Ugly Baby

Okay all  you yarn crafters and quilters that I know and love, don't you feel a certain connection with projects when you are finished with them?  Seasoned crafters realize that at some point you have to find good homes with your completed craft because, lets face it, you really can only have so many afghans, quilts, baby booties for no babies, scarves, table runners, etc.  Sometimes we sell our creations and sometimes we get lucky and someone has a birthday, or Christmas, or graduation, or other gift-giving life event so that our "babies" have a good home.  On rare occasions, there are some items that are unique enough and someone gave you the perfect yarn and you plan on keeping that treasure all to yourself.  But, what happens when, like me, you've spent the better part of the summer through fall on this item in your free time and it looks like this?

I love the yarn.  The picture on the pattern makes this neck shawl look so cool.  I blocked it the way I was supposed to, but I think it looks like a clown bib.  Help!  I don't have a circus family member to give this to but I don't want to give it away and I can't think of anyone in their right mind who would pay money for it.

What do you do with your ugly babies?

Truvy's Trichology

After taking some business courses in high school and being impressed by Truvy and her salon in Steel Magnolias, I decided that I wanted to own and operate my own hair salon one day.  (I also decided that my daughter's name would be Shelby, but my cousin beat me to the punch.)  I graduated high school and enrolled in college with a concentration on Business Management.  

Life took some unexpected twists and turns and I ended up finishing one year of college while continuing to work at the hardware store job I'd started in high school.  I worked there until a few months after getting married.  The business "bug" never quite left me.  I excelled at the hardware store and was put in charge of placing the weekly orders, checking in the stock, making special orders for customers and overseeing the cleaning department and I was allowed to extend that department to include specialty orders and attentions and accounts for the new local factories in town.  

Once again, I made choices that focused my attentions elsewhere and further away from my dream of owning a place that felt like Truvy's.  Often I fantasized about going to Beauty School and becoming a stylist--or beautician as it was called when I was younger.  (Now they are "designers".)

Here I am at 40-something and I feel like God has brought me back to where I was supposed to have been had I made different choices at an earlier age--the right choices.  Now I have a salon.  Trichology Salon.  I am at work right now and I love hearing the chatter and giggles and seeing the TLC that my staff gives each guest that walks into our salon.  I may not have the name Truvy, but I sure am blessed to have her salon.  

Trichology Salon
Clay Terrace Mall
Carmel, IN

Transitions

Boys disassembling theater seats.

Moving.  Packing.  Cleaning.  Predicting what will be and fighting to keep things the same during the transition.  Add the hormonal swings of middle aged parents and teenagers mixed with late nights and a "regular" schedule and we have one heck of a volatile cocktail brewing.  I continually pray that we give much grace to one another during these days.

Most of us in the family are planners.  We have one free(er) spirit among us thankfully.  Thank you, H for the comedic relief!  When we have unpredictability or we have differing opinions, the stronger willed or more freaked out of us becomes the squeaky wheel and the rest of us are learning to bend before we break.  I suppose that I am glad that this lesson comes in this way.  Don't we all at some point in our lives have times when we can look back at some transitions that are difficult?  Either they happened more suddenly than expected, leaving us less time to adjust or they are not wanted and we fight them.  It's the people who lent support and worked alongside in the trenches that we hold dear.  My fellow workers are my family and I am so very grateful for their support both in emotion and elbow grease.  I am glad that we can bend together.

Journey

Mr. H and I went to Journey concert as his birthday present

Life is just one big journey, right?  Just when I think I can get comfortable, things change.  Last year about this time, I felt the Lord telling me there was going to be change.  I asked if it was church, house, or job and never really got an answer.  Well, over the last year, we have had our church close its doors, and we've become members of a new church --which we LOVE.  We are buying a new house and moving this month.  B has taken on a consulting job, which isn't great, but is meeting some needs, but we are now looking into purchasing a new business (this is in the very early stages, but looks promising).  I think sometimes that our changes and adventures come in the Texas-big variety.  I'm not complaining, but could use some encouraging words...and maybe a maid.

B fixing some drywall before listing our house

Adding curb appeal with some large pots and hibiscus (cat not included)

Cotillion 2014

Our homeschool group's Cotillion was held the first weekend in May.  I finally have some better photos to post.  This was Mr. H's first Cotillion.  If you look closely, he is actually smiling and having a good time.  Enjoy!

First year with a green screen and added background later.  Is it just me, or do I look
like I could be one of Miss Peregrin's children all grown?  You decide.

Mr. H is smiling!

Mr. C in the Grand March

Miss K (front center) and Grandma and Grandpa W (Gma blue suit and Gpa behind)
helped serve.

Mr. H, back row left.  Mr. C, back row second from right

We did dance, this was a break.

Yarn Along

Hooray for me!  I actually finished my orange scarf and book last week!  That is a rare occasion.  Rarer still, is having the yarn, pattern and new book lined up to begin.  I started The Happiness Project 4 days ago and yet only made it through the first 2 chapters this morning.  Now that is usual progress.  :)

Too many other things on my To Do List to stop and comment much more on this post today.  Plus, I've gotta have time to knit...or read...now if I could just get better at trying to do both at the same time.  Yes, I have done both simultaneously, but only if it is a basic stitch I'm working on.

Yarn Along

Every bibliophile I know would say that they have books that have become friends to them, or perhaps just books in general are friends to them.  Merging that thought with the poem that says that we have friends for a reason, a season or a lifetime applies to our relationship to books too, I think.  Last week I popped into our small, local library.  Normally we borrow books from the bigger library in Noblesville, but last week I couldn't find a book for one of my boys and I thought I'd check closer to home.  No luck on his book, but I did find a book I'd been looking for about a year.  It is Daring Greatly; How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by Brene Brown.

I'd seen a TED video she'd done and decided I wanted her book.  Who knew I'd find what I was looking for last week?  Well, I think God did and that is where the idea of reason, season, or lifetime comes into play.  I won't go into the details of which category or why that category here, maybe that is for another blog, another day, but I will say that I find that this book has been helpful.  Reading it has revealed some things in myself and given me sympathy and perhaps even realized some empathy for others.

To whet your appetite, I'll give you the passage from a speech that Theodore Roosevelt made that gave Brown her inspiration:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how strong

man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face

is marred by dust and sweat and blood;

who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who

does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms,

the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,

and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly...."

I checked out one other book last week too.  (It is highly abnormal for me to get more than one "reading" book at a time, as I rarely have time to finish more than one in my 3 week period before the due date.)  Coincidentally (yeah, right) I picked up a book that was in a different section of the library, but mentioned many times in Daring Greatly.  Maybe I'll write about how that one is connected with this one later too.  I'm getting ready to learn!

The project I'm knitting is a scarf.  I started it in the car on the way to Ohio to visit family over the Mother's Day weekend.  I will give it to the Heavenly Hooked group at church to give out as needed, but I find myself hurrying through it now because I received some really nice and new yarn from Mom for my birthday last week.  Maybe I'll have a new book and a new project to show you next week.  :)