Long Time, No Post

Wow, I haven't posted in ages! It's time to catch up. In September 2008, we visited London and South Africa. Dozens of photos from the South Africa trip can be viewed on my flickr site. Here's one of my favorites - Craig with a friend Rainbow Lorikeet on his shoulder.


We visited the kids in Eugene, Oregon, for Thanksgiving, and then were in Oklahoma for Christmas. At the end of February, we visited my cousins Jim & Karen in Atlanta, and then cousins Jeff & Vicki, two couples from Sioux City, and Craig and I went sailing in the Grenadines for a week with friends who own a beautiful sailboat named "Tatonka."


I got my scuba certification and have fallen in love with diving. The underwater world is spectacularly beautiful, and diving is relaxing and almost effortless (once you get in the water, that is).

On February 22, 2009, we were blessed with a new grandson, Andrew Dylan Cornelius, born to my son Larry and his lovely wife Melody. My next trip is out to Eugene, to meet that sweet baby face-to-face.

Keeping up with Ravelry, Facebook, and Twitter, along with the blogs I follow and 'real life' (as opposed to my virtual one) is keeping me busy and away from Blogger. I'll try to post more often than once every eight months in the future!

Hope Remains Alive

For the last two days, fiber artist Virginia Spiegel has been discussing, on her blog, the benefits of writing haiku. Besides being a talented artist, Virginia is well known for her fund-raising efforts on behalf of the American Cancer Society through her project Fiber Art for a Cause.

I'm chairing a current fund-raiser on the FFAC site. For a minimum donation of only $10, plus $2 shipping and handling, you can purchase a CD that contains 173 photographs from the Quiltart 2008 Grab Bag Challenge. In the challenge, each participant filled a small bag with fabric, fibers, embellishments - whatever they chose - and someone else made a quilt based on the items in the bag. The contributor of the bag received the finished quilt. The CD contains a full view and a detail view of each quilt, as well as the artist's statement for the quilt. The quilt I made, shown below, was made from the bag contributed by Beth Mastin. The quilt is called "Finding Balance," and it includes hand-dyed cottons, silk, cheesecloth, ribbon, and trim; silk rods; Beth's hand-made fabric beads; and metallic cording. The quilt was machine pieced, machine embroidered, and hand and machine quilted.



Please consider making a small donation to the American Cancer Society through Fiber Art for a Cause. You can donate to the ACS via a link on the FFAC website or by mailing Virginia a check, and then send me $2 for the CD and postage via PayPal or by mailing me a check. All the instructions are on the website. With our help, the ACS can continue its efforts to find a cure for cancer in our lifetime!

Many voices cry.
How can we find a cure?
Hope remains alive.

A Goodbye Story

It was 6:30 am on the morning of Friday, June 20, 2008. In a rural farmhouse outside of Mulhall, Oklahoma, my mother-in-law, Frances Fent, or "Frann" as she was known to friends, got out of bed and walked out onto the front porch to check the weather, so she would know what clothes to wear that day. One of her sons, the second of three, was going to pick her up about 9:30 am for an appointment in Stillwater, a city about 20 miles away, and home to the Oklahoma State Cowboys basketball team, which Frann had enjoyed watching for decades.

When they returned from the appointment, she might have followed through on the plan she had announced to her son two days earlier. She wanted to dig up some bright orange daylilies that grew wild out by the roadside and transplant them to her garden to fill in some empty spots. Perhaps this was just wishful thinking; it had been several years since Frann had spent much time outdoors tending her gardens. In any event, it was not to be.

Instead, Frann came back indoors that early morning and poured herself a glass of milk. Then she sat down in her favorite recliner, closed her eyes, and died. She was 90 years old.

Frances was married to Richard Fent, a self-effacing, bona fide World War II hero. A very humble man, Richard barely acknowledged that he had won the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and other commendations during the war. Despite a war injury that left him partially paralyzed, Richard raised cattle and farmed throughout his post-war working life. He and Frann raised three sons, the youngest of whom is my husband Craig.


After Richard's death in 1990, Frann continued to live on the farm. She maintained a large vegetable garden for many years, and enjoyed tending her flower gardens surrounding the house. She loved flowers, both real and artificial - she had a 'collection' of silk and plastic flowers that would have filled a small shop!


Frann loved the farm, and though the majority of her work was that of raising children, fixing meals, and keeping up the house and gardens, she proudly considered herself to be a "Farmer."

Her deepest hope was that she would never have to move into town, to a nursing home or assisted living center. She got her wish. She was able to stay on the farm until she died. She never had to suffer through a terrible illness. She died peacefully, in the home she loved. We should all be so lucky, when our time comes.

I'll miss Frann's sense of humor, and her quiet dignity. She seldom had a harsh word to say about anyone. She was a great mother-in-law, and I was privileged to know her.

In loving memory of Frances Wilma (Frey) Fent, born January 5, 1918, and died June 20, 2008.

Oops, not a Mountain Bluebird after all

An avid birder took a look at our photos and says what we have isn't a Mountain Bluebird - it's an Indigo Bunting. After looking at photos on the web, I have to agree. The bird in our yard has the black coloring around his eyes that's characteristic of the Indigo Bunting. He's still gorgeous, though!

