Elabeth's Crafty Blog

Old People
Things are just crazy around here. We closed on the sale of my in-laws' house Tuesday. Now we have 30 days to get everything including my Father In-Law moved out. He doesn't know it yet, but he is moving to the nursing home on Tuesday. I'm afraid he's just really going to have a bad time of it, but there isn't anything else we can do at this point. He has Alzheimers and he's afraid of the shower, afraid of the toilet, and pretty much afraid of any water anywhere.
The house is full of junk and trash and boxes of old magazines that have mildewed together in the basement. It's just a huge task to even think about cleaning it all out. We got a giant dumpster and that's our weekend project. At least Ian is excited about it. Steve and I aren't. haha
Stitchin N Bitchin
Let's see..what else is going on? We moved the local Stitch N Bitch night to Thursday starting tonight. I hope the crowd at the coffee place is nicer. The Wednesday night crowd was full of pyramid scheme people and rude old ladies.
Speaking of Stitch N Bitch, I'm trying to organize a weekend retreat for the Arkansas SNB yahoo group I moderate. I'm getting quotes for enough space to sleep about 20 sometime in April 2006. I'm trying to keep the cost under $40-50 per person including a place to sleep, and so far it hasn't been that difficult. All the quotes aren't in yet though. The reason I'm keeping it small is because I'm going to have to pay all the deposits out of my own pocket to ensure we get the rooms. I can cancel whatever we end up not needing the week before. I also want to make sure everyone gets to attend and isn't stopped by the cost. So many nifty knitting/spinning retreats are crazy expensive even when they don't have big name teachers attached...I'm not getting quotes from crappy motels here either. These are nice places. All I can think of is that someone is making a killing organizing these expensive trips.
So far I have 13 people from the group saying they're interested. I'm thinking we'll arrive wherever on Saturday, check in, hang out meeting and greeting and getting to know eachother, get together for lunch or dinner, do some classes and a stash swap, hang out some more, then have breakfast together Sunday, check out and go home. It isn't going to be terribly organized time-wise...lots of hanging out free time etc. If this one goes well I'd like to do another one in the fall at one of the state park lodges. I'm excited about this, but I'm also a little scared. What if people have a bad time? What if the place I pick turns out to suck and everyone blames me for picking such a sucky place? I'm going to narrow it down to two or three places and let them vote. haha
Knitting Out
September 10th in Dallas, 10 am - 6 pm Half Price Books, 5803 East Northwest Highway is this year's DFW Knit Out & Crochet Too event. There is a scarf design contest being held. The winning pattern will be published in Interweave knits. I want to go, but that's a 4-hour drive for me and I'm not sure I can afford the gas right now. We'll see. Anybody want to carpool and split the gas cost?
I'm still knitting on five or six of the same old boring things. I won't show you any more half-done sock pics or slightly longer entrelac stole pics or pics of gnomes or even pics of the cats. I got nothin new, but maybe I'll finish something sometime soon. It could happen.