Softball!

DH and I met each other playing church league recreational coed slow pitch softball; he was pitcher, I was catcher. He noticed my blue eyes behind my catcher's mask and asked me out. The rest is history. He proposed, we got married. And we still love playing softball. We used to play every spring/summer. But for the last nine years, we haven't played due to one reason or another.

A gal at DH's work is organizing a softball team. (The boss is sponsoring it so we'll get T-shirts!). DH agreed to "coach." This is recreational slowpitch so coaching consists of mainly telling people where to play and deciding the batting order for that game. We're so excited that we get to play again!

DH dug out our old equipment bag to check and see if all our stuff was still usable. Other than needing to oil our gloves, everything was fine, even our old cleats! DH's glove is over 35 years old. Mine I inherited from my brother; it is at least 25 years old. We would have hated to break in new gloves!

When we first started playing, DH routinely hit home runs. As we've gotten older, he's noticed that although the ball still goes as far, he can't run as well or as fast. Now his home runs are only doubles. *sigh* And as for me? I've never hit a double in my life! But I can still run fast for a short woman. Although I have to stretch out for a REALLY long time before I start a game.

Ohboyohboyohboy! Softball! The smell of a freshly-oiled glove, the smell of diamond dirt, the sound of balls pinging off of bats, the sound of cleats grinding in the batter's box, the happy sound of the ump calling, "Strike!" on DH's pitches! Ohboyohboyohboy! The league starts up at the end of February and I can't wait!

Knicker Knotter #8 - Some of y'all don't have a clue...

...as to how to properly spell the word y'all.

I've been inundated with misspellings of y'all a lot recently. And as a Texan, I know how to use the word properly in a sentence, and know how to spell it. And yes, it is a southern word.

Y'all is a contraction, people. It is as contraction of the words "you" and "all." It is not spelled ya'll. That would be a contraction of something unknown and it is not in the dictionary. It is not recognized by any SpellCheck program.

It is also not spelled yawl. This is a different word entirely and means "a type of sailing ship or small ship's boat."

Y'all is in the dictionary and in SpellCheck. It means "a group of people." It can be used singularly, but is usually used to mean a group.

Now, fer cryin' out loud, y'all learn to spell the durn word correctly; y'all give me a brain pain when you don't.

The "no home for it" blues

WHEE-E-O!! The sun is out today!

Work on the house is progressing slowly, just as we expected would happen in the winter. The days are shorter and colder, and Daylight Savings Time is gone. We were hoping to get a lot done over the holidays, but didn't due to a variety of reasons.

I am usually calm about all the chaos in my house, but today I have a bad case of the "no home for it" blues. You get this when you have ALL your boxes unpacked, but you are forced to pile/stack stuff in corners because the home for said stuff hasn't been built yet.

DH, bless his heart, is trying to help, but there aren't enough hours in the days for him to get all the wanted storage built AND work on the house. He delayed starting work on the new bathroom so he could build us an underbed storage unit (which is about 1/3 done). The "UBSU" as we call it, will get this pile of stuff out of this corner. It will all disappear under the bed! Yippee! (BTW, that's our unfinished new bathroom on the left there.)

This morning, I was kitting up my next project - the one for my parents' 50th anniversary - and was reduced to frustrated wailing while digging through my patterns. No, I'm not starting on it as I'm not done with the birth announcement yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad to have all my stash accessible and not stuck out in the P.O.D.S. in a box somewhere. However, I wish my stash was HORIZONTAL instead of VERTICAL. I keep my patterns in UniKeep binders (the shorter stack). We also keep all our home files in them, too (the taller stack).

All those UniKeeps are supposed to go in cabinets (which I don't yet have) on this wall over a custom-designed built-in desk (which I don't have yet either). Everything is cramped and crowded and not user-friendly. AUUUGGGHHH!!! I try to keep my grumping to myself as it makes DH want to run out to his shop and build things out of sequence.

After a bit of housework, I shall hie myself off to my stitching chair and stitch. Life will be good (especially if I'm not looking directly at all the piles of stuff with no home!).

A WIP and a prize

Reposting as Blogger completely unformatted the post when I corrected a typing error.

Yippee! t.u. beat Ohio State! Way to go Texas! (I will root for t.u. when they play a non-Texas team, especially if that team is of yankee persuasion.)

In my post yesterday, I forgot to recount the story of the "rigged" doorprize at Saturday's IH35 Stitchtogether. Occasionally, one of us will bring a doorprize and we'll draw a name to see who gets it. This month, Marilyn brought one; a nice fleece throw with a manger scene that she machine embroidered on it.

Mel carefully wrote all our names down, folded up the papers into tiny pieces, and mixed them vigorously. Then she asked a supposed impartial bystander, my DH - who had come in to graze the food table after his strenuous morning at Cabela's and Academy Sports - to draw a name. DH mixed up the names again and then promptly drew mine. I had to put up with a lot of ribbing, but the fleece throw is very nice!

Here is a picture (taken in the dark, gloomy, rainy light with a flash) of my birth announcement WIP. You can't tell much. Margaret Sherry patterns always look like nebulous blobs until you get all the backstitching done.

Stitchy weekend

On Saturday, DH and I drove to Austin for the monthly IH35 Stitchtogether. (Well, I went to the stitchtogether, DH went to Cabela's and Academy Sports.) We had a good group at the meeting as there were eight of us there. No pictures as no one brought a camera.

