Knits and Pics and Favorite Things

peonie_bee3

Originally uploaded by cindratee

Okay, so now the bees are into my peonies. I was watching this little critter crawl all over the peonies when I got home from work. I had just finished watering and so it was slippery going.
I didn’t use the tripod on this shot, so it is a little tiny bit blurry on the closeups.
For those of you who enjoyed the TEDD speaker I had posted earlier, Jill Bolte Taylor, Oprah had her on her Soul Series Webcast last night. I missed her, but as luck would have it, you can download and listen to it from Oprah’s website. Does Oprah ever stop talking? Maybe she cloned herself. I don’t know how she gets it all done. I do like alot of the people she has been talking to though. Anyway, it is definitely worth a listen. Jill actually lives here in Indianapolis and practices with the I.U. School of Medicine. I may even read her book.  Here is her website.  Her delivery is so easy to listen to and understand that I am thinking her book might be a good read, too.

While I was busy inside, there was a lot of busy work going on in my garden. Peonies fascinate me. If there were no ants, would they ever get open? This year I have so many buds, last year, there were only a few.

I hope all mothers had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Although none of my children were here, I talked to them and had a wonderful day.

Today was spent tackling quilts squares for the Quilt-a-long. I had forgotten how unforgiving star blocks can be. I am definitely rusty. I will have to work on these, but here is what I got done today.

The first

one is the linking square. Each star will be

linked by one of these to the next star. I have been wanting a quilt to put on my bed. I was thinking of one in soft blues, yellows and white. I thought that would be such a clean look. So here are the first ones.

The yellow polka dot is the first star.  The blue plaid with polka dots is the second star.  It actually is prettier in person than in this photo and,

unfortunately, it is not quite big enough.  I think I was rushing.  I knew I had some website work I had to get done today.  (Which I did get done.)  Today was a ve

ry productive day.  I even got the rest of my impatience planted!!! 

I found this the other day and for the life of me I can’t remember how I came by it. This whole site ~TED~ is fabulous! I couldn’t get this to load from TED so I found it on YouTube and tried from there… let’s hope it works this time. I have been beating my head against the wall trying to get VodPod and Share Video within Mozilla to work. AAAAHHH! So back to the drawing board and search on YouTube. Back to the video. It’s 18 minutes long but well worth it. A little dry to start, but gets better.

Here we go again… Heart Hospital Emergency Room ~ Round 2. Stretch really is okay. He is downstairs right now watching golf. We just needed to fine tune directions… we had a miscommunication problem mixed in with a misunderstanding. At 6:00 a.m. he awoke to his heart doing an unusual rhythm again and we tried a few things before calling the Heart ER and the doctor’s office. We knew to not to stress, he was on a blood thinner and meds, but also knew it would need to be corrected.

While he manned the phones, I showered and packed enough “toys” that I could last many hours without being bored. I took my hand quilting, two hand knitting projects, a book and my ipod! I even took my camera…. go figure. As it turned out we were only there for about 5 - 6 hours. We learned a few new things and they knocked him out and recharged him again. Next time he goes into a-fib I am going to stick his finger into a toaster and call it done!

I did get a lot of stitching done on my wall quilt while I waited.  I decided to do a primitive looking straight stitch emphasizing the squares that make up the quilt.  It made time fly while we waited on doctors.

After Stretch was released we had a little lunch at a place that just happened to be located next to my favorite camera store.  This camera store just happened to be having a Mother’s Day sale.  I had been discussing a new camera for some time.  Beau wants my old one and has been pressuring me to upgrade.  It doesn’t take much pressure to get me to want to buy a new camera.  I’ve been waiting for the right moment and the stars and the planets and my bank account were all aligned.  I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D80 with a wonderful 55X200 VR lense and a pretty snappy new tripod.  Too bad it is so gray and gloomy today.  Can’t take many pretty photos.  I am so excited though.  I think we are planning a little photo shoot downtown.  The subject will be the alphabet!!!

I have been getting a few e-mails and everyone wants to know how I got injured. Well, it’s kind of embarrassing…. I was trying to dance like this little girl….

did I mention my neck brace?

I have no less than four knitting projects on the sofa in my office, a couple of ufo quilts in my sewing room, plenty of unfinished chores (flowers on my back porch that need planting) and multiple other odds and ends. So, why not start something else. Actually, this is another ufo that has been sitting for at least a year. I absolutely love it and have determined I am going to finish it. I have never hand quilted before and I don’t know if what I am going to do really qualifies. I am using embroidery floss in different colors.

