Skies and Snowflakes

Happy Birthday, Katie! She is 11 years old.

We usually spend the weekend after Thanksgiving putting up our Christmas decorations. It's a little different this year. I bought one of those pre-lit trees last year, and when I got it out yesterday to put it up, I noticed that about half of the lights weren't working. I checked all the bulbs to make sure they weren't loose, checked the fuses, and the wires at the base of each bulb to make sure it was making the connection. When none of that worked, I called the customer service line to see if they had any additional suggestions. They couldn't suggest anything I hadn't already tried, so now they are sending me a new tree.

Our tree is not up, but we did put out some of our other decorations. It was fun doing that in the new house. In our old house, we had put everything in the same place for so long, and this year, we had to figure out where we wanted to put things. Cody actually did most of the decorating, including coming up with this arrangement:

Yesterday I didn't post anything but a picture because I was really tired. I had an appointment for an upper GI yesterday morning, and I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight. Now, I don't normally spend the wee hours of the morning eating and drinking, but somehow knowing that I couldn't drink anything made me so thirsty. I kept waking up during the night thirsty, even coughing because my throat was so dry. Consequentially, I didn't sleep well and spent the rest of the day in a brain fog. However, you will be pleased to know that my tests showed no abnormalities in my upper digestive system.

While I was waiting for my appointment, I saw one of my co-workers up there. He told me he'd been there all week. His wife has cancer, and apparently she's not doing well at all. Dennis told me he thought she was dying, and that she'd be better off if she did. That must be so hard, to watch someone you love suffer so much that you come to that conclusion. I've never met the wife, but Dennis is such a nice guy. I can't help but feel for him.

And now for some good news. I washed and dried the scarf I made yesterday out of the Red Heart Strata, and it is much softer now. It is not quite long enough for my taste in scarves, but I think my sister in law will like it. Next time, I'll use about a skein and a half and maybe make a hat out of the remainder.

Today I started the Irish Hiking Scarf from Hello Yarns. I'm using some old Sayelle acrylic yarn in Bluebell. I'm pretty sure this yarn has been discontinued, since it came from the bunches of yarn my mother sent me when she cleaned out her stash. This may have been my grandma's yarn, since my mother had gotten all of her yarn when she passed on.


I absolutely adore this pattern, but then I like anything with cables in it. I was disappointed, though, that I couldn't find a good game on to watch while I knitted it. I wanted to watch the Egg Bowl, which is what they call the annual Ole Miss-Miss State game, but it wasn't on. Well, it wasn't on a channel I get anyway. Ole Miss won that one 20-17. I was kind of surprised, because Ole Miss hasn't really had a football team since Eli Manning graduated. For the last couple of years, State has had the better team. Nevertheless, Ole Miss pulled this one out by the skin of their teeth. I ended up watching Tennessee play Kentucky. That was a pretty good game, but it just isn't as exciting when you don't have a dog in the fight.

Now for today's Saturday Sky:

It was a beautiful, cloudless blue, and got so warm that at one point, I turned my air conditioning back on. I think this is the last little bit of fall color we are going to get this year.

Moving on to winter...

Remember making paper snowflakes? Since it seldom snowed in Southeast Texas where I grew up, I used to make bunches of paper snowflakes and tape them up all over the house. Now you can to it online here. I could spend way too much time on this site. Plus, until the end of the year, they are having their flake-a-thon. That means for each increment of snowflakes made, the owners of the site will donate to the Salvation Army. There is a scale on there. Just mouse over the Flake-A-Thon banner and it will pop up. Now, I'm off to make more flakes. It's fun. You should try it.

I'll warn you, though. It's definitely addictive...

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