Winter Storm

This is what we woke up to this morning.  The fir trees have a light coating of ice that luckily didn’t get thicker as the day progressed.  The snow started in the morning and was fine but continuous all day with strong winds.  So far we don’t have drifting yet anyway.  The snow has gotten heavier during the afternoon so wonder what it will be like tomorrow.  The weather people say snow and strong winds with a high temperature of 4 so they are telling us that the wind chill temperatures may be down to -40 F.  Now that is COLD!

John opened up the barn and have places for all the horses and calves to get out of the wind.  The cows are over in an area that has a very protected area that is out of the wind so they will be ok too.  You never know how the storm will finally play out but need to be prepared for the worst.   The large snow blower is on the tractor so now it is a waiting game.

The wind is from the north so the ice is only on the north side of the trees.  So glad we didn’t get more of the ice as that can do lots of damage in a hurry.  I didn’t do too much walking around out there this morning as the wind was too, too cold.

I canceled my PT appointment this morning as it would have not been a smart choice to drive the 45 miles up and back when the weather was marginal at best.  I tried to do my exercises an extra time today to make up for it and hopefully when I go on Thursday the weather will have calmed down by then.    The only time I went out was to take these photos and that was long enough for me. 

Lynn

Purple Dishcloth

 A little over half of a purple dishcloth knitted on the new knitting needles.  Again, Sugar N Cream yarn purchased at Wallmart.

Ta Da, the dishcloth is done.  The final corner (upper right corner) always looks a little funny.  Any ideas out there on how how to make it look like the starting corner on the lower left?  I know it is a dish cloth but but wouldn't mind improving my skills.  I do need to work on keeping my tension the same throughout as some rows are a little farther apart because I am knitting looser.  Maybe if I keep knitting and knitting these skills will come.

On another note - Physical Therapy is helping little by little to increase my range of motion on my right shoulder.  It does get time consuming to do the exercises several times a day but can see the results starting to happen.

Lynn

Broken Knitting Needles

When I was finishing up the yellow dishcloth the tips broke off of both knitting needles on the circular set of needles I was using.  The needle on the left is one of the needles with the tip broken off - the one on the right is a the same brand needle but different size needle with the tip intact.

I dug these 12" straight needles out of my knitting stuff and used them to finish the yellow dishcloth.  I don't like using these long needles as I am always hitting the arms of my chair with them.  They are very awkward to hold and knit while sitting in my recliner.

 When I was in Hastings the other day I purchased a better set of circular needles - the ones on the right in the photo.  The old broken needles were size 7 but the new ones I purchased are size 6.  I have found that size numbers on knitting needles are not universal so the sales clerk measured the ones I had been using with a plastic needle sizer that had holes of the different sizes - must have been the sizes of these Addi Turbo needles.  Anyway my 7s were a little smaller than the 7 Addi Turbo and a little larger than the 6 Addi Turbo.  Since I knit loose at times I decided to purchase the size 6.

These needles are really slick so are very easy to knit on.  They are more expensive to buy too costing around $16.  Don't remember what the Balene II cost but think it was in the $5 to $7 range but if they break after using them for a while it is not worth the cost.  I have made quite a few dishcloths with the set that broke but will enjoy these new slick metal ones for years.

Until Later,
Lynn

Knitted Dishcloth - Yellow

Another dishcloth finished – this time with a creamy yellow of the 100% cotton Sugar N Cream yarn.  Not fancy knitting but it is keeping my hands busy.  It takes a couple of evenings to make one dishcloth as I am not so fast, especially knitting the last half when I have to decrease by knitting two stitches together, twice on each row.  Those decreases take me a while as I am just not too coordinated as yet anyway.  Wish I could figure out a faster way to do them.

Lynn

Multicolored Dishcloth

Finished another one – not perfect but good enough to be a dishcloth.
Lynn

Physical Therapy

I am now doing Physical Therapy for my shoulder and additional therapy for my ankle.  I had my first appointment  and therapy session and after this first session I got a printout of the different exercises I need to do here at home to increase my mobility and strength between PT visits. 

I was so exhausted from the 1 1/2 hour session I dozed on the way home…don’t worry John was driving!  I took an hour nap after getting home too.  I don’t remember being that tired in a long time and worried the nap would make it hard to get to sleep that night but must have needed that sleep as I slept all night long.

