We're Home

We arrived home on Monday just in time for a late supper.  We've been busy unpacking and putting away and catching up on all our mail, etc. ever since.  I have more pictures and some stories.....I'll try to get everyone up-to-date soon!  Thanks for reading...check again in the next couple of days.

Jonesville, NC

We had a good day for travelling.  It was very warm all the way to North Carolina - still 75F when we arrived about 6:30.  Fortunately, it was slightly overcast most of the way, so the air conditioner in the car could keep us cool during the drive, when it was 88F outside the car.  We grabbed a sub for supper because the sub shop was a very short walk from the hotel.  We are settling in for the night now.  See you all soon!

Drawing Near..

The time is drawing near for us to vacate the villa and the warm climate of  Florida to head north to our home and native land.  It is going to be 86F here today.  Poppa is doing some last minute cleaning while I write this.  I will do some last minute packing when I am finished here.  Then, we will grab some lunch and head out to the pool, and there we will spend our last few hours of leisure in the land of the star-spangled banner.

It will be too bumpy to work on knitted lace in the car......so I will concentrate on socks.  It will also be too inconvenient to work on silly socks, since that requires working with two balls of yarn at once and there just isn't enough space to juggle them and keep track of them in the car.  Hence, I will work with the yarn that Auntie Smiley and Auntie Denise chose when they were here.  I closed my eyes and reached into the bag - and - Auntie Smiley's yarn came out, so I will start with it.  In the meantime, here is the collection of silly socks which are completed and ready.  The blue ones are for Kev-Inn, the green ones are for Auntie Colleen.......the turquoise ones have not yet been designated to anyone.

The knitted lace is coming along too.  The Dundee lace is finished and measured off at about 20" when I cast off.  It is one of my personal favourites so far, but may be a little wider than Auntie Colleen usually works with at about 2-1/2".  It looks like this....

Of course, I started some narrower, un-named lace since I finished the Dundee lace.  It is only about 1" deep..and it is already about 30" long.  I didn't intend for it to be that long - I thought I was really close to the end of that spool of crochet cotton - which was why I chose the narrow pattern.  However, it turns out that there was a lot more cotton on that spool than I thought and the piece of lace just keeps growing.

So much for the creative update.  Now it's time for lunch and the pool.  Later.................!

OK - so now it is almost supper time....we are going out since we don't want to dirty the kitchen or any dishes....besides we have eaten up all the food!  But.....a couple of hours ago (at least) I headed out to the pool area to read and catch some rays until I was really hot - so the pool would feel really good.

It wasn't long before Poppa joined me out there.

After we had read our books until we felt like we were quite well-done, we checked to make sure the lifeguard was awake, alert and on duty.

And then we headed into the pool.  At this point, Poppa will wave Bye-Bye since the next time I post we will be on our way home.

Now, I've gotta run.  It's supper time and the bears are patiently waiting.

See you soon!

And So On...

Since Poppa did his cleaning of the laundry facilities...he has done the following:

He discovered a crack in the "start" button on the dryer.  I tried to get a picture, but my camera doesn't do close-ups as well as Auntie Colleen's camera...can you see the little crack?  The button still did its job, but Poppa likes things perfect.

So, we went to Auburndale and got a new button and he put it on the dryer.  It does work better.

And it looks as good as new!  One evening while I was watching TV, Poppa disappeared.  When I went looking for him during a commercial I found him polishing the brass handle on the front door.

Another evening when he had disappeared I found him out by the pool cleaning the table and the outdoor furniture.  It looked really nice when he was done.

He has taken some leisure time too.  More on that later.

I think Munchie is going to be just like Poppa....he spent his weekend at Gramma's house helping Cousin Taylor make breakfast.

And later that same day, he helped Gramma make dinner.

Correction

As you are, no doubt, all aware - Squeegie and Poppa proof-read my blog postings for me.  Squeegie has asked me to make an important correction.  He has informed me that the Aunt formerly known as Auntie Grumpy is henceforth to be known as Auntie Smiley.  Go figure.

After the Visit - or - Poppa Does Laundry

The day following the departure of our guests, I threw the sheets and towels in the laundry.  The View came on and Poppa went to put them into the dryer....sounds good so far - right?  He disappeared into the laundry area and soon came back out to the living room to ask how the powdered detergent got into the fabric softener dispenser.  Of course, I had no idea - I use liquid.  It had been there since we arrived.  I had tried to get the cup off to clean it, but it wouldn't budge...and I had forgotten to mention it to Poppa-Fix-It.  All right he says and disappears into the laundry area again.  Pretty soon I hear the dryer running so I assume all is well.  After a few minutes I realize that he should be back out by now, so at the next commercial I sneak in there to see what is going on....

