I finally got

a project finished. I have been working on a pair of monkey socks that were supposed to be for my mom for her birthday. They won't fit her. For some reason, the sock is very difficult to get over your heel and it fits either my son or my husband. They turned out really nice, the colors are vibrant and worked really well with the patterning of the monkey, they just have a small opening at the heel. I don't know what part of the sock I needed to make bigger to make it fit better, but it fits the boy and he's going to get them. The colors, hot pink, orange and chocolate brown aren't really a boy color, but as he says, he wear boots most of the time and no one will see his socks and he will finally have a pair of hand knit socks after the fiasco of the last pair I tried to knit for him.

I think I wrote last time about finding out that we are going to be grandparents....oh, yeah, I remember. I did tell you about that. Well anyway, I had a little bit of yarn left over from the monkey's and decided to knit a pair of baby socks for the grand baby out of it. They ended up using all of the variegated yarn and then the socks were finished with the brown so they have brown toes. They are as cute as can be.

I really want to knit a BSJ from EZ...what that means is that I want to knit a Baby Surprise Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmerman for the baby. I was discussing it with DH and looking through Ravelry at all of the BSJ's that are posted and getting ideas. I decided to do it in untraditional baby colors and ordered some Cherry Tree Hill yarn in some blues and greens. In the planning and scheming, DH suggested that I do the BSJ and a pair of matching socks for the baby and do a pair of socks for our daughter in law that match. So I ordered two skeins of the yarn and will do that for them.

We have been from home to Ohio, Indiana to Laredo, TX, and now we are on our way to make a delivery in South Carolina and then we will go to Virginia, New Jersey and New York. It's kind of nice knowing where we are going to be and what we are going to be doing for the next few days. It is also nice to back in the groove and actually making money instead of being down and having repairs done.

The only bad thing this week is after being home last week I have been fighting some kind of upper respiratory thing. I have a cough and the symptoms of a cold, but I don't feel all that bad. I think it has to do with being at home and fighting the allergy to the cat. I am allergic to cats. My sister has one. She kindly cleans the guest room thoroughly when we are coming, but the cat makes a beeline for the guest room every chance he gets, and because their house is under construction, none of the doors have door knobs and none of the doors (except the two bathroom) can be latched. All he has to do is push open the door and he has free access. Any way, the last two times we have been home and then left there, I have come down with the same yuck. I got better the first time just in time to go back and do it all over again. Makes me not want to go home if I'm going to end up sick all the time.

SP 11 is entering it's last month and I hope that my downstream pal has enjoyed the gifts that I have sent or had sent to her. I am putting together a big box of the last month, but I have sent her several things through out the course of the time and am hoping that she's enjoying all that I have sent. My upstream pal sent me a wonderful gift certificate to the Loopy Ewe, which I will use the next sneak up. I love any excuse to shop the Loopy Ewe, don't you?

I don't have much other information. I tried to get some good pictures of the harvest moon outside of Houston the other night, but the roads were so bumpy that what I got is this:
This was probably the best of them, but the moon was huge and orange and the typical Harvest moon. We started seeing it right on the horizon when it was its largest and then watched it climb into the sky and become small and white.

One other thing....I am thinking about moving my blog. I have been having some problems getting pictures to upload and various other things and am thinking of moving to one of the other blogging sites. Any recommendations or thoughts? Any of them that you absolutely love, any that you hate? Any input would be helpful. Thanks!!!

