No knitting...

I missed church last Sunday because I was sick, but I had time on Thursday to listen to the sermon I missed. It was a very good message, and I'm glad I found the time to listen to it.

An Introduction to 3 John

However, I wish I could knit in church. I knitted while listening to that and I find it so much easier to listen when I have something to do! There's an elderly lady in our church who always says that we need a row in the back for people who want to knit during the sermon, because she doesn't like to just sit there either. ;) Oh well...I knit in the car (not while driving!) and while watching TV and sometimes while I'm on the computer if I've got something really slow pulled up. It's not that I don't have enough time to knit or anything...I just listen better. :(

Daylight savings time ended. I got an extra hour of sleep this morning! :)

Last night

Mmm, I'm awake now. My friend Jess called me this morning and woke me up...we're going to go letterboxing today and when I left her a message last night I failed to say that I just might be sleeping in...but it's okay, I needed to get up.

I was sound asleep and dreaming even I think...so it took me a few moments to figure out what that noise was! :p Oh, phone...

Me: Hullo...?
Jess: Hi! Ohh... did I wake you up? I'm sorry...
Me: Yeaahh...but that's okayyyy... *yawn* What time is it??

She finally suggested I just call her back later because it wasn't working too well to make plans with someone who was half-asleep. :D

Here are the pictures from last night! It was a pretty boring night...Colin and I went to maybe 14 houses, and when we got back I answered the door twice. Once to a small (cat? leopard? tiger?) that wouldn't say anything, and once to a guy who was maybe fourteen, who asked how I was doing and told me "happy halloween". Um...okay, that was nice! If you're that old and going trick-or-treating you should be able to be polite.

And we have....*drum roll*... Sarah Palin and Joe the plumber!!

And Sarah looks a bit peeved with Joe... :p ...and our bookshelves are a mess...



































Mom told me to say "Maverick!" which just made me laugh. :)








Please note the snow boots, moose (it may be a deer...) and gun... ;)











Joe...looking ready to fix something!











It's really hard to get a picture of a wink...











And this would be the after-effects on my hair:












That's hairspray...scary stuff. And my hair still feels a bit crunchy this morning even though I used a ton of shampoo last night! That doesn't look bad, in fact I kind of like it, but my hair doesn't usually have "volume", so it's a bit unusual! :p

Okay, I'd better get going and call Jess back...oh, Happy November!
I can't believe it's November already....it was just...April or May or something like that...

Some projects

I made a skirt yesterday...I got this dress from Goodwill a couple months ago planning to make a skirt out of it. I didn't get around to it till yesterday though.












I basically cut the top part of the dress off and made a waistband on the bottom half, so it's sort of halfway home-sewn. :p

It has a neat diagonal stripe sort of thing, and it's really full:











So it swirls!:












And since it's black and white I should be able to wear almost any color of shirt with it, which is nice! The one I'm wearing in the picture is perhaps not the best choice, but it's just what I had on. :)

Now I'm trying to decide what to work on for a knitting project...I have two sweaters in progress, but they both need some messing with to work, and I don't feel like dealing with that right now. So I'm thinking of starting on a pair of fingerless gloves or a hat. For some reason I want to knit a beret, but I have trouble with hats, so while it may look really cute in the picture, I may get it done and it'll look dorky on me. So I'm not sure about that...I guess it's worth a try. I guess... :p

I'm planning on sewing myself some ballet-slipper type flats, because I found a pattern for some and if I sew them, I might be able to make them so they stay on my feet! I'm going to try making a pair with what I've got on hand, like denim for the soles, and if they work I'll get a piece of leather or vinyl from the fabric store for the soles on another pair.

I was supposed to be working today, but I'll be working tomorrow instead, so I've got today to get some things done. And I should get a knitting project going to take to work with me tomorrow.

Oh yes, I'm working tomorrow, but I'm going to take Colin trick-or-treating, so Friday night or Saturday, I will post pictures of our costumes. :) *snicker, snicker, giggle* Okay, so they're probably very popular costumes, but they're scary...especially mine. ;) Of course, I didn't have to dress up to take him around...but I couldn't resist.

Okay...

...you know it's cold in the house if the two cats are sleeping on the same bed, with their fur touching even!!!

These two will usually never cuddle up next to each other, and they don't much like to be sleeping on the same surface most of the time...so yesterday when I was shivering and turned around to see this on my bed, I knew that it was in fact very cold in the house! :p

We try not to turn the heat on before Thanksgiving, in case you were wondering.

