I tried.

I really tried to get enthused about this blog. I appreciate everyone who's showed up and commented and clicked 'follow'. I haven't done a very good job of keeping up my end of the bargain.

BUT! I've actually started a new blog over at Wordpress. Here...go look. Picture! Words! Promises to post regularly!

So I'm abandoning this. I'd advise y'all to do the same. But do come visit the other blog. I'll do my best to keep up with things over there.

Ciao!

Call me irresponsible...

I have NO idea why I can't seem to keep up with a blog. I know people out there :::waves, 'Hi, Annie!'::: who manage to blog four or five or even six times a week. I can't get it together for that many posts in a month.

:::sigh::: Perhaps I just don't have much to say.

Actually, I have a lot to say but making the time, getting things together (like pictures and links) seems to be more than my poor ADHD brain can handle. I haven't even dyed anything since I got home from Louisiana. What's up with me??? (That was a rhetorical question and you can put your hands down, now.)

There has been knitting. I've accomplished several things which I've failed to photograph before they left my hands, but here's the most recent FO:



For Daniel...

Baby, baby, where did the time go?

While I was busy playing with Daniel the days just slipped away and now I'm leaving for home in the morning. I have a camera full of pictures and short videos and a heart full of love and delight from being with my baby and her baby and husband.

Curiously, I'll get into Detroit Metro tomorrow afternoon, weather permitting, and the next day I'll return to Metro (before starting the 225 mile drive home) to put my *other* baby on a plane to come down here for a week to see his sister and nephew and brother in law.

My time here seems to have been much too short.

How many of you have close family that you live far from? How do you do it? We talk on the phone almost daily, and several times a week I get to see Kate and Danny via videocam, but it's totally not like the real thing. I do suppose it's better than in the days where it took months for a simple letter to travel great distances to bring news and love, but it's hard to hug over the phone. :::sigh::: I'm hoping for the kids to come to Michigan when it thaws some time next July.

Dh (Scott) has been keeping me apprised of the weather conditions in northern Michigan. It appears that we have set many new weather records. He says that there's about 18" in the driveway, and the place where we always pile the snow from the walk is over six feet high. How do we account for this? Is the weather freaky in your neck of the woods?

I do have a picture of the boy and an FO all in one. When I was down here in Louisiana in May I brought my wheel. While Kate was recovering from childbirth and learning how to be a new mommy, I spun some soft-as-clouds blue Cormo. The Navajo-plied yarn marinated in my stash for several months until I decided to make a roll-brim hat for Daniel. It's adorable and it fits. And it turns out that they actually have weather here in Shreveport. The leaves turn and fall off, it gets down into the 20s at night, and a jacket, mittens and hat are necessities here! Woot! I can totally knit for these people!

Is he not beautiful? We took a Sunday afternoon drive to Texas (???) to the Caldwell Family Zoo. It's a natural habitat zoo that houses a wide variety of animals in different habitats. We had fun, but the breeze was killer. So glad I finished the hat.

But wait...it fits. Right now. And he's growing SO fast and it'll not be spring for a while. What to do?

I took the rest of the yarn and started another hat with a ribbed brim and on a much smaller needle with many more stitches. Naturally, I didn't have enough yarn. My thought was to knit from the small hat to the larger, but it turns out that a) his mommy *likes* this hat and b) he actually needs the hat.

Considering this dilemma, we took a ride today to a new yarn shop here in Shreveport. Called Knitting Under the Influence of Nancy... That's not actually a link to her shop, but to a site that shows you where the shop is. As far as I can tell she may be technologically challenged and blogless. Nevertheless, she's got a sweet little shop in a pricey area, with lots and lots of highend traffic. I bought some yarn that I think I may add to the hat to stretch the Cormo. Oh...and a few other huge skeins followed me home as well.

I'm off to sleep because I have to be at the airport early tomorrow. Send good thoughts and prayers for safe travel if you will, for both of us (me and Nick) traveling by air and car over the next few days.

Lots to catch up on when I get home, especially with my honey. And the dog. :-) Ciao!

It's still Thanksgiving here...

