A crafty Saturday

From time to time, we have a Saturday in, to craft. Well, CaDiva and HRH craft, I put on The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for The Mom and pulled out an afghan I have been working on for several years. That is the way of it, you see. I have actually counted out and it takes, on average, about 50 hours for me to finish an afghan. I just tend to spread it out over three to five years. 

On the other hand, HRH and CaDiva do all sorts of crafty projects. I have seen them make candy, Christmas Ornaments, and now candles. Note to the house photographer, when your subjects are forming bees' wax tapers, time your photos carefully. You see they carefully wrap wax around a wick to begin the candle. Then they they roll the wax around and around, shaping and forming it with their warmed hands. Just think about it... now you get it. 

I crocheted and watched the video with
The Mom. We ended the day with Chinese delivered. It was a lovely Saturday except for one thing.

I was sitting beside CaDiva and HRH as I counted out five chains to form a circle into which I did single crochets and chain seven loops eight times. The third round is double crochets into each double crochet for seven times until I get to a chain two space where I do two double crochets a treble crochet and two more double crochets before I start the seven again.


While I'm quietly doing this I have a running normal dialogue with the candle-makers and The Mom. Until the CRAFTY ONES decide to start counting and discussing the numbers of sheets and candles while I'm trying to complete a pattern.

In my head, I'm counting one, two, three "I think there are 18 in the box" nineteen, twenty...Wait, wait, that's wrong. Ok, start again, one, two,  three "Well if we had 20 sheets and they were two each" three, four - wait, no that's not right. One, two, three,  four "See there was a girl about 10 and seven other kids" six, seven, eight... WHAT...

I think I might have caught on a bit as to why it takes me five years to finish an afghan. Six, seven, eight , DANG IT!

MOhrh's Birthday tonight

We spent the evening at The Mom's house with HRH and the PC, mohrh and hrh. It was mohrh's 25th birthday.

Life is just too full to plan a grand, girl trip to celebrate this major plateau, such a shame.

Tomorrow HRH and CaDiva are going to craft. The Mom and I are going to watch the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel while I work on an afghan.

It has been in the works for a few years. CaDiva originally asked for it, but she thinks it will be too heavy since it is double yarn. HRH has claimed it for herself. But then she claims all the afghans. She still blames me for giving the first one away to some who is not only not her, but lived in another state.

I have been going through the pictures from our first trip to DC. Well CaDiva and my first trip. I actually have been there several times. I'll try writing about that next time, I think.

Elevators, Bridges and Fields of Dreams

 So I decided to take CaDiva to see eastern Iowa back in 2007. Why? Well, we drove in from the west when she moved to Iowa from California. But also, I just think it is one of the prettiest parts of the country anyone can see. Oh, and there is the Field of Dreams. It is one of her all time favorite movies. And it was right there, on the way back from back from the Mississippi. So we had to stop there.

On the way, we had great, small town breakfast and saw some neat architecture. Don't you just love country churches?

 We drove up from Davenport to Dubuque. There is nothing flat about Iowa here. At one point, we looked out from the bluffs and saw three states.

The river and sky are only the second and third most beautiful sites in this shot.

 Then someone said, oh you have to go to the Fourth Ave Elevator. Elevator, like in a building or for farm produce we ask. Oh no, not that kind of elevator. This is the the shortest, steepest scenic railway in the world. Well, that sounds like fun. We got our tickets and walked into a small room with steps to nowhere. Except, they weren't steps, they were the seats.

CaDiva didn't really look out the windows but there wasn't much to hold onto and as short as this was it was really a long ride when you are trying not to look out the windows that surround you while holding yourself to a wooden seat with your butt cheeks.

We needed to get up here from down there.

As I understand the story, there was a business man who wanted to go home for lunch and still have time for a nice lay-down before he had to return to work. So he hired this guy to stand at the top of the bluff and pull him up rather than walk all the way around the bluff to get from downtown to his home.  Pretty soon, other businessmen were offering to pay to get the ride too. One thing led to another and you pretty soon have actual train tracks running up and down this steep hill taking people to and from downtown. Pretty cool, huh?

This, I cannot explain.

We were amazed that the entire outside set for Field of Dreams was still there. The farm house, the field, and at that time of year, the stand of corn higher than an elephant's eye.

Truth be told, she didn't stop grinning the entire time we were there.

But then, it had that effect on most everyone there.

Long day and an early night

So look at these cat pictures and I'll go to bed.

You got me, this one is a dog. Roxy.

Yep, dog again. Cat, Dog, and The Mom...on one bed

Another early night with the dizzies

I so need to get my nails done. The Mom and I got our hair cut yesterday. Tomorrow the handyman is coming. So no nails until Wednesday at the earliest.

