Summer heat doldrums

Doing this on my phone so apologies in advance for any errors or differences in appearance.  Just watching my Football team from England on the TV playing against their bogey team. Haven't beaten them since 2005. So far so good, they are in the lead and the other team are down to 10 men.

We are having very hot weather which has not given up yet. They forecast rain and storms but we have not had any and it is still hot, albeit a few degrees cooler than yesterday.  Basically we just gut it out indoors with the Air conditioning on.  

I did knit a skirt for one of the dolls and now they are both respectable. I swapped the dress from this one to the other as the skirt looked better with this cardigan.

I have started on a new project for ourselves. A knitted Santa Clause from the Jean Greenhowe's Christmas Special pattern book.  This is the one that has the pattern for the Nativity characters I made a few years ago and also the Snowman. So far I have one leg complete with boot. It is going to be quite big judging from the size of the leg.

Darn, my team let down at the end and we got beat!

Time to get back to knitting. Hope all is going well in your worlds.

Progess reports

Firstly and most importantly my granddaughters husband is home.  He is having home health come in 4-5 times a week but he was well enough to go home with the additional help.  Praying for continuing improvement and some return to normalcy for them all.  

Secondly, I have had time to try my new stamping gismo and I think it will help a lot with the stamping.  You can only use the silicone flat type of stamps with it but you can keep re-stamping until you get a good print so that is a bonus.  I think you can take the rubber stamps off the blocks and use them the same way but I haven't tried that yet as I didn't want to render the wooden block stamps unusable.

It also came with a stencil so I tried that and decided I wanted to do more stenciling.  It is fun.  Of course, I was way too heavy handed with the ink at first but after watching many YouTube videos I realised I needed dobbers and sponges etc.  My daughter sent some money for my birthday so I got a lot of supplies from Amazon including more stencils and blending brushes, foil paper, sticky squares for 3D effect, finger dobber sponges and blending tools which come with disposable sponges.  I was in card making heaven and I didn't feel guilty because the money was a gift.

The gismo also has a type setting board and letters and numbers etc.  I have yet to give that a go.

I finished the second replacement cardigan for the dolls. (the one on the left).  Now I just have to get a skirt made. The one on the right is sitting around with just her underwear and cardigan on!

The weather has cooled slightly so we have been able to get out and do some mowing and outside stuff.  My husband is now able to do more post surgery and he had 4 infusions over the course of 4 weeks and that seems to have helped him regain some strength. We had more large limbs down with the storms which we will cut up for firewood at some point too.

We have been working on editing one of his stories ready for publication also so things are simmering along nicely.

Hope all is good in your worlds!

And the conversation went like this.......

Waiting at traffic lights yesterday I looked into my rear view mirror:-

Me: "You gotta see this, there is a dog riding in the pillion seat on the back of a motorbike behind us."

Husband: "No flipping way!"  (actually it was another 'f' word he used!)

Me: "No honestly, there's a guy on a motorbike and he has a dog sitting on the back and the dog is wearing shades!"

Husband: "You must be seeing things!"

Me: "No look for yourself, and the best part is the dog has on sunglasses, oh wait, lights changed I will go slow and get into the right lane and you can see when he passes."

I pulled into the right lane and drove slowly as it was an access lane to get into Walmart.  But, the motor bike guy was also going into Walmart and pulled into the lane still behind us.

Me: " I will park and you can see him go past."

Husband: "Ok."

Me: "See, the dog is riding pillion and wearing shades!"

Husband:  "Well flipping heck (actually the other 'f' word again) that's gotta be illegal."

We watched him ride the motorbike and park it by the front door and go into the store.  The dog remained sitting on the back seat still wearing his shades and waited patiently until his owner came back. The guy had made a platform for the dog to sit on. It was a big old male pitbull, a very nice looking dog and extremely well behaved. My husband talked briefly to the guy who said his other pitbull, a female, didn't like to ride but this one loved it.

We had never seen anything like it before and here's the proof.