Well....there he is scraping the scudgey stuff from around the rim of the washer lid - which incidentally is no longer attached to the washer at this point.  I peek into the washer and it is perfectly clean - no powdered detergent in the fabric dispenser any more!

Whoohoo!  What a nice job he did.  Next time I looked the washer was all back together and looking like new again.

While I was watching the View I started Auntie Colleen's first silly sock, since I had finished Kev-Inn's second one.  Now he has a pair...what?  I know, I know, they don't match - they're silly!

And by this evening I had one of Auntie Colleen's silly socks finished too....

Later in the day, after the washing machine renewal, Poppa headed in to empty the dryer (I can't remember what I was doing?).  He decided after removing the sheets and towels so I could fold, put away and/or remake that the dryer needed cleaning out too!  He thought the pipes were getting clogged with lint... so....

.... the dryer was pulled out to allow access to the flexible vent pipe in behind it.  And,

the back came off the dryer to allow access to the interior vent pipes - and to remove any lint getting near the motor and stuff in there.  Then,

it was all carefully put back together again and pushed back into place.  He then started cleaning up the linty mess he had made....this is what he got.

At this point, he declared the laundry facilities to be ready for the next wash day.

But, that was a few days ago.  This afternoon he went golfing, after a dip in the pool, so I decided to get out my knitted lace pieces and get them ready for dispatch to Auntie Colleen.  Here is the Lattice piece that I promised a picture of earlier.....

This one needed a lot of pressing, and I'm still not totally satisfied with it...I'm convinced there must be another pattern for lattice-type lace that would turn out smoother, without so much work.  It really should have been dampened and stretched across and down - especially at the bottom, but I just didn't have the equipment or the space here to do that - so hopefully Auntie Colleen can doctor it up a bit when she gets it.  This piece is packaged up and ready to go now, it is about 12 inches long.  These are the other three pieces that are ready to go.....

...the top one is the Rosebud, the centre one is Diamond and the bottom one is made-up....let's call it Trolley Lace.  Auntie Colleen got the Hilton Lace (the first one I made) earlier this week and proclaimed it acceptable (actually she was very enthusiastic about it).  Hopefully she will like these as well.  I am working on Dundee Lace now, it looks like this....

It is quite deep, but it is very fun to do.  Just to give you an idea - it takes about 3/4 of an hour to do one complete pattern repeat - and that time just flies!  So if you're ever bored and wanting time to fly - just start doing knitted lace with string!

The Visit - Chapter Four

On our final full day with Auntie Grumpy and Auntie Denise, Poppa wanted to take them to the Atlantic side of Florida, so they could wet their feet in the ocean.  That is always a favourite thing of ours and he wanted them to experience it too.  So we climbed into the car and headed east to Daytona Beach Shores.  That is one of the remaining beaches where you can still drive your car right onto the beach and park.

There weren't many people on the beach, the breeze was a little cool on the east side of Florida.  However, it wasn't cool enough to keep the girls from getting their feet wet in the great Atlantic Ocean.

It was cool enough to keep us from staying too long there and we headed back to the villa after about an hour.  We stopped for supper at a Chinese Buffet place, the food was ok, but we weren't overly struck by it.  Then we headed straight to the villa and arrived in time for a dip in the pool.  There wasn't as much breeze inland and the swim was great.

The girls were squabbling over the noodle and I gave up on trying to get them to share - just let them fight it out.  It seemed all too soon and it was time to get out and settle down for the night.  Next morning the girls finished packing their stuff back into their luggage - along with the new stuff that they had bought - and we headed to the airport again.

Somehow it wasn't as happy an event as when we went to pick them up, this time they were heading away with the luggage.  But, with no choice, we went and got their luggage checked in and then they got into the line for security screening and all that fun stuff.  It wasn't long until they had disappeared.

Can you spot them in this line?  When we got back to the villa it seemed kinda empty and quiet.  I powered up the computer and tracked their flight home, so we knew they had landed safely.  While we waited for that news, I finished Kev-Inn's first silly sock.  I experimented with the changing of the colours and was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Squeegie decided he wanted to be "on TV" and asked me to take this picture.  Silly bear!

Murfee the Wonder Dog went nosing around in an interesting location ...just so I could see that there is very little snow left at home.

And little Munchie went to visit Gramma on the weekend and checked out the beach where Mommee and Daddee got married.

He kept wondering where all the people went.