We had a great stash exchange as several ladies had cleaned up and tidied their stash, and Mary brought three boxes of vintage cross stitch magazines. It was like a feeding frenzy, I tell ya! Yes, I picked up a couple of new treasures myself. I got the '02 JCS Christmas Ornaments issue and a magazine with a fishing pattern that I could stitch for my dad sometime.

We had a great time catching up with each other, eating, stitching, venting, eating, stitching, solving the problems of the world, eating, stitching, and did I mention eating? Mel reported that she had received a set of pink cookware for Christmas. ACK! She is next looking to get a pink kitchen appliance like a mixer or blender. ACK!! Everyone had a mostly peaceful Christmas; no relatives were maimed, killed, or disposed of (although some should be).

It was a good day! I got another motif finished on my stitchtogether WIP. It's a mystery Quaker sampler that I got off a danish website a couple of years ago. I started the pattern because I was interested in trying a Quaker sampler, and it was free. It has been a fun stitch, but I think I will modify it somewhat. The last part of the sampler is an alphabet at the top. I don't think it looks good with all the motifs, so I will probably modify it. When I finish it, I'll frame it and DH is going to hang it up at work, probably in a patient area. Here it is before I worked on it this weekend:

Yesterday, we vegged out by watching NFL Wildcard games. We had to put up with Phil Sims as a commentator for the Miami/Ravens game. That man drives me nuts. I think he had too many concussions when he was a quarterback. I'll be sad when football is over. I really enjoy watching it. At this point, I think I'm rooting for the Cardinals to win the Super Bowl.

I did get to stitch a lot on the newest nephew's birth announcement. I'll post a picture on a day THAT IT ISN'T DARK, GLOOMY, AND RAINING so that I can get a good one.

Well, I'm off to go to the dentist this morning for my usual six month cleaning and check up. I'm thinking that I will be making another trip to the endodontist as one tooth is escalating in its peskiness. I'm not a dental coward and I'm not one of those people that hate and fear going to the dentist. I'm just not in the mood to spend more money on this one tooth! Oh well. I've learned from seeing elderly relatives have nutrition issues later in life due to bad teeth that you should do whatever you have to when you are younger to save and keep your teeth for when you are older.

A book review

Those that know me well know that I love to read Star Wars books.

I saw "Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope" on the day it came out in Dallas (the first time, not the re-release) while in high school and was hooked. Han Solo to this day remains my favorite rogue. I remember coming out of the movie in a complete daze - the special effects, the story line, the aliens - it all blew me away and intrigued me at the same time. George Lucas is a genius!

I have almost every Star Wars (SW) book in print. One of the reasons I like the SW books is that they are meticulous as to timeline and character sameness (with very few exceptions). One book will rarely contradict another. Everything flows together well. In fact, if you read the author's notes (yeah, I'm weird, I do this), you'll find out that they often read or research previous SW novels to get all the facts straight. This becomes more difficult when you have a lot of writers for the same genre. But SW has done a great job with this.

I recently finished "Star Wars Death Star," a novel set just slightly before and during "Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope." It answered the question we all have, "How can thinking, civilized, sentient beings blow up an entire planet of other thinking, civilized, sentient beings?" And it gives you a different look at the galaxy's favorite bad boy, Darth Vader. It was a tight, well-written book that drew me in and kept me interested. The characters (most of them new) were believable and developed with the storyline. I give it five stars out of five.

On a stitching note, I did get to stitch today, but no pictures. It's cloudy, dark, glummy, and grismal out; not a good day for taking pictures. I haven't finish-finished my bellpull either as my sinuses are not happy at all. This usually affects my ability to think well, so I don't want to risk doing something stupid to the bellpull that I spent all that time stitching.

Tomorrow, I go to Austin for the IH35 Stitchtogether. Whee-e-o!!!!

Happy New Year and all that rot

Happy New Year! Whoopdedoodle! No, I don't do resolutions. No, we didn't go out and "celebrate." We were in bed early, but were awakened by the sounds of gunfire and fireworks going off around midnight. We were not amused. We never are. Yeah, we're sticks in the mud. We haven't been up intentionally at midnight on New Year's Eve in probably a decade.

I've noticed that several of the blogs I follow are posting stitching resolutions or stitching goals. Goals for a hobby seem counterproductive to me - too much like work. However, I am not above posting about hopes.

I usually finish twelve to fifteen projects per year. This past year, what with all the work on the new house, I only finished nine. I finished my bellpull last night. I'll post a picture after I get it washed, pressed, backed, and "hardwared up." Maybe I'll be able to do that tomorrow. BUT!! A finish is still a finish, so I'm happy.

For 2009, I have several "have to" projects to get done before I can go back to being a selfish stitcher. I started my new nephew's birth announcement today ("Baby Boy"). I hope to get it done quickly. Then I have a special project to stitch for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary which is in late May. After that, I'm dragging my MIL's HBP WIP out and will stitch on it until it's finished; I've done two out of 15 pages so far. I figure 2009 will be a three-project year if I'm lucky.

I hate having WIPs. I have three and don't like it. I'm a one-project-at-a-time gal. I have the birth announcement, my MIL's WIP, and my take-to-the-stitching-group-meeting WIP. I could handle having a regular WIP and the stitching group WIP, but more WIPs that that is too many. I know, I'm pitiful, aren't I? Those of you with multiple WIPs in double and triple digits are laughing. Oh well.