Granny Gets a New Toy

Yesterday my new toy arrived. It's a gadget that attaches to my camera and I can take pictures of my old slides and convert them to digital. I went through all of my slides this morning and sorted them.

All the pictures of people have been converted to digital, but still need to be edited. Pictures like scenery and stuff, that I REALLY like, I've sorted and I'll go through them and then do only my very best pictures, there's too many to do all of them. I haven't cropped them yet, there are 206 of them, but here are a few that I like.

The first one is Gryper. He's trying to sell his hat by convincing them that it was carved from a solid block of wood. You can see by the look on Halfpint's face, he's not falling for it.

This next picture is of Mrs Gryper. Behind her is the tent trailer that she and Gryper made back in the olden days. Mrs G sewed the tent, while Gryper made the box and frame.

This is me with Cyclin' Granny in the middle, Never Give Up on the right and Mushing Mum in front. We were in England in 1969 for this one.

This pic is me ... looking groovy in Scotland in 1971.

Grandson the First

I can't take credit for this photo, it was posted by a friend of Grandson I on facebook. I can however, take credit for the DNA. This was taken in Aurora a couple of days ago. Isn't he the coolest?!

I'm Not Normally One To Gloat

But ....

I did it .... I really did it. After getting beat at crokinole by Gryper for most of my life, I wupped his butt. Yep, I did it.

So now, the questions come.

Is he losing that killer instinct?
Did he have too much G&T?
Was he sleep deprived?

I know one thing, he didn't let me win, as he might claim. I saw the surprised and horrified looks that flashed across his face when his shot wasn't exactly as he had planned. I saw the looks of disbelief when my shots did work out. I was red hot!

Yep ... if I never, ever win again, I will always remember that for one brief, shining, moment, I reigned!

Knitting

I've been working on another pair of socks. These ones are different in that I had to sort of work out my pattern on my own rather than using a pattern. I've been making two socks at once, starting at the toes, on one long circular needle for a year now. It's so comfortable and easy to do it when you're not fidgeting with all the double pointed needles. Here are two that I did last year so you can see the difference.














The first few pairs, I experimented with the cast on and getting the toes to look the way I wanted. Now I'm working on the heels.


The first two pairs have a heel that's done in a way that's similar to turning the toe. This pair has a really nice heel, but it was a brain cramp working it out. So here's what I've come up with. I've patterned the top with cables (difficult to see with the varigated wool) and used a different method for the heels. I think they look much nicer, but I'm going to have to modify them a little further.














Today, I was going through some old stuff and found pictures of this Spiderman sweater that I made for Grandson I in 1996. Another make your own pattern. I was very proud of this one and was pleased that I found a picture of it. If you click on it to enlarge it you can see the webs I stitched on the face and sleeves.













Right now I'm also working on an afghan for Grandaughter I, that's very pretty, but it's too warm to have it sitting on my lap at this time of year. I expect she'll get it in a couple of years ... at 265 stitches to a row, it takes a while.
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Every Once In While

Every once in a while it happens, there's no predicting it.

We go to a lot of pot lucks. Our circle of friends will use any excuse for a party and they're almost always pot luck. I'd guess that we go to about twenty a year, definitely more than one per month, but not twice a month. So let's say twenty a year. We've been here for close to six years. So without actually going back and looking through my diaries, I would estimate that we've gone to lets say one hundred and twenty in the past six years.

Of all of those pot lucks they've all worked out fairly balanced wth salads, comfort foods, meat dishes, and desserts. Once there were a lot of salads (early summer) and once there were a lot of pasta dishes (autumn). Generally though, you get a really nice balanced selection of dishes. Today that was not the case.

I didn't count heads, but I would guess that were about 20 of us at a pot luck lunch. It broke down like this. There were around four appetizers, a jellied salad, a cole slaw, a potato salad, an asian noodle type salad and sliced ham. Oh, but the desserts ... there were LOTS of desserts. There was an angel food cake, an ooey, gooey chocolate cake, fruit salad, cheesecake, nanaimo bars, several types of squares, butter tarts, cookies, cream puffs, I made a glazed bundt cake, and there was much more. There were desserts that were virtually untouched because we simply couldn't eat that much stuff.

If you don't plan pot lucks they almost always take care of themselves. Almost always.
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Peer Pressure

After Angellaura's comment on her post, I'm feeling pressured to post more frequently. Succumbing to the peer pressure, I have the following post.

This morning I have nothing to say. I'm waiting for the kettle to boil so I can make tea ... in one of my teapots .

Angellaura made the vermicomposting sound easy. After annihilating my first flock of worms, I got another half pound herd. They seem to be surviving, but they're not "gettin' busy" as quickly as I thought they would.

That about does it, I'm out of ideas this morning.

I have a fiddle lesson today ... yee haw!!

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Catching Up

I've been catching up on everyone's blogs this morning. Since we got home from the RV Safety Course, we've been busy.

The course was great. We learned a bunch of stuff, confirmed that we already knew a bunch of stuff and were on the right track, and the highlight of the course, was the rodeo. Ken aced it, natch, I did pretty well too. The really cool part is that I got lots of practice backing up. Not straight, mostly at right angles. The reality is, I don't like backing the sucker up, but I can if I need to.

We were last in line for the second time around, so I backed into the one "site" that was on the right hand side beside a building about six times, just for the practice. Then I had to go down a narrow corridor and turn onto a narrow road. Next was back into a compound through a gate drive around the compound then back out the gate. Last was backing around a corner into a "site" on the right hand side beside a building.

We met some terrific friends, Yvan and Francine. They will be in Haliburton at the "School of The Arts this summer, so we'll be able to get together really again soon.

All in all it was a great time, the weather was perfect, Muggins and Merlin were both well behaved.


A great way to start the season.
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