On our way

home for the weekend. We brought a load down to near Myrtle Beach, SC and now we are picking up a load that is going to Ohio, but it delivers either tomorrow, unless they say we can deliver it Monday and we'll go home and DH will do things like change the oil in the big truck and I will get to pick up my mail (read yarn). Oh and my my new Cat Borhdi book should be in the mail and oh maybe my booty club yarn, so see, we need to go home.
Did you know that it is 80 something degrees today down here? That's just too hot for October. I got some comments about seeing the color that we saw in Montana and how in the east there isn't that much color because of the lack of rain. Boy did I see that coming down to South Carolina. Is it too warm for the trees to be changing or is it that there just hasn't been any water in the form of rain. We stopped at a truck stop on the back roads in SC yesterday and they are under water restrictions and all permits for burning have been canceled. The grass was dry and crunchy. Down near the coast, things seemed to be greener, but then, there is always more moisture near the coast because of, you know, the ocean.
I meant to blog about this the last time I posted, but in the course of things, I forgot. We found out a couple of weeks ago that the son/stepson that got married in May and his wife are expecting, and we are going to be grandparents. Now, in the great scheme of things, that just sounds weird for me to be a grandma. I know that I have a son who is old enough, but hopefully wise enough not to, to present me with a grandchild. But with DH's kids being older than mine and you know, married and such, it's okay, but I just don't feel old enough. But DH, he's OLD. He should be a grandpa, but me, I'm just a youngin, I'm not old enough. But it's all good. It gives me an excuse to knit a BSJ from EZ and to do up some baby booties and maybe a blanket out of mason dixon knitting and .... hmmmmmm!
A couple of weeks before we found out about the baby, DH's oldest son let us know that he was getting engaged. We met his then girlfriend at the middle son's wedding and liked her very much. They seem to have a lot in common and she's from an area of the world that he has a lot of interest in, so they should make a good match. They aren't planning on getting married until probably August of next year and that takes a lot of planning. They are doing it all themselves and it sounds like, from the preliminary stuff that SS1 told me, they are looking to have an outdoor wedding, maybe in a conservatory or something. There DH's kids go again....trying to make the evil wicked step mother feel old.
Now if we could just get DH's youngest son married off and in a few years, mine we'll be doing good. Oh wait, I almost forgot. We still have one living at home that's only 11, so I guess it will be a while for us to get them all out of the house and gone.
Have I mentioned yet that it's too hot for October? Just checking to make sure that ya'll are paying attention.
I don't have any pictures to put up this time. I'm still working on the monkey socks that may or may not fit my mom. If they don't, I'll give the monkey's to someone else and knit mom something toe up that I know will fit. Might not be as wild as the monkeys, but they will be hand knit socks.
I messed up the other day. I was emailing my SP and sent the email from my regular email address and so now she know's who I am. That's okay, sometimes I think that might be better since now I don't have to do all the cloak and dagger stuff and can just come right out and ask.
I have blogged about having to have the truck repaired and being off of work for a week. Well, this last time, in California, when we had almost $9000.00 worth of repairs, we had to borrow some of the money from the company. Not because we didn't have it, but because the Kenworth dealer would not put all of the repairs on a credit card. We paid the bulk of them and then borrowed the rest from the company. We made arrangements to pay it back in increments and then today they took OUR WHOLE PAYCHECK!!!! and then said that we still owed almost as much as we had borrowed. We called the man that had made the arrangements, and it's back to being taken out in increments, but that doesn't make up for the fact that we have no paycheck this week. They did call us and give us an express code to have the money in a comchek, but now we have to find someone who will cash a check in that amount or if we can just deposit the check into our bank. It's all a mess. Anywho, at least now we are back to getting paychecks and not having them take all of it at one time which makes me less stressed.
I tell you, I am such a sucker. I love the yarn that Roxanne at Zen Yarn Garden puts out. I like them so much that I have joined two of her sock clubs, Well, she decided that she wanted to put out another sock club, only this time it's call the Sumptuous Sock Yarn club. She wants to know if you are ready to knit "with luxurious and exotic yarns? Want to wrap your feet in pure luxury? This is the sock club for you!" She is starting the club out with Mongolian Cashmere and silk. Now if that isn't luxurious, I don't know what is. And the price for a three month club is pretty darn good, too. So if you are so inclined, rush right over and join me in pampering yourself or someone else (great for gift giving) with the sock club. Just to show you what kind of product she puts out, this yarn is something I bought from her before I knew about her sock clubs and it's what made me know that her sock clubs would be, in the words of Lawrence Welk, "wunnerful, wunnerful!" This picture is from her Art Walk sock yarn club, and I love this yarn. I haven't done anything with it yet, but I may use it for my mom, if the monkey socks I am making right now don't fit. I think she would like the yarn and it's smooshy and springy and , well you get the picture.
I sent my sister her socks in the mail, and she got them some time last week. I called her to make sure she had gotten them, and she hadn't even tried them on. What's up with that? Don't you think that if someone sent you hand knitted socks that as soon as you got them, you would at least try them on? I realize that it's been maybe a wee bit hot for wool socks, although they are a lace pattern, but you would think that maybe she could have tried them on. I did talk to her a couple of days later, and she had tried them on and liked them, but said that it has still been too hot to actually wear them. My niece, the one that ended up with the "Not so little boy" socks that I knit for DS, wears hers constantly. My sister said she loves them and looks for them to wear all the time. At least I have one hand knitted sock devotee. :-)
I don't guess I have anything else right now. We might do something fun this weekend, but then who knows. If we do, I'll try to remember the camera for blog fodder.