I did do the series of exercises again before I went to bed a couple of times and started out the next day with them.  If I am to get my range of motion back I have to be diligent about doing them several times a day.  Let me clue you in….they are not fun and are uncomfortable and take time I would rather be doing something else.  I am not saying I have pain, just discomfort but if I don’t stretch a little more each time I won’t get better.

I do have some special equipment I am using – the pulley system is one I had from when I had the left shoulder fixed 7 years ago.  I have a couple of different exercises I do with this apparatus.  It very conveniently hangs from a closed door and I can do the exercises a few times every time I walk by.

I use towels, belts, walls and corners of the walls for some of the other exercises.  I use this foam slant piece to help stretch my foot and ankle.  Actually this area of my house sort of looks like the Physical Therapy gym.  It does make it handy though to have it all out where I can see it as well as reminds me to do them frequently during the day.

Guess it is time to go do the series of exercises again as sitting here with the laptop sure isn’t stretching the shoulder and ankle. 

Happy Exercising to Me,
Lynn

What You See

 

This is the photo I posted yesterday but it was cropped a little from this original.  Have you wondered what things are in a photo from someone else, things besides the obvious?  Well, here's your chance to find out what is in this photo.

I hope I have it large enough for you to read the green writing on the photo...if not you will have to click on it to make it larger in another window.

Let's get started on the obvious....the moon in the sky.  As I told you before this was at 7:30 in the morning and it was just beautiful.  This photo is looking west of our house.  To give you an idea of distance find the red X on the left side of the photo.  From that red X to our place is 1/2 mile.  The neighbor farms you can see in the distance are 1 1/2 mile to 2 1/2 miles from here.  Even though we live where the terrain is fairly flat we can see a long distance because of the lack of trees.  Most of the ground is devoted to farming and this time of year there are no standing crops to interfere with the view.  The golden colored field is the harvested corn stalks laying on the ground.  You can see the rows on the left where the snow is laying between them.

The row of tall poles along the highway hold the electric power lines.  I don't know if you can see or not but the one closest with the "Electric Power Pole" label on it is where the overhead wires end.  (Power to our neighbors 1 mile east get their power from the east so this line ended at our place.)  We got permission from the owner of the field west of our building site to have the power line buried from there into our yard and this saved us from having our driveway ripped up to bury the line.  It comes into a main breaker box out by the shop building.  From there we have underground lines to the house, barn, shop and grain bins.  It is nice not to have overhead lines criss-crossing the farm, especially when we get freezing rain as that can bring the lines down.

We put up the fence just behind the trees to help keep any livestock (cattle or horses) from running through and across the lawn.  It works if they are on the west side of that fence but we don't have a gate between the fence and the west side of the garage so guess what?   When the cows got out last spring they just ran in, tromped around sinking into the lawn and deposited....for a better word I will say "cow pies", if you get my drift.  

We planted the Blue Spruce and Douglas Fir trees for a wind break when we first started working on the place, before we remodeled and moved over here.  The firs were supposed to grow faster than the spruce so put them on the outside row but the opposite has been true so far and they are skinnier and shorter than the spruce.  The trees were only about 2 feet tall 7 years ago when they were planted and now some of them are 7" tall or more.  They help stop the wind and snow but there are still gaps between them that will take a few more years to fill in.

The two ugly tall trees are old, old black walnut trees that I want to have removed and have wanted to have removed since we took out some other old trees.  John thinks they look fine and that the place would look bare without them and another UGLY black walnut tree that is only about 6 feet from our bedroom wall.  The trouble with these trees is that quite a few of the large branches are dead plus the one on lawn by our bedroom drops the walnuts on the lawn in late summer and fall every year.  What a pain to pick them all up!  If you don't get them right away after they fall the outside husk gets mushy and will stain your hands.  Of course John thinks they are fine if left on the ground but I don't want to hit them with the lawn mower, they sprout in spring and they kill the grass where they lay so I pick them up.  Last fall John paid the grandkids to pick them up as I couldn't bend due to the healing ankle.  The 4 grandkids thought that was easy money but they each picked up a 5 gal. bucket full which is a lot of nuts.  We hate the taste of black walnut nuts so the buckets got dumped in the trash.  Black walnut trees are toxic to many plants and that includes it's bark, roots, husks and leaves.   Enough about how I hate those trees.

