As the sun sets, my head is hurting more and more… I think I will be getting off the computer in a few minutes…

But, I wanted to pop on and let you know that the baby blanket was a huge hit! I gave it to mama today, because I don’t think I should go to her shower on Sunday, being ill and all. Well, she LOVED it and went so far as to make sure that every single person in the whole office saw it and admired it. Everyone oohed and aahed and said that I was making them all look bad.  heehee  That felt really good. And I’m so glad that she likes it!

This weekend I plan to start on Baby Checks Blanket for my neighbor’s daughter. Her baby is due the third week in October, so I need to get rockin’! She’s having a boy, so I’m either going to do it all in blue and white; or in blue and two other colors that aren’t pink. I have to see which colors are available. Green and yellow would be good; or maybe a darker blue and purple. Or, maybe I’ll just get a multi-colored yarn. I don’t know yet. I’ll see what inspires me, when I’m standing in the yarn section.

After that, I’ll either make my sister’s scarf, or make her the pink and brown Sunrise Sunset Afghan. Either way, she’s getting something…

As promised, here are a few photos of the Flowers in the Dell baby blanket that I made for my co-worker.

Here is a shot of the detail of one of the squares:

And here is a shot of the detail of the other square:

And here is a shot of the entire blanket:

I didn’t notice that end of yarn sticking out in the upper right, before snapping the pic. Suffice it to say, it isn’t there anymore…

For the last two days I’ve had a headache and nausea. Evidently, one gal at work has been sick with the same thing. But, she has it much worse than I. Thankfully, I’m not barfing. I went to work and just went downhill from there. So, my peers decided to banish me, until I’m cootie-free.

After I got home, my sweetie went to the store and bought me some ginger ale and Cracker Jack. That really seemed to help. I have been up and down from bed all day, but I’ve been vertical since this afternoon.

On a positive note, I got the baby blanket finished! All it needs now is blocking and gift wrapping! I plan to take pictures post-blocking. I’ll post them for you to see. I’m quite happy with the way it turned out.

Hello there!

I thought I’d better post an update, since it’s been a whole week.

The baby blanket that I’ve been working on is about halfway finished. I’ve completed all of one type of square and have started on the other one. I have only been doing the centers, because I can’t decide what type of join I wish to do. I can finish all the squares and sew them together; or I can do a join-as-you-go method. If I decide to do the join-as-you-go type, it is going to take a lot of planning and forethought. It would have been much easier if I hadn’t yet made all of the other squares. Sewing them together will be more simple. But, I have time to decide. I only have four of the centers finished and I need 17.

I started back to school, yesterday. I just did a review of all the previous units, as a refresher and plan to move on to the next unit, today. Coming up: Radiology coding. I am committing to finishing at least one unit per week. I really should do more than that, though. I only have until February to graduate (that’s how long my extension is good for). So, I need to rock and roll on this. I’ll see how fast I can get this done and maybe change my weekly commitment to more units.

My children are doing well. My son working the fair in Washington is getting ready to head to Florida, next. Very exciting! My son that lives 50 miles away is doing well. He’s participating in Youth Build and it seems to agree with him. And my son in Maine is doing well. His health was in question for a little while (he spent a few days in the hospital) but he is much better now.

Now for some photos…

These two were shot for The Daily Shoot. Today’s assignment: “Make an interesting photograph of something mundane and ordinary today.”

This is the one that I did not submit. The corner of the door frame on the laundry room:

This is the one that I did submit. Mini blinds:

And here are a couple of photos of our other farm animals, the pigs. Left to right are: Lunch, aka Miss Piggy; Breakfast; and Supper.

Here is a shot of my sweetie measuring Miss Piggy with a hog weigh tape. This photo gives you some sense of scale.

According to the tape, they weigh somewhere around 145 pounds, right now. They aren’t growing as fast as my dad’s pigs did, but they also aren’t as fat, either. I’m happy about that. I’m okay with slower growth, if it means that they’ll give us leaner meat.

They don’t get a lot of “junk food”. A couple of times a week they get human liquid meal replacement (Ensure) and a few loaves of bread. Mostly though, they get their grain (in the trough, above) twice a day; and lots of produce that we get from the grocery store, once a day.

