The Scottish Lamb

Won't You Be My Teddy Bear

Before everyone and their sister had digital cameras I used to send my film to Walmart and they had a deal with AOL to put the pictures on the web and you could go look at your "You got pictures".  I'd totally forgotten about them after we'd gotten a digital camera.  Well I clicked on the button by accident on my AOL browser and look what I found!

This is Joseph at about seven months old.  I wish you could see the whole outfit.  It's from Debbie Bliss's Nursery Knits.  The hat is underneath was probably just a little plain vanilla in-the-round pattern (I made a lot of them for the boys when they were little) and the shawl is the beginning of the Elizabeth Zimmermann's Stonington Shawl from Knitting Workshop.

I also keep forgetting to mention that a photo I sent in to Knitter's over a year ago finally made it into the Fall 2005 issue (Where In The World section).  It's a group shot of everyone that went on the Mull Island Spinning Retreat in Scotland a year and a half ago.  That's where I met Nilda and several other awesome knitters and spinners.  You can read more about that trip back in my archives.

Thank You, Soldier

My great-grandfathers were military, my grandfathers were military, I grew up as a Navy brat, served in the Army myself for nine years and, as most of you know, am a military wife. I know first-hand the sacrifices that our military and their families make in serving our country. While I’m grateful to each and every one of them, I’d like to tell you about my very own personal soldier.

I met my soldier at an Army school at Ft.Devens, MA on July 5 th, 1992. We were married just two short months later. I don’t thank him enough for the things that he does for me, our sons and our country. I think it’s clear that I love him as a man and the father of my children, but as a soldier, my heart swells with pride for him.

He’s been a Federal Special Agent with Criminal Investigations for ten years. He seldom wears a uniform. We’ve had neighbors for a year that didn’t know he was in the Army. His hours are very long and demanding and he has been very short-manned our entire tour here, but he maintains his positive outlook on life and always-jolly mood. Middle-of-the-night phone calls are common in our home

He is fair, professional and caring. His men love working for him so much that, on several occasions, they have asked to be assigned with him, even when it meant deploying to Afghanistan. In February he will leave for his second deployment to Afhganistan. The first time he was gone for eight months. It will be a year this time with two weeks R&R leave somewhere in the middle. It’s a year that he will miss out on not only the little luxuries in life that we all take for granted, but it’s a year that he’ll miss out on his sons and his wife. I know for my husband that will be the hardest part. Missing his family. And though daily life for us here at home will be tough as I muddle my way through single-parenthood again, the hardest part for us will be missing him.

Each deployment gets a little easier with new technology. When he went to Bosnia he got a video every week of toddler Daniel.When he went to the Pentagon to process the crime seen on 9/11, Celluair gave them all phones to use for free while they were there so we could get hold of him at any time and as it was playing out on CNN, he could call to let me know he was okay when the Pentagon collapsed and caught on fire again. When he went to Afghanistan the last time, we had Yahoo Instant Messaging and games to play together online (I cheated my pants off on online Chess and didn’t admit it to him until he came home). This time we’ll have DSL and great web cams. It will still hurt and we’ll miss him but we’ll get through it.

So, thank you, Dan, for being the man, husband, father and soldier that you are. For setting a fine example for our sons to follow and for loving your family and making us so proud.

A little update on Jeremy: As I type he is outprocessing during his last day in the Army. He will be on his way to his grandparents and civilain life this afternoon.

Caught In The Act

Okay... seriously... you all knew that the rest of my posts would probably include a picture of Aggie, right? lol.  I'll try to control myself... right after this one:

That thing she's chewing on is the bed I knit for her. I used Wendy's cat bed pattern.  You can't see a lot of it but it's obvious it didn't felt very well. It's knit with leftover Ballybrae from my Must Have Cardigan.  The Ballybrae is one of those rustic mill-spun yarns with a lot of spinning oil in it.  I washed this at least five times and you can see it's still pretty floppy and has a lot of stitch definition.   It's nice though because I can wrap her up in it to go out to the bus stop in the morning and it gives her a place on the sofa to sleep.  She thinks it's a tasty snack.

I won this little beauty on German ebay last night.  It's from Holland.  It should only take a couple of days to get here.  I'm anxious to see  how she spins.  Didn't I just say about six months ago that I only needed one wheel?  I figure it'll come in handy to teach if someone wants to learn.

Perfect timing because a little package arrived a few days ago from Nilda with 2 beautiful ounces of 50% Angora/50% Merino roving from Twin Ponds Fiber Farm.  Thanks, Nilda!!  You're too good to me.  ;-)

Yesterday was the one-month mark from when we lost Leilani.  My mother still has her good days and bad days as I'm sure she will for a long, long time, but she's healing and realizes that Leilani is finally at peace.

Pure Sweetness

She's here... she's here!!  She's on my lap as I type.

I brought Aggie home on Wednesday!  She'll get to go back and visit her mom, sister and one brother  on Saturday when we go for a bbq.  Actually she'll see at least her mom and sister quite often as they live down the road and we're friends.

She's been a great girl already. I have a big basket on my side of the bed.  She whimpers to go out at about 2am.  We do our business and she goes right back to sleep until 6am.  Even though the basket has been serving as her crate (just easier for me to sitck my hand down and reassure her at night) we'll start real crate training on Monday.  We're huge believers in this method after we crate trained Bailey and I have yet to meet a vet that doesn't think it's the way to go. I've already introduced her to it for a few naps but I wanted to her to feel comfortable with us and in her new home first.  She hasn't had one accident in the house yet.  She went everywhere with me yesterday in a doggie tote bag.  She slept so much no one even knew she was there.  Good girl.

Our friends that we got Aggie from have a little girl named Lucy.  She looks adorable in hats so I'm making her the Fiber Trends Garden Party Hat.

It will be perfect on Lucy.  I started the brim the other night.  Here's how far I've gotten:

I'm knitting it with none other than Elann's Highland Wool.  Speaking of Elann... they have a great line up for the month of November.  I just got my knittable swatches yesterday.  The new Highland Silk is some gorgeous stuff.  It does have a sheen to it due to the silk content.

I'm also working on a V-neck sweater for Dan with Highland Wool in the darker denim color.   The exact name slips my mind at the moment.  I think this may end up being one of his favorite comfy sweaters to just hang out in.  It's just a basic wide V-neck with a band of ribbing that will go up the sides and down the inside of the sleeves.  Of course, I'm knitting it in the round so it's a pretty simple knit so far.  Kind of hard to make out the ribbing before it's been blocked but here's a picture for proof anyway:

I leave you with one more adorable shot of Aggie: