asking for help

 I'm not very good about asking for help sometimes, but yesterday I asked Carla to send out an email asking for people to help with binding quilts because Rhoda, my friend who has done most of the bindings for the Binky quilts found out she has arthritis in her wrist and her shoulder is giving her troubles.  She is unable to bind quilts for us for a while.  I hope they figure out what is wrong and she can help again, but we have quilts piling up.

 I also asked for people to make preemie quilt tops or blankets or whole quilts.  I had a great response and dropped off quilts yesterday and today to three different people for binding.  I think there were 20 quilts that will be bound and ready to go over the next week or so.  That's great considering we've been pretty quiet lately.  Carla's machine is acting up and doing the same thing mine did before it died so hopefully she will be able to get hers fixed faster than I did and she will be back to working on quilts again quickly.

 I also had several people offer to make some preemie quilt tops and some blankets out of fleece or flannel.  I need to get busy cutting some fabric kits because there are some people who also want kits to work on.  I should just quit my job and work on quilts full time.  I could fill my days with all of the things I could be doing!  I have enough fabric to last about a year if I worked full time at it, that's for sure.

I could also use some help with school work.  I have needed to get things done over the weekends, but last weekend I had such terrible migraines 2 out of the 3 days and yesterday I worked all day.  We have to change around the way we are teaching science.  Every few years someone way up in the government decides that their way is the best way and this time around it's called Next Generation Science Standards.  It's been in the works for several years and there are more projects and less of the teacher telling the student the answer.  So, no only do we have to change the order of how we are teaching (Physics will be taught 9th grade year instead of Earth science) but since we are changing the name of the course 10th grade year and I have an old credential, I will have to take about 4 tests to teach the exact same class.  About 3 years ago our school changed the name of the class from Integrated Science to biology because my credential didn't allow me to teach integrated science.  Well, we are going back to Integrated Science so I have to get the new credential, even though I've been teaching the same class for 15 years.  And people wonder why teachers leave the profession?

new camera cord

Yay, my camera cord came today and now I can post pictures again.

 I put my machine to good use this weekend working on quilts and am happy to be back working again.  I had some troubles with it shocking me for the first couple of days, but it must have been the weather because after the first couple of days, it hasn't shocked me since.  My knitting machine also was shocking me so maybe it was me doing the shocking.  I do have an electric personality!

 I did get some bad news this weekend.  My primary binding buddy has arthritis in her wrist and has pain in her shoulder so she won't be able to do any bindings for me for a long time.  I will need to find some more people to do all of these bindings now.  Probably lots of somebodies.  It's hard to find people who love to do bindings as much as my friend Rhoda did.

 It has been raining like crazy today and the winds have been insane.  We've been having sustained winds of 50 miles per hour.  It feels like the house is about to get blown over, especially up stairs.  It's pretty funny because about once a month I wake up and tell my husband to check for an earthquake.  He always thinks I'm crazy, but will check anyways.  Tonight he's the one who thought there was an earthquake because the house was shaking so much from the wind.  I'm just worried the big trees we have around will get blown over.  They are coming down all over the neighborhood.  Fences are falling down everywhere too.

 The creeks and rivers around town have been cresting and one has even reached flood stage.  In 2005 it flooded and a friend of my daughter came to stay with us for a couple of weeks because her apartment flooded and her mom had to find a new place to stay until the apartment was fixed.  We were just notified that the same creek is flooding again, which means the roads around it are flooding.  I hope that they have fixed the drains enough so people who had flooding last time don't have to deal with those same issues.  Some of our students live in those houses and I have a good friend whose house flooded.  She stayed home last week to keep watch on the creek.