Well, I better sign off for now. I need to get crackin’ on my studies…

I have three boys: one lives on the opposite coast – I rarely see him; one lives about  50-miles away – I see him about once a month, or so; and one lives in the same town that I do – I see him a few times per week. The kids are 25, 20 and 23, respectively.

The son that lives here in town is getting ready to leave. He is going to work for a guy who is a vendor at State Fairs and whatnot. He will be leaving in a few days and we aren’t sure how long he’s going to be gone. But, we know that the guy is on the road for 10 months out of the year. He’s going to make good money, but we are definitely going to miss him.

Last night, we had a small get-together for him – a send-off, of sorts. My son that lives 50-miles away came and stayed the night. So, we have both boys and their girlfriends sleeping out in our Airstream, as I type this. It was so great to have them both here. I wish my eldest could have been here, too!

My sweetie BBQ’d and it was awesome! Even though all the food was put away and the dishes were washed last night, it still smells like BBQ smoke in the house. Yum! And surprisingly, we even have a few leftovers!

Sadly, everyone has to go back to their regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow; so it’s off to their homes today. But it sure has been a nice visit!

And speaking of babies… A co-worker is having one and I’ve been invited to her baby shower. This is taking place in two weeks. Invitations were sent out a couple of days ago. So, I searched frantically for some sort of yarny project that I could make. She is having a girl (nice to know the gender of the child ahead of time!) I found two baby blankets that I thought looked promising:

Sunrise Sunset blanket that I would make in pink and brown; and Flowers In The Dell blanket that I would make as written.

Since my local store doesn’t carry the necessary yarn for the Sunrise Sunset blanket, I ordered it online. But, then I began to panic. Knowing that it would take probably at least a week for the yarn to arrive, I would have to crochet like a mad woman, to get it finished in time for the baby shower. That is, IF I even got it finished in time. So, I was at my local store yesterday and they had everything to make the Flowers In The Dell blanket. I couldn’t remember how much of each color it called for, so I just grabbed three skeins of each.

Well, the pattern actually calls for 1 of pink, 2 of green and 4 of white. I think what I’ll do is just make all the squares the same. That will use up more green and less white. And I’ll trim the blanket in pink, instead of green. Or, I’ll just go back and get some more white… I dunno… I haven’t quite decided.

The yarn is a lovely, super-soft, super-fuzzy baby yarn called “Baby Cloud”. Because it is a chunky yarn, I’m using a fairly large crochet hook (size N – 9mm) and it takes me about 20 minutes to finish one square and I need 35 of them. I’m crocheting, not knitting because I’m such a slow knitter… The yarn, while quite yummy, is kind of hard to work with, because it’s very fuzzy; so it can be a bit of a struggle to pull the loops through. But, it’s going to be fabulously soft and very baby-perfect, when it’s done! I’ll post some photos of the squares, when I get a few more finished. They look A LOT better in person, than they do in the photo on the website.

Since I have the pink and brown yarn coming, I’ll probably just make it for myself and use it as a lapghan. The original pattern is actually a lapghan; so it is rather large – much larger than a typical baby blanket. So, I think it will work out well, in the end. On second thought, maybe I’ll give it to my sister. I do owe her a yarny something…

Here is my photo from today’s assignment: Go old-school today and make a photograph that either features an old subject or simply looks old.

I didn’t realize it was a little bit crooked, until after I’d already uploaded it to TDS… Ah well…

This really is old. It’s an antique (circa 1890s, if I recall correctly). I think the person I got it from said that it had iodine in it..? I’m not sure. At any rate, you certainly didn’t want to drink whatever it contained!

Being that my name is Jeanne and people call me “Jeannie”, I’ve always loved that TV show I Dream of Jeannie. I even bought a plaster Jeannie bottle, the type she had on the show. My plan was to paint it to look like hers. That never happened. But then I got this bottle and I said “Now, that’s MY Jeannie bottle.”  heh

I’ve been neglecting my little blog for a whole week! You have my apologies! I’ve been hanging out on a couple of photography forums and I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

I have Kindle for PC and it is really great to be able to download books with one click! The drawback is that some of the books don’t show all of the photos. When it comes to photography books, it’s quite frustrating when the author refers to a photo and you can’t see it. Thankfully, it’s not ALL books that are affected.