Coming closer to the house you see the garden hose reel on the left...love those reels as it sure saves rolling up the hose every time you use it by hand.  At the very bottom of this photo is the base of a bird bath.  Last year's snow broke the actual basin the birds used as the snow drift was piled about 4 feet above it and the weight just broke it into pie shaped pieces.  I was going to shop for a new bird bath this summer but you know after I broke my ankle in June I didn't do a lot of things I had planned on but watch out this summer.  I hope to play catch up on the flowers and yard.

The pale golden vegetation is my asparagus bed....I can't wait each spring for it to come up so I can start eating it.  I didn't like asparagus as a child but can't get enough of it now.   The Knock Out Rose was given to me by my quilt guild when I finished being president one year.  I love it as it blooms all summer and really doesn't take much care.  The other flower stems still standing are the old fashioned light purple phlox and the remains of the daises.   I love the daisies but have to be vicious about thinning them each year as they really want to take over.  They seed down easily and some will sprout during the summer and those plants will green up in the spring so there are always lots and lots of daisies.

That is pretty much it for this photo....you didn't know you were looking at so much did you?

Lynn

Morning Moon The Day After A Storm

A week ago we got a snow storm overnight but luckily we didn’t get too much snow with that storm.  The next morning as I was walking through my sewing room at 7:30 am, I looked out the window and was amazed to see the large moon hanging in the western sky.  Grabbed my camera and took this photo through my dirty window.  I am surprised that there were no blotches on the resulting photo from the dirt on the window.  The moon was full and really pretty and I was in no shape to go outside to get the photo.  With my arm in a sling and a limp from my healing ankle it would have been like me to fall down if I would have ventured out to get a better shot.   This one turned out pretty good despite the dirty window.
At 10:00 am the state snow plow came along cleaning the snow that did land on the highway.  The truck was moving along pretty fast since there wasn’t much to clean off this time.  We are thankful the highway gets cleared off early each storm, sometimes we hear them go by even before we are out of bed in the morning.  So a big thank you to those road employees for the hours they put in keeping our roads in good shape!


Clear and cold today,  there is a chance of a storm tonight but the rest of the week the temperatures are supposed to be above freezing.  We sure hope some of the snow laying around the yard melts this week as we do have a few small drifts in the yard from the wind that blew that snow around over the weekend.  I keep telling myself this winter isn’t as bad as last year but it is hard to feel it is better when we have had so much really cold weather and snow storms or nasty weather about once a week.

Until later,
Lynn

Tea Time

I am a tea drinker not a coffee drinker…I never could get over the biter taste of coffee so finally gave up trying to like coffee and stuck with tea which I enjoy very much, hot or cold.

I like to have hot tea and would heat 2-3 cups of water in microwave each morning and would brew my tea using loose leaf tea in a tea ball strainer but always had to re-heat the brewed tea or heat more water as it always got cold.  Not a huge problem but I like my hot tea HOT.  I have one of the pretty glass coffee presses and it works but just doesn’t keep my tea hot.

Before Christmas I was looking through Amazon.com and came across several different insulated coffee/tea presses.  I immediately knew this would work for me…easy to use, easy to clean and hot tea for several hours, plus they looked pretty.

I settled on this stainless steel insulated pot and ordered it and have not been sorry I did.  I LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT.  It holds 3 cups of water which fills about 2 1/2 mugs of tea which is just the right amount for me.   I like that I can put the tea leaves in the pot and when I am finished and need to clean up I can just rinse it out and the leaves go down the disposal.  I always had tea leaves sticking to the tea ball strainer so it is nice to just rinse out the pot and swish…they are gone!

The lid/press looks like the above.  Some tea leaves might stick to the bottom but a quick rinse and they come loose and down the drain like the rest of the used leaves. 

I do like that it looks pretty sitting on my table or by the computer as well as the fact that it keeps my tea hot for several hours.   So far I am not putting it in the dishwasher to keep the outside shiny and unscratched.  I dry it immediately too so it won’t water spot. 

Here is the web page on Amazon.com for this particular pot I ordered but look at all the other coffee presses for other models. 

Tea, tea, tea, so many flavors and kinds – I love all kinds but right now my two favorites are Oolong and Lychee Black.  I love the semi-sweet flavor of the Lychee Black so am choosing to drink it most mornings.  I would like to drink tea all day long but need to have decaffeinated tea or water in the afternoons if I want to sleep at night so usually opt for drinking water which is good for me anyway. 

