Picture of Contentment

A picture of contentment. AKA - why I love having cats...there is something soothing about a purring kitty in your lap on a cool morning! (Turn up your speakers to hear the purrrrrrr!)

And this is why my cats annoy me. This one only wants what she cannot have. 

I used to think she was applauding me, but now I know she is just trying to out-cute the other cat...after all, annoying cat was here before contented cat. "It's just not fair!," says she.

Then there are the days when everyone gets their way...kinda. 

Yes, both cats are content here, but I have had to pee for the last 20 minutes. The girls will see to it that I do not get up anytime soon! Hahaha! 

At least I can still knit!

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!

Baby Shower Day!

From the time we heard that she was expecting, I started knitting and crocheting. Today is the baby shower...

...so I can finally reveal some secrets! By the time you read this, she will have opened sweaters and hats and blankets, oh my!

Washcloths and booties and giraffes, oh my!

And my favorite, the piece de resistance...the item that started as many tiny, triangular, tee-pee-looking cones...

A colorful puzzle ball!

All of those cones are sewn into three sections, then wiggled together into the final toy. 

It was fiddle-y, but fun to make, and I hope our grandson enjoys it!

Oh, and the stockings. Yeah, I put the stockings in there, too...one for Daddy, Mommy and Baby...

...and one for the little dog, too!

Super fun, and now not secret Christmas knitting I can share at a baby shower! Now, back to the super-secret, Christmas knitting I cannot share until Dec. 26th for me!

I hope you have some fun in your day today, and everyday! Find some fun wherever you can, and it will get you through the drudge of everything else.

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!

Winds of Change

29 years and a couple weeks ago, Sweetie and I were looking at this:

We had a sweet little, baby boy, and lived in Goose Creek (a suburb of Charleston), in a rental house about 25 miles from the coast of South Carolina. As Hurricane Hugo approached, and the weather men and women did their best to lay out all the possible paths of the storm, we prepared. Well, I prepared. 

I prepared by asking locals things like, "How do you get ready for a storm like this?" The average reply was, "Don't worry about it. They always say it will hit us, but it never does." This did nothing to calm my nerves, and without the benefit of the Internet, I finally went to the library to do some research. I did also have a neighbor, Mike, who was full of information. Mike's advice and wit calmed my nerves a bit and helped me to feel like I was doing something to be prepared.

Tape or board up the windows to protect them from breakage. A week out, with no one panicking but me, tape was easy to come by, so I got some.

Stock up on non-perishables and drinking water. Before the days of bottled water as we know it today, this meant buying a few gallon jugs of water, and filling every container in the house that had a lid with tap water. 

Fill the bathtub. I was quite unsure of the reason for this, but I took note of it. 

I also stocked up on diapers (Mork was 9 months old) and powdered formula. That was pretty much the extent of our planning. "Are you going to stay?," friends from well out of town asked. There was no evacuation order for anyone inland, and Sweetie could not leave. There were Navy duties that intensified with the approaching storm...and pretty much everyone around me said that this thing would likely not hit our town that hard...so we stayed. 

The storm was bad. It made landfall in the middle of the night, so at least we could not see all the chaos the wind brought. But as we huddled in the hallway with the baby (no interior rooms without windows), we just listened to all the things bouncing off the roof and the walls, and hitting the taped windows...all night long. Well, there was that 45 minutes when the eye of the storm passed right over us and everything was eerily quiet...but then Hugo was back at it. We decided that if another storm ever came along, I was leaving with the children even if Sweetie had to stay. 

We were inland very lucky. Our carport was destroyed (but our car was not under it), and a  large tree in our front yard uprooted (but it did no damage to the house), and the water was out for 3 -4 days. When we did get running water again, it tasted like pine. Land lines were jammed (no cell phones) for incoming calls, but we could call out to tell our extended families that we were ok. The power was out for a week, and many of the roads to the coast were out for longer than that. 

The landscape was forever changed.

For us, our daily routine was only temporarily changed. In the very first days, we would get a bucket of water from the bathtub each morning. We did a quick sponge-bath kind of clean up (baby first), then used that bucket of dirty water for our daily flush of the throne. (So that's why you fill the bathtub. I thought about losing power in the storm and maybe the water would not be safe to drink, but losing all running water did not occur to me.)  We rationed water all day, ate peanut butter sandwiches and cold Chef Boyardee, and set up the ping-pong table in the living room to give us something to do. We did everything by candle-light, and kept the windows open because there was no power for air conditioning. But it was only for a few days.

As Florence approached the coastal Carolinas this week, 

I have been reminded over and over of our time in South Carolina, before, during and after every storm that approached. I hope those who stayed to greet Florence filled their bathtubs, and that everyone made adequate preparations (I wonder if the knitters have enough yarn to see them through the power outages?). I'll be praying for all whose lives, homes and businesses are forever changed, and I hope that you will be too. There is a long road of recovery ahead for them.

Whatever your weather, wherever you are today, stay safe friends. 

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!

Knitting!

PrettyKnittyJewelry, a blog about knitting and my PrettyKnittyLife. Except, there really has not been a bunch of knitting lately! Life has taken over, for sure...but today there is knitting! You see, it is nearly Christmas! 

Wait. What? You say that Christmas is many months away? Hmmm, I see. You must not be a knitter... 