I’ve purchased several photography (how-to type) books and bunch of Ann Rule books. Ann Rule doesn’t usually bother me; but I read four books in five days and I think it’s made me a bit paranoid! I’m locking the doors a lot more, now…

The animals are doing well. My sweetie told me that the goats were starting to shed, so I took my dog brush out there and gave them both a good brushing. All that came off were the wiry guard hairs.

Ray thoroughly enjoyed the brushing, but Frank was not so sure at first. After he saw all the hands-on attention that Ray was getting, he decided that he needed to get in on that action too. Their coats are growing in nicely, after all the trimming that they endured. I should have a nice “harvest” next Spring!

The pigs are getting big, too! They seem to grow overnight. Last night my hunny fed them some liquid meal replacement (Ensure-type stuff) and I guess they got it all over their ears. When I stepped outside for the last time last night (at about 11:15 pm) I could hear them shaking their heads. Their little ears were flopping and slapping about. It was funny.

Here are a couple of photos for you to see… These two are part of my participation in The Daily Shoot:

This first one is a picture of my mother, rest in peace. The picture of her was taken July of 1961. It generally hangs in my bathroom, where I can see her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The rest of the scene is part of my backyard. The assignment was to take a cherished print and photograph it as part of a larger scene.

This is today’s Daily Shoot assignment; take a photograph that is predominantly yellow. This box is (obviously) no longer full. My sweetie used a lot of them to make applesauce and apple pie filling. The house smelled so good! Golden Delicious!

Well, I’m in the middle of watching a movie, “Hanging Up”… So I’m off!

I did some more experimentation with the Raynox. With only two exceptions, all I did was resize these photos. The other two, I only changed the colors and resized. I didn’t crop them, which is why some of them are off-centered…

This is a feather from a cat toy. Converted to black and white:

Lens cap:

U.S. nickel:

Tiny orange carnation bud:

This was a tiny pink carnation. I converted it to blue:

I have also received some extension tubes. Used in conjunction with the Raynox, it produces some pretty amazing results. I only have a shot or two, so I’ll wait to post those photos, once I have more. But I’m quite impressed.

Once again, I was up way too late and got up way too early… However, when the siren starts singing, you must follow its song…

Here is a shot of a meteor:

And here is a startrails photo:

It was fun, but I’m drinking a HUGE cup of coffee this morning… Mmmm, with Peppermint Mocha creamer, no less! Quite yummy, I must say!

Hello!

Work has been keeping me busy and tired. I’m sorry it has taken me this long to write… I have a half-day of work today; not going in ’til noon, but I get paid for a full day! Sweet! I took the opportunity to play with my camera this morning. I hope you enjoy the photos!

Here is Ray, looking handsome as ever! He loves to have his picture taken! Quite the ham!

Here is Frank. He does not like to have his picture taken. Probably because he’s like me – not very photogenic. I’m not sure if it’s due to the lack of contrast in his coat, or what… But, he never comes up to me, when I have a camera in my hand. And unfortunately, I’m really not coordinated enough to hold food in one hand and the camera in the other.

This is just a blade of grass. I’m not sure what kind of grass it is, but we have it all over. I’m thinking maybe it’s just orchard grass, or something…

This is Western Salsify. Everyone thinks it is a giant dandelion, but it isn’t. They do look quite similar.

These flowers are in a hanging basket, on my porch. I had a hard time getting this shot. I was shooting overhead, standing on stairs. My balance isn’t all that great, especially when my head is back and I don’t have my hands on something to balance me.

Well, I have a long weekend, this weekend. I have Monday off (it’s Labor Day, here in the USA). And since I work for a bank, of course, our office is closed. I’m hoping to be able to go out and take some more star shots. But, I need to find someplace new to do it. I think my audience is getting tired of seeing photos of my “laundry room” roof.