Out of California

and headed to Ohio. We finally got the permit that we needed at about 10:30 Monday morning and the two pilot cars that we needed for the narrow, twisty roads that we were detoured onto. Now to kind of explain why we needed pilot cars, I will show you what the load we were carrying looked like from the front. Our trailer is 8'6" wide and the load we were carrying was
14 feet wide. Hubby was having to look around almost 3 feet that was hanging off either side of the trailer. Here's what the same thing looks like from the rear... If you make it larger, you will be able to see just how much is hanging off of either side. Any way, it was a nice weekend in Redding. Not quite what I had hoped for, but we just kind of hung out and did laundry and DH got the tires, all 10 of them, rotated. Then, because we weren't hooked to the trailer, he took me to the grocery store and I was able to mail my sister her socks...Hope she likes them.

On the way through Oregon, we stopped in Canyonville at the Seven Feathers Casino and Travel Plaza. If you are ever traveling I-5 and are looking for a good reasonably priced restaurant, stop at exit 99 and go to the one in the travel center. Any who, the morning that we were supposed to get up and leave really early, DH got up and took some pictures of the sunrise. Now usually, you get sunset pictures on my blog, but these were too good to pass up showing to you. Aren't the colors just beautiful. I didn't actually get to see this sunrise as my darling husband decided that I really didn't need to get up at 0'dark thirty. After looking at his permits for Oregon, he also decided that maybe 0'dark thirty was a little bit early for him and the morning curfews in the Oregon towns and he went back to sleep for another hour or so, but he was thinking of my blog and took these loverly pictures, wasn't that sweet of him?

As we were making our way up California 89 the other day, we were able to see a view of Mount Shasta that we don't usually get to see. We were also able to see the first snow of the season, at least for us. I love seeing Mount Shasta...it's a beautiful mountain that just kind of pops up out of nowhere and signals that we are in Northern California. The picture on the left is the mountain seen from the side. You don't usually see pictures of it where you can see both peaks. I thought it was kind of a cool picture and wanted to share it with you.

We delivered in Seattle on Wednesday and promptly picked up the load we are on now heading for Ohio. We usually run out I-90 out of Seattle and go through Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, and then to head south Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and then on to the delivery in Ohio. I have show several pictures of the route that we are taking in my blog at various times. If you look at the archives for the end of July or maybe the first week in August, I showed some pictures of a forest fire that was burning on the side of the road in Montana. When we went through it on Thursday, I was able to take some pictures of the devastation that the fire did and to show just how close to some trailer homes that it came. I don't know if anyone is living there anymore, but it came awfully close to them. I tried to take pictures of the same things that I had photographed when it was burning, but going east instead of west kind of threw me off and I missed the mountainside that the helicopter dropped his bucket of water on and then I got the place where the fire crews were, but only as a blur on the side of the building.

We did see some absolutely lovely fall colors on the roadside in Montana, but something that we both noted was that most of the colors are some form of yellow with very few reds or oranges and when you do see those colors they are transplants and usually in landscaping. That picture is blurry on the side because it was taken out the window of the truck as we passed. It's not the best picture of color that I took, but for some reason, the ones that I fixed and cropped and showed what I wanted, didn't get uploaded. Crud!!!