For me, Christmas knitting must be planned loosely in the summer months, and begun no later than the beginning of September. Really, this is the only way to avoid late-night knitting while waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve! If I am being truly honest, the only real way to avoid that scenario is to start in January, but even Pam-with-a-plan* has not gotten there yet!

Anyhoo... I have started my Christmas knitting, and this project is one I can share, because it is not a secret! Christmas stockings for Face, Dollface and Baby Face are on my needles, because when this knitter receives a gift card to one of her favorite places to buy the craft-and-toy yarns...

...she spends much too much time picking colors and deciding on just the right amount of yarn to get for the next project! After a couple minutes (or, you know, an hour-and-a-half, and many texted pictures to Dollface to make sure the colors were just right) I had three main colors and a contrasting gold that will go together and match the holiday decor in the Face household. 

The yarn is one of my favorites, Lion Brand Heartland. Soft and squishy (despite its acrylic-ness) Heartland has a depth of color in the rich, semi-solid skeins that I have not seen matched in any other acrylic yarn. So, as per usual, I bought twice as much as I thought I would need, and spent more than was loaded onto that gift card, but less than if I had not put back the $2.59 safety eyes that I had stuffed into my cart at the beginning of the shopping trip. Because, as you know, $2.59 saved is $2.59 earned...I think the saying goes something like that.

Last night, I finished the first stocking, and I am calling this a success! One down, and morning rain means that I have a solid start on stocking number two - Knit Pretty, knit!

Fun fact: I actually have 4x the yarn I will need. lol!

So, there you have it. A knitting blog with actual knitting. Promise kept. Go me! Now, back to life I go, knitting in tow. What do you have in store for your Satur-knitter-day?

Thanks for stopping by, and  Knit in Good Health!

*Oh, how I love a good plan! Even if I have to abandon the plan, there is something so very satisfying about putting it together in my head!

Fan Girl - Osmond Edition

A long time ago, in a far away land...ummm, wait. Nevermind. I am not THAT old! Let me try again. Ahem.

A few years back, when I was a girl (yes, I know, it was more than a "few" years, but please give it to me or we will be at the beginning until next Saturday)...when I was a girl of about 10 I suppose, I had my first celebrity crush. Every Friday night, we turned our television to channel 5 for the Donny and Marie Show. I figure it must have come on at 7, because I know my bedtime was 8 o'clock...but my memory is a little sketchy there.

My memory is not sketchy when it comes to Donny Osmond, however. His rendition of Puppy Love made me swoon just like every other pre-teen pretty watching the show, wondering what puppy love was and if I would ever experience it. Donny was dreamy, to be sure, right down to those sparkly, purple socks that he showed off nearly every week on the show.

At this same time, I had a good friend who was my favorite sleepover buddy, and also a fan of Donny Osmond. She had a cute older brother and an annoying younger brother (neither ever took much notice of me) and I loved spending the night at her house! Friday night sleepovers were the best, because we could watch the show together before bedtime, and then giggle about how cute Donny was instead of going to sleep!

"I think I want to marry Donny Osmond when I grow up," Kathie might say, on any given Friday night, then she would hug her pillow and sigh! I would sigh, too, but I remember the first time I did the math. We were 10. Donny had to be much older, like 19, and I didn't think that he would ever really want anything to do with us little girls. Even Kathie's older brother was only 2 or 3 years older than we were, and he wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with us!

But Donny and Marie had a younger brother. He was not as classically handsome as Donny, but he was kindof adorable in his own way, and Jimmy was only 15! Yes, that is still quite a bit older, in terms of people who had just entered the age of double-digit birthdays...but those 4 years might just give me the edge, I reasoned. Jimmy Osmond was simply more attainable than Donny, and I would certainly have less competition from Kathie!

So, there you have it. While the world was swooning over Donny Osmond, I chose Jimmy...and although I never did get to meet him and show him what a worthy Osmond wife I would have been, he still holds a special place in my heart. He probably always will, which is something I recently shared with some new friends (my daughter's Mother- and Father-In-Law) when Tom revealed that he would be attending a Jimmy Osmond concert at Lakeside this past July. I am pretty sure my wacky revelation made my darling Dollface roll her eyes. Hahaha!

Fast forward to last weekend, during brunch at Tom and Jan's house. We had just come from a 3D ultrasound of my newest grandchild (due in November), and as we settled in with coffee, Tom said, "I have a present for you!," to me. Now a present for Dollface, growing our grandchild in her belly, or their son the baby-daddy, makes sense. A present for me?

Tom returned quickly, and with excitement on his face, he handed me this:

Yes, that's right. An autographed photograph of Jimmy Osmond! Turns out that Tom actually took this photo at a concert a few years back, and when he heard my story, he figured that it couldn't hurt to ask for an autograph...so he did!

"To Pam"
"Love Jimmy Osmond"

I now held something in my hands, which has since been hung on the wall, that Jimmy Osmond has touched personally! And he signed it! To me!!! "Love Jimmy Osmond." SWOON!!! My childhood dreams are coming true, and today there are only two degrees of separation between me and the Osmonds. I have to text Kathie immediately!

Oh, the baby is healthy and growing well, and will be a handsome fellow for sure! I wonder if they might think of naming him Jimmy?

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!