Woodworking

Well, the school year is over, which means one thing--it's time for the Summer Program and our (in)famous WOODWORKING class!

Yes, that's right, J and I are once again teaching woodworking to impressionable young students grades 3-8. Yesterday we gave our safety talk and then one of them had the nerve to swing his 30 inch board at someone like he was going to hit them. I gave my best stern teacher look and he looked appropriately ashamed. I've got my eye on him now.

If you're lucky, I'll post pictures of the bird houses. I know that you're very excited to see them.

Quote of the day: "Aww, this is too much math for summer!"

Thursday is the PawSox (Red Sox Triple-A team) game--I got J tickets for his birthday. Then I lost them. (skip over the long story of searching). Then I called and they re-issued them without any questions at all. All that searching and worrying for nothing. Alas. Hopefully it will be as fun as people tell me it is.

Summer of Stash

Hmm. Well, I missed the official sign-up, but I'm committing myself to the Summer of Stash. Don't worry, that is neither dirty, nor drug-related. That means that I will not buy any yarn this summer, but will use only things from my yarn stash. What's a yarn stash? If you have to ask, you probably won't understand. But once you start knitting there's something that comes over you and you buy yarn for future projects and it just doesn't stop. Now, I'm not as bad as a lot of people out there (I'm not hiding yarn in the piano, or in the sleeves of coats hanging in closets), but I do think that I should commit to completing the projects I have already purchased yarn for.

I am announcing this on here because then I will have to be better about actually doing it. And then J will know about it.

The official SOS program allows you to pre-set some exceptions. My exception will be if I need to purchase yarn to complete my project for my One Skein Secret Pal. And that's it. This is tough love.

Wish me luck!

THE SOCKS ARE DONE!!

The socks are done, hoorah! It's self-striping yarn, so don't be too impressed. I did manage to get the stripes to line up pretty well on the two socks, so that's pretty good.

Here they are:

One Skein Secret Pal Delivery

Look what came in the mail from my One Skein secret pal!! After expressing my interest in socks (and especially in knitting them on two circular needles), my secret pal sent me this gorgeous skein of Lisa Souza sock yarn and Cat Bordhi's "Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles" book to help me learn. It was especially thoughtful of you to wind it into two separate balls so I can see if I'm brave enough to try doing them two at a time! And thanks for the websites you sent in email too....I've been inspired to finish my green striped socks so I can work on these. Now I have to decide whether to try it out on not-so-beautiful yarn first, so I can learn before using this nice stuff.

I love the colors of the yarn...subtle variegation so there's some variety, but not too much. Great choice....Thank you so much! Sorry that the bottom picture is so blurry, but I thought it was the best picture of the color of the yarn.

UFO update

If you remember, I listed some projects I needed to finish:

Here's what I've got started right now:

1. Baby blanket to wrap shower gift (that one has been ripped out 3 times to get the right dimensions) Done!
2. Green Striped socks. My first pair of adult-sized socks! I have one done and the second is on the needles. Progress is being made, really.
3. Eyelet wrap for Graceful Stitches. This is a volunteer project and I hate how it's turning out...I need to bring it in to see if I should continue with this pattern or not. Going back to Graceful Stitches because it's not worth continuing
4. Crochet Scarf Finished, then ripped out. It wasn't what I wanted.

So that means that only one of those projects remains! That's pretty good, if you ask me. (Of course I think that's good). I also made that felted bag, and a couple of washcloths from Mason-Dixon Knitting. And I used my first washcloth already! I will post a picture later (when I'm not feeling too lazy to walk downstairs to get the camera).

It's going to rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

I've got that song from an elementary Sunday school musical in my head, "It's going to rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain....(repeat 3x), one hundred percent chance of rain!" Of course, they were singing about Noah, and we're not at the Ark-building stage here, but man has it been pounding down all day. We even lost power at school for an hour or so (which always makes teaching SOOOO easy).

And it hasn't been hot enough to run our new Air Conditioner. I know I shouldn't complain because that's good for our finances, but since it's brand new, it would be nice to use it.

That's about all for now.

Hooray for AC (oh, and heat too)

I was reprimanded for not posting the update on the AC/duct work front....the AC and new furnace are installed along with some new duct work (free of charge)! It was finished on Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday was hot and sticky and we tested it out. It was awesome. :) Now it's been nice and cool since then (I'm not complaining, just stating it) so we haven't used it again.

I won't go so far as to post a picture....that would be going to far, right?