Almost Wordless Wednesday - Building a Tomb

This weekend our church is having a big drama production. For the little kids, they're having a "Mystery Weekend." The kids will go to different stations in our Satellite sanctuary and get "clues" to what happened on Easter.

Today Des, Diantha and I went up to the church and spent the afternoon building a tomb.

Here are some pre-blocking pics of my TwitKal (Twitter Knit-a-Long) shawl. It's knitted of Merino/Bamboo handspun & has 48 hanging jewels. It will be about 6 ft. wide when blocked.

Oh and I got a new motorcycle today, a GS650 Suzuki. Which I very kindly let 18yos Artemas pose on for the pic. :D

Dude, Someone Blogged Me

Today I went to the firing range with my friend (and my daughter's MIL) Cheryl. We had a nice time shooting. My Lorcin .380 misloaded every time I tried to fire it, so I put it away. I don't get it; Richard thoroughly cleaned and oiled it before I went. oh well... Afterward we went to Wild Wings for lunch, which was more fun than shooting guns together. She didn't want to take home the targets, because ex-hubby-slash-SO, a retired Highway Patrolman, gets nervous about guns. She sent them home with me. I said I was going to Blog about them so the whole internet could see them. She just laughed and said, "Don't BLOG me!" So for tonight, I didn't post the pics. Tonight. Muahahaha...

On the way home my little old Suzuki was misfiring also, like one of the spark plugs is fouled or something. A project for tomorrow, maybe. So I have had a Bad Mechanical Day.

Someone did Blog me today! She wrote about recycled yarns on Etsy and included me! Thanks!

I snagged a main Treasury last night in Richards' Rossoaps shop at Etsy. Here on the left is a screen shot... it is called Cardinal Sins. What fun!

EmptyNestEgg also included my Blue Bell flower pin in her main Treasury, called She Stopped to Smell, which is all items from the SHE team. Thank you!

On to something we actually did. LoL. For Diantha's birthday last week, I gave her some random lavender and purple wool balls (I spun my felted slippers from them, passed some on to another knitter, sent some carded with other fibers to Japan, and gave Diantha the rest with some lavender Cashmere yarn bits mixed in), some cleaned and dyed orange Corriedale fleece, and some teal Merino. Yesterday she carded them together. She didn't divide the merino quite evenly, so ended up with a little extra purple and orange. She spun them up together last night and got 28 yards of the coolest, funky yarn! It will be great trim on something.

Yesterday we made Great Grass soap. It has hemp oil in it, and minced alfalfa... and the soap is actually colored with grass! We used lavender, cedarwood, and spruce essential oils for a deep, herbal fragrance. Wonderful!

Chives, Sweets, and Trampolines

I wish I knew more things to do with chives. I can put them in soup, put them in dips for chips, in cheeseballs, on baked potatoes, in omelets, and on a cream-cheese bagel. But I am at a loss for more chive-y ideas. And I wish I had more of them. Ideas that is, not chives. Some people actually buy chive seeds and grow them on purpose?!? Chives grow wild here, wherever there is grass. In fact, some people have more chives than grass. If you pass a yard this time of year and the (still-dormant) grass looks very lush and green, those people actually have a Chive Lawn. You can ride past a Weekend Warrior cutting his lawn and smell the chives, if you have your car windows down (or are fortunate enough to be on a motorcycle, LoL). Here are 2 pictures I took today... one is from my lawn (with the pinecones), and one is from under the trampoline next door.

If you are a big fan of chives, let me know. I will mail you some wrapped in paper toweling. If you want them dried, I will dry them first. Just let me cut them before they mow the lawn...

And speaking of trampolines, I went out for my walk today and came home to all the kids next door bouncing on the trampoline. Diantha (my 13 yo) was sitting in the middle with Betsy. Bouncing wildly around them are (from left to right): Amy, the almost-girl-next-door (stays weekends there with her grandma) and NOT MINE. Veronica, my 10yod, and Josiah, my tall 8 yos with no shoes on.

