We're leaving on a jet plane

Well, tomorrow afternoon we leave for Israel. I guess I am nervous/excited/hopeful all at the same time. I'm the kind of person that worries about getting to the plane on time and doing all that kind of stuff. (Once, when I was younger and about to fly to Romania all by myself, I accidentally left my plane ticket at home. Thankfully I had my passport and we were able to get a replacement ticket, but now I think about that happening all the time) We are mostly all packed and the house is just about clean, so we're just about ready. Dan's never been on a plane before and I haven't been on a plane in about 6 or 7 years. (That seems sooo crazy because used to travel somewhere practically every year. I've even been able to take free flights because of the flight mileage I've gotten) Anyway, we're looking forward to it and hope that everything goes well.

For your amusement, I put together a little photo montage of one of our cats. So here's Norman being himself.

l to r: top: Norman asleep on the living room floor, Norman and Dan in matching "coats"
bottom: Norman asleep under the chair, Norman asleep on the couch (don't worry he's still alive)

We get no end of amusement from our fun pets. From the looks of it Norman sleeps a lot-he does, but sometimes he gets this giant amount of energy that sends him racing from room to room, up the top of the chair and down. He sometimes gets so crazy he starts fighting with himself. He'll sit down on the floor and act like he's going to wash his back feet, but instead he starts kicking is own chin and growls and bites at his feet. The more he does to himself the more mad he gets at himself. We try to tell him that he is beating himself up, but he won't listen. At first, we thought this was just kittenish behavior, but he continues to do it even now that he is four years old.

Well, I hope that your next week is great (I hope mine is too). Hope you enjoyed the random information.

Myrtle Leaf Shawl

Okay, long ago and far away (a couple of weeks ago) I showed you pictures of the Myrtle Leaf shawl that I wanted to knit and said that I was getting the yarn and all that. Well, the shawl got started (I told you that, too), but then, as you may have noticed, no knitting content!!!!!! What happened you say . . . well, I got done with two repeats of the pattern and it was fun, but life gets in the way of knitting and sometimes (you may be shocked to hear this) it can be nice to do absolutely nothing during your free time. I needed absolutely nothing to be happening for a while (although I did start a simple scarf from the vintage knitting book I have).

The scarf I started is the one in the picture above here-except its blue

The life that got in the way was putting together a youth concert at our local performing arts center for my church. The concert (with Carpenter's Tools and Elizabeth Hunnicutt performing) was on Wednesday and was a success, but I don't know if I will ever again agree to be the contact person for things again. (ie: I should know more about sound equipment and all. I did work in my college's auditorium and set up for concerts and things, but I was always the underling who got told what to do and when to do it) Anyway, I won't go on and on about that now, but I do have something you would like to see.
Very early progress on the Myrtle Leaf Shawl!!!

Here is Rebecca Modeling the first two repeats!!!!


You can't quite see the leaves yet, but they'll show up better when it gets blocked

I have a long way to go yet and I had hoped to wear it in Israel, but that won't be happening. I will just have to accept it, but some glorious day I will have this . . .

How'd it happen?

Well, Maya got engaged in February and she just wrote about how it happened in her blog, so it got me to thinking about how my husband proposed to me.
We've been married for going on five years now, but I remember it anyway :0)

So here goes--we were already pretty much figuring on getting married the next fall, but Dan's kind of a slow guy sometimes. (I recall that he compared us getting married to selling his old truck (not when we got engaged-I promise)-meaning that even though he knew he wanted to sell his old truck he just hadn't been ready to do it right away, but then he ended up selling it-what a romantic guy, huh? (this was is the summer before he proposed to me-I still tell him that he should never again compare me to an old truck, but I digress))

Anyway, on a very cold and windy day in January (the 19th) he came over to my parent's house (the one we live in now) to take me on a date. We had been planning to go for a walk in the snow, but it was nasty cold. Instead I played something for him on the piano that I was going to play for church the next day. He sat on the couch across the room from me with my cat, Cleo. When I had finished with the song I turned around and then got up and walked over to him. He got off of the couch, knelt down and proposed to me. I said yes to my most romantic man. (He said to me later that he had been asking the cat whether or not he should ask me) Then we went up to St. Cloud to go pick out a ring-he was nervous about picking one out, so we got it that night and even though we would have liked to have gone to this fifties diner that we had seen up there once or twice-for whatever reason we couldn't find it and ended up eating out at Pizza Hut.

Ahhh, the memories. Well, what my Dan sometimes lacks in romantic notions he makes up for in boundless kindness and forgiveness for all of my faults. I will be able to show our children someday the place where their dad proposed to me . . .

Us on our wedding day outside the church

So that, in my long-winded nutshell is how my husband proposed to me-Anyone else?

Someday soon sometime once again there will be knitting content, but, eh, there isn't very much to talk about on that subject.

. . . oh, what a beautiful day . . .

. . . I've got beautiful feeling -every thing's going my way
Well, maybe not so much, but it is a beautiful day. The temp is in the 30's and there is sun outside shining on the snow. It is truly very pretty out there. Not that I have a picture of it to show you, so you'll have to believe me. I'm seriously thinking I need to get a digital camera of my very own. I always feel bad when I steal my dad's and put pictures on it-even though I am only walking outside of the gallery that the camera resides in.
Anyway, all that said-did you know that in 10th grade I was in the HLWW/DC High School version of Oklahoma? You probably didn't know that, but I was. I was a part of the "chorus" and got to wear a white dress with bright purple, pink and green flowers on it with a giant purple sash. I think it was the brightest dress on stage. I knew the costumer well and she told me she thought I could handle it. She has been a director of a few plays that I was in as well and she always had me wear some strange outfit or in charge of some strange giant prop. Much as I can't act that well, I can handle props and looking strange. What a gift!!!!

Since, my parents live next door to the gallery, I ran next door to see if there were any pictures of this dress and lo, and behold-here they are. The picture might be a little small, but anyway they give you an idea of how it looked. Well, that's all for now. Have a good weekend!

white stuff from the sky

Well, I am a happy person because it is snowing outside. At this very moment there are white flakes falling outside of the gallery windows. I took a few pictures earlier when it was snowing a little less.

We also has a large storm last weekend so there was already snow on the ground. The snow last weekend fell during the Home and Garden Show in Hutchinson. It was great! (the crowds weren't that big at the show, but there were a good many hardy Minnesotans who decided to show up just to get out) We ended up getting about 12-15 inches around here.

I don't know what other people think (well, actually, I do-many people do not like large snow storms), but I enjoy snow. I enjoy the times when we get so much snow that things get canceled and we get to stay home and make cookies and watch movies and things like that. I enjoy the fact that we can be "forced" into sitting down, relaxing, and spending time with family.

(here's me on my soap box-you can just skip to the next picture if you like) I feel bad that there are people out there that get annoyed when the snowplows aren't out there in the middle of a storm plowing. Now, I understand the folks that are emergency personnel and need to get to the hospital and those kind of things could get tired of the snow, but the people I tend to hear complain about these things are usually are the ones who are truly able to take a day off.

We live in a rural area and I like it. I like the fact that there are times when our gravel road gets giant frost heaves or there are huge soft spots that not very many people can get through. It makes people think of different ways to get around. We only live a mile out of town and I remember a few times when my mom put on her cross-country skis to go work after a snow storm had come through.

The snowplows pile the snow from the roads on this side of town across the street from the gallery.

Looking in the other direction is my red truck and the bandstand where we have a couple concerts in the summer.
(It all has much more snow covering it now.)