Good morning gals! It is chilly this morning but we are supposed to go through another warm up so who knows? Man, I missed a sale yesterday. Kohls had all kinds of things buy one get one free then today I saw nothing so guess it was a one dayer. Bummer!

As for the cheese ball, it says 10-15 servings and Jean, what I bought comes already crumbled in a round plastic container. Maggie, I assumed because the recipe said one, it meant one container of the Treasure Cave bleu cheese. I found it at Walmart's so it is probably a lot of places. It didn't indicate serving size just # of servings. As for me, if I was making it again, I think I would add half of the blue cheese and half the olives and taste it then add more if it needed. Like I said, I thought it tasted pretty salty but I did taste a bit of the made version yesterday to see how it set up and it set up very nicely and was pretty yummy actually.

Susan: Hope you and Stan have a fabo Thanksgiving and you are able to get out before the rain hits you hard. Hope his new leg works well for him.

Jean: I know you have to be counting the minutes until the bell rings! Boy that is some warm tushy for $600! You need a car in this day and age, but they sure are more trouble then they are worth sometimes especially with all the new fangled sensors and such on them.

Maggie: We look forward to your visit! It will be lovely to meet you finally.

I have another chocolate pie to make today for tomorrow, floors to mop downstairs and the knitting. My pie for the guys at Jack's work came out beautiful. Jack said it looked like it was bought at Perkins! High praise! This is a seriously excellent cream pie base that you can make and add anything to it. You can make chocolate, coconut, banana, etc just by adding the flavor ingredients. Jack likes whipped cream rather than meringue so I put cool whip on top and then shave chocolate over it.

GRRRRRR! I was only a few rows from having the left front of the sweater done and my count was off. I ended up having to frog the whole thing. I started it over and now am about half way so I hope to finish it and get started on the other side. I really want to make the bags the and shrug too so I have to knit everday all the time! So, with that being said, I need to get out of here and finish chores and such. You all have a wonderful day!

Faye

Just a quick note to wish everyone a wonderful

I will check back in tomorrow morning. Gotta run and get a shower so I can finish up the packing of the goodies to take to dd's house.

Faye

I certainly hope everyone is haveing a nice day this Thanksgiving day. We have had our "big" meal at noon and I have now to do the dishes. I am resting.

JEAN I love a good salad also and those layered ones are so eye catching and always taste good too. I found the "dust" in with the smilies ~ they are always adding something new, bless their hearts.

FAYE have a safe trip and a wonderful time.

I'll type at you later . . . Don't eat too much now, ya hear?

Good morning everyone! Hope your Black Friday shopping day is turning out well. I want to get some stuff at Michael's for knitting but I am just staying home. I think Jack and I are going to go to the movies today and see "Deck the Halls." It looks pretty cute.

We had a lovely time yesterday and Thomas is such fun. We played a lot of board games and he keeps on surprising us. We were playing Pictionary Junior and the category was animals sounds and the word was bark. He made a tree and a hole in the tree and though his mom shouted out the answer, we discovered he was trying to finish bark on a tree! He thought I would guess that easier! He also played piano for us and boy is he good! He has been taking lessons about 4 months now, can already play two handed and played us every song in his book, including Good King Wenceslass (sp.) We had a great dinner at Cracker Barrel, only waited about half an hour and the food came to our table in only about 5 minutes. It was just an all around good time.

I have started the last piece for his Beatles sweater, but put it aside because I had to clarify a direction. I decided to start on my dil's handbag and almost have it done now. It is turning out great and very pretty. I will be anxious to felt it and sew it together. My dd looked at the pattern book and loved them so I am definitely going to fit one in for her too. They are a breeze to do and put together. I am really enjoying knitting again and you can't eat and knit without putting it down!

You all have a wonderful day!

Faye

Good Saturday morning everybody. I hope your day is going well. I am waiting for the UPS customer service to open so I can call and yell. Well, maybe not yell, but big gripe! I was supposed to get T's monogrammed turtleneck yesterday and they never delivered it. On top of that, I called them at 9:30 PM my time and she assured me they were behind because of the holiday but it would be delivered so I sat up until midnight and no package. I am madder than a wet hen. For one thing, we lock our back gate and keep it locked unless we are expecting a package. "This ain't Mayberry!" Also, I was practically knitting in my sleep waiting for them to show up here because some ditz said they would deliver. Now I don't know if they are going to show up today, since they don't deliver on Saturday's or not until Monday. I imagine I will get a run around again this morning when I call. I lodged an email complaint saying that people expect packages on time and pay for the service and if they don't deliver it is worthless, especially getting close to Christmas time. I get nervous the closer I get to Christmas if I am expecting a package that has to be wrapped then shipped some place else. I am cutting corners and have a few of my son and dil's baby gifts for Christmas shipped directly to them to cut out the middle man so to speak so they will get them on time. They're getting as bad as the post office and they charge a whole lot more!

We had a good time going to see "Deck the Halls" yesterday. Very, very funny movie. The movie theater was packed though. Lot of elderly and people bringing their kids. It was fun.

Jean: I have a bazillion sources for free patterns, one of the best is kntting pattern central, but I bought one of those little booklets at Michael's. It was worth the few $$ I spent as I am making 3 of the handbags out of it. I sure hope this one comes out ok. It is a weird shape right now, sort of like a huge elf hat! I have part of one of the handle pieces and one whole piece to do then they can be felted and dried then put together. I have never felted before so I am anxious to try it.