We asked for rain, but this is a bit too much.  When I came home, the house was really cold and I couldn't figure out why the heater wasn't keeping up to keep the house warm.  I had to eventually take the dog door out of the sliding glass door.  The dogs will not go outside with this much rain and wind anyways, but the 50 mile an hour winds were just blowing in and cooling the house down to 62 degrees.  It was 'freezing' in here.  I know some of you have real cold weather, but for this California girl I'm not used to dealing with anything this cold and stormy.  Once I took the dog door out and got the wind to stop coming in, the heater was able to keep up and the house has warmed up nicely.  Finally I can go to bed and hopefully sleep through the shaking and blustery wind outside.  It's a good thing my days at school are long and exhausting so I can sleep well at night. :)  There's a silver lining to every storm.  I just hope I wake up in the morning and the trees are still standing and the roads are open.

Another exciting adventure awaits.

back to work

A short week ahead but long days. On Tuesdays I run the tutoring center after school which means I can't start getting ready to leave until 4:15. I had a meeting before school too which meant an even longer day. I'm trying to make good use of my time during the day so I can use my time to do fun things when I get home but I'm so tired at the end of the day it's hard to get off the couch. 

Maybe I should stop and quilt something before I ever sit down. 

There's always tomorrow. 

having camera issues

I am so happy that my quilting machine is back up and running. I got 5 quilts done today but can't show them to you because I lost the cord to the camera again! I swear there is a Bermuda Triangle here somewhere. 

I do have some more hats to show for the days efforts though as I spent my day working to finish up 50 boy preemie hats. I had 50 girl ones done plus a few extras and was hoping to get boxes shipped out this week with preemie hats for a group called God's Tiny Angels that I found on the Internet and a box of adult and kid hats and scarves to a friend in Idaho and some yarn to my cousin (well second cousin) in Colorado and another box of yarn to a lady in Southern California who also does charity knitting. 

Share the love. 

 

 

 

Rebecca is back!

I know what I will be doing this weekend!

 

early morning

This is what you do when the dog wakes you at 3:30am. 

You knit baby hats before work. 

Lots of baby hats. I got these 10 done in an hour. 

 

trying to learn to let things go

Today was such a long day at work. I got there at 7am and left at 5:30pm. We had meetings before school for two hours and the students who missed finals because they left early for vacation stayed after for two hours to make them up today. 

Working with so many people who don't see the same situation the same way can get really frustrating sometimes. After a really long day like today I'm trying to learn to let those frustrations go and focus on all of the good things that happened throughout the day. 

I should be able to pick up my quilting maxhine on Friday and hopefully spend the weekend getting some quilts completed. That will make up for all of the stupid things I had to deal with today. 

And I did get a hat made before work this morning which is a great way to start the day. 

 

let it rain

And rain and rain

The field at my sons school flooded as did many roads around my school. I think things will slow down a little tomorrow and give us a chance to dry out a little but there is more rain in the forecast. I guess the drought is over. 
 

what a crazy day!

Wow, the saying about everything going wrong on the same day sure did come true today. 

This morning started with my computer not working at school. I was promised a working system when they installed the new projectors and that's why I went on Friday to play with the new set up. Not only did the computer not work...it would not turn on. But once it got tuned on, it would not talk to the document camera or the Internet. Our grades were due at monoglot tonight but nobody could access the grade program today so they had to push back the deadline. 

They had promised that my vcr would be hooked up and working but again those were hollow words as the vcr doesn't show anything.

There was no paper for the copy machine. The department chair asked for some but because the Internet was out the message never made it to the library where the paper is stored. Luckily I had some squirreled away but then the copy machine jammed about 7 times.

We were told to take attendance by Jane but not given a class roster so I wasn't sure which students were supposed to be in my class. 

I had planned a very short inspirational video to start the class with and my lesson plan was on the Internet which I couldn't access. About two minutes before school started I decided to throw out the lesson plan and go with the idea that for I ended the day and all of the students were still alive it would be a successful day.

I could not get the air to work in the classroom. I could get the air to turn on for five minutes and then it would shut off. After ten minutes of no fresh air and 30 stinky teens the room got so stuffy. 

I'm not sure if the kids had any idea that my day was chaotic or not. Half of them were asleep.