A New That Makes Most Moms Nervous
My 17yos has decided to learn to ride the motorcycle. Because my little old Suzuki has a nubby tire on the back, it can be ridden in the yard. A while back we got a riding mower. I told him, it is not a race car. You have to be cautious with it. You ride it in first gear, around the yard gently. The first pass, I saw him go past the front door and porch very slowly... and back past, farther down the yard, very slowly. Past slowly... back past slowly. Past slowly... back past slowly. Then BLUR!! This streak went past on the mower. Well we just repeated this routine with the motorcycle. To his credit, he is letting out the clutch properly and not doing wheelies and not dropping the bike. And if he stalls it, he kicks it back to life. DON'T WORRY, he isn't riding without a helmet... he just posed on the bike for the picture.

And yes, that really is his hair (he didn't spike his mohawk today). LoL.

No quilt blocks today. One was for yesterday and today, easy-peasy ones we will do tomorrow (maybe). I sat in the sun a while and finished knitting a top-secret project for one of my etsy shops. Maybe tomorrow I will block it and make the lining. Des sent me some more pics from B's birthday party. Tomorrow is her actual birthday; I will post them then. Wow, I had better go to bed. Tomorrow is a busy day already!

Ok, here is a giveaway from SweetLollipopShop through tonight, for a Mystery Box of hard lollipops values at $10.

And, another one from PolpetteClay for a Peapod Magnet.

And, one last, a set of Management Posters from JohnWGolden. Hurry! Go enter!

A Turn in the Weather

ok, so we're back. We got back late Wed. evening, and haven't had a spare minute to write until now! I didn't even get caught up on my emails until this morning.

Had to be up Thurs. at the crack of dawn to help the girls with their 4-H baking units. Diantha's age group had to make biscuits, Veronica's had to make muffins. Other ages had to make yeast bread, cupcakes, and cookies. The meeting was in the next town over at 8:30 AM. Diantha won 1st place with her made-from-scratch biscuits, using butter instead of shortening. Veronica won 1st place with her Oatmeal White Chocolate muffins, also made from scratch. In the Spring, they go on to a competition in the county. If they win there, they go on to the state.

Came home, unloaded the bike, and my mom, dad, BIL, and niece Dana came over. Dad and I took off to take lunch to eldest DS and get the title transferred on the bike. It is old, and smaller than our 450, but not by much. The top of the tank needs painting. But it started on the first kick (real bikers kick, LoL) and sounded mighty fine to my bike-deprived ears. Shoulda gone for a ride in the balmy 50 degree weather!

In the afternoon, I took the 4 youngest kids plus my niece to the Children's Museum in Oak Ridge. Met my oldest dd and her two kids there, plus a friend of ours and her two kids the same age as my daughter's. Twelve of us in all. What a good time. It was Josiah's 8th birthday, so he was thrilled to get to go have so much fun for his birthday.

Took Dana home and took in food for everyone at sis's house... stayed around to visit a little while, but I was exhausted. So far this week I have averaged 5 hours sleep a night, plus the round-trip to Ohio.

Today dawned too dang cold to ride. Call me a piker, but I like to see at least a "4" in the 10s column of that weather number before I ride, no matter HOW well those fringed chaps block the cold.

I caught up emails, ran to the PO, went to bake Josiah's cake to have everyone over this evening and didn't have a speck of flour. He wanted a "Hot Wheels" party, and I was going to make him a big, 3-dimensional racecar with dark-chocolate wheels for a cake. Off to buy some flour. The store had a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, complete with a road and billboards on it, on the day-old rack. I really don't like store-bought cake, but when 16 people are going to dig into this thing, they aren't going to let it get a minute older! Divine Providence, that's what it was. Though my BIL did comment on my not serving a scratchmade cake ("What is the world coming to?!")

We baked a bunch of pizzas; Josiah got some nice presents. A Car Holder that hangs on the back of the bedroom door, some new Hot Wheels, a Hot Wheels "laptop" to do some of his school on, some new jeans. A Disc Shooter, to ensure that the floors of my house continually have little foam discs on them until Christmas.

My dh is feeling lousy, but I gave him a hard time about it today. When I am sick, do I get to just go lie down and die like I feel like doing? Especially when I am going to have a houseful of company? So he sat on the couch with the kids and made them get rid of all the laundry in the living room. That is some help at least.

Tomorrow I will put up some new yarns, I hope bright and early. Tonight I am going to go lay on the bed, knit, and read to hubby. Goodnight!