I have been trolling ravelry and reading the group post for the SP11 post. I'm starting to feel guilty that I haven't sent more to my SP. I am gathering up some stuff, and actually have a box with some yarn that I hope she is going to really love, but I have only had something sent to her. I hope she isn't feeling neglected and I need to get some more stuff for her box and send it to her, although....if things got done in the workshop, there should be a handmade wooden item that will go wonderfully with something she just broke down and bought. It will make her knitting life much easier, and not only that, but it was hand made just for her when I put an order in with my Dad. It should be similar to mine, but yet different. That reminds me...I need to check on Dad and make sure with the visit from his oldest grandson this week, that it got done.

On the knitting front, I have been working on a pair of Cookie A's Monkey socks in Duets sock yarn in the colorway "Hot Flash". I love this yarn and the colors are ones that you wouldn't think would go together, but they are great. They are hot pink, chocolate brown and pumpkin orange. I'm going to have to take a picture of them in really good light so that you can see the differences in the colors. I haven't actually taken pictures of them yet, but I will and will post the in progress the next time I post. I'm having trouble with the last repeat that I am doing for the second leg. I keep ending up one stitch short, and I know that I started the round with enough stitches, so I am going to frog this last repeat and do it again. That's what you get for trying to do some knitting while fighting a migraine. I finally took out DS's scarf and pulled it out of UFO status and back into WIP status. It's mostly garter stitc with about 20 rows on either end that are patterned. Now if I can make sure that both ends look the same since it is something that I just made up as I went along. He's excited and it will be another FO that I can cross of the list of projects on Ravelry.

I think I am going to go read some more of the group posts on Ravelry and then put the lap top to bed. Hopefully I will post again really soon.

California

We were here, Now we're leaving for a while....you know, sung to the tune of California, Here I come. We are finally leaving the sunny climes of CA heading to the cooler regions of the Pacific Northwest. We are carting a 14' wide load from San Diego, CA to Seattle, WA. It's not very tall, only 4' or so, but it sticks out 3 feet on either side of our trailer. In the state of CA, we have to have an escort. That means that we have someone following us everywhere we go telling us what is coming up behind us and clearing the lane from people behind us when we need to move to the right or the left. It's only the second time that we have had an escorted load, and it's an interesting experience, to say the least. (I guess we are going to be "stuck" in Redding, CA for the weekend. We need a county permit for a detour, and our company didn't get it for us, so we now have to wait until Monday morning to get the permit.)

We got to California last Friday. We had a load of military equipment (2 hummers) that we brought out from Chambersburg, PA. It was a fast and furious trip, but we made it to Camp Pendleton in time to sit for the weekend. We went up to Ontario, just outside of LA, where the only truck stops in the greater LA area are. We went there because we figured that we would pick up a load in or around LA and that was where we decided to go. Not only that, we were having some white smoke coming out of the stacks and there was a Kenworth dealer/shop in Fontana, about 5 mins from Ontario. We ended up having to put the truck into the shop to the tune of $8,500.00 to replace a cracked head, a blown head gasket, a cracked exhaust manifold, and a broken turbo charger. We stayed in an old Best Western hotel that was okay, but it wasn't great. It did have a pool, which was freezing, and a hot tub. I wasn't able to use either, but the boy used both and enjoyed it.

We were home the week before last to pick up our mail and to get things like snow chains (can you believe it's that time of year already?) and to do some minor repairs on the truck, mostly preventive maintenance. While we were home and getting our mail, I got some good stuff. I almost always have yarn waiting for me at home (three sock clubs will do that) but I also had some of the boys school books waiting for us. We are slowly but surely getting everything together and getting this school year off to a start. The only thing I haven't ordered now is the Spanish program that I want to use, but if I don't do that until after Christmas, we have plenty of work. I decided to change math programs this year and chose Teaching Textbooks. One of the things that I like about this is that they teach math "things" that I am not comfortable with and don't have the first clue about teaching and the program is written by two Harvard graduates for the homeschooling community. It starts with grade 5 and goes through the many subjects of high school math...yay!!!

On the way to California, we went through New Mexico and saw this sunset:








The sky was a burst of brilliant oranges and pinks against a backdrop of shearing clouds that reflected the sun in such a way that the sky just looked like it was glowing. I must have taken 40 pictures of it driving down I-40 and these show the different colors that we saw.

