Tomato Tango at Cathedral Square

On Saturday, my sisters and I decided to get up early and head to the downtown area to visit the farmers market. In addition, the local botanical gardens had a booth set up to promote their herb gardens -- Tomato Tango in Cathedral Square. They were serving tomato sandwiches and flavored teas for a small donation. I have to say that I am a sucker for a good tomato sandwich. My sandwich had a basil infused mayonnaise and also avocado dressing. Since it has been so HOT in the Deep South, I had to follow it with a peach basil iced tea. Overall it was quite tasty. Finally, our sweet tooth set in and we decided to try miniature pies--sweet potato and buttermilk. Yummy! Little sister came home with a gigantic cantaloupe. It was a wonderful outing with my sisters and we need to do it again sometime -- just the three of us. Thanks to Bunny for letting me borrow her picture of tomatoes for this post. We forgot the camera on Saturday. Tomatoes are compliments of Bunny's little sister Baby. Fresh from her plants.

Life and Legacy

The last couple of weeks have given me a lot to think about especially with the loss of my Mother. It has made me review the time I spent with her and my earliest memories. I know as the days and weeks go forward my recollections will increase. Sometimes it is the surviving family who will try to piece together the life and legacy of that dear departed one. Discussions over the past couple of weeks have been an attempt to put her life and legacy together. It will take time for all of us to gather our thoughts and memories. The next thing is to put them on paper. I know it will be a time when we can laugh and cry, but it is something that I feel we need to do for the generations that will come after us. We have family photos and pictures that will help us piece together the 88 years of my Mother. Sitting down together on Friday evening, the process began. We reviewed pictures, wrote down names, years of events and made a trip to the country on Saturday to visit with my aunt and uncle for more information.

Sometimes people fail to realize how much is lost when a loved one passes. It is good to write down who people are in pictures, why/when the picture was taken, memories of the family and even recipes.

My sisters and I (my brother too) are going to make an attempt to put the life and legacy of our family down in writing. Geneologies are a good place to start because the detail is a tremendous asset to future generations. Our pictures are going to be duplicated for the four of us and also the grandchildren with as much description for each picture as possible. We discussed purchasing a good Kodak printer/scanner with photo quality ink, photo paper, digital scrapbooking software and other photo software programs to aid us in this endeavor.

In the long run, this will bring us all together in a common effort -- life and legacy of our family. What will we leave our children and future generations? Only the printed page we work on now will tell them.

Baby Sweaters

I have finally taken some time to sit down and post about the baby sweaters that I knit for my local church. These were bundled with other items that will go to a central location for distribution around the world. The church was able to gather enough items to make 25 separate bundles that contained: diapers, diaper pins, receiving blankets, gowns, soap and sweaters. I was so thrilled to be a part of this endeavor and have started another sweater of many for next year. The following pictures are the little sweaters made with yarn leftover in my stash:

All six sweaters bundled and ready to go.....

The bundle shows the colors almost exactly and better than the individual pictures below.

Sweater #1

Sweater #2

Sweater #3

Sweater #4

Sweater #5

Sweater #6

Loss of a Mother

This is a particularly hard post as I lost my Mother on Tuesday, May 5th, and she was laid to rest on Friday, May 8th. Her illness was sudden and her death just as fast (within 3 hours). The pain is great, but I know she is in God's arms and for that I am appreciative. I miss you Mom. I miss you so very much!

Prayer Shawls

Seems like forever since I posted anything to my blog. So what have I been up to lately? I've been knitting prayer shawls for my local church. Two shawls are finished and are shown folded below on my ironing board:

The shawls are rectangular using k3, p3 stitches to make a patternweave design. I chose k3, p3 and three rows before switching to p3, k3 as it reminds me of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The top shawl is true raspberry color and the shawl on the bottom has a mixture of green, red, purple, turqoise, brown and gold colors. I had the raspberry shawl completely knit using a different design and did not like how it turned out. There was nothing else to do, but "frog" it and start over. The yarn is from my stash. The next picture is a better look at the design. The raspberry shawl shows up red here, but it is really the color of the first picture.

I delivered these to the church and am now working on baby sweaters for charity that will be put together with other baby needs to be delivered throughout the US and around the world.

There is such a good feeling when I knit knowing that the finished product will either comfort someone or keep a little one warm and that all of my love for God is included in each stitch.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. It is always a great day for me! Easter reinforces everything that I believe about Gods love in a really big way.

Baby Goes Victory Gardening?

Just a quick post about Bunny's little sister Baby and her new gardening venture. I would like to say that she is working with her Mom on making a Victory Garden, but it is a raised bed garden instead. Baby has planted tomatoes and onions in temporary containers. She has flowers growing in other containers. Baby and her Mom are taking a couple vacation days this week and are going to put together their raised bed garden. The beds will contain a number of 4' x 4' containers. She has some ideas about other vegetables and flowers that will be in the garden and I am excited to see Baby's handiwork. Pictures will be posted soon of Baby's garden.

Baby is the cook in our family and has given us some great meals with her creativity. She inherited her love of cooking, especially baking, from her grandmothers. Her great great grandmother worked in a bakery. Baby works in a bakery at a local high-end grocery here. Wouldn't Pops (my Dad) and GGGrandma be proud of her culinary skills? I know we are. Her GGrandma would be happy to see her gardening skills too. GGrandma used to love planting a little garden and flowers. I guess you never know what will sneak through the gene pool to our children.

So you will know, Baby and Bunny are my nieces that live next door to me. What a joy it has been to watch these two grow up into fine young ladies! Proud aunt that I am......

Proud Aunt That I Am

This aunt has to do a little bragging on young niece--Bunny. She has finished stitching a large sampler named "Elements". Needless to say, I am very impressed with the finished project both front and back. She asked me to teach her how to cross stitch when she returned from England (after a year getting her masters degree) and that was all it took. She bought books, checked books out of the library, searched the internet and then went to stitching. The "Elements" sampler pattern was a gift to Bunny for Christmas. She has been working on it steadily over the last few months. So now I would like to share the finished object:



I am just immeasurably proud of Bunny. When she frames and hangs her handiwork, I will post again so you can see the finished piece. Bunny, I hope you don't mind that I snatched your picture from your blog to show it off to the knitting community.