Category Archives: Random

It’s Wedding Day

I don’t really know why, but I seem to be excited about the royal wedding this year.  There’s a few reasons I think that might be.  a) I am actually in Europe at the time it’s happening.  b) I wouldn’t have to get up at 4am to watch, like most of my fellow Americans.  c) I wasn’t around for Princess Di’s wedding, yet I continue to see the famous pictures and it is continually talked about still by the press. d) The fact that I just seem to love weddings, and seeing wedding dresses (I can’t wait to see what she wears!) e) It’s a whole lot of knitting time!

Have you seen the stuff??  All the gifts and souvenirs you can buy!  Some of it is adorable, some useless, and some just absolutely ridiculous!

And possibly my very favorite?

Of course I had to tie this whole post into knitting!  It’s what I do best!  And actually I am highly awaiting the arrival of a royal wedding themed item myself.  I ordered Lorna’s Laces April Color.  If you don’t know, Lorna’s Laces creates a special color every month and needless to say, I had to get on an e-mail list to be notified when the April Color, Royal Wedding came into stock.  It’s an absolutely gorgeous color, and I’m not quite sure what I will do.  I’d love to find a pattern that in some way goes along with the wedding theme.  I’d love suggestions if you have any!

I Had To.

I finally did it.  I had to.  I hit the big red panic button on my blog-reader.  I use FeedDeamon, and I really love it.  For a little while it wouldn’t show up all new posts as unread, but I noticed this week that there was an update.  I’m thinking that problem had something to do with it.  So I updated.  And that cleared up my problems!

But I still had another problem.  I had about 250 unread blog posts.  I follow probably a good 50 blogs or more, and ever since my family had visited I’d gotten way behind on my reading.  And no matter how much I read, I stayed behind.  So after 3 months of trying to catch up, I did it.  I hit the panic button, which deleted every post that was more than 24 hours old.  Now after 4 days, I have ZERO unread posts.  And I’m commenting on more of the blogs I enjoy, because I’m not trying to get through so many.  It’s amazing how I can get up and do my daily computer stuff, and after an hour or so I’m done!  I feel more accomplished, just from a big red button.

Distractions

I haven’t blogged lately at all.  I apologize.  I didn’t even get my WIP Wednesday post up, and usually I at least get that posted.  And I actually have some progress to show too!  I shouldn’t make excuses, but I blame it all on my husband.  I never played any of these RPG (role playing games) till I moved in with him.  He really got me interested in a game called Fable.  Actually Fable II to be correct.  Last week we received our copy of Fable III.  Yesterday, I beat the game.  I don’t know if I am proud to say I beat it before my husband, or if that is actually a bit sad?  I am a bit ashamed to admit that I am turning into a gamer dork!   But yes, I blame my lack of bloggingness to this one large distraction:

Blogger Challenge

I don’t talk about school all to often on here.  Mainly because it’s boring being online and what-not.  There’s not many cool projects or interaction like I would have in a real classroom, or doing hours in the elementary school.  My Master’s degree is Teaching and Learning with Technology, so every now and then we learn about cool new software or websites.  This week I have one I wanted to share with all my blogger friends!  It’s called Wordle.  It’s hard to describe, but it’s fun!  It really gives you a visual of what you write about most often.  You type in your blog address and it creates a pictures of words from your blog!  It’s just a bit of fun!  Here’s mine!  I want you all to comment and share your link to your Wordle!  Or head over to the Blog Hub group on Ravelry and share there.  Or blog about it!  That’s my challenge to all you!  

Welcome November

Can you believe we only have 2 months left in the year?  And they are my favorite!  Especially this year.  I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving for about 2 or 3 weeks now (don’t tell!) and trying to plan out everything.  I’m very excited and now that November has finally rolled around I can actually share my excitement.  Last year was the hubs and my first Thansgiving together, among other holidays, but it was also my very first time cooking a turkey.  Just for the two of us (and might I mention the commissary only carries turkeys that are at least 12 lbs and bigger!!).  I must say that I was told it was the best Turkey he’d ever tasted.  Well, who knows if he was just saying that for my sake, but it was pretty darn good.  And this year I get to find out how sincere he really was!  Because we are having people over.  Actually quite a few.  Right now I can count on 6 people (+ 2 babies.  we never can forget the babies!) and 6 others have been invited but we are waiting on.  So I may have quite a large group.  And no matter what, I know we will have more food than we know what to do with.  I’ve cooked for others before, but nothing this extravagant.  And I can’t wait.  I really love to cook, and I love to make things I don’t make everyday.  So I can’t wait!