Nice sunny day today.  We didn't get much more snow last night and John estimates we had about 6-8" and it is very light and fluffy but slick as John found out this morning.  He had to go to town and another guy slid through an intersection and they crunched together.  Our pickup has a dent over the front wheel, passenger's side, plus did some damage under the headlight too.   The pickup is old but it will still need to be fixed...guess we are lucky no one was hurt.  John said it was kind of like slow motion as he hit the brakes too when he saw the guy coming across but they both slid together - Crunch. 

I have quilt guild tonight and I will have John drive me in as I am not driving yet.  We have not had a meeting since November so it will be good to see everyone.

Lynn

Snow

Backside of our house.

Today we are getting a snow storm but so far we are just getting falling snow, not blowing snow.  That is unsual for us in Nebraska as most times as the snow falls it also blows in blizzard like fashion.  Of course the wind could come up yet and blow it all into piles by morning. 

View from my front door, looking toward the barn.

I took these photos right around noon today and it has snowed pretty steady since then so everything is a little whiter.

Lynn

Keeping My Hands Busy

I finally am able to do a little with my right arm so decided to try knitting.   That makes it sound like I really know how to knit and  guess I do but definately not a master knitter by any means.  My knitting experience is quite limited and mostly I have just knited squares and rectangles.  I did start knitting a pair of socks at least a year ago but only got one done over the heel then put it away.  Must get it out again sometime and see if I can figure out where I am on it or start over.

I decided to make more dishcloths.  I love to use these dishcloths and this was the perfect project for me right now.   I use the directions for one called Grandmothers Favorite.  The website is called Knitting Pattern Central and has lots and lots of free knitting patterns all types.

It had been so long since I have knitted anything I couldn't even remember how to cast on and then after I finished it I couldn't remember how to cast off.  Luckily I had a fabulous website (knittinghelp.com) bookmarked to give me a memory boost.    I used this website to help learn to knit even though my niece taught me the basics.  For one thing, this web page has wonderful short videos on the different stitches.  The videos show the English method of knitting which most American's use...this one you throw the yarn over the needle with the right hand, and the Continental method which picks up the yarn that is held with the left hand.  The Continental method reminds me more of crochet and for me being left handed it just was much more natural feeling so taught myself that method and that is the one I use.

I would recommend the Knitting Help free web videos to anyone wanting to learn to knit.  They are very easy to see what to do and you can play them over and over until you get it or to refresh your memory as I needed this time.

I like to use the circular needles when I knit instead of the straight kind as I was always hitting the sides of my chair with the straight ones and the circular ones are more compact and I don't have that problem.  

Oops!

I did make a few errors when knitting this first dishcloth but you know it is just a dishcloth so I am not ripping stitches to start over.  I didn't do the increase yarn over a couple of times and once I stopped in the middle of a row to go do something and when I came back I picked it up and knitted back to the same end and didn't notice it until several rows later.  It makes the dishcloth have 1/2 row more on one side than the other.  This pattern only uses the knit stitch and is knit from one corner up on the diagonal with yarn over to increase at the beginning of each row until you reach the half way point then knit two stitches together to decrease.  It makes the dishcloth look like it has a lace edge with the yarn overs.

Two more errors.

I made one change in the pattern though.  I like a larger dishcloth so I knit rows until I have 50 stitches on the needles before I start decreasing.  The pattern says to increase until you have 44 stitches.  I use a size 7 circular needles that I purchased at Hobby Lobby.  I like the narrow tips on the end of these particular needles.  I use the Sugar and Cream yarn an inexpensive cotton yarn that makes great dishcloths.  That is pretty much it - I do use a large eyed needle to weave the tails back into the previous knitting at the start and finish.

Have one done and started another with another color yarn last evening.  Don't know how many I will knit but now can knit these almost without thinking so can watch TV while knitting.  As I said they are great dishcloths, easy to make and they do make great gifts too!

Until Later,
 
Lynn

Amaryllis

There is something nice about having real flowers in my home in the middle of the winter, especially after all the Christmas decorations have been taken down’  Maybe it is the hope of spring to come, don’t know, but January and February are times when I especially like to have fresh flowers around.

On my last trip to Hastings I purchased a couple of amaryllis bulbs right before I had surgery – love the flowers and since the bulbs were over 1/2 price I couldn’t resist.  Could get my flower fix this way.  

