Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Catch Up

It's time to play "What's Been Up In Leah's Life?!"

First, there has been knitting and crocheting as evidenced by:

A table runner made out of cotton that sparkles. Ooo, shiny!
A never-ending parade of crocheted dishcloths.
A Fair-isle vest is forming, slowly but surely...
A new sock is being born because...
A new pair of socks was finished!

That's it on the knitting/crocheting side of life. Now I'll catch you up on the rest.

I had a couple of big life events happen in the past two months. At the end of June, my great-grandmother passed away. She was the only other fiber artist in my family, so I had a special connection with my Granny Johnson. When we were cleaning out her things at the nursing home, I cam across the Herbivore shawl I had made for her. Turns out she wore it a lot and would wrap it around her shoulders at night to keep warm since she was always cold. I also found her cotton stash, which she was using to make dishcloths. The dishcloths pictured above are made out of some of that cotton. She had a stroke a few years back that left her unable to knit, but she was determined that she would crochet instead with her arm that still worked. She crocheted until the day she died.

My parents flew in for the funeral and we had a big family gathering. It was a nice service and she will be greatly missed. She lived a long life though and I was very fortunate to have known her and to have really had a relationship with my great grandmother.

A few weeks passed, and then a big thing happened: DF came back from Korea for a visit! It was wonderful to get to spend two weeks with him, although they went by quickly. I was very sad to see him go through security at the airport and I stayed in a funk up until now. I'm still sad he's gone, but work has been keeping me busy, so I go on my daily grind.

While he was here, we did all kinds of fun things. We went to King's Island, which was my first trip there. It was a fun time for sure. We also went to Mammoth Cave:DF and I became friends with our tour guide that day!

We also went on a tour of a bourbon distillery:

After the bourbon tour, we drove to Ft. Harrod and I found the gravesite of the woman who brought the first spinning wheel to Kentucky. I paid my respects:
Thank you, Ann McGinty for braving the wilds to bring Kentucky such a wonderful invention!

And that about catches you up. DF and I had a few other side trips in there while he was here, but nothing with pictures. It was a wonderful two weeks and I was sorry to see them end.

But now, I want to get back to the knitting. Catch you all on here again real soon!

Knit on...