Not only is Thanksgiving coming up, but my brother’s birthday is also in November.  Then comes my birthday, Christmas and New Years!  I’m just so excited for this year, although I’m not exactly sure why it feels different than other years.  Maybe it’s just that I feel more like a homemaker now, and excited for all the treats I can cook while my husband is at work.  And I have more friends that like to get out and do stuff, so I’m excited about exploring new places.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been losing weight and I’m excited to see how well it continues. But I’m happy right now, very content.  And I’m here wishing you a Happy November!

The Green-eyed Monster

……has taken me over.  Ok, I must start with this.  To all of you going to Rhinebeck,  I am so jealous!  Incredibly jealous.  Like, don’t talk to me today, jealous.  Before I really got into the whole fiber world, and even knew they had events like this I lived in Rochester, NY.  Yes a few hours away, but still in NEW YORK!  I could have gone!  I could have easily taken the weekend to go with a friend.  But now I know about it and I’m in Germany!  I can’t get there.  Not at all.  So I am jealous (but of course still looking forward to podcasts/blogs reviewing Rhinebeck!).  Don’t worry though, I will get over it.  Especially if I go to the next Knit Nation!

So, I am back to an empty house.  Back to my same old routine.  Not traveling every day to a new city.  And unfortunately we are also back to one car for the time being.  This means lots of extra time for knitting.  And knitting I have done……well not really I suppose.  Frogging I have done.  I spent all day yesterday frogging my secret present for the hubby because I realized I didn’t have quite enough yarn to do what I had planned.  New plan already in action.  Then I was onto the next project (once he was home) which is my lovely fingerless gloves.  I have named them Hands Over the Fire on my Ravelry page since I’m using the Socks That Rock- Fire On The Mountain colorway.  This is now my time to complain.  I rarely complain about anything KnitPicks, but I have decided I won’t be buying too many more Harmony Needles.  I had to frog these gloves because the tip on my needle broke off.  I was doing the cable, and it a bit tighter than is should be, but that does not mean the tip should break.  I have also had the tip break off two of my DPN’s in the past and had cracks in two others.  Now, I know they are supposed to replace them with their warranty, but I tried that with the DPN’s.  Because they came in the pack with 6 of each size, they won’t replace it because that’s why they give you an extra needle of each size.  They should replace the circular needle that just broke though.  I sent a message to them, hoping to here back soon.  Now don’t get me wrong, this will not deter me from KnitPicks but I really like their zephyr needles to, so I think I will buy these from now on.  I love the harmony needles and know many people who have never had a problem with them, I think I just knit too tightly.  So anyway, I frogged these and started over with a size bigger needle.  The yarn is thicker that I realized anyway, so I think it should work.  I almost knit back to where I was before I frogged yesterday too, so I did make some progress.

My family is gone, but I have alot of memories and pictures left behind.  Pictures I need to share with you all.  Trust me, I won’t make you look at all the 500 something pictures. Just the really good ones.  To recap, we went to Dresden, Passau, Munich, Regensburg and Rothenburg.  I didn’t join them in Nurenburg.  After my Grandma and family friend left just my Mom and Aunt went to Prague and a town near Baden Baden.  I was supposed to go with them, but my hubby was coming home the day they left for Prague so I wanted to spend time with him.  I’m sorry I missed Prague, but I’m glad I didn’t go since I probably would have ended up in a hospital there instead.  So this is where my hospital visit comes in hence the reason I didn’t join them on their next trip.  I think my favorite of all the places we went was Rothenburg.  I’ll share with you why in a later post.  As you can tell I have a lot to post about and really didn’t know where to start, so I didn’t post anything.  It’s been too long since the last post, but here I am anyway.