Welcome CaDiva to the world of blogging. She has so many stories to tell.

I talked her into it after I listened to The Mom and The Sister sing songs their dad and mom used to sing to them. We are going to lose all of those stories because we never think to turn the video on at these times.

I could tell you about the songs my mother sang to me as a child. But they all had something to do with what happened to children who's mother died and father was no good.  SPOILER ALERT They died alone in the snow.

Any way we have added two new labels, Concerts I have been to and Celebrity Encounters.

Off the top of my head I can say Tom Jones, Lou Rawls, Roger Whittaker, Bruce Springsteen (twice), Helen Reddy, Reba and Cher.

Encounters are mostly political - Ann Richards, Hillary and Chelsey Clinton and Rosalyn Carter.

There may be more but I'm tired and wobbly. So more later, OK?

You know that T-shirt that says, "I may be old, but I've seen all the really good bands"? Well, I think I qualify to own one ...

Periodically I will mention to MiDiva that I have seen this group or that artist in concert and her response is that I should start writing down all the artists I have seen perform live.

So this is the beginning of that compilation -- and I will be adding those recollections when something jogs my memory.

The most recent, of course, was Reba McEntire.  We saw her at this year's State Fair.  The first time I saw her was when I was working at a country radio station in Northern California.  The station had a partnership with a performing arts center and would frequently act as Master of Ceremonies when a country act was scheduled to perform.

This was early in Reba's career, and my strongest memory is of her sitting at a table in the lobby signing autographs.  I remember her as a genuine, nice person and it was such a pleasure to meet her. She put on an amazing show and still does to this day.

Little Horses and other livestock

The Sister lives on an acreage in Carlisle. This tree, as viewed from her deck, is a perfect climbing tree. I remember when I was a girl in Texas we were only allowed out during the heat of the day if we agreed to sit still. There were these trees, Mimosas I think, with low broad branches. You could climb two or three layers up and still be able to lean back and lose yourself in a book between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm on most any long summer day.

 The main reason for the visit was a little further out in the pasture. Little hrh patiently adhered to the guidance foisted on her by HRH. She visted with her Aunt, she didn't insist on running out to the horses. She remembered to be a good guest. She played nice with the dogs. But, come on grandma...get real. There are tiny horses, out there...in the biggest freaking backyard she has ever seen in her whole entire life.

Her Momness and I only made it as far as the first gate.We decided we could see just fine from there. CaDiva made it into the second gated area. But, HRH, The Sister (who is only as much younger than my mother as she is older than me) and hrh walked well into the pasture. She had no fear. No concern at all, and even the most elder and skittish of the horses, walked up to visit with her. There were three horses and one mule in The Sister's pasture. Not to mention a much larger horse in the next yard over.



This was a good day, despite how the weekend started. Little hrh had a lot of confusion as the weekend started the night before. She went out Friday evening with her grandmother and grandmother's friend who had the same first name as The Sister. And she really couldn't grasp the concept of there being two people with the same name and she wasn't quite clear on which one had the horses. After a lovely soft, but late Friday night, Saturday morning rolled around really way earlier than she planned. She tried to explain to HRH how sleepy she was and how she really thought she would stay in bed. Then, about a half a beat later, her eyes popped open and she sat up in bed and said, "I just remembered something." Today was the day she was going to see the horsies. I asked her if she had ever seen a horse before. She said no, but she had seen a movie.

The Sister only made one condition to meeting the horses, hrh was supposed to learn their names. The oldest is Momma. Then there are Annie. I don't remember the brown and white horse's name. But the mini mule was Maxie I think. There was a lot of discussion as to how you got mules, and what happened if one mule got the warms for another mule. So the names sort of got lost in all the other mish mosh. I did better remembering the dogs names, Eli (a standard poodle who is my best bud, although he loves CaDiva best), Bailey, and Stella.

Anyway, back to the pasture. The bag of carrots was depleted quickly. Little hrh may be willing to try eating them now, although to this point she has insisted they were bunny food and not little girl food.

While we were waiting on the deck to for The Sister, HRH, and hrh to finish visiting the little red barn, we were visited by a triplet of humming birds. I only managed to snag a picture of one of them 

We did see this Mom and set of twins walking across the pasture. But, I wasn't fast enough with the camera. They gave me a second chance as we were headed towards Pennick's sweet corn stand for one of the last batches of peaches and cream of the season. I may need to do an entire blog about Iowa Sweet Corn. Unfortunately, I have work to do now. So I'll sign off for now.