This one was already growing when I bought it and was out of it’s box so didn’t know what color I was buying.  I was hoping it would be a red one but as you can see it has variegated pink and white blossoms.  The other one is supposed to be this color so who knows maybe it will be a surprise too when it blooms.  The second one is just starting to grow and a leaf tip has just emerged from the bulb.  It is nice that they are not both blooming at the same time. 

I hope to be able to keep these alive over the summer and plant them again next year.  I had one that I kept for several years but last summer it didn’t get planted and of course died of neglect.  I had a late start getting my garden in shape then broke my ankle so was just lucky that John wanted to take care of what I had done before my fall.

Keeping them from year to year is pretty easy…just sink the pot or remove the bulb and plant it in your flower bed in the spring after all frost is gone and keep it watered and fertilized all summer.  Towards fall dig it up and lay it in a dry spot  out of the sun and let it dry up.  (I lay mine on newspaper on my garage floor.)  When you want it to grow again and bloom, re-pot and start watering it.  I think they do need the rest time without water to bloom and the old leaves will dry up and you will need to pull them off before re-potting. 

I have found that keeping the bulbs over and fertilizing them during the summer they tend to have more than one bloom stem and more blooms per stem so it is well worth the effort.

Enjoy my flowers to brighten your winter.

Lynn
P.S.   When I looked at my blog this morning I couldn't figure out why the photos all looked a little out of focus but when you click on them they are sharp...wonder if that is the way it as always been?  Anybody know?

Old Farm Photo

As the title of this blog indicates here is the photo of the farm where I grew up that was taken around 1955.  This photo is taken from a different angle than the more recent one in the blog entry before this one so you need to orient yourself.  The road is on the upper part of this photo too and it is running at an angle from the upper left corner towards the middle of the right side (behind those trees.)  The new house my parents built was placed just in front of the old two story house.  After the new home was built they sold the old one and it was moved to a small town nearby.

My dad milked a couple of cows for years and you can see them in the lot south of the small barn.  The cattle in the feedlots really show up on this photo too.   The barn was removed and a new metal shop building was erected in the same place or close to the same place.

The tall silos were built near that small island looking area in the lower center of the photo.  If I am remembering right that is the area where the large gas and diesel barrels were located.  Most farms then and now have gas and diesel barrels that we fill our vehicles from.  Farm tractors, trucks, and pickups take a lot of fuel and farmers can't be driving into town for every fill up so they have to invest in bulk barrels to make it convenient.  Of course that means the fuel bill when they are filled is a big one too.  I still have trouble with filling up my car at a gas station in town at times since I usually fill up here at home.

There was a small grove of trees that was to the left of the house that my sisters and brothers and I played in almost continually when we were kids.  There were a lot of large cottonwood trees plus caltalpa, elm and ash trees.  We would play house out there for hours.  Each of us would have a separate area as our "house" and would have all sorts of empty cans, old pots and sticks for silverware. We even swept our dirt floors with an old  broom or rake. Of course we climbed the trees too - I think we were part monkeys as we did a lot of tree climbing.


My two sisters and I would climb to the top of a few of the younger elm trees that were 25 to 30 feet tall.  We would climb up to the top of  the spindly trunks and branches, each of us in a separate tree.  We would then start swaying back and forth and back and forth bending the tops over.  Looking back, I am surprised we didn't break the tops out and come tumbling down.  I don't remember my brothers climbing those trees while I was doing it because they were younger than the three of us girls, in fact Don was a baby during the height of this fun activity.

We had a snow storm blow through here Sunday night and Monday and ended up with 6 to 8" of snow.  Yesterday, Monday, the snow looked so pretty as it had come down and settled over everything without any wind.  That was short lived though as the wind picked up my mid-morning and blew it into small drifts around the yard.  John waited until closer to evening to start clearing the driveway our with the tractor and scooping the deck off.  Would hate to do it all and have it all sift back in.  All I can do is watch from the windows this winter.

Besides the snow we are having frigid temperatures here in Nebraska and even colder wind chill temperatures.  I am not sure how they figure wind chill temperatures but they take the actual temperature, factor in the wind speed and come up with a temperature they say it feels like outside.  This morning it was -3 degrees F actual temperature and the high was 10 degrees F around 4:00 pm. but I don't know what the wind chill temperatures were today but tomorrow the high is supposed to be 9 degrees F and a wind chill of -26 degrees F.  It is predicted to be very cold all week....another reason for me to stay in the house.

