I've mostly Moved

If you are looking for the most recent posts for my blog, you will have to go to www.kenworthknitter.wordpress.com. I have been using it for a couple of weeks and really like it. I finally figured out how to post the buttons from this blog over there and I have moved the ones that I wanted to move, but didn't move all of them.

I have a rant...if you don't want to read it, skip it.

I kept this one going, and will probably continue to do so for a while, because I was involved in SP11, but since that is over and my upstream pal, due to family troubles, flaked on me, I don't have to keep it going any more. I would have been okay with it, if she had in some way kept in contact with me, but she didn't. I contacted my moderator and she assured me that my pal would be in contact, but she never has. I haven't gotten an email from her since the middle of November and then nothing. I am extremely disappointed and angry that she couldn't even be bothered to email me occasionally or comment on my blog, but she has been on Ravelry!
I know that there are people that flake in these things, but I expected better from my upstream pal. Unrealistic, I know, but still, I was ever hopeful that she would come through or at least offer some kind of explanation or comment.

Rant over...I am going to leave it at that. I've said my piece and if it makes any difference, it's made me feel better.

Edited to add: I contacted my pal and I think that it was resolved to my satisfaction, I don't know if to hers or not. I need to publicly apologize to her because she is going through something very tough and I was maybe a bit impatient and needed to cut her a bit more slack. I still believe that communication would have solved a lot of the problems, but it's now water under the bridge and I'll follow my DH's advice and just leave it.

Happy Thanksgiving

I am still noodling around with Wordpress and their blogging software. I have to figure out how to post all of the buttons and stuff that I have worked on for here and move them over to that one, but I am finding that it's easier in some ways and not so easy in others. Posting pictures, if I use photobucket is so much easier and it works for me, but it's harder if I use the photo uploading in the blog site.

As Jo commented on the last post, it's kind of finding the one that works the best for you because we aren't paying for it and it is a free service.

We are on our way to my parent's house for the holiday weekend. We wanted to be there tonight, but we will be there sometime tomorrow. I hope it is semi early, as I have to brine the turkey, and I can't push it of on my mom, because I have the ingredients to do it. We also have to stop and finish doing her grocery shopping because she gave me a list of things she forgot and we have to get the pies for dinner. She didn't want to bake and I can't, so we're buying. We are also furnishing the sparkling cider to go with dinner. We found some at target last year that was green apple cider that was just delicious, so we were tasked with bringing it again this year.

I will leave you with a couple of shots of Monument Valley that I took today as we were driving north. It's not a real representation of the views we saw today, but it does give you sense of the vastness. The above picture is representative of of the myriad of monoliths that litter the valley floor.

Until next time, I hope that you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and don't hurt yourself to badly if you decide to hit the malls on Black Friday. I will be out and about in Colorado Springs and Pueblo on Friday, but only to pick up some hard wood flooring and a new mattress for our truck (THANK YOU, GOD for new mattresses)!!!

I think I might be moving

I am messing around with Word Press to see if I like it better than blogger. I have had some problems with posting pictures and stuff here, so I thought a change of venue might be the ticket, but I am going to play with it for a bit and see if that's true. You know what they say about the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence....we are going to see.

If you want to see what I'm trying to do, come see it here. Right now this is just a test, so I have moved all of my posts from here to there, so it will look the same except for the new post I'm putting up today.

Come along with me

on a trip across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. We had to make a delivery in Portsmouth, VA on Halloween, and then go to New Jersey and New York to make deliveries. So in the interest of blog fodder, and the fact that it would only cost $5.00 more to go across the bridge/tunnel, DH decided that we could go that way so that y'all would have an interesting blog post for the 1st day of November.

This first picture is the official start and the place where they want money to allow you the privilege of driving out to the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and disappearing for several miles in a tunnel that is actually below the commercial shipping channel of the bay. If you were privileged to go through the first toll booth of the east bound lanes, you would have gotten to give your money to this little lady. She was all decked out in the spirit of Halloween. As you can see, she has her festive orange ghosty/Boo bucket hat on. To further the ensemble, she has added several strands of shiny purple and black garland with orange pumpkins as a necklace. She has completed the outfit with and orange T-shirt with black undersleeves and, though you can't see them, a pair of black pants. Quite festive, if I do say so.

