Flickr Meme

I got this idea from Christy who posted it on Ravelry.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? Susan
2. What is your favorite food? Salad
3. What high school did you go to? Jackson High School
4. What is your favorite color? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Denis Leary (don't ask)
6. Favorite drink? Bloody Mary
7. Dream vacation? Italy
8. Favorite dessert? Blueberry Pie
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Wealthy
10. What do you love most in life? My Family
11. One Word to describe you. Generous
12. Your nickname. Sue

Open three windows. One with the list of questions, another open to Flickr and ready to do an image search, and a third to Big Huge Labs' Mosaic Maker (create a mosaic with 4 columns and 3 rows). Answer the first question, put your answer in the search field on Flickr and choose one of the images from the first page to represent your answer. Click on the photo then copy and paste the url into the #1 spot on the Mosaic Maker. Do that for all 12 questions, then click create and post the results to your blog. Have fun!


Photo Credits
Ginsky(mostlyabsent)
Katie and Joe
matuko amini
neloqua
RayDS
skrockodile
Valerie Renee
SMaryS
Biggie*
CatsFive
conceptvessel
Eridony

The Saga of the Socks

Mr. Truck's family has a real sock issue. I thought at first it was just him. He is very sensitive to socks, once they're off they can't go back on until they're washed, they can't be wiggly (whatever that means) and they can't be old. All he ever asks for at Christmas is socks. His dream is to have 365 pairs of socks every year. Olivia doesn't like wiggly socks either, she stretches them up to her knees, even ankle socks. And the seam in the toe drives her crazy. Evan is well on his way to becoming just like them. The nephew, who is a grown man, has this problem as well, must be genetic. Now my SIL, Mimi, has taken this to new heights, she has all of the others' issues and a few they don't even have. She wears her socks inside out. So I knit her socks and she loves them. Being in Florida, I never make her big wooly socks and I try to make something different each time. These are the latest.





Breeze from Knitty.com Summer 2007. Sockotta sock yarn which is mostly cotton. I think she'll like them but I think I would prefer the pattern in a less variegated yarn.

Look What's Up

I haven't posted pictures of my flowers for a while. It seems there's something new almost every day. On my porch is the fuchsia that BDE gives me every Mother's Day. I love this color best and occasionally we'll see a hummingbird.



Black eyed Susans, Rudbeckia, they bloom well for a long time.




Daisies, always nice.




I planted the annual vincas along the front walk.




I have a whole bed of daylilies, Hemarocallis. This is the common variety.




This is Stella D'Oro.




Real lilies, too.




Two kinds of yarrow, achillea.



I grew this one from seed.

Knitting At the Ballet

Saturday was the first full day of summer and the first day of SOS 2008. I went to the ballet with Little Sister. We took the bus to Manhattan which I thought would be a good place to work on my first sock (which I stayed up till midnight to cast on) but it was not meant to be. Standing room only. We had lunch at Becco. Wonderful!



Then we walked to Lincoln Center. I'd forgotten how big it is and how amazing the acoustics are. The program was all Chopin with choreography by Jerome Robbins. Beautiful!




There was a lady a few rows in front of us knitting a very pretty mohair yarn but I never got to talk to her. At least I wasn't the only one. I thought my first socks should be simple ones for the ballet, no room for patterns. So I'm doing a simple top down ribbed cuff plain sock for Little Sister's DH. I use size 2 needles and 72 stitches for a man's sock and amazingly enough the Yarn Harlot and I knit our socks exactly the same way. This yarn is Trekking pro natura which has bamboo in it. So far, I like it a lot.

L is for Lovey

When my first born, Cherry Pie, was still a tiny baby she found a lovey. Hers was a fuzzy blanket with a satin edging. It went everywhere with her and when I washed it and hung it on the line, she stood next to it while it dried. It even went on her 8th grade trip, which appalled Mr. Truck. It looked pretty bad by then, the fuzz was gone and so was the satin edge. It still lives at her house although I hope she doesn't sleep with it. "Blankie" was a huge part of all our lives for a long time. You really have to be careful of a lovey, they're irreplacable.