...so I can still wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

We are such a blessed nation, despite the falterings of recent days. We are still free to live where we want, believe what we want, eat what we want, say what we want, worship who or what we want (or not,) live our lives free from most oppression. How can we not be thankful?

Although I had to leave some beloved family at home (I'll be home soon, guys!) I've gotten to hug my daughter and son-in-law and play and hug and roll around with and really get to know my grandson. He was fresh out of the wrapper when I left this past May. It's hard to conjure up the memory of that itty bitty newbie now. He's getting so competent and can do so much. I've been here for 4 days and I've seen him change and grow and learn new things in just that short time.

It's amazing to me that I have this little boy in my life. See, I'm so freakin' ADHD that in my head I'm still about 19. Only my children have been the mirror of my aging...and when they're not around, I'm still 19 (except for my knees.) But then comes this baby, a most remarkable amalgam of his parents, looking so much like his daddy yet so much in temperment like his mama...and suddenly I'm not 19 any more. I'm Nana!

And I love it. For Daniel I will be not-19. I will play and sing and clap and rock and love and...I'm off track and it's almost midnight here in the Central Time Zone. So what I came in here for was to blog about being thankful. I'm pretty thankful for each one of you who reads this too, y'know. I've gotten to know some wonderful people via knitblogging.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You take my breath away...

I'm in Shreveport, Louisiana. I arrived late this afternoon after an uneventful flight out of Detroit (there was that little bit where we ran into a huge snowstorm and had to climb 4,000 feet to get over it and the turbulence it caused) but for all intents and purposes it was a fine flight. I had a seat to myself, unusual at this time of year, and nice not to be so crowded.

Once landed, I headed out toward the luggage claim and ran smack into Kate waiting at the intersection of the two possible directions I could have come from. I sort of sneaked up on her and gave her a kiss on her neck, and when she turned around...oh, my. He took my breath clean away. My Daniel is 6.5 months old and he's quite a person! I whispered into his ear the thing I always say to him when we 'talk' on the phone, "Daniel, Nana loves you so much!" He heard my voice and broke out in a huge smile. I am smitten. I don't know if he actually remembers me by my voice, but he's let me hold him and snuggle and play and cuddle. Kate and Mike are doing a spectacular job loving and rearing this little man. There may be pictures if I can get him to hold still for a moment.

I closed my shops for 'vacation'. I was interested to see that you can do that. How long has Etsy had that feature? I'm obviously not paying attention.

So I expect to he here until the 3rd of December. With any luck, I'll be posting occasionally while I'm here. Thanks for stopping by!

Halp?

Blogger is really different now. I'm stymied...how and where do I put the code to put the 'Subscribe to Bloglines' button here?

Halp? Please?

ETA: Never mind. I figured it out! (Thanks for the encouragement, Laurie :-)

It's gone.

Finally. Turned on the laptop this morning and my 'To Knit, Perchance To Dream...' homepage was gone. Gave me an error message. In my email was the official notification that I'd canceled the account. Okay, guys. Now where's the money y'all took out of my Paypal account? Just waiting for it to be refunded.

So here..you're stuck with me in this little hole-in-the-internet blog. I suppose it's more fitting than that big, tricked out blog I had, where I often had nothing to say. It makes more sense to downsize if you're not planning on posting regularly.

Still, even though I knew it was just a matter of a day or two before it disappeared, it took me by surprise.

I suppose I ought to start decorating in here, put up some curtains and whatnot. I thing I'm going to put a Bloglines button in here somewhere, and a stat counter. I'm going to look at all the widgets that Bloglines now offers (where was this stuff 3 years ago?) And I might even post more frequently, now that it's not the major undertaking it used to be.

***Go see my sale. I'm officially heading to Louisiana to visit Katy and Mike and Danny and I sure could use to get rid of all this yarn and roving. I realize that they won't let you pay for airline tickets with skeins of sock yarn, so I need to exchange them with y'all for the money that most retail outfits require. There's some nice stuff, and more on the way (I'll get to it when I get back from my meeting in Gaylord) and I'd love to be sending it to your house.

Perchance To Knit...
Perchance To Spin...