Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day! My own Dad has been gone almost 18 years and the Cowboy’s almost two years. We miss them both–greatly!

Nat and the Cowboy–two good Dad’s.

And my Dad–not sure what he is doing but I’m sure it involved work–he was one hard working man and he passed that good gene as well as others to his three children.

When we were traveling this spring from Arizona back to Montana due to this dang Covid mess, I told the Cowboy I was going to use our Montana 14 day quarantine time to teach myself to knit, to organize my photos better and to quilt. Well, two out of three wasn’t bad I’m thinking.

I did quilt using the longarm to finish a quilt–it still doesn’t have a binding and the bunnies still have no facial features which have to done by hand. I started using Lightroom year before last but all my older photos are still a mess–and they remain a mess–that project has not been completed and I realize it most when I’m searching for photos such as these photos of our Dad’s.

But I did teach myself to knit and it makes me happy! Years ago I attempted to knit socks–my first foray into knitting and it was a disaster! The Cowboy said he learned new cussing words when I was knitting–I highly doubt that–but it was stressful and I gave it up. I have a blogging friend–Judy, from the Patchwork Times who knits beautifully and is so encouraging. Judy gave me suggestions for needles and I was off. I completed those two headbands a while back and while in Arkansas I finished a scarf–it’s not perfect, there are mistakes but I am so pleased with it!

I started this little dishcloth while in Arkansas and now it’s finished–it too has mistakes but I’m learning.

We’ve been busy as usual with the normal stuff–spraying weeds, house cleaning, mowing the grass, etc.

I have the handiest husband! Knitting has changed–much of knitting is now done with circular needles on cables. The “needles” are interchangeable. I started a project before leaving for Arkansas and realized the longest cable I had was not going to be long enough to hold all the stitches of this bag I was knitting. I ordered longer cables and they arrived while I was gone. When I started to transfer the knitting from the too short cable to the longer one I told the Cowboy I wished there was some device that would connect the two cables then I could just pull it through the knitting. Instead I had to carefully pick up each stitch with a needle and transfer it to the longer cable. My handy Cowboy to the rescue. Each cable comes with “stoppers” to keep your knitting from falling off the cables if you need to remove the knitting needles for another project. The Cowboy took two of those stoppers and created a “joiner” for two cables. He is amazing! (I later searched for “knitting cable joiner” and found such a device does exist but I will just use my Cowboy created one for now!)

The stopperThe joiner

A needle tip attached to the cables.

Do you like my decorations?? We have this pesky little bird–a yellow warbler–and he has about driven the Cowboy over the edge. He started pecking on the windows while I was in Arkansas and has continued to do so since I’ve been home. I had read somewhere that these pinwheels would deter birds and had purchased some in the past trying to deter a pesky robin. The little yellow bird is on his last two legs and these pinwheels had better deter him!