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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April Showers

Unbelievable!!

Okay, I know that the danger of frost hasn't passed until the third weekend in May, but this is ridiculous!

April showers bring May flowers?! I don't think so. How about April showers bring out the snowblower?!?

Look at the bottom centre of the pic just out from the wall of the house ... see that? We still have piles of snow where it was deep and on the north side of buildings and hills.













Hrrumph!
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My Wack Job Family

So one of my nieces, Meg, is having a baby and we had a surprise shower for her today. It was a three hour drive for her and her sisters and Mushing Mum to get here. They got her here by telling her today was the big experiment that Cyclin' Granny had blogged about way back when (Click here to read it) . This was the day CG, MM, Devon (the negligent blogger) and Gryper were going to put their tongues on frozen metal. Sound nuts? It was.

As it was right in the vicinity of freezing it wasn't cold enough to do it outside, but determined Gryper was not to be put off. He spent last evening washing nails, putting them in plastic tubs and then into the freezer. By the time all the guests arrived, they were ready.

Gryper pulled out the first tub from the freezer, and they each in turn stuck their tongues into the tub, picking up as many nails as possible. Then they tried seeing if they could steal them from each others tongues. The whole thing simply put, wasn't pretty, but I'll let you be the judge.

Music Festival

Yesterday was the big day. I played my violin at the Haliburton Music Festival. Thanks goodness that the adjudacator wasn't like Simon Cowell!

There were several of us playing and they had us play from youngest to eldest. First, a six year old boy named Eric, was sooo cute. At the start of every line, he went up on his toes. Then Mieke, 10, who was pretty much terrified and refused to crack a smile no matter what I said to her, but she did well. Matthew who is about 13 played two really tough, advanced classical pieces, then Emily, 15, played two fiddle tunes she was great ... "gnarly", as Leo put it when she was done. Leo, about 16, played a classical piece on a big ol' double base. He was great. Then me.

I played two pieces. First, St Anne's Reel, a Canadian fiddle tune, with Ken as my accompanist on guitar. It went really well, no mistakes despite my nerves. I would have like to have had more "pulse" in it, but it was good. The adjudicator, Stella, gave me great comments on it.

The second piece was a classical one, Bourée in G Major by Handel. I made a couple of mistakes, but was able to recover so it was hardly noticable, then I made a third one that I actually had to pause for a moment and get my fingers out of the braided mess they were in. However, I got good compliments on that too.

One thing I had been working on all week was keeping from scrunching up my face when I made a mistake, so only those who knew the music would catch the small goofs. I think I did fairly well on that .. well mostly. Apparently when I briefly paused to sort my fingers out I mouthed the word "shoot". The only ones who caught it were Stella and my teacher, Bethany, who was accompanying me on the cello. Afterwards, when the doors were opened and people were leaving, Stella came up to me laughing and asked "Did I hear you use a "colourful" word when you made that mistake?". Smiling, Bethany said, "It was 'shoot'.". Fortunately, I'm fairly sure it was shoot, but I told her, laughing "It wouldn't have been unlike me".

All in all, I had fun, played pretty well and got great comments from the adjudicator.

Yesssss!

Uncontrollable Fit of the Giggles

I had this happen once while I was dispatching for the police depratment. I can relate to this so much.

Take a look at this BBC article

Then click on the link below her picture and listen to the recording. It's hysterical. Every time I listen to it I am helpless with laughter.

Spring

Note: Thanks for the picture advice Susan. Ken taught Gryper and me me how to do it.

How do you know it's springtime in Haliburton?

First of all, this was taken 4 weeks ago.

You finally start seeing some daylight coming in the windows of the house.















The snow melts off the backhouse roof .... finally. There was about 2 1/2 feet of snow on this tiny roof.












The road starts washing out with all the water from the melting snow. At least the road is a bit drier. When we went for our walks, Muggins' tummy was soaked and covered in sand.











The really ugly boat that has been completely buried in snow from the snow plough starts to emerge. I couldn't even see this boat when I was walking past it three weeks ago!












There are a few ruts in the driveway.












Gryper starts thinking of ways of fixing or improving the evaporator while he's making maple syrup.














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What is it with blogger??

Why is it that every time I try to load picutres onto blogger, it's a big hassle?? It sits there for ages and then times out. I almost never have the pictures go without a problems. I NEVER have a problem on Facebook.

A raspberry to google on this one.

I had a great one planned and have tried for over half an hour to load my pix. I'm giving up in frustration. I think I'll go and read Gryper's blog to cheer myself up.

My Sister Spoils Me

I know, I know, I haven't been very active with my posts. I've just been doing a bunch of other stuff.

I have to share something cool though. My sister spoils me. Thank you CG.

First of all after having posted about my teapots, we had a few posts from others about their teapots. That segued to a post about aprons. Since that time, both my teapot collection and my apron collection have each grown by one.

First of all when we went to their cottage for a visit last week she gave me this apron she made for me. It's got funny cartoons on it. Notice the nice pink border around the outside. I look very June Cleaver-ish when I'm wearing it.








Then, as if that weren't enough, we arrived at Mum & Dad's yesterday and she was waiting for me with this beauty.

After our teapot blogs, she sought out Mrs Potts for me.

Isn't it great?! Thanks CG.





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Don't Get Any Bright Ideas

The subject line is for CG & MM. This in no way means I have any intentions what-so-ever of joining your mega-ride. I'm still planning on doing the hostess thing.

Since we're planning on visiting PEI this year with the Bees & the Grypers, and we're all planning on taking the bicycles, Muggins wanted to get prepared early. This is her in her new bicycle seat. (Sammie hasn't tried hers yet since the Bees are down south. )

Muggins didn't mind it at all, she just couldn't stop sniffing long enough to get her picture taken, so she looks like she's pulled down, but she can sit up perfectly. I think the girls are really gonna enjoy it. It'll be interesting to see how Mrs Bee's and my legs hold up though!

Hmm ... I wonder if I should get a little parrot style one for Merlin?