And here's a new photo of our other, more permanent pal - Max, the Devil Dog - after she's been to the groomer. When she's groomed, they always put a bandana on her. After awhile, when it gets ratty looking, I take it off and Max always wants to play with it. So if you wonder what the blob of pink fabric is, it's her bandana. The white blob at her feet is the tip of her sock toy.

This is a good picture of Max. She's hard to photograph. Her black eyes (now filled with silver cataracts) almost always look either bright red (thus the nickname "Devil Dog") or they reflect like mirrors.

A New Garden Friend

Much to our surprise, this Mountain Bluebird has taken up residence near us and is visiting our garden bird feeder regularly. How he ever got this far east is anyone's guess, but he's certainly brightening our view. He's the most gorgeous shades of blue! (Photos were taken through four panes of dirty glass.)

Ravelry Rocks!

If you knit or crochet and you don't know about Ravelry yet, you should! Ravelry is an online community for yarn-lovin' folks like me. It has so many cool features, it's hard to know where to start to tell you about them. First off, you have your own Notebook in which you can record details about projects you've finished, queue up projects you want to make in the future, keep a record of your library of books, magazines, and patterns, and even keep a record of your yarn stash. There are groups you can join to interact with others who have like interests. And there's a huge pattern library you can search using key words, designers' names, magazine issues, etc.

Besides being just plain fun, I've found the website to be useful in a number of ways. Take the project queue, for example. So many times I'll be looking through a magazine and see something I want to make. When I actually go looking for a new project, do you think I'm going to remember that one, or if I do, find it? Not often! Now I just add the project to my queue. I can even link to a particular yarn I want to use for the project, and add notes and a targeted completion date. Then when I get ready to make the project, I can search to see who else has used the pattern. They might have useful notes about the design, yarn amounts listed, shaping, or cool alternatives - things I want to know before I get started.

Getting my Ravelry notebook organized has also prompted me to finish some UFOs, and to take pictures of finished projects. Over in the sidebar of this blog, under "Off the Needles," you'll now find pictures of Craig's sweater, which uses an interesting stitch pattern (at right) in a super-soft baby alpaca; my Summer Openwork Sweater, which uses a drop-stitch Snowshoe pattern (below) in a cool summer-weight cotton; and my Blueberry Wrapper.


Now if someone would just develop a website like this for quilters, I'd really be organized. Of course, it would take me months to create that notebook!

"Blue" - A Postcard

Here's the second of the eight postcards I'll be making for members of my quilting small group. I called this one just "Blue." Then today, I got an e-mail from Virginia Spiegel that she has a piece in an upcoming exhibit at Translations Gallery in Denver, called -- what else -- "Blue." Seems the gallery and I share a talent for stating the obvious. (heh heh)
Sorry the picture's not better -- I forgot to photograph the card and had to borrow a friend's cell phone to get a pic.

Knitting for Babies is Fun!

I'm hooked on knitting baby clothes. Things get finished so quickly! I had a three day weekend two weeks ago, and made this darling little hoodie for a friend's new baby. I finished the entire sweater (0-3 mos. size), from casting on to stitching up, over the weekend. If it was adult size, it would take me forever!

I had planned to photograph the sweater on a teddy bear, but one of my bears is too big and the other too small. The closest thing I had to a newborn size was my Felicity doll, one of the American Girl dolls. This is probably how the sweater will fit a newborn - they'll be rolling up those sleeves for awhile.

Pattern: Hooded Sweater from "Special Knits" by Debbie Bliss, which contains 22 adorable patterns for babies and toddlers. I've already picked out a little sundress I want to knit for my grandniece.
Yarn: Cascade 220 (80% cotton, 20% wool).
Needles: US8

Emily's Sweater

I made this cute little sweater for my grandniece, Emily. The pattern was adapted from the "Cuff to Cuff Infant Sweater" by Rae Creedle. The pattern only gives the infant size. I enlarged it to make a 9-12 month size. Yarn - Cotton Chenille by Crystal Palace, on size 6 needles. Hand-dyed buttons are by Primrose Gradations (now discontinued).

Winter Warmers

Hell officially froze over in Iowa during January. About a week ago, the actual temperature (not the wind chill) was -22 during my morning drive to work. To keep us warm and comfortable, I've spent the last few weeks knitting scarves. I've made lots of scarves in the past but never remembered to take photos before I gave them away. This time, I did better.

First, I made myself a really looooong scarf. I can wrap it around twice and still have nice long ends to loop through each other or let hang. It's just a quick garter stitch scarf on size 18 needles. Next, I made a scarf for Craig. It's based on the "Architect Scarf" in Greetings from Knit Cafe , but I used different colors. Encore washable wool and size 11 needles. My son Larry just came for a visit, and was here on his birthday. I knew he was completely unprepared for these temperatures. (He lives on the coast of Georgia where people are "cold" when it's in the 40s.) So I made him a scarf too. It's a k2p2 rib in rich brown, with random stripes of seven different colors. Same yarn and needles as Craig's scarf. And a bonus photo -- here's the very first thing I ever made after attending a knitting class in the summer of 2006. It took one two-hour class for me to become hooked on knitting.
Today I'm finishing up a little sweater for my six-month-old grandniece. Photo soon!