, visit http://www.nativeamericans.com/Squanto.htm )

Because of these, some of my yarns are called:

Squanto - a lovely wool in self-striping reds, oranges, and tans

Venison - earthy tan and brown wpp;cashmere/acrylic

Planting Fish with Corn and Beans - pale gray wool hand dyed with yellow and green

Cornucopia - deep rich colors!

Log Cabin - deep red, tan, brown, black in 100% rustic silk

Johnnycake - looks like homemade bread! A nice thick chunky yarn.

and Pumpkin...

Well what can I say? Pumpkin is a very fine 80% wool/20% nylon yarn in pumpkin tweed with slubs of cream, tan, and blue. The entire sweater this came from weighed a mere 204 grams... not even 7 oz. At 800 yards to a 100 gram skein, this would make great lace or the softest socks. I said to Richie (my dh, who for years went by Dick, until one of our pastors' wife couldn't bring herself to say it), "Shall I hand dye this yarn?"
" No, honey... it looks great just like that. "

And I tried to listen to him. Really. In fact most of the time I do listen to him. No REALLY! But after being up several days, poor lil' Pumpkin has no one to heart it. So today my itchy fingers, that haven't had a good coat of dye in a week, got hold of Pumpkin. I overdyed some areas a nice earthy olive green, and some areas a nice dirty brown. Now Pumpkin will be Pumpkin On The Vine, and I think it is much happier.

Speaking of pumpkin, I have a funny story. We built a scarecrow with a Cashmere sweater (don't gasp, someone partially felted it so I can't unravel it) for a head, a flannel shirt, my old jeans, and my dh's ancient boots that he wore on a 22,000 mile motorcycle trip. No really. We set him (the scarecrow, not my dh) up on a haybale with some pots of begonias and some pumpkins, out under this totally ridiculous shelter that some previous owner of our house built out near the road.

I came home from my daily walk escape a day later to find the scarecrow lying on the haybale with his "head" on a pumpkin, a newspaper as a blanket and his boots off and setting next to the haybale like he took them off for a little nap. I figured the Neighborhood Vandals got to him. But no, one of my kids said to me, "Mom, the scarecrow kept falling over so I gave him a little rest." Hmmm. My kid is the Neighborhood Vandal.

Tomorrow is busy... I have handmade double-pointed knitting needles to mail, my daily walk, three of us have quilty objects to finish for a challenge, by Wednesday. School for the kids, two more yarns to unravel/dye/put up in the shop and I have some merino batts I am nearly dying to try to spin. But finally I got a chanceto take a picture to share, of the scarecrow.