Gracie & Petunia:

Ten things Tuesday and some music

Well, I just remembered the "Ten Things Tuesday" that my cousin Rebecca was doing every Tuesday for a while, so I thought I'd do one. (Now you have a blog post for today, Rebecca...*hint, hint*) ;)

Ten things that make me smile. I had a hard time coming up with just ten! Maybe I'll do another ten next week...

1. A crisp fall day
2. A good book
3. Dancing
4. Music
5. Completely unexpected presents
6. Going to Starbucks on a cold day
7. Jane Austen movies...and books
8. Happy babies
9. A letter or email from a friend
10. A finished project

And now, music...

Beaker from the Muppets "sings" Coldplay's song "Yellow":


Also, so that Mom can actually hear this song: Viva la vida by Coldplay...note: Coldplay do not sound anywhere near as good live, and the lead singer Chris Martin never holds still so it's very annoying to watch on TV. :p

Square Dance!

Okay, I'm going to try to blog...we'll see how it goes. I'm sick, so my head's not necessarily very clear! :p Anyway...

When did I blog last?...Oh, Thursday. Okay.

So we went to a square dance Friday night! It was in Butner, NC, which is sort of north of Durham. It really didn't take us too long to get there, we managed to hit the traffic through Greensboro at the right time I guess, so that didn't slow us down. And it's a good thing we had plenty of time, because it took a while to find something to eat.

Butner is in the middle of nowhere. As is Creedmoor, but I thought that there was supposed to be food in Creedmoor. Which there is, but it's on the next exit, even though there's a sign for Creedmoor at the top of the exit for Butner. *sigh* Okay...

So we drove to Creedmoor (apparently the wrong part) and just got further and further out in the country with no signs of restaurants anywhere. At one point Mom suddenly said "Oh, there's a woodchuck!"...."Do you want to eat him!?" I asked. :p Of course we had no way to kill or cook said woodchuck, so we had to leave him there, minding his own business. ;)

Dad finally turned around and got back on the highway and we found all the restaurants at the next exit which was also for Creedmoor. And by this point I was getting pretty tired of Creedmoor... So we ate at a Hardees that had a 100% health rating, but didn't look like it should have. But the food was good, so maybe it was just so old they couldn't have cleaned the building up any more...I hope. I'll go with that.

Then we went back to Butner and found the hall for the square dance. Wait, I don't think they call it a hall in square dancing...hmm. It was a very neat building: Soldier's Memorial Arena Anyway, we got there in enough time for me to get my clothes changed and meet a few people before the dance started. Oh, and the light in the ladies room didn't work...so that was interesting. :p

I had a lot of fun! It was neat to get to meet people I know online. The dance was organized by the H.'s church...the H.'s perhaps known better on here as the Life from the Toaster people :p (Will, Sarah, and Annabeth, plus their brother Nick who blogs on Tunnel Vision with Neil who was also there). So I got to meet all of them and their family, and also Abigail and Allison. And various other people who I'd heard of or seen pictures of, but didn't know as well, which was cool! (Wow, that was a confusing few sentences...)

Plus, one of the guys I know from contra, Peter, was there too, which was nice because that way there was someone I'd actually met in person before! And he gave me a 45-second swing lesson, which will be very helpful next time I go contra dancing, but I didn't have any use for it Friday night because apparently you don't do that in square dancing. :( Which is a shame because it's really, really fun. But now I'll be better at it next time...and I found that it helped greatly that I put masking tape on the bottoms of my shoes...makes it a whole lot easier.

The dance was a lot of fun... although to be honest I'd have to say contra is more fun, partially because we kind of kept doing the same thing every dance on Friday. But it was cool anyway! And I managed to leave a few of my partners going "Wait, what? I'm sorry!!!" by throwing in contra moves...oops. ;) No, you did know what you were doing, I was the one messing it up! *grins sheepishly* Sorry about that...

Now, pictures! Dad took some pictures, although they came out kind of blurry...I'm not sure if using the "sport" setting on the camera would have helped any or not...but I'll post a few of the slightly less blurry ones. Dad said he got dizzy from trying to focus to take pictures of people spinning around. :(

I'm the one in the bright pink skirt, if you couldn't tell.

Circle left:








Find your partner, promenade home: ...I seem to have my eyes closed.








I'm blanking on what this square thing was called....?








Right and left through:








Another right and left through...no wait, the end of a ladies chain:









Do-si-do and promenade...and I'm wondering why the square I was in seems to be the only one still moving...everyone else is just standing there.








