I thought I’d try a quick post using Windows Live Writer instead of posting through Word Press.  Let’s see if this actually works.

Tonight’s agenda is to make sure the basement family room is ready for some new carpeting in the morning.  Such excitement!  The “man cave” is nearly done.  DH is pretty happy with it.  I have to agree, it’s looking pretty good compared to what it looked like before all of the remodeling.

Update, I just checked the post.  Yep, it works great!

I went out to dinner this evening with a coworker and this is what we saw

Off the coast of Cape Cod

We drove to Cape Cod after work and had dinner on Cape Cod at a little diner in Falmouth, MA.  Yum, lobster rolls! .. and I’m not telling you how big they were.

Note: this is actually an old post that I found in my drafts.  I never published it until last night.  Go figure…

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything to my blog.  I thought I just might give it a try again.  It may be the new laptop I purchased this week that is making me think about blogging.  I was using a 7 year old Dell Latitude laptop until this week and decided that it has seen enough of life.  Even though it was “state of the art” when I purchased the latitude, technology has left it in it’s wake.  The new laptop reminds me of getting a new car.  They’re  all shinny and pristine, nice and fast, and no nicks (stone chips?) in the screen/windshield.  I’ve had good luck with Dell products and purchased a Dell Inspiron this time around. I decided I don’t haul my personal laptop around enough to need the durability of the Lattitude.

I’ve still been knitting.  DD and I are making the girlies new sweater coats for the fall.  We are making Secret Garden From The Children’s Collection by Alice and Jade Starmore. We’re each using Beaverslide Dry Goods 90% Beaverslide fine wool/10% Kid Mohair 3 ply worsted weight yarn in Natural Jersey Cream. The yarn is a dream to work with and the pattern is great! It’s a really fun knit; not too boring and not so busy that you can’t enjoy a movie while knitting. I’m anxious to see the sweaters done.

On my way home from work this week I  stopped at Leagal Seafoods in the B concourse in Boston’s Logan airport.  This is what I brought home for tonight’s dinner.  They were delicious!

 Legal Seafoods packs the live lobsters along with  an ice packin a box lined with styrofoam and a  plastic bag.  I carried them onto the plane an put  them in the overhead for safe travel.  When I got  home I put the box in the refrigerator till today.    They kept overnight quite well.  When we  unpacked them for dinner tonight, one of them  started crawling across the kitchen counter.  DH  put a large pot of water on to boil

When the water came to a full boil DH put the lobsters into the pot.

Cooking lobsters

We never cooked live lobsters before and I was suprised how quickly they turned red. 

They cooked for 10 minutes after the water began to boil again.

Dinner

A great dinner was enjoyed by all!

There are some great benefits to traveling for work!

I went out after work with a co-worker for dinner and this is what we saw

Cape Cod

We were at one of the many bays and evidently facing west.  I don’t think you can watch the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean, at least not from Massachusetts.  The air was quite chilly and Jean said the water was even colder (she put her hand in) .  We drove around Cape Cod for a while and stopped at a little diner in Falmouth, MA for dinner.  Yum,  lobster rolls.

Today when I left the house it was snowing.  Now I’m in Whittier, CA (a suburb of LA) and it’s quite warm out.  I sat out on the patio outside my hotel room without a coat or shoes and was quite comfy. 

I also learned something on my journey:  If you’re flying into LAX and have drive 30 miles, most of it on the 105 and the 605, don’t schedule your flight at a time that puts you in the rental car at 6:00 pm.  LA traffic is crazy at rush hour.  It reminded me of a trip I made to LA with DD many years ago.  We were in LA for a wedding and had some time for sight seeing.  We tried out a few LA freeways at rush hour on a Friday evening. 

In response to a comment on this morning’s post, I was talking about the registers not resisters.  Spell check didn’t even catch it.  And, the floor is now done! Yee Ha!

And to my other comment, yep we did have dinner in the Perrytowne Tavern Saturday evening.

The dining room floor is nearly finished, pictures on the weekend.  There are just a couple of pieces to put down but they need cut to fit around the resisters and such.  It looks so much better than the sticky tiles.

We went to the Penguin’s Hockey game Saturday evening.  Ed got tickets and invited us to go.  Thanks Ed!  We had a great time.  We stopped for dinner at a little bar/restaurant in Perrysville.  It was nice and the food was good.  We had great parking at the game in the south lot, the closest to Mellon Arena.  We also had great seats, 2nd tier, and could see pretty much everything.  The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Buffalo Sabers 5 to 2.  Whoo Hoo!  It’s always great when the home team wins!

I’m headed to the airport in about 1/2 and hour, so I’ve gotta get going.

I see you’ve found the new blog.  

My DS set me up in WordPress so my many thanks to him.  You’d think that in my line of work I would have done this a long time ago myself.  Well, I didn’t.  I owe all of the credit to Steve.

I’m still knitting.  I’m working on my Christmas grab bag gift and a pair of socks for DH… no pictures at this time but maybe later. 

