I finally got my Mystery Stole started on Friday night. Oh..the saga. I had Friday afternoon off. So I went to the craft store to get beads. I picked out some very pretty ivory beads. Then rushed anxiously home to get started. I busted out the crochet hook I bought last week, just for thi purpose. Unfortunately, the hook was 13 cm long...not size 13. It's a size 12. The hook wouldn't go through the beads. So I decided to go ahead without beads. I got a few rows into it, then fell asleep. We went to Joann's yersterday, but they didn't have a size 13 hook, so I'm resigned to the no bead look. If I waited until my next day off to get a smaller hook, who knows when I'd get any more done? Here we have a whopping 35 rows of the stole.

I'm definitely not one of those people who has the clue finished within a day or two of it coming out. But eventually...

And in food news, this is our local meal of the week.
Tortillas: local tortilla factory in town
Eggs: bought at the farmers market in Nampa from a farmer that lives here in Caldwell
Veggies and potatoes: from various booths at the market.

Thank god for the Nampa Farmers' Market. I go basically every single week, and we load up on goodies. We have this little routine...walk partway through, then stop and have a lemon/blueberry scone, then carry on. I tend to frequent and support the same few booths each week. I hope that the Caldwell Farmers' Market will eventually take off and become as successful as the one down the road, but it's on Wednesday nights from 4-7. Right now it's way too hot to be an especially pleasant experience.

And now, Jack's happy with daddy. Catie's in bed. I best be getting to knitting.

A Perfect Sunday/One Local Summer

What a great day. I was on call last night, and busy until midnight. Then things settled down, and I got some sleep. This morning we got up and went out to breakfast, went for a drive in the new car, then went to Ste. Chapelle for their Jazz at the Winery. We got there early, so were able to get great seats in the shade. As we listened to some blues, I was able to knit my swatch for the Mystery Stole. Then I read a bit. After we got home, I was tickled to find my invite to Ravelry. I'll have to somehow find a way to keep from spending ALL NIGHT on this site. I have no clean clothes for work tomorrow, plus I need to work on a project for the residents. I need to find some self-discipline.

I also am desperately behind in my posts for One Local Summer. This is our meal from a few days ago.

Roasted red potatoes and onions, a salad and fixin's, all from the farmers market in Nampa. I must admit, the chicken isn't local. Unfortunately, the same day I signed up OLS, we discovered our freezer in the garage had lost power, and we lost all of our meat. This is some chicken we've had in the freezer in the house that we needed to use up. But the pesto on it is from our local Coop. It's a start. We need to find a source for local beef/chicken. I'll keep working on that.

And now...the dilemma...laundry or Ravelry. HMMMMM....

G's Lucky Day

7-7-07. The day thousands of couples want to get married, as they'll have good luck and long and happy marriages. Well, today is the day G turns 38. So in honor of his birthday, we went to the yarn store. We walked out with $110 worth of yarn, none of it earmarked for him. See...isn't he lucky? His comment as he carried the bag out of the store was "YAY. Happy Birthday to Me!"

I felt guilty.

So I bought him this:


Just to qualify this...we've been contemplating buying a new car for a few months. And we'd done a fair bit of internet research and pretty much knew what we wanted. It's a Ford Edge. We bought it off the showroom floor. I've heard about this before, but never knew anyone to do it. Weird, huh? But this car is sweet...and now Catie and Jack's car seats won't be right next to each other. And we won't have to say things like, "Catie, get your finger out of your brother's mouth. Quit poking him in the eye." At least until they're older. Hopefully by then, he'll be big enough to fight back.

Back to the knitting, though. I have to admit to being a joiner. After I told myself I wasn't going to do any more knitalongs. I signed up for the Mystery Stole 3 after reading about it on Stephanie's blog. Me and about 2 billion other knitters. Including the girl at the counter at the yarn shop where I bought the yarn today. Misti Alpaca laceweight, in ivory. I'm on call tonight, but I'm hoping to get my swatch done in the next 24 hours. I'd like to use the beads as well, so I need to find a place to get those as well. But we'll start with the swatch and go from there.

But for now...we're loving that new car smell.

A New(ish) Look...Sans photos

I decided it was time to clean up the blog. Get rid of some of the outdated links/buttons on the sidebar. Maybe change the template and color scheme. Well, I deleted a bunch of stuff. On purpose at first. Then some other stuff that wasn't on purpose. So now I've been trying to put some stuff back on. So please bear with me as I try to jazz this thing up a bit over the next few days/weeks.

I'm also late for my One Local Summer post from week 1. Along those deleting lines, we had a moment at our house Saturday night. I had started to post about our local meal, and couldn't find the pictures anywhere. Just before that, G had deleted a bunch of pics from the camera. Something about too full or too slow or something. But alas...no pictures of the meal. And even worse than that, no pictures of Catie's birthday party.

G: "I thought you saved them."
Me: "No, I thought YOU saved them".

I'm happy to report, that as of midnight last night, the pictures are back. The local meal. Catie's birthday. Old pics from months ago. All of them. We had to download some free software and buy a $20 card to read our camera's memory card. But it worked...we somehow recovered our accidentally deleted pictures. Best damn $20 we've spent in a long time. Thank goodness for Best Buy.

So, that's about all for now. I'm going to try and learn how to spice this site up a bit. Any tips?