SOLD!

It finally happened ~ our little blue cottage has been sold to someone who will love it and we are off to new adventures in our bigger home with much more space for our large family to tromp around in. WA-HOO! We no longer have to wait in line outside of the door to the one bathroom; if we all want to sit in the living room and watch the tube together in the evenings, we can do so without having to drag chairs in from the dining room and without having to sit elbow to elbow squeezed into our tiny area. We can now twirl around and do cartwheels in our master bedroom, Shilo no longer lives in the dungeon but has joined the real world in an above ground bedroom. We no longer look out all sides of our house to the next house three feet away ~ we now look out over the top of a school onto Youngs Bay and Saddle Mountain. We look out our side kitchen window to a mama deer and her two fawns walking up the drainage. We do look out our side living room windows into our neighbors back yard, but usually there is a raccoon or four hanging around their patio. We are in heaven. Below is a sneak peek of the new house taken off of the MLS listing. My new camera is scheduled to arrive before the end of the week, so stay tuned for a play by play tour of corners of our home. I can't wait to take you through my secret garden....

Sneezy, Sheepy, Shaniko

(Originally uploaded over here)

Well, crud-olla! This post is already not going as planned. I was going to share with you my latest yarn purchase, but apparently I didn't download the pictures I had taken of it before losing my camera.

Anyway, it's a beautiful pure wool fiber made right here in Oregon on the Imperial Stock Ranch of Shaniko.
Shankio is located in a high desert area of our very diverse state and has a tiny little population. I remember riding through there as a teenager in our high schools van on the way to all kinds of different FFA functions. We always found it humorous that Shaniko even had a population sign up because about the only thing that you saw while driving through town was the little post office. I haven't been through there in years but understand that Shaniko has grown a bit, (not a whole lot, but I think the population is much more than 4 now), and is an incredibly cute little town. You know, we had to have another tiny town to laugh at since we came from the thriving metropolitis of Elgin...

I digress...This yarn is gorgeous. The little brochure that was attached when I bought it states that their yarn is specially colored to reflect the ranch's unique, high desert landscape. I chose the "fawn". Beautiful. I started my project a couple of weeks ago, knitting (oh wait, I'm actually crochetting this one!) away in the late evenings after dinner, clean up and dog walks have been completed. For the past several weeks I have had a terrible time with allergies - sneezing; nose either swollen shut so that no breath is coming through or wide open and running away with itself; eyes red, itchy, watery, swollen; ears hurting; throat sore. Medicine is not working, I'm not sleeping, because I absolutely can not breathe. What is going on with me??? It finally hits me. Could it possibly be this yarn?? I have allergies anyway, but maybe it's contributing to my complete and utter miserablness... Off to the doctor I go.

Fast forward to tonight at my dinner table ~
Brittany innocently asks, "When you went to your Doctor today for your allergies, did you tell him about the yarn you've been using?"

I answer, mouth full of scallop scampi, "huh-uh."

Brittany giggles at this response and replies, "Why the heck not?"

"Because I don't plan on going through all the needle poking allergy testing to find out what I'm allergic to, so there was no point. Allergy medicine is allergy medicine."

Riff has just decided to start listening to our dinner conversation and being the blustery Foghorn Leghorn that he is, belted out something like this ~
"What! You didn't tell him that you're using that raw wool stuff off the freakin' sheep from over yonder?! Good God Man!!"

Brittany almost wet her pants laughing so hard. Not hard to do when your nine months pregnant. Need a little comedy with dinner? Come to our house!

Sneezy, Snuffly and Sheepishly Yours,
Paula

Crabby...

Feelin' Crabby...

We are supposed to be moving into our new house this week...We have had the world's longest escrow ~ at least that's how it feels ~ three long months our house has been under contract and a domino effect is taking place. Our buyer is selling her house, buying ours, then we are buying our new one. Everything is in place and ready to go, our money from our lender is sitting in escrow just waiting for us to use it. Our buyers buyers (of course the very first leg of this three leg transaction) are dragging their feet and not getting things done on time. Our closing date is wednesday, looks like there might have to be extensions all the way around. I'm disgusted - I'm frustrated - I'm CRABBY!

More to come...

Mermaid Bag

Hmm...What can I use to knit a lightweight summery bag to take to the beach? After quite a bit of thinking, I came up with the idea of knitting using raffia. The biggest obstacle I faced was finding some darn raffia that came on a spool and was a continious strand. I searched the internet for days and came up with nothing. Craft supplies in our little town are sadly lacking, so I drove an hour to a Michaeal's and found a few spools, and in different colors. The raffia was a little hard to work with, but mostly because it was knotted up periodecally on the spools. I bought what I thought would be plenty, but ran out about 3/4's of the way through the bag, so back to Longview I went for more raffia. Thank heavans they still had some. The mermaid on the front was just cut out of different colored felt pieces and appliqued to the front. (Actually, it looks a little off kilter here. Oh, well...) I brushed some glittery paint onto her tail to give her a fishy shine.

I then found this fun retro inspired canvasy fabric for the lining and proceeded to sew it in. Now, think about sewing a fabric lining into a loose knit raffia bag. Easier said than done. I was going to do it by hand, but that proved more than my fingers could bear to push the needle through those layers, so I abused my poor little sewing machine and finished it that way.

I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. It has been sent off to my swap partner in a Summer Swap that I participated in. I hope you enjoy it, Jenn.

On my Starbucks cup today:
"The world is smaller than you think, and the people on it are more beautiful than you think."
~Bertram van Munster
I love it...

GOOD GRIEF!!

I'VE LOST MY CAMERA. I'M BESIDE MYSELF....