The last thing befor leaving for the day was an email from the principle saying we were down custodians and our rooms would not get cleaned. The perfect ending to the perfect day. 

Then my poor little guy comes with this list for homework. 

He's pretty sure his teachers ganged up on him to torrure him. 

 

binky Sunday

We had a small turnout today but got a lot done. There were four of us who stayed the whole three hours. Two of us worked on baby hats and got a dozen preemie hats complete with pompoms and the other two worked on quilt tops. Several more ladies came by to drop off finished quilts and blankets and to pick up supplies.  Binky Sunday is a great day to connect with the others who are committed to helping kids and let's you feel appreciated for the work you are doing. 

 

final countdown

Today is the last day of vacation and I need to squeeze every last bit out of the day.

This is what I did yesterday...for 10 hours!
  I had grand plans to grade all vacation, with little bits here and there so there wasn't the final push at the end.

However, the grading program stopped working about the 2nd day of vacation and since I use the grading program to print out my grade sheets, I had no place to record the grades I had.  My excuse was if I graded anything, I would have to do extra work going back through everything to record it later.  Therefore, why work twice as hard?  I would just wait until the tech guy fixed the trouble.

The problem was, the tech guy took forever to get the trouble fixed.  There were only a few of us that the problem affected.  Seems Comcast decided to upgrade us to a new IP address which blocked the grade website.  It took some sleuthing to get this figured out.  I could access the grade program while in Colorado, but not at home, while using the same computer, so it had to have something to do with the internet.  But, my parents also have Comcast in Colorado.

Then I went into school on Thursday to work there, but since we are getting new projectors (which nobody wants) they had taken my computer offline and I couldn't get the internet there either.  It was like someone really didn't want me doing any work over the vacation.  However the work still had to be done.

So, yesterday I sat down and cranked out yarn cakes on my yarn winder and graded like a crazy woman.  I finally finished at 7pm and then made dinner.  Good thing my husband and son love to play video games.  I don't think they even knew it was so late!

Today I need to clean up the yarn mess that has taken over the living room and try to get organized for the new semester.  We are supposed to have the 'Storm of the Century' here today with up to 10 inches of rain in the mountains.  Flooding is expected, with high winds, but so far, it is just raining like a normal storm.  I don't want to jinx things, but I'd say the weatherman may be wrong on this one.

 I have Binky Patrol this afternoon and as long as I don't have to get a boat out, I will be heading out to see if anyone else shows up.  I won't be taking too much stuff, but will be taking my small knitting machine and some yarn and a few fabric kits in case anyone wants to pick up things to work on at home.

My quilting machine still isn't finished.  I called the repair guy on Thursday and he returned my call Friday saying that the parts finally came in and that he would start working on it.  I'm not sure I believe anything he says anymore.  It sure will be nice to have it fixed and be done dealing with him.  I would NOT recommend this guy to anyone else.  Even if he does get it fixed, the trouble of dealing with him has not been worth it..

OK, off to clean up, sort things out and get a plan to be organized.  Now that's a funny joke :)

Oh, and happy birthday mom!  She's 83 this year!

 

reality

I'm back to reality. I spent 2 hours yeaterday and 30 minutes today grading finals. This morning I'm heading in to school to grade some videos that are on the computer there and to check out the new projector that was installed.  Already looking forward to the next vacation!

 

button jar

Does everyone a button jar or three? I probably have about a dozen of them but every time I need a button for something I find myself running to joanns to get just the right one. Not this year. I'm going to start using these beautiful buttons so others can enjoy them too.

I used two buttons for the eyes on the snowman scarf. It's a small start!

 

 

 

 

home life

It rained off and on all day which made the excuse of staying in and working on more hats an easy one. I got groceries this morning and paid the house bill and then have either made hats or watched videos on how to make hats the rest of the afternoon. The program for entering grades still isn't working and I spent about an hour working on that this morning with the tech guy from school so that has to count for something!  