Men star left, ladies stand still:








All four ladies chain across:...we seem to be missing a lady...








Circle left:








Do-si-do:








I'm not sure what that is...








Another circle left:








They must have been explaining a dance at this point:









Okay, so unless you were there, you probably don't know who any of those people are...hmm... I could put a public link to my Facebook album, but I don't think that would show the tags on the photos, so it wouldn't help much. Ask if you want to know, I guess! Here's the link anyway.

I had the song "Mountain Music" by Alabama stuck in my head all weekend, because they played it at the dance. :p

And after looking that up, I realized how many songs by Alabama I used to listen to when I listened to country more...
The Closer You Get
I'm In A Hurry (and don't know why)
Song of the South
If You're Gonna Play in Texas

Um, anyway...if you can't stand country music, just ignore all that... :p I hadn't heard those songs in years though...wow...

Colin had a lot of fun at the dance too, although he didn't dance. He ran around with a bunch of other little boys and got so tired he actually fell asleep on the way home! Right before we left we rounded him up and he flopped down on the bleachers and I didn't think we were going to be able to get him going again. :p

On the way home Dad was getting tired, so I drove instead, and Mom kept asking me if I was awake, and I kept telling her that YES, I was awake! ;) I'd been moving all night, I was wide awake!

Okay, I think that's everything... and now I'll see if I can get to sleep. I slept a lot yesterday, which is why I'm posting this at 2-something in the morning! :D

It was nice to actually meet you all! *waves to blog readers she met* :)

Finished chairs

Well, I got the chairs done! Recovered, refinished, re-upholstered, whatever makes the most sense. I took the old fabric and foam off and replaced it with new foam, batting, and fabric...oh and piping! As I promised Rebecca, I have step-by-step photos...well, several anyway.

I refinished the chairs with some Minwax Polyshades, which is universally despised and not recommended and doesn't really work the way it should, which is why we still had 7/8 of a can in the garage. Because if you actually put two coats on something, sanding in between, it will all peel off when you sand, or it won't come off, but won't absorb any more color because it's already sealed with the polyurethane. BUT, it worked for this, because I just wanted to make the chairs look a smidge better, they didn't have to look new (they'd look newer than the table then!).

Also, try not to get the Polyshades on your hands if you use it...it's weird stuff. I'm fine, but it really dried out my hands that day and made them all red.

Chairs before:








Seat cushions before...they didn't really look that nasty:








Supplies:








Layered:








Piping:








Finished:








Chairs after:









So not quite step-by-step, but I only have two hands and I needed both of them.

The chairs had way more staples in them than I thought they would...that was actually the hardest part of the job, pulling all those staples out! I managed to jab my hand a couple times with the flat screwdriver...ouch. But I got them all pulled out, got the foam, batting, and fabric cut, and got it all stapled back on. And by the last one, realized that I had been putting the stuff on the wrong side, which is why when I screwed them back onto the chairs, the metal things for the screws on some of them came out. *bangs head on wall....gets out caulk gun and tube of adhesive to glue metal things to chairs* At least one of the chairs is the right way around...and the glue seems to be holding on the others. One of them must have been wrong though to begin with, or I wouldn't have thought that was the way they went. Oh well.

I went contra dancing Tuesday night, and I took a few pictures of the building right before we left...I need to get some more next time, but I didn't have time Tuesday.
It's at the Vintage Theatre, which used to be a church, so it's a neat building.























I didn't get any pictures of the actual dancing because I was...you guessed it, dancing! We're going to a square dance tomorrow night and I think I'll give Dad the camera. He was surprised I didn't take pictures Tuesday...sorry. :( They would have been blurry! :p

I think that's all...oh wait, no, Dad and I were late getting home because of the Democrats! lol Well, not the whole Democratic party, just Biden. He was at Wake today I guess, and after Dad picked me up from work we were at the traffic light trying to pull out onto the main road when a police officer on a motorcycle showed up and started directing traffic...against the lights. We finally figured out that he was just letting the south-bound traffic through (as quickly as possible) but we didn't know why. The officer was really getting mad too, he was standing there forever waving the traffic through, switching arms every once in a while and yelling at the traffic to hurry up!

"Is the president in town or something?" Dad said jokingly.

Well, finally a bunch more police cars, ambulances, and various other vehicles like that came by, and then three buses, one with a discreet "Obama/Biden" bumper sticker taped to the window, and then two more with signs that said "staff" and "press". So that's what was going on! They had to get back to the highway. I don't know how long we sat there though! Sheesh.

