New Year, New Yarn, Finished Socks

Happy New Year to all of you who read my postings. I hope that it's been a wonderful
14 days for you.

Since my last post a lot has happened. 2009 has started with a blast. I've got several things on the needles right now, but I finished my Monkey socks New Year's eve. How cool is that? That was my goal and I did it. Below are a couple of pictures for you. I can truly say that this won't be my last pair. I love them. I think I may do my next pair something solid or nearly solid.

Recently I was in Tennessee taking mom to the Ortho Ped Doctor to schedule her next total knee replacement (Jan. 27th) and while I was there I went to my favorite place in the Smoky Mountains. Smoky Mountain Spinnery. I have talked about this shop before and I just love it there. When you walk in it feels like you have the softest blanket wrapped around you. It's just an awesome place for me. You all know how crazy my life has been, so going in there is almost like a sanctuary of quiet and peace.

Well while I was there I made a couple of purchases. My son wants a pair of socks so he picked out this fantastic Heritage. These colors are so him. I promised him that I would start these while mom was in the hospital, because he made me promise to do a lot of relaxing knitting while she was there.

Then I seen where Nancy had woven a beautiful shawl out of Nikki . I just had to have that yarn. The colorway is nearly all my favorite colors. I have no idea what I will make out of it yet, but for now I am just enoying the color.

My other news, last buy not least, I finally started my first pair of toe up socks. Yup, I have one done and the second is just about finished. The jury is still out on how I like doing them though. Speaking of jury duty. Guess where I'll be next week. Yup. Sitting. they won't let me knit, so I'll reading and I have some patterns in my mind that I will write out. So I'll be knitting in my heart. LOL.

Have a great day,

Blessed Be

I've been busy

I'm a few minutes from leaving for a long weekend in Tennessee but I wanted to post a few pictures of what I've been doing. (when I'm not on Ravelry, LOL)

A neck warmer pattern for my knitting students. As they finish theirs I'll post pictures of them.

I LOVE these socks. If you are like me and think that you are the last knitter on earth to make a pair of Monkey socks (found on Knitty.com) go ahead and start a pair. You will wonder why you waited so long.

This is Cindy. She is modeling her "Beacause I Care" shawl I made for her.

I'm suppose to be in Tennessee

My bags were packed, the Cruiser was ready, and my throat was so sore and my fever was 101.3 so I didn't get to go on my weekend trip. I really need to get away for a couple of days and check on mom. Plus I seriously need to go to the Smoky Mountain Spinnery. But mom sent me a few pictures to make me feel better.

So I'm going to fix me a hot toddy, kick back and knit, and sleep, and knit, and sleep... I may play on Ravelry some too. ;-)

Blessed Be

Back in Georgia

WOW, it was just beautiful in the Smokies over the weekend. I have a couple of pictures to show you. From when we got there till we left to come back it was busy. I think we spent 90% of the time there out running the roads. Gatlinburg was just fantastic as always. I love that place.

While I was there I did find time in the evenings to finished my Alternate Moss Stitch socks. They turned out pretty good. Tomorrow I will give them to my friend Suzan who went nuts over them while they were still on the needles. LOL.

More pictures coming soon. (that is if I can leave Ravelry alone enough to come here and blog :-)

Blessed Be

Back to TN

This afternoon I'm headed back to TN. I have a knitting classes to teach this morning that I just didn't want to cancel. These ladies are wonderful so I'm knitting and then traveling. I have to be back Monday, so it's not going to be a very long trip.

Mom hasn't been sounding too good on the phone and she needs to be checked on, and of course I've got to head to Gatlinburg to visit my favorite fiber store.

So I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend and that it's filled with doing things that bring you peace of heart and peace of mind.

Blessed be,

Pictures, Pictures and more Pictures

I've promised you pictures and now I have them. They are proof that I have been busy. LOL. By the way, before I post pictures, thank you to everyone who said a prayer or kept Truman in your thoughts. Tuesday he was finally taken off his antibiotics and will be checked again in 4 weeks to make sure he can staff off of them.

Ok, here we go. Lets start with yesterday. My daughter turned 21. We had a great day. It went way too fast, but we had a lot of fun. Her friends and co-workers really showed how much they cared for her. It was wonderful. Now she wanted to make her cake and she did. She loves Oreo's so she made a Oreo cake with Oreo pudding filling. DIVINE.

We met up with her boyfriend at the new Starbucks and spent an hour there cutting up and having a good time. (bad picture, taken with cell phone)

Then a few weeks back we went to Tennessee to see my mom. I mentioned that we had went to the county fair while up there. Here is proof. This is their version of a petting zoo. Check out the goat on top of the turtle.

And I have been knitting. I've been on this Tam kick. Though I'm working on every project I have on needles trying to finish them. (I need the needles for other things and refuse to buy more) LOL. So here are a few of the tams I've done the past week or so. The last picture is a detail of the wool that I am crazy about. It's think and thin and just wonderful to work with. I got it at JoAnn's and made the tam in about 2 hours. I was excited.

I have one more tam started that is also wool, but is on size 3 needles and will be fair isle. I can't wait to get to the color work.

I've miss blogging. It's so frustrating to have just enough time in the day to read a few blogs and not jump in and participate. But, hopefully with some of the decisions I've made lately and getting my Avon business started I can make enough that I'm not running in a hundred different directions. By the way thank you again to those who signed up on my Avon mailing list. Very much appreciated.

No pictures yet

Let me start out with what we've been up to. We've been traveling, knitting, worrying about Truman, working and joining Avon.

We went up and spend about a week with my mom in TN. It was wonderful. We went to a county fair and had the best time. Can you believe that I had never taken my kids to a county fair. We don't have them around here. GA has a state fair and I think that's about it. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We also went to a little drug store that had the soda fountain / restaurant in it. I can't even begin to tell you how good the food was. And the people had to be some of the most friendly people I've ever met. I got to go to the craft area of Gatlinburg and visit spinners and knitters and came away with no purchases. But plenty of ideas and a few job offers.

Then it was back to reality. Truman is now on his third round of antibiotics. For those of you who don't know who Truman is, he is my 5.5 month old Great Dane puppy. He has a serious infection located between his vertebra's. Though it's getting better, it's not getting better fast enough of me, or the vet. We'll decide after this next round of meds what our next step will be.

Avon. Well my cousin has sold Avon and made a really good living for herself. I really hadn't paid much attention to it until I was up at mom's and see ever thing they offered, and seen their prices. Even paying full price I could cut what I spend on makeup, facial cleansers, moisturizers, shower gels, nail color and shampoo by 3/4s. Yes, you read that correctly, I can have my bathroom full of goodies for a quarter of what I am now paying. And the stuff is good stuff. I use the mineral foundation ( I use a lot of natural products) that you see on tv or at ULTA, and Avon's Mineral Foundation is less than half of what I pay. So I talked to my cousin and it only cost $10 to sign up. So I'm really excited. Here is my Avon website. www.youravon.com/sandramelton . Please go buy something LOL. Actually I would like to do this full time, but I gotta start somewhere. Oh and they also sale clothes, handbags, undies and all kinds of jewelry. I gotta tell you if I can shop from one catalog or one website and get it all done, I am there!

Now for knitting. I have for some reason gotten the bug to knit Tams. I've got three made all ready and ordered the yarns for my next one. I'm going to start making fair isle tams for gifts. Hell, I make sale them. Anyway, I'll have pictures of those soon. I've also made a few more washcloths. I love making those. While up at mom's I realized that it's about time to get both of the scarves that I started last year out and get those bad boys off the needles.

So be patient with me pictures are coming soon!