Who's the daddy?

Can you tell which

is

which?

Isn't life interesting? ;-)

Garden Tuesday ~ Natures bling

This is the prettiest thing that has grown in my garden all season! Just look at the sparkling, gold collar on this delicately shaded jade green form. Amazing!

This will be my entry for Sidewalk Shoes Garden Tuesday.

Makes me giggle....

I love my fil!

Hello all!

So, I must say, I absolutely adore my FIL! That's Father-in-law, in case you didn't know. He has been so, so kind in making me things. First as you may recall was my lovely, one of a kind, spice rack.

It has been so wonderful to be able to have ALL my spices in one location! It's certainly made my cooking time faster now that I don't have to go searching for any particular item!

And so now, he has taken pitty on me and made me a beautiful oak book shelf that looks like it's a built in! He moved a light switch to the other side of the wall which is so wonderful. I'm not sure why it is that it wasn't like that to begin with. But it's done now and it makes sense!

;-)

Anyhow, as usual. In my excitement over having this wonderful new item made for me, I forgot to take a bunch of before pictures. I took a few of the book shelf when it was already installed and I was beginning to stain it. So here is that photo.

In the picture you can see how dark it is. I ended up going over it with another color stain to add a bit more red to it. I was trying to match it up to the stain that was already on the window and door frames.

It's still a little more brown than I wanted. But I was nervous about making it too red. The shelf actually matches the color of the baseboard more than the window and door frames. And the T.V. is something that get's moved from one room to another. So the cords are all showing. But, I'm okay with that. Normally the T.V. is in the sun room which is kind of our small family room.

So, I've got most of my cookbooks on the shelf. I've downsized quite a bit! Now I need to figure out how to use the bottom of half of the shelves as a pantry too. I don't want to nail or screw any holes into the shelf so that limits how I can use it as a pantry. But I'm not thrilled with the plastic containers sitting out there in the open either. I like my cracker tin that is on the bottom. I would love to have some other tins to maybe store my pasta's in. Or, maybe some pretty glass jars? OH! Maybe some larger WECK jars..... Hmmm, I might have to see if I can get my hands on some of the large jars.

And so this project continues. ;-)

Hope everyone had a great weekend! See you soon!

OMG! That Yarn Harlot....

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am over the Yarn Harlot and her never ending bevy of adorable baby knits? Perhaps, *annoyed* is not the correct word I want to use. Envious is definitely more appropriate! She is the reason why my grandbaby has so little in the way of Nana-knitted items. (I hope the Yarn Harlot doesn't mind me using her as my new excuse!) The Yarn Harlot has churned out four baby items in just that many days. As for me.... I've managed to complete 16 rows of my baby bonnet that I started 10 days ago!

Every morning I go on line and see that she has yet another item up for show and tell. And I sit here wondering how the heck does she do it!?! Okay, I know that she's been knitting for a long time and all. And I've only started three years ago. And yes, I have gone on-line and I have seen her actually knitting! And it doesn't seem human to be able to knit THAT fast!) But still! I'm depressed. I'm bummed. I can't seem to *get over it*!

AND to top it off.... I'm also working on a baby quilt for my niece who is about to have a little girl this month. And quilting and trying to knit using silk hankies does not equal easy or smart!

I have this problem where when I quilt, the middle finger on my left hand becomes all prickled. (I think that's a word. I'm too frustrated right now to look it up to make sure.) So then when I go to knit with the silk hanky, my fingers get all tangled up with silk fibers. It was already difficult even before I started quilting. No matter how well moisturized you think your hands are, the silk will tell you how rough your skin really is!

So, this is the quilt which is still needing quite a bit of stitching done to it.

And here is the baby bonnet.

This is a whole new technique of knitting for me. And this idea was taken from reading the Yarn Harlots blog. She made the cutest, most adorable baby bonnet out of silk hankies and I wanted to make the same exact bonnet. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out what pattern she used, which probably wouldn't have made a bit of difference had she told me because I'm sure that pattern was WAY out of my league anyhow. But, the idea of using silk hankies was so overwhelmingly fascinating to me that I decided to see if there were some Youtube videos out there explaining how to knit straight from the hankies. And sure enough, there were! So, although I don't have the antique-y looking pattern that she used, I did find something that looks like a bonnet and I'm making it. We'll see how cute it turns out. As you can see, the fiber is all wonky. That is because I did not quaddrupple check my hankie strand before I began knitting with it. But, I believe I've gotten the hang of it and it's looking a bit more even now.

But, back to my title...

I think I'll just stop reading the Yarn Harlots blog until I can get a few more knitted baby items of my own completed. Or.... until Jen's baby is born! ;-)

Okay, back to the needles........