DH is working on removing the self sticking vinyl tiles from the diningroom area floor at home.  We plan on putting down some engineered hardwood in Harvest Oak.  I can’t wait to see it done.  It’ll be so much nicer than the tiles.  By the way… we’ve moved since my last post.  We put the old Victorian on the market and bought a 2 bedroom ranch.  We’ve downsized!   I think I’m still trying to get used to living in a new home but I’m making progress.  I think about the old house much less these days.

Thanks for stopping by!

(Currently in Christiansburg, VA)

Sorry, no pictures with this entry.

I’ve had a job change recently and am now traveling a good bit for work and I’m not at home. I’m in Indianapolis, Indiana and I don’t have my camera with me. I love the new job. I’ve taken a position with a company that I worked for in the past. I always liked working for this company and saw a job posting on their website that I thought was a good fit. I applied and was hired. Last week was my first week back and I felt like I had gone “home” (even though I wasn’t home, I was in Philadelphia).

On the knitting side. I’ve been working on my Christmas grab bag gift and it is going well. I really am happy with the way it is turning out. Sorry, I won’t be able to post pictures of it until after Christmas, so you have a long wait to see it. I am working on another pair of Wendy’s toe-up socks that I’m making out of Austerman Step. The colorway is shades of brown and off white and I’m making these socks for DH. I also started a pair of Bayerische socks and only have the ribbing done on one of them. I’ll post pictures when there is something to look at. I’m making them out of Louet Gems in cream that I purchased from the Loopy Ewe. You should check out their site sometime. They have great sock yarn that I don’t see in the yarn shops that I visit. Their prices are reasonable and their shipping service is very fast. They always personalize your order and put in a nice personal note and some little freebies.

I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I arrive home last weekend. DD ordered a pair of handmade glass circular knitting needles and had them sent to my house for me. They are really lovely! I can’t wait to knit with them. I’m thinking that a lace project will need to be started this weekend so that I can try them out. We saw these needles at MDSW but I didn’t purchase a pair, I just coveted them. Now I have a pair of my very own.

DD’s birthday was Monday and she, her hubby and the girls stopped over to visit. We went to the mountains for Memorial Day weekend (a yearly occurrence) and I stopped at Reiland’s Farm and Shop to pick up some fiber as an addition to DD’s birthday gift (see my post from May 07 for the rest of the birthday present details). DS turned 21 years old yesterday (yep, their birthday’s are 2 days apart). He also received his birthday present from Reiland’s. He was with me when I went to the shop and picked out some nice llama yarn spun from the fiber of Penny and Danaka. I love the fact that you get to know the name of the llama that gave up their fiber for your knitting pleasure. He has enough off white llama to make a vest.

This past weekend my sister, daughter and I went to Maryland Sheep and Wool. It was absolutely great! The weather was perfect, it got a bit cool in the afternoon but it was dry.

(Please feel free to click on any of the pictures for a closer look.)

My sister picked me up Friday and when she arrived she had a surprise gift for me. Nope, it wasn’t my birthday or any other occasion for a gift, it was a totally impromptu gift (my favorite kind).

Here is what she brought me. I think he is absolutely adorable!

It’s a wall plaque and was the perfect thing to start off the weekend. I decided that it needed to head to Maryland with us. We left my house and picked up my daughter then headed south. When we got into our hotel room we found a place of prominence for our mascot.

On Saturday morning we went over to West Friendship to the Howard County Fairground. We got to the festival sometime around 9:30. It’s amazing how many people have a fondness for fiber. The parking lot was filling quickly when we arrived, but there seemed to be plenty of available parking. The people who run the festival certainly seem to have their act together when it comes to handling hordes of people.
There were plenty of vendors and we spent the day browsing all of the fabulous fiber, yarn and everything else. I picked up some fiber for spinning. I bought 4 ounces of a lovely sea foam colored wool, silk and angora blend. I’d love to spin this to a lace weight yarn and knit a shawl.

I bought 2 pounds of a wool/silk roving in a grape, blue, gray colorway that I am going to split with my dd; a pound for each of us. Oh, what is dd going to do with a pound of roving? I did my birthday shopping for her while we were at MDSW and she has a new Ashford Kiwi on which she can learn to spin. Happy Birthday DD!!! Her birthday is at the end of the month and I thought this would be a great way to usher in a new decade for her. I bought some sock yarn for the stash (I know, sock yarn doesn’t count as stash) and 4 balls of Jameison Cob Web weight wool in and off white color. It was a great day for a bunch of fiber enthusiasts!! Next year we have to figure out how to get Em to come with us!

DH and I went to the mountains the weekend before MDSW and DD and her girls came up to join us on Saturday. I got a good bit of spinning done on Saturday. I plyed 620 yards of the Red Swirl Colonial roving that I picked up a while ago.

It looks like a fingering weight yarn. I still have another 1/2 a pound to spin. I think it might have to be used to make a vest.

DD and I got some knitting done in the evening. I finished knitting my Early Spring socks that I made out of Crystal Palace Panda Cotton in Periwinkle.

Pap-Pap took Anna outside to swing for a while. It was a bit chilly out on Saturday for Claire to play outside.

On Sunday it was warmer out, thee weather was gorgeous, and we went for a walk to a place where they are digging for fill. There were a lot of rocks to climb on!!

We all hung out for a while to enjoy the nice weather……

Then we packed up and left for home.

A good time was had by all!