On the weekend while we were in Ontario, CA waiting to get the truck fixed, I went out on the trailer and set up my yarn winding station. I was able to wind all of this and actually got some funny looks. Our neighbor, in the truck stop, came back and saw me and wanted to know what I was doing. When I told him I was winding yarn, he wanted to know for what reason, and then I had to show him the socks that I had finished and show him that the yarn is wound so that I can use it to knit socks from. I happened to have my stash outside and he couldn't believe that my hubby would allow me to keep all of that on the truck. I felt like getting the picture of the "super stash" out and showing him how little I really have. I could list each one seperately, but if you want to see what they are, you can look at my stash. I wound the Knitivity yarn that day, two skeins of Oldfield Creek Sock and Yarn Handpainted, some knit picks gloss, the Shelridge farm, and some Lorna's Laces yarn. I still have some more to wind, but I don't want to wind everything, although I do sit the fence about what winding does to it. It does make it easier for me to store if it is in cakes as opposed to hanks, but is it bad for it?

I cast on the other day for a pair of Monkey socks by Cookie A, and I'm finding them a quick and easy knit. They look really complicated, but they are cool. I have a Duet Sock yarn from a Swell Yarn Shop in the Hot Flash color way. It is chocolate brown, hot pink, and orange with the coordinating yarn in the chocolate brown. It is making some awesome monkies. I'm going to give them to my mom for her birthday, since I can't seem to find a pattern that the Mountain colors yarn that I was going to use for her socks, wants to be. Everything that I have knit with it so far is just not right.

I'm still working on the tank top for my sister, although it is in danger of becoming a UFO. It's still in my knitting bag, it just doesn't seem to see the light of day very often. I need to finish it so that it's done and she has it, but it's all stockinette all the time and you know how that it.

I finished the I love gansey socks and I need to get them to my sister. They were knit for her birthday, which was the end of September, and I think I had them done in time for her birthday, but we weren't there, so she doesn't have them. Amanda made a comment about how much knitting I get done on the truck and I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I don't think that I get all that much done. It seems to me to take forever to get anything finished, but then again, I do usually have 3 or 4 things on the needles, so maybe that's my problem. I also tend to get a case of finishitis and then all kinds of things go up on the blog, so that may be why she said that. And yes Dawn, these were done cuff down. I know, I told you how wonderful toe up was, but sometimes that pattern just calls for cuff down.

I cast on a pair of socks toe up, but the yarn that I'm using is just not working out for that pattern. It's the Mountain Colors Barefoot yarn, and with the little bit of a halo that it has, it's just hard to see any kind of pattern. I'm going to have to frog them and put the yarn away until I find something else that it wants to be.

When we were in Oceanside the other day I got some good, or at least interesting, pictures of the Pacific ocean from the rest area just south of Camp Pendleton. The rest area has an overlook that is under a bunch of trees and you kind of have to look out through the trees to see the ocean, so that's why the pictures are surrounded by the trees. You can see the ocean and the pretty blue sky on both of these pictures.

In the rest area there were a bunch of squirrels that were begging for handouts. I got a couple of pictures of one that ran up and down a low wall begging. He was kind of cute, and had a really funny, short tail. It looked like half of his tail was missing. He looks like he's giving me what for, doesn't he. He was mostly just begging, and by the amount of sunflower shells and stuff that was littering the ground where their den was, I would say that the squirrels are fed quite a bit.

Also in the rest area were a couple of types of flowering trees. I took some pictures of them and maybe someone who reads this will know what they are. The first one is a good sized tree that has these bright red puffs on them. They are really interesting and I have no idea what they are. the second one is also a rather large tree that has pinkish purplish round puffy balls on them. There is no fragrance from either tree that I could smell, but I also didn't get really close to them.

I guess that it is time to go to bed now although I did want to say a big thank you to my secret pal from SP11. When we were home, I got a post card from Virginia City, NV. I guess she had gone there and sent me a card. I also got, and man I love this, a gift certificate for the Loopy Ewe. Thank you SP, I LOVE it with all capitals. I will use it the next time I'm able to catch a sneak up.