It's Been A While

...since I've posted but it doesn't look like anyone has missed me. Honestly I just have not had the time to blog. I've got so many irons in the fire. Something happens or I see or hear something and I'll think "I need to save that for my blog" but then I don't find the time to blog and when I finally sit down at the keys to write, my mind goes blank. I don't do well when I am overloaded with things and I've really got myself laid bare. Nothing seems to be happening to talk about. I have my Bible study on the Disciplines of Christian Living and then I've got two Bible reading projects going. I know. You'd think one would suffice, huh? Well, I have been using the Daily Bible since the first of the year which is an NIV translation divided into 365 segments with a few devotionals thrown in (not nearly as many as I had hoped for, but oh well!) and then my pastor challenged us to read the Bible in 90 days over the summer. So I've continued with my first plan and just added the second plan to it. At some point they will meet in the middle but the 90-day plan is much faster having many more Bible pages to read every day. But I am using a new translation I got for Christmas last year. It's the New Living Bible and I really enjoy it for reading. I'm glad I decided to use that Bible for my second reading plan. The NLB is a very good translation (paraphrase) for just sitting back and reading the Word of the Lord. I wouldn't use it for a Bible study. I prefer the NIV for that. But it's very, very readable.

So I've had all this going on in my life and have had meetings and meetings and meetings and of course I'm still knitting up a storm although I confess I've eased up a bit on it. I don't need to knit as much as I was there in the beginning. It's nice to have settled into a schedule that is more relaxing. When I first went back to knitting last year I almost knitted 24 hours a day! Day after day!! I knitted afghans and throws and shawls and baby hats (which by the way is about time to knit another one). Now I'm pretty well down to just one project at a time. I'm working on a white baby blanket. The pattern calls it an afghan but it's more of a blanket to me. Much tighter weave and a little on the small side for an afghan. I'm using white worsted yarn for it. But I picked up a pattern the other day for another baby afghan that I'll use my lavender (sport?) yarn to make. This one has a much tighter weave and looks and feels more like a blanket than an afghan which I think of as open and loose. This white one will be much warmer than any other afghans I've done. I have plenty of worsted yellow yarn left over from when I was knitting years and years ago (I knew I was hanging onto that yarn for some reason) and I think I will use it for an afghan too. I'm ordering some yarn and patterns today for future projects. I had hoped to order them online but couldn't figure out how to navigate their "store," so I'll do it snail mail. One of the projects is the yarn and pattern for adult jacquard wrist warmers that I think my granddaughters will like to have. The second project is for me. It's the yarn and pattern for yoga socks and yes, I plan on going back to yoga again. I have my DVD and I'll just do it here at home rather than going out to a class. I really need to be doing something. Anyway, I thought they were great looking socks and they don't have heels or toes so there aren't any tricky places to knit (I hope). These may be knitted in the round and if they are, that will give me the opportunity to learn how to knit that way. I do want to learn but I'm secretly hoping that they aren't designed to be knitted in the round because I'd like to just knit them like I know what I'm doing, lol!

[Hubby just took me down to the yard and showed me that we have two tiny cherry tomatoes on our vine now! Yippee!!! That is as close to having home grown tomatoes as we've been in years and years!]

I still have yarn coming out my ears and I'm buying more??? Shame on me! But I don't have any sock yarn around so if I'm going to be doing socks, I need more yarn. I've been thinking about making myself a sweater but I just can't get myself to do it right now. I'd rather knit things! I'm thinking about knitting some place mats too if I can find an interesting pattern. But then, most of those will involve working with more than one color and I'm not ready to tackle that issue yet.

Our weather has been so strange lately. Very cool and overcast for the past two weeks. Yesterday's high was only in the 70s. This is June folks!! We're supposed to be dripping in sweat by this time! I'm not in any way complaining though as I simply do not like hot weather. It just seems weird to have such mild temperatures this time of year. I could go for this temp all year round. The biggest problem we've had going for the past couple months is the wind. We've had an almost constant wind whipping the pollens and molds around activating all those nasty little nasal problems.

One of my blogging friends sent out the cutest chicken pictures today. She and her hubby ordered 27 chicks from somewhere with I think 3 roosters. But her little chickies are absolutely adorable! Harriet is the winner hands down for today's vote. She's got so much personality just standing there in the pic. Looks like she could rule the roost if you ask me. I sure wish I had 27 chickies to play with until they matured into laying hens. They are just so cute. We always had a pen full of chickens when I was growing up. It was fun to go out and gather in the eggs, to count them and see how many you got for the day. Anyway they just bring out the little farm girl in me. I always liked our chickens and I didn't like it one bit when mother would cook one for dinner. That didn't stop me from eating dinner but it made me sad. I would have turned down the fried chicken in a heartbeat if my doing that would save the chicken but I knew that would never happen so why not eat what the Lord has provided? I am not a vegetarian but I would be if I had to kill my food before I could eat it. There are too many vegetables to pick from before you start killing animals to satisfy your hunger. Or that' s the way I look at it anyway.

Well, yes, I know this is a very short post but I've got things I need to be doing before it's time to take hubby to the doctor and see if he can do anything for hubby's nausea and vomiting. As if he doesn't already have enough to handle what with all the pain he's dealing with and then to have this stuff heaped on top of everything else, it's kind of rough around here for Mr. Hubby. But I do need to get some things done. I wanted to vacuum but don't know if I'll get around to that or not. I have gotten the bed made and all my Bible reading is done for the day. There's about an hour's worth of reading every day for me to get my two different Bible reading plans fulfilled. And that's hard for me to sit still for that long. But I think my biggest problem is that I keep falling asleep. I need to do my reading before I start my day and I am constantly fighting the urge to sleep. I must have fallen asleep a dozen times this morning before I got all my reading done. But I can't read during the day (I've just too many things to do to spend my time reading) so that leaves mornings or nights and I end up battling the sleep issue regardless of which one of those I choose.

This hasn't been much of a blog but I keep trying. You have to give me credit for that, I do keep trying. I want to take out the time this afternoon before we leave to get my Bible Study done. I think this discipline is on prayer if I'm not mistaken and we can all use help with prayer in some way. Prayer is such an incredible gift from our heavenly Father and yet most of us get prayer so far pushed aside from our daily activities that we never seem to get around to it. I know that I could improve this area of my life greatly. I just never seem to take the time for it and a brush up on that discipline will do me the world of good. And then I do want to get more knitting done today too. I've got my bed made and the dishes done and that's as far as I've gotten. So anyway I'm going to let this be my blog for today. I know it's boring and I don't even know if anyone out there is still reading it but I keep trying. I think it may be time to put my blog to rest, permanently. We'll just have to wait and see how that works out. In the meantime, stay close to the Lord and improve your prayer time, it can't hurt!!!