I took it to work today so I could match up some floss at Michaels. Everyone asked what I was going to do… did I have a plan. I’m ADD… the most I planned was to take it to work so I could match up the colors. I thought that was a plan. To take the time and plot out a design? Pfft! Too time consuming. I would second guess myself so many times this beauty would find itself back in the sewing room for another year. So I am going to go put the hobbled foot up and sit down and listen to tv and quilt.

… but what the heck have I been doing the rest of my daze? Yes, I spelled it correctly.
Friday - Teeth cleaned, hair blonded, blossoms admired (without inhaling), foot checked and checked again… yep, it is a stress fracture. Yes, it has been there for a few months. Hmmm, why didn’t I get it checked out before? …. it wasn’t that bad? It is now! Here’s the punishment… we’re putting you in a foot contraption that will make your life miserable and your gait even more clumsy than before. Is that possible. I am here to tell you yes! The worse part is I can still do pilates, but it will consist mostly of ab work…. can you say “YUCK?”

On the bright side… here is some of the springtime I have been blessed with lately.

The tulips are Elizabeth Arden tulips from my neighbor Ann’s yard. She has the most beautiful garden. She is an inspiration to me. I went tramping around in her garden with “das boot” trying to take photos without falling over. She inspired me to buy some impatience to

plant under the bushes in the only shade I have in the back yard. (Did that tonight after school ~ sans boot.)
Don’t tell the doc.

I can’t begin to believe how heavy with blossoms all the trees have been this year. I noticed my peonies have tons of buds on this year, too. I still haven’t seen any blossoms on my viburnum. The got hit hard last year. It breaks my heart because they had beautiful white blossoms.

On the knitting front I have finished two squares of the Great American Afghan. The gold square is #3 by Traci Bunkers. I missed this class and thought I was doing the YO correctly. It is different if you are coming from a purl or a knit. Duh! This is why there aren’t the open lace work you see at the red arrows in the areas where the black arrows are pointing. AAAAHHH! I know I will end up making a new square. I like the mirror image look and this isn’t it. I didn’t notice the problem (my excuse is my mind was in pain from my foot! That’s my story.)

The second square is #14. It doesn’t show up very well. It is very subtle and reminded me of snow, so I did it in

cream. This one is by Sidna Farley. This was fairly easy to do. A lot of reading back and forth because there was no flow to the pattern that I could feel. I could see one forming, but….

I also made the trip to pick up some white fabric so I can start the quilt along on Amanda’s blog. It’s fun seeing how others interpret it on Flickr. Hopefully, I will be posting a couple squares this weekend… although I am committed to knitting at the museum on Friday, have the Ravelry meet up on Saturday and a Dr. appt. on Monday. Looks like Sunday will be the day!

Got to go put my foot up… it’s gotten a workout today!

This spin has nothing to do with the washing machine, or yarn… it is politics. Normally I don’t get involved in politics on my blog… or at least I try not to. BUT… here it is, politics is all I am hearing right now. Bill Clinton spoke at our high school, Obama went to the church not too far away. The candidates are all around here. You can’t not talk about it. So, at lunch today at work the teachers are all talking about all the phone calls they are getting from pollsters wanting to know how they are voting. My friend C’s husband answers the phone. One of the different groups asks him who he will be voting for on Tuesday. He inquires who is asking. It turns out it is Hillary’s people. In a little bit more colorful language than I am going to write, he says, “I’m voting for anyone, but her.” The female polster quickly answers, “So, you are undecided?”

Now, is that what anyone else got from that conversation? Not exactly, but I can just barely see how it could be interpreted that way. So now I more clearly understand how some of these poll numbers are created… and I do mean created!

Everything is on YouTube anymore. It has lots of junk on there… many questionable videos and quite a few silly, but entertaining items, too. I find the animal videos are addicting. The newest one to catch our attention is the painting elephant. I mean, this elephant actually paints things you recognize. The elephant at our zoo is a modern painter… you can’t recognize anything. This is elephant is a modern master… I have no idea what that means… it just means you can tell what he/she is painting.

Now, I believe the elephant above can really paint. This next video is a cross between real and special effects.

Okay, enough of animal tricks. While looking at elephants painting I found this cool painting. A week of art! It really is neat.

As you can see the lilacs are out in full force and a nice spring breeze is wafting their fragrance all around the house.  On the health front, Stretch has been probed (no clots have been detected) and zapped and they have his heart beating in its natural rhythm again.  They will be keeping him just a bit longer to make sure it doesn’t pop back out of whack.  It will be good to have him home so we can resume our normal routine.

As far as the smell goes.  I put another dose of coyote urine around some of my plants today so the rabbits would stay away.  EEEEWWWWEEE!  That stuff stinks.  Luckily, the beautiful fragrance of the lilacs is working hard to mask it.  So far no sign of those pesky rabbits.