Until Later,
Lynn

New Blog

Thought I would all let you in on a new blog Platte Valley Farmer about farming in central Nebraska.  It also so happens to be written by my brother Don.  I borrowed this photo from his blog...it is the farm that I grew up on.  It has made a lot of changes since I lived there, one being the house.  I grew up in a large square two story house and my parents built the home you see in this photo the year after I graduated from high school.  My brother Don and his family live there now.

Also when I grew up, my father had some cattle feedlots but expanded the operation in later years.  Now there are no cattle on the place as my brother has switched to all grain farming (read his blog for more info.)  That is the ebb and flow of any enterprise.  I think this photo was taken at the height of the cattle feeding operation with many cattle on feed.  If I can manage my camera or the scanner I will post an aerial photo in a few days of what looked like at an earlier time.

The farm is located in the Platte River valley in central Nebraska but at the north edge of the valley.  You can see the pastures on the rolling hills beyond the corn fields.  Growing up we would occasionally hike up to those hills and in the winter would get out the ice skates and drive to a pond near our pasture a few miles away from our house and spend a few hours ice skating.  My dad had skates too and would drive us up and skate with us....what fun memories.  (I have two sisters and two brothers so I have 4 siblings with 10 years between the oldest and youngest who is my brother Don, the new blog writer.  I am 9 years older than Don and he was just a little kid when I left home to attend college.)

It seemed like we had colder winters when I was a child than we have had for many years as I remember skating a lot.  Either kids didn't skate or we had warmer winters when our daughters were young but this Christmas our two granddaughters received ice skates and are skating on a pond near their home and loving it.  They did get in a few times of skating before it warmed up after Christmas.  They had to put them away for a while as their pond was melting a little and it was just too dangerous.  The last few days it has gotten very cold and is snowing so maybe it will freeze solid again so they can skate some more.

 Shoulder update....I am doing better and have not had to take any pain pills since Friday afternoon.  I still have some aches but no worse than before surgery so can deal with that, of course I have not moved it too much either.  I am even typing this blog with two hands....Yay!  I just have to angle my sling over the keyboard and away I go.  I still am icing the shoulder and wearing a sling and will be for a while but am getting along pretty good with one usable arm since I am left handed and it is my right that had the surgery.  I will start PT in about 2 weeks but in the mean time I am to do some simple arm swings etc. to keep it as limber as possible.

No sewing for a while I am afraid - I just can't raise that arm too high or for very long.

Until Later,

Lynn

Fleece Fun

We had the pleasure of having our granddaughters for the New Year’s weekend.  John and I met their parents at the interstate on New Year’s Eve afternoon.  Our first stop was to go to a fabric shop and choose some fleece that would go well with their winter coats.  We were going to make scarves and hats the next day and I wanted them to choose a fabric they liked.

The rest of the day we just had fun!  We spent a lot of time at the Hastings museum, ate at a fast food joint then went to see the new movie “Gulliver's Travels before we headed home.  It was a great day and the girls were so excited about everything we did.  At 9 and 10 they are easy to take places, are serious and interested in all kinds of stuff and can be silly too.

New Year’s morning I decided to make a prototype of the scarf and hat first to make sure the directions and sizes I had figured out would work.  I did use the pattern from this web page for the basis of our project.  The hat and scarf on the web page were made of two fabrics but we just used one, but made them the same way.

Since I don’t show the grandkids photos on my blog to help protect their privacy you will just see hands and bodies.  They are cute and I would love to show you all how cute but I made a decision when I started my blog they were off limits as far as photos of their faces go.

The girls used the rotary cutter but not quite like the photo here shows….this was just set up for the camera and the guard is still on too.  Actually I had my arm over theirs with my hand on top of theirs when they used the cutter.  I just don’t trust that they will not cut something or themselves and figured I could help guide them and they could still “do it themselves.”

D. wanted her scarf to be about 9” wide but S. wanted hers wider so she cut hers 13” wide.  The length was cut at 1 1/2 yd.  We bought 1 1/2 yards of the fabrics so the scarves could be cut on the length wise grain.  We cut two pieces for each scarf.