As you leave the toll booth, you are greeted by a bridge that seemingly stretches on into eternity. But let me tell you right here and now, it does not. Oh no....you go out a little island and enter the area of the tunnel. Here is a picture, stolen directly from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Website (because I can't fly), that shows how you go out on a bridge and the shipping channel passes over you while you are down under the water in a 1 mile long tunnel (both are approximately the same length). On the first nice little island that you come to, there is a rest area, a fishing pier, and a restaurant. You can go out there and watch the ship traffic go by, cast a worm or other fish enticing delicacy, and grab a bite to eat, all in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. How cool is that. Not that we were able to do that, cuz you know, no truck parking. But we could have, theoretically.

The first tunnel, the Thimble Shoal Channel Tunnel, was reached after crossing approximately 6 miles of bridge. It was 1 mile in length and this is the approach. Here we are actually in the tunnel and here is the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel".We did this twice, the second tunnel is called the Chesapeake Channel Tunnel as evidenced by this picture. We saw quite a few ships, both coming and going down the bay and back into the ocean. Probably the coolest photo I took was after coming out of the first tunnel and looking back in the mirror to see the shipping channel we had just come under. One of the ships had been getting ready to cross over the channel as we were coming across the first bridge. We watched him getting closer and closer and then figured that he would be gone when we came out of the tunnel. In reality I got this really cool picture, taken in the passenger side mirror of him getting ready to cross over the tunnel. Isn't that a cool picture? I made it bigger, because the small size just didn't do it justice.

From shore to shore, we traveled 17.6 miles on bridges and in the tunnels. If you add in the approaches to the tolls and everything, it is 23 miles long and from toll booth to toll booth, it is 20 miles long. The north bound lanes were completed in 1964 and the south bound lanes were completed in 1999. The north bound took 42 months to complete and the south, without having to dig any tunnels, only bridges, took 46 months. The original north bound side cost $200 million dollars and included the cost of doing the tunnels. The south bound side cost $250 million. The water ranges in depth from 25' to 100'. One of the interesting things is that neither the north bound or south bound was paid for with any tax dollars. The first was funded by revenue bonds and the second was funded by revenue from the tolls and revenue bonds. The bridge/tunnel connects Virginia Beach with the DelMarVa peninsula and saves 95 miles to points above Delaware. All of these facts were stolen from the facts page of the official website of the CBBT.

As you cross the final bridge, you come on shore in the Eastern Shore of Virginia. You get to see all of the things that you typically think of at the shore, but what is cool is that it's surrounded by water. On the east is the Atlantic Ocean and on the west is the Chesapeake Bay. To the east is this lighthouse that you see for miles and miles as you are crossing the final bridge.
As you head up US 13 onto the eastern shore, you see several of these little gems where you can pick up anything from soup to nuts and everything in between. There are many of them and they all have in common the bright yellow paint and the gaudy signs. some of them advertise more food and less fireworks, but they are all pretty much the same and all are tourist traps for the shore vacationers.

There are all kinds of neat houses in Virginia, and the eastern shore is no exception. I am really drawn to the low country style of house and also to the Federal style of house. I took some pictures of houses:
I love these big old houses with the huge porches. I wouldn't want to have to clean any one of them, but I can admire them and wish that when we win the lottery, I will buy one so that I can have a house at the shore, although I think I want something a little smaller.

We tried to stop and have some seafood; Maryland crab cakes sounded really good; but there is just no place for a truck to park that might have some decent food. We stopped at a little truck stop and had some decent spaghetti, which was okay.

We drove up to New Jersey last night and parked at the customer that we were delivering to and this morning I called a friend of ours that we haven't seen in several years because we were 2 blocks from her house. I chatted with her for a while and then she kindly brought us some coffee and said that she wasn't going to let us get away without coming the two blocks to see us. Her first comment when she answered the phone was not Hello, but "There's no _________ way."

We finished the trip in Binghamton, NY and saw some very pretty colors in the leaves on the hillsides.

There hasn't been all that much knitting going on, except for the dog sweater, but that should change in a couple of days. I am trying to figure out what I want to knit next and I'm sure something will catch my attention.

Oh...when we were in Portsmouth, we called all of the kids down there and we all got together for dinner. I took the baby socks I had knit for our daughter-in-law and gave them to her at dinner. I kind of think that she liked them. In a couple of months she will have her second sonogram and will find out the sex of the baby. That will make knitting so much easier, although the colors of the yarn that I picked out for the BSJ are unisex, so I'm good there.

Until next time....sayonara!

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!!!