I'm not being a total lazy bum.

 

I guess 8 baby and one preemie hat are nothing to sneeze at. I used up three skeins of yarn.
 

 

new job

My son starts his new job today working for a water resource management company.

Ramnet.com is the website if you want to check it out. He will help write programs to manage the reservoirs in the state of California.  Pretty cool.

Made it home safely. That was the bumpiest flight I've ever been on. There must have been a lot of storms between Colorado and California and we went through each one.

It was a good trip and I'm looking forward to going back this summer.

 

snow day

I woke up this morning to snow! 

My dad and I went out for a walk and it was a nice crisp walk with. Fun crunch to each step. There were only a couple other brave people out and we left fresh footsteps that melted by the time we left to head out for my moms dentist appointment. 

I will be home tonight and be back to my old routine.

 

 

 

 

more hats

I'm still in Colorado and still working on making hats. Today we watched the rose parade and I made two owl hats, his flower ear warmer and then after a trip to hobby lobby for some buttons and dinner including French silk pie at village inn. I cranked out a dozen preemie hats. I head home tomorrow and back to the routine of cooking and keeping up with the family so it is nice to have a couple days to sit back and relax.

I  used up the last of the tiny balls of yarn ends to make these dozen hats that were leftover from my last visit here.  These tiny hats sure do not take up much yarn.  You can get 4 hats from 1.oz of yarn.

I've made three of these owl hats now (2 today-they take 2.5 hours each to crochet) and I had to modify the pattern a LOT to get it to fit.  I have a large head and the original pattern came out big even for my head.  It is too long and too wide, so I had to shorten it and take out some stitches.  Then I messed up on the last hat and it came out bigger again.  Maybe after 30 of these I will finally get the pattern correct and I will get faster and figure it out.  It has a lot of front post and back post double crochets which really works the fingers.

Happy New Year 2017 Goals

I'm visiting my parents in Colorado this week and my sister's family came over tonight to celebrate my 50th birthday,  My sister was talking about her goal for 2017 to walk 2017 miles this year.  She has walked 10,000 steps every day since she turned 50 in 2015 and hasn't missed a day (that's pretty incredible)!  I'm lucky to get 4,000 steps in and am super excited to get 5,000.  I'd love to take on a challenge like that, but know that I'd never achieve it.  By the end of the work day I'm exhausted and the couch at my house has a very strong gravitational pull that cannot be escaped.  I'm pretty sure there is a black hole hidden underneath it that sucks in anything that gets within 10 feet of it, including the TV remote.

So, I started thinking about what goal I would like to achieve for this year.  Something I could actually accomplish.

Since I got an Addi knitting machine (two actually-the king size and the smaller one) I have been making hats...lots of hats.  I was talking to my mom tonight about all of the things I've been working on this school year since my quilting machine is broken.  I actually have some hope that it will be fixed this week (fingers crossed and breath held) because I talked to the repair guy last week and he said that the parts have finally come in and I paid  $1,000 for the deposit on them.

But my goal for the year will be 2017 things made for charity.  That will be hats, quilts, blankets, afghans, fleece blankets, dog beds, baby booties, burial gowns, stuffed animals, dog toys, head bands, keychains for fundraisers or anything else I can think of that I can donate throughout the year.

Doing the math, that's 5.5 things a day or 39 things a week.  Some weeks may be easier than others, but overall, I think it is a very doable goal.  Plus, with making so many items, I hope to find many worthy charities to donate to and also to clean out much of the donated yarn, fabric and other goodies I have stashed away in my shed and garage.

Today I made about 7 or 8 hats here at my parents' house while sitting and talking. I even got my nephew to make a preemie hat after dinner.

I will also be blogging again.  I will not let life get in the way of documenting the things that are going on.  I enjoy looking back at the year and reading about the events and everything that happened, so even if nobody else is out there reading, I will do a better job of keeping track for myself.

Here's to a productive 2017!