Now I’m just trying to enjoy today.  This is the first day in months that I get to spend with my husband alone.  He has to work tomorrow because of rotation so this is his weekend.  And we have to go grocery shopping and I’m making him mow the lawn.  I hate to ask him to do that today, but if he doesn’t now it might snow before it gets cut again.  The lawn is way too long to get snowed on and we have a horrible housemeister who likes to mow everyone else’s lawn except our rows.  And yes, I did say snow.  Supposedly it is going to snow on Monday, but we will see if that actually happens.  I’m not ready for snow.  But the hubby and I are making the most of our day when we aren’t running errands and doing chores.  We are going to go see Dinner with the Smucks tonight.  It’s actually playing on post and we are huge Steve Carrell fans.  We are also going to watch the two episodes of The Office Season 7 that we haven’t watched yet.  I’m excited for a fun night with the hubs!  And if you are still reading, thanks for enduring this long post without pictures.  It is really a post of randomness.

Must Catch Up

I still have Passau and Munich to share with all of you!  But I’ve had a lot going on lately.  My husband went home a few weeks ago because a family situation.  He really just needed to be grieving with his family.  My Grandmother and family friend left Germany on Monday, my husband returned on Tuesday.  My Mother and Aunt also left for Prague on Tuesday and I was too excited for the arrival of my husband to join them.   They were there for three days and that was three days longer than I wanted to wait to see my husband again.  So I decided to stay home to pick him up from the airport and spend some well needed along time with him.  Although 2 weeks isn’t much compared to a deployment, we still missed each other dearly.

It turned out this was a good choice.  I wouldn’t have been very well off heading to a hospital in Prague.  Good thing I was home.  Rob was back in Germany to work for two days when he received a call from his platoon sergeant telling him I was in the hospital.  Luckily he received the call when he was temporarily grounded (my husband flies in helicopters).  A few minutes earlier or later and he wouldn’t have been able to reach Rob.

I was in the hospital with yet another kidney stone.  And boy was I in pain when my friend had to drive me in.  Ugh, I hate hospitals, but the one great benefit of them is that they have great drugs!  They had an IV in me and were shooting me up with painkillers before they even put me in a room or asked my name!    The German’s do not waste any time.  It makes me think that they don’t have many people here abusing the system and trying to get pain killers.  I had 3 or 4 more bouts of really bad pain again that night.  One was really bad though, I was already on an IV drip with pain killers and had a pain pill in my system, so it sure was bad if I was feeling that much pain on those.  So they gave me something….um, interesting.  Lets just say I couldn’t see my fingers anymore, or anything I brought close to my face.  The next morning they did an X-ray nice and early, saw that my kidney stone was gone, and let me go!  BUT I’ve pretty much been dealing with some withdrawal symptoms  since about 12 hours after I got home.  I’m pretty exhausted still, and my stomachs been acting really funny on me.  So needless to say, I haven’t gotten around to blogging.  And  I’m behind on school work.  And I still don’t really feel like doing very much.  So  I’ll be watching some movies till I feel better.  Update you guys on my travels when I feel better!

Sorry!

Ok, I’m on a bit of a hiatus.  Had a crazy weekend traveling, visiting with family and trying to get a big project done all at the same time.  I’m still not done with my project.  So the blog posts will return on Tuesday.  I’ll be posting the rest of my swap gifts then too!

One Hundred!

Since June 28th, with my official Moving In post, I have posted 28 times.  Good, but I actually thought it would be more than that.  Anyway, I’m still amazed.  With my readers that is!!!  I have had over 1,000 views of my blog durring this time, and with my last post I hit 100 comments!!  Well, 101 to be exact but I broke that 100 point.  I’m so awestruck.  Amazed.  I guess when I started out blogging (with Anything But Blonde) I was really only doing it for friends and family to see.  Then when I tried to create a knitting only blog, but it was just too much here and there.  I needed everything together.  For that reason, and the fact that Blogger hated me even though I loved it,  I started here.  And I married my personal life with my knitting life.  I mean, I suppose knitting is part of my personal life right?  So all in all it makes a bit of sense.    So basically I wanted to tell you all that I’m so happy to have avid readers.  I’d say less than 1% of the comments are from people I actually know.  I never thought I would have such success.  ( i know, i know.  there’s people wondering how that is such a success, but to my little spot on the map it is!)  So here’s to you!!

In a side note, I really didn’t want to forget to mention the blog hub swap I’m in organized by Eskimimi.  I sent off my package last week and it has been received!  A big shout out to sarajewel over at Bird In Hand Farm who is posting everyday about the gifts I have sent her.  She wrote a very heartfelt note about me, and my blog!  I have to thank her for the kind words!  All of you should go check out her blog (especially if you like cooking or knitting!!!).