Happy Birthday Daddy!

Daddy's 71st birthday
Originally uploaded by heatherunruh

Here's Mom and Dad celebrating Dad's 71st birthday. We had Dad's favorites of chicken fried steak, fried potatoes with gravy, wilted spinach salad, and angel food cake with chocolate whip cream frosting. Everything was delicious and we had a good time.

Rambling About Lots of Nothing

Last week was kind of a difficult week. Our computer went down on Sunday and didn't get back up until yesterday. So it's been tough to check out the blog. I was afraid that Kevin was going to pitch fits because of the computer, but he was very calm about the whole thing. It seems as though he has to check the train boards every hour to make sure he isn't going to be called to work any time soon. Fortunately the Geek Squad was able to save all our pix that were on the hard drive before the Dell Tech Guys had me wipe out the hard drive. I definitely plan on buying a memory stick to back up the computer now!

Meriam ended up having a little boy, Tiger Zevyn Wallace Thompson was born on Tuesday, June 10. He is so cute and has so much black hair. (Meriam says it was the same with Hogan and Jadyn. Now neither of them have black hair.)

I still haven't started working on Audrey's bag yet. I need to get T-shirts and start cutting them into 1 inch strips. Once that is done I'll start knotting the strips together and then I can knit them.

Kevin and I leave for Colorado on Thursday. I am sure I'll figure out something to knit while we are in the car. I actually like to knit in the car. It gives me something to do while I'm singing to the radio and Kevin' driving. Kevin always complains that I never pay attention to him while I read in the car, so knitting at least gives me something while I listen to him and his wonderful sports talk radio.

Baby Kimono Done

My sister is going to have a baby in 3 days. I have really felt the rush on this piece. Everyday the kids have been asking, "How many more days until Aunt Meriam has her baby?" This question kept me on the knitting push. So much that on Thursday I had to take an Aleve, to keep my neck from cramping up. Well, if Meriam is looking she now needs to leave the page. NO PEAKING MERIAM! You'll get to see it in 3 days.

Here's the pictures . . .

The pattern is from Mason-Dixon Knitting by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne. I had been looking all over the Internet for something to knit and I came across a knit-a-long with this pattern. So I went to my local library and checked to see if they had the book. Unfortunately they didn't, but the wonderful Inter-library Loan system my library belongs to did. Within a day of asking for it I was called letting me know it was in. This is such a great book. I think I'm going to have to purchase it. I love almost everything they have done in it.

The only change I made in it was buttons instead of ties. I know that you should not do buttons, because of the choking risk, but I am very secure that my buttons will not come off. My 8th grade home-ec teacher made sure in class that our buttons could stay on no matter the amount of tugging on them. The seams required mattress stitching. Usually I just whip stitch the seams, but this time I did the right thing and seamed them according to the pattern. I think if I practiced some more I would be pleased with it, but it'll do.

The yarn was Peaches and Cream 100 % cotton. I've knitted the kids some socks with this type of yarn. I like working with it. When I bought the yarn for the baby's kimono, Wal-Mart had a huge cone of Peaces and Cream that I had to buy. I don't know what I'll do with it, maybe a new bathmat for the downstairs bathroom, or maybe a bunch of washcloths. The yarn will let me know what to do with it when I'm ready.

My next project is inspired by the Mason-Dixon ladies. Audrey wants a messenger bag for school, so I'm going to take old T-shirts and make them into yarn that I can knit up. The book talks about using T-shirts to make a rag rug. (I plan on doing one of these also.) I figured it would make a durable bag that is easily washable and soft. My nephews have tons of shirts they never wear so I'm going to raid them to make my yarn.