The fringe was cut 4” long and made cuts every 1” for the width of each fringe.  I figured that 1” cuts for fringe would be best for little girls to cut but I would probably cut them 1/2” wide myself.  The fringe was cut before they stitched the long sides of the scarf.  Whoops, D. has the cutter open.  Sure didn’t see that when I took the photo.



After the fringe was cut they pinned the right sides of the scarf together then stitched them with a 1/2” seam.  It worked out great for them to use the walking foot on the machine and we moved the needle to the left so they could guide the fabric along the edge of the foot for the 1/2” seam allowance.  The stitching was started and stopped just before the fringe started.  Notice D’s finger nail polish…every other fingernail is painted either pink or blue.  She told me she did it herself and didn’t I think it was pretty, although it was coming off in a few places.




The next step is turning the tube inside out and lightly pressing the seams flat.  Don’t use really high heat as you might melt the fleece.


The last stitching on the scarf was done 1/2” from the long edges and across the top of the fringe (about 1/4” from the top of the fringe.  I didn’t want the girls to draw any lines on their scarf so we used a piece of tape across the top and bottom to make a line they could follow.  Ta-Da….the scarf is done!
The Hat was pretty simple to make too.  I measured the girls heads and they cut the hat 1” bigger than their head.  Cut the fleece with the stretchiest  direction going around the hat.  The length of the hat was figured this way….4” fringe + measurement of center of head to below ears + 3 times the width of the cuff. 

Cut the 4” fringe with 1” cuts across the top then stitch a side seam with right sides together, stopping the stitching just below the fringe.  Fold up 3 times the cuff width and pin then stitch it down with a stretch stitch.  The top is closed this way.  Cut a 1” strip of the fleece and tie it around the hat just below the cut fringe.  Adjust the fullness as you tighten up the tie then pull it very tight then tie in a double knot then trim the ends even with the other fringe and the hat is done.  I didn’t get any progress photos of making the hat but  the girls made them very quickly and I was tired and wanting to sit in my chair with my legs up.

OK – now to see the finished projects…our granddaughters have smiley faces but maybe not quite this smiley.  They were so proud of their sewing project and couldn’t wait to wear them so went with John to water the cows and check for wildlife down by the river.  They didn’t see any deer or turkeys but had a good time and told me the new scarves and hats were really warm.  The temperature was about 10 degrees F about 4 pm so it was cold out.

Until Later,
Lynn

I'm Home

Well I am home from having surgery this morning.  Ihad to be there by 7 thid morning but by the time you check you in and do all the stuff they need to do before surgery I would guess it was 8:30 by the time it started.

It was what I had hoped where the Dr. didn't have to repair the rotator cuff muscle.  He removed the arthritic flex joint at the end of the collar bone, cleaned out the arthritis from the ball and socket,then had to break loose some frozen shoulder bits.  This was all done with 3 tiny half inch incisions.

I guess the surgery took about an hour and a half,was awake by 10 and they sent me home aroun noon.

I am typing this on my "smart phone" since my right arm can't reach the keyboard on either computer.

Since I had no stitches in the muscle I am todo some moving of that arm already today.  Dr. F wants me to hang the arm down,bend over at the waist and rorate it.

My thumbs are tired of typing..."talk" to you later.
Lynn

Countdown….tick tock!

Well, tomorrow morning is is the day when I am going to have the surgery on my right shoulder.  I have my house clean (well…mostly clean), the laundry done, food in the freezer, hair cut today so guess I am ready to be out of commission for a bit.

For the last few weeks, when ever I cooked an entree I made a double batch and divided it up into meal sized portions for the two of us and then froze them.  Last summer when I broke my ankle, friends brought in lots of food and we ended up freezing portions that we heated up later.  It was so handy and  I wanted to do that this time too since I probably won’t feel like cooking for a while.  I do think I will do that in the future even when I feel good as it really is convenient and saves doing a lot of cooking when I want to be doing something else.  I made a list of the foods in the freezer so we will know what is there…after all, things get buried and I sometimes forget too.!

I have a couple of things I want to share with you so may type up those blogs tonight yet and post them at a later date.  Not sure when I will be able to type again as it depends on how the surgery and recovery goes.

I didn’t get my basket miniature done though….it will wait and be ready for me when I can sew again.

Until Later,
Lynn

Happy New Year

May you all have a great, great 2011!

Lynn