Time to finally post (*Warning: Picture Heavy)

As always, out trip to visit family in West Virginia was fun. We left with 5 bags (1 for mom's clothes, 1 for our clothes, 1 for toiletries, my laptop bag and my knitting bag) and came back with a van full. We stayed with my cousin Becky, who is more like the sister my mom never had. We visited my Aunt Lorene, Becky's mom, and the rest that were within short driving distance. On the way, we stopped at Greenbottom Plantation, which at the time, we knew was connected to the family somehow. Here is what we saw.

This is the plaque that is posted out by the road. It tells a brief history of General Jenkins. We later found out that we are related to the last owners, the Knights, who were forced out by either the state or federal government so they could make the house a historic landmark.

This is the front of the house, which faces the Ohio River. For a plantation house, this one is really small. It was originally 4 rooms with a foyer and a basement, and summer kitchen about 50 feet off the side of the house.

This is part of the living room.

This was part of the dinning room. The house had such lovely fireplaces. At one point, one of the owners had made this a modern kitchen. When my cousins lived there, they removed the kitchen and placed it in the addition, turning this back into a formal dinning room.

This was the china hutch in the dinning room. And if I remember reading the little card inside, the china and silver tea set is on loan from my cousin, the last owners of the house. And the print on the china was very unusual. It depicted a castle.

This is the bedroom above the living room. They had this room roped off because of the rug, which is on loan. The bed was one of the old beds that had ropes under the mattress.

This is part of the bedroom above the dinning room. In this room there was a large four poster bed that is on load from my cousins.

This is what the front of the house now over looks. A swamp. The original plantation was about 400 acres along the Ohio River. Some time in the last 100 years, it flooded and is now a nature preserve. The two black poles in the grass are the old horse hitching posts, with horse heads on the top.

When we got there, only the curator guy was there, all by himself. I think he was happy that someone was actually stopping. And, Lexa, you would like this place, there is a history of hauntings. You can read about those here. But, since we were there at about 11:30 am, we didn't get to experience any of that.

Becky made us a batch of caramel corn to take home. She gave a lovely set of doilies, which I'm not really a doily person, but I love these. I'll have to post a pic later, because I forgot to take one. And I will finishing a couple of afghans for her, as medical conditions stop her from finishing them. We visited the indoor flea market in Milton, where I got Katie something for her birthday, which is this Saturday. I'll have to say what it is later, 'cause she periodically visits here. And here is a few pictures from on the way home.

Here is one of the barge ships on the Ohio River, that Annie would point out when ever she saw them.

Here is the snow that fell on the Ohio side of the state line. This was taken at one of the rest areas that we stopped at.

This one was just a surprise shots of Annie.

When I got home, there was a large envelope waiting for me. It was the 2 Annie's Attic bed doll patterns that I bought on Ebay.


They are Miss July and Miss October from the Cotillion collection.

And yesterday, I stopped at the house to pick up the afghan that I am working on for Becky, and there was a box at the front door. See:

I was so excited, but I had to wait until I got to mom's to open it. And below is what was inside of it.

Good smelling things sent to me by my Harvest Sock Swap pal, ZhiWen. From left to right there is a bar of floap (soap that floats) in Black Berry Bliss, a bar of Frangipani, above is a cupcake soap and a Nail 911 cuticle stick, which is a heaven send. Thank You, ZhiWen!!!!!! She ordered this from Gudonya. Go check it out, she's got some fabulous stuff.

And, I will be putting my knitting on hold to make sure I get the afghan finished for Becky. And here is on that I just might make one for myself in the same colors. Here, have a peek.


Don't you just love those colors? They are cream, cilantro and country rose.

And to answer a few questions from the last set of comments.

Q. Where do you get the "in progress" counters?

A. I found them at Yarn Tomato. From there, you'll have to save them to your hard drive, and them upload them to a photo hosting service. I use Photobucket. Once you get it uploaded, you can get the html tag to place in the template of your blog. If anyone needs more help, just e-mail me ( the link is at the top of the side bar, just under my profile) and I can kinda walk you through it.

Happy Knitting!

Another mess up & ROAD TRIP!!!!!

So, I sat down and happily started the sleeves for my Rogue, again. In between rows, Annie roped me into playing Super Mario Bros. 3 with her. I got past the 14 rows for the hem facing, and 35 rows into the pattern chart, when I saw it. Yes. At about row 15, I made a glaring mistake. I crossed the purl stitches over the knit stitches in the cable. My mom thought that I had to frog the sleeve back to the mistake. Uh-uh! Not again. So, I did the next logical thing. I slipped only the pattern section back to the mistake. Thank goodness I had a glass of wine handy for this crisis. It wasn't a pretty scene. And I have pictures to prove it. See:

You can see the tangled mess that was the patterned section, and the half a glass of wine. You can also see how by the orange on the chart how far I was on the chart. And just above the pink sticky note is where I made the boo boo. I think it only took me about 30 minutes to fix it. And this sleeve looks much better than first sleeves I made. See:

Mr. Vinny is by no means a skinny cat, especially since he's been fixed. You can judge by his pudgy butt how narrow the sleeve was when I worked it on US 7's. But, I am determined to finish this sweater, even if I have to kill someone. And thanks to Lexa and Kat for the encouragement. Now for the second half of the title.

ROAD TRIP! My cousin Becky called my mom this morning, and somewhere during the conversation, we decided to go for a visit. So, bright and early tomorrow morning, we'll be packing up and heading to West Virginia. And first order of business was to pack knitting projects. I packed my Rogue (of course) and 2 different socks that I am working on. One of the socks is the simple cable pattern that I am designing. The sock yarn is Cherry Tree Hill in Fall Foliage. The other sock that I have will be a plain vanilla sock in Lorna's Laces, color is Irving Park. And I was hoping to visit a few yarn shops while I was down there, but a quick search in the web did nothing but break my heart. According to the maps, there isn't a shop within 20 miles of where we'll be, which is near Huntington. That's just too disappointing. But, I can at least work on my genealogy while I'm there, which means toting along the laptop. So, unless I can find a wireless connection down there. I'll blog when I get back.

Oh, and here is a shameless plug. I am currently taking sign ups for a spring sock swap. So, if you are interested, either e-mail me or leave a comment with how to contact you, and I'll get you signed up. Also, we are taking a poll to see what name to use. Should it be Spring Fling Sock Swap? Or Spring Sock Hop? So far it's neck & neck. Later

Crushing Defeat

This is the first chance that I have had to post, and it's going to be a quick one. I have been working on the sleeves on my Rogue. I got both of them finished and seamed. But, when I went to seam them to the body of the sweater, I realized there was a problem. When I switched from the smaller needle size (US 5's) to the larger ones, I picked up the US 7's instead of the US 8's. That means only one thing. To the frog pond they went. As I sat and ripped them out, my mom kept apologizing. And as I told her, I guess you live and learn. So, I won't be touching them tonight. I'll start them tomorrow, again.