Some Sunday hiking :)

Today we had a fellowship lunch after church (and no evening service), and then just as we were leaving my friend Jess asked me if I wanted to go hiking.

"Um....right now?"
"Yes, and G.'s coming too!"
"Ah, yeah... you'll go by my house, so can I go home and change shoes real quick?!"

So my family went home and I speedily changed my shoes, clothes, washed my makeup off, grabbed a sweatshirt, water, and lip balm and headed out the door!

We went up to Hanging Rock state park and hiked one of the trails...it was a lot of fun. It was cool enough outside to be able to cool off when you got warm after a big hill, but it wasn't too cold. Some of the trees were starting to turn, but not as much as I would have expected.

A big rock tower!












Me and G....Jess also took a picture after I took my sunglasses off but I had my eyes closed (as usual)...












All three of us...and if you're wondering why I look ready to kill someone, the sun was in my eyes...I really was enjoying myself! :p Actually we all look a little strange...in fact, that's a very scary picture...









Anyway, that was lots of fun; I love hiking! :)

Hmm...not bad!! :)

I did a bit of shopping today! Successful shopping, thus the exclamation point. Well, in the long run it was successful, but there were still plenty of the usual "Who on earth can wear these clothes?!!" moments as well....I have trouble finding clothes that fit right.

I needed some jeans, because both of my old pairs are about to wear out, and I only have one pair that looks nice enough to wear out somewhere. So I looked at Eddie Bauer online, because usually theirs are the only jeans that fit me properly...well, they're $40-$50 or so full price, and the only size they had left in clearance was a 20. Bother. Seriously, bother.

Why do I have to be only able to wear expensive jeans? All the boot-cut, low-rise, skinny jeans, tight jeans, and whatever various other styles there are that either aren't modest or just don't work for me can be found for ten dollars or so, or twenty even!

Well, Mom said I'd probably just have to go to the store and try on a bunch of jeans and see if I could find some other (cheaper) brand that would work. *sigh* I decided I'd at least try Goodwill first...so I went there this morning and tried on who knows how many pairs of pants and jeans, but I did find some that worked!! Two pairs of jeans, and one pair of khakis... the khakis and one of the jeans are Old Navy (hmm...wouldn't have thought those would work, but apparently they have an "at the waist" style line) and the other pair of jeans are...Eddie Bauer. And of course they fit me best. :) BUT, the Old Navy ones fit too, along with the khakis, and at least I was able to find one pair of EB jeans for oh, 10% of the new price!

So I was pretty happy about that, and after I got done at Goodwill I went to Goodys. (I'm not sure of they have Goodys stores anywhere other than North Carolina, or not...anyway, it's a clothing store and they have a few home items too).

I needed to return something and then I had a gift card from my birthday to spend. So I tried on some more jeans there, and a pair of corduroys (I would like to be able to find a nice pair of tan corduroy pants), just so I could see if there were any readily available brands that would work for me. I did find two different pairs of jeans that worked, and wrote down what they were. But the corduroys didn't fit. :( Then I wandered around the rest of the store looking for clearance racks and sale stuff. I found a really cute knit top in the juniors section, picked up the XL, and went to try it on...and it didn't fit. Um...I'm not really that big...who can fit into the small? I mean, it fit alright, except for the shoulders, so maybe someone with narrower shoulders would have been able to fit into it, but I couldn't hardly move! I don't know if the juniors section is starting to be for little girls too (thus the small sizes), or what; although I wouldn't think the majority of teenagers would wear the clothes in the "Misses" department. I ended up buying one of the pairs of jeans, because I wasn't really sure what else to buy with my gift card, but when I tried them on again at home, I realized they don't really fit very well, they're sort of cut funny or something. SO, I guess I'll be taking those back tomorrow. Then I think I'll wait until I've pulled out my winter clothes and see if I need any more long-sleeved tops for this winter or anything.

I also bought seven salad plates on ebay this morning for about $20 including shipping! So altogether a successful shopping day and I didn't spend too much. :)

And when I got home I was very talkative because I was so happy I found some pants that fit and Mom was sitting there looking slightly overwhelmed. Dad took today off to paint next door at Grandma and Grandpa's house, so everyone slept in this morning, except that I got up at 8:15 to bid on the salad plates, so I was up and dressed and had eaten breakfast by the time everyone else got up about 9:00. Mom didn't have her contacts in yet, and asked me if it was 9:00 or a quarter-to-12?? Because surely it must be late if I was up... :)

Oh, and gas was $2.98!!! Woo-hoo! :D