Knitting Along and Travels

I had a good laugh yesterday when I decided to ramble through an old box filled with crochet and found twenty granny squares that I had worked on more than thirty years ago for an afghan. (I had just finished knitting the first square of the twenty-four I will knit for our Christmas Square Exchange at the LYS.) The squares are all crocheted, on probably a size J needle, and all are done in acrylic yarn; still they are beautiful. Each square is crocheted in white with one other color as a filler; they really stand out. I laughed and told DH that I am going to take these squares with me to Knit Night on Tuesday and tell my fellow-knitters that I've almost completed my 24 squares. As luck would have it, the squares are 10 inches square. Actually, I won't be using them (unless there should be an emergency) as part of the twenty-four that I plan to make for our Christmas exchange. For one thing, I want to knit my twenty-four squares, although crochet is allowed, and for another, I think I will finish up that afghan with acrylic yarn and give it to Dariana to enjoy playing in with her dolls and stuffed animals.



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

On this map you can see other places, outside the US and Canada, that I've traveled. When I hear people from the European and Asian countries speaking of the many countries they have traveled in it sounds as if I've never traveled anywhere and that they have traveled everywhere; but this is what makes the difference. The United States and Canada are so large that to travel them, you have actually traveled to as many different places (although not countries) as someone living in Europe or Asia traveling in the countries around them. Those countries are so much smaller (in area) than the US and Canada that several countries could be placed inside one of the larger states in the US, or Provinces of Canada. All in all, I
shouldn't be complaining that I've never been to Germany, the Netherlands, or Russia, or to India, Singapore, or China; I have traveled. None the less, I'd love to go to all these countries and more. Our son had a trip to Russia when he was in college but at the time, I thought it was to costly for me to travel along, now I wish I'd gone. I have a dear friend from Pakistan and was invited to go along and visit her family one year when she traveled back to see her mom. Now I wish I'd gone, but at the time I didn't think I should go with the upheaval in that part of the world and then two of my gardening club friends encouraged me to come along with them to China where they were going to teach English for a summer. Again, the timing wasn't right for me because my health was already becoming an issue before I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Life keeps us it check sometimes.

We're having Northern Weather here in the Mid-Atlantic these last few days. We have the gas logs burning along with the heat pump and the humidifier running to counter the dry heat. It feels like soup weather to me so today I think I'll make a big pot of beef and potato soup and maybe put a loaf of bread in the bread machine to smell good while I sit in front of the fire and knit. The neighbor just brought over a couple of DVDs of a ventriloquist they thought entertaining for us to watch however that's not my cup of tea. It shouldn't hurt me to listen along with DH while I knit though(at least I don't think it will). Good neighbors are something to treasure!