So when Cherry Pie called me to tell me that Reese seemed to have found a lovey, I wasn't all that surprised. What really surprised me was it was a blanket I had knit long before she was born. I was looking for summer weight, gender neutral and washable and I ended up with a green Cottonease. I made a small blanket with some seed stitch and some stockinette and never really thought too much about it. I thought it would be good in the air conditioning or cool summer evenings.




It seems Reese likes Cottonease and likes this particular blanket above all other things.



And the phone call was a request for at least one more so this time there can be a back up lovey. Something I really could have used back then.



So I'm making another one, this time in pink. I hope it works.

World Wide Knit in Public Day

Did you knit in public on June 14th? We went to Delaware for the weekend and I tried to find a group to knit with. They were all too far away so Mr. Truck and I went to the beach and I did my own knitting in public. The beach was warm, the water very chilly, but we sat there relaxing and had a lovely time.



I'm making Breeze from Knitty.

Getting Ready

I love socks, have I mentioned that before? Love, love, love them. I have officially signed up for summer-of-sox-2008 KAL. It starts the first day of summer, June 21. I'm going to the ballet with little sister that day, how odd, socks at the ballet. Anyway, I've queued a lot of socks patterns, I have my stash ready and I'm pretty excited. I'm never going to beat the record of 42 pairs of socks, but I'm ready to go with enough yarn for 5 pairs right now.

A Series of Minor Catastrophes

Well, we've had a few minor catastrophes here at Chez Truck. First a really hot spell, which was followed by some violent thunderstorms, one of which caused our first problem. Apparently, lightning hit our satellite dish. So now we only have about one third of the channels we should in the living room and none at all upstairs. After much fussing and a little cursing, Mr. Truck has ordered cable and it will be installed next week. It has to coincide with the insulation that is being pumped into the walls. Don't even ask Mr. Truck about all this, he gets a little testy. Then Francois broke. This is a real tragedy for me. Oh, Francois is my Roomba iRobot vacuum cleaner. Just push his button and off he goes. Except he's not going, so there's more time with Tech Support, and he probably has to go to Roomba Hospital, and I HAVE TO ACTUALLY VACUUM! Through all this turmoil, I've been calmly knitting away. I've been working on the pink blanket from my last post. I made these booties out of leftover sock yarn and they almost are twins.



And I finished this sweater for me. The Short Sleeved Cardigan from Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2007. (I love the buttons!) I'm always cold in the AC at work and this is just the right thing to keep me warm.



I've also been using this a lot, getting ready for Summer of Socks 2008. Mr. Truck, master carpenter that he is made it from these directions and it works really well.




And it's probably the only thing we have right now that doesn't need Tech Support!

K is for Knitting at NASCAR

It all started sometime last year. Mr. Truck and I were on our way home
from Delaware and we were passing the Dover International Speedway and
there was a race in progress. He mentioned that he'd like to go to a race someday. So for Christmas I bought him tickets. We've reached that point in life where we really don't need any more things, I just have to dust them anyway. All I told Mr. Truck was he was getting an activity and no, we weren't going skydiving. This past weekend we finally got to go to the race.






Not being NASCAR fans, we had no idea what to expect, I mean we really
didn't even know who Junior was. The girls wanted to know what I would be
doing during the race and of course I said "knitting." "Mom, you can't
knit there!" I can't? How am I going to sit still for 400 laps? Well,
yes I can, there's a NASCAR group on Ravelry and they say I can. So it's off to the race with my knitting. The whole experience was fun...and strange. There were lots of sponsors giving away lots of things and we got them all. Then there was the race, so noisy you can't hear anything. You're in a crowd of 50,000 and no one is talking. Big accident, no one was hurt, Navy Seal skydivers, fly over by fighter jets, fireworks,and the pit crews were amazing.






The smell of rubber and fuel is overwhelming and little specks of greasy black stuff are all over you.





The track is a mile, 400 laps around. That's 400 miles. I realized that 200 laps would have been just right. Good thing I had my knitting with me.




Mr. Truck loved his Christmas present and we may just do it again.

YAY!

I got my Ravelry shirt!




Isn't it funny!