Maggie: Sounds like yummy bread. I like to make the dough in the machine then do the raising out. I make a garlic bread that way, putting minced garlic in the dough ingrediants. You can cut down a lot by using ff or powdered milk, I use egg beaters instead of eggs, and margarine instead of butter etc for regular egg bread. I like my french bread recipe too.

Hope Gloria, Gail, Susan, you all had wonderful holidays!

I will talk later. I am going to see if I can get UPS on the phone!

Faye

Good Sunday morning ladies! It is nice and balmy here even this morning! We got up into the 70's yesterday and will remain in the upper 60's until Thursday than a nose dive to low 40's for the high! I go out in the morning wearing sweaters and turtlenecks and end up sweating by afternoon.

No turtleneck! I called yesterday morning and they said my item would be delivered yesterday. I had contacted Land's End and got a response back saying she had contacted UPS and they said it wasn't a guaranteed two day delivery and they had a lot of holiday packages! Well big surprise on that, it is the holidays! Anyway, the Land's End lady apologized but there is nothing they can do about it. Then I checked my tracking yesterday afternoon and they had rescheduled the delivery until Monday! I hate them! I am angry not because of the two day thing so much as I paid standard delivery with Land's End not expedited, but the fact that I stayed up until midnight on Friday after they said they would deliver for sure then, on Saturday we stayed home waiting for the delivery and now it isn't coming until Monday. I do not like leaving that gate unlocked more than I have to.

Here is my first foray into the world of knitted felting. Only problem is the yarn I use is known to more expert knitters to felt very fast and I didn't know this. I followed the directions given by the manufacturer because it was one of their books. My handbag came out pretty small and my dil may not like it, but I tried stretching it as much as I could, but it didn't help. I still have to sew up the handles better and get a toggle for the fastener and I may put a snap in too since it isn't very deep. It is a nice small bag to use once in awhile though. My next one for my dd I will know not to felt more than about 4-5 minutes instead of 15. Still working on that sweater for Thomas, but I have lots of time to finish it. I am trying to get stuff done that I have to ship off to my son and dil done first so I can get things out in the next week or so.

Maggie: I think people would be amazed if they only tried how you can trim fat, sugar and such out of food and make it taste good. Sometimes you haveto have fat to make dough come out right or some such, but most of the time even that can be cut down upon. I know how much I can cut out for Jack because I have done it. Problem is, most people dont' want to put the work into it. For example, I make a swiss steak in the crockpot with a sirloin cut (lower fat) tomato sauce, and a packet of the brown gravy mix. You can get lower sodium in these mixes now too! I brown the meat in Pam then transfer to crockpot with the tomato sauce/gravy mixture and just cook it then thicken it a bit for gravy. Jack loves it and he hates swiss steak. I also do this using the ff canned beef broth and a gravy mix and he has more of an Amish baked steak with gravy. I buy cans and cans of beef and chicken broth either ff or 99% depending on what I can get and lower sodium. You can make tons of stuff this way. Jack has always loved gravy and this is one way he can have gravy without fat drippings. I make him a little sausage gravy once in awhile using lowfat Tennessee Pride rolled sausage, ff milk and about a 1tbl of olive oil because their isn't rendering from the sausage. Now this is a treat not an everyday thing, but I still cut calories from it. You don't haveto completely change your foods, just change the way they are fixed. I think people give up easily because they radically change how they eat thinking they can no longer have anything worth eating and that's just not so. I thought when Jack had his heart attack that I would have a horrible time keeping him on the American Heart association program, but it hasn't been hard at all.

Jean: Hope you had fun at the "north pole" yesterday. What responsibilities has Santa assigned you while you are there? Oh, have you ever found Kolby his rocking horse?

Well, morning chores are calling me. I better get to them!

Faye

Good morning everybody! It is really warm here this morning so I am sitting around in a summer nightgown. I have a lot I need to accomplish today, but want to make a real mark on T's sweater since yesterday. I had the worst time getting the sleeves started. I didn't know it when I picked the pattern, but the sleeves were not made separate (I didn't look at the pattern well enough) and you had to pick up stitches along the side of the front, over the shoulder than down the other side. After starting it about 5 times and ripping out, I finally got the hang of it and now have a partial sleeve! I dread having to do it with the other side though.

Jean: Felting is this big thing right now. I guess knitter used to do it with felting needles, but you can now use the machine. You knit something in a yarn that is 100% wool (but not the new washable wool) then you "wash" it for a period of minutes in your washer in hot water. It shrinks and becomes heavy felt. This handbag is almost like a rug it is so dense now. While it's wet you pull it into shape and size and then let it dry. What my problem was I followed the pattern book on how long and I let it stay in too long and it shrunk too much so now the handbag is more for a teenager. I am going to make another one after Christmas and a winter hat and send them to my 2 nieces and nephew. My brother's kids are 11,11, and 13. I am going to make my dil another one and only leave it in about 5 minutes or less. On my knitting forum one of the ladies told me that this particular yarn felts really fast. She wasn't kidding.

I talked to our dil last night and she said she isn't having morning sickness just a feeling of food caught in her throat all the time. She went to the doctor and she hasn't gained any weight, but she was measured and is 2.5 inches bigger so the little one is growing. She got to hear the heartbeat again too. This is her mom's first grandchild, both her sisters are unmarried, my dd's first nephew or niece and T's first cousin and her dad's first grandchild as well. We were talking about Christmas and I told her I was shipping the baby's Christmas present straight to them (I bought him a vibrating bouncy seat) and she was saying everyone was buying stuff and she was afraid they wouldn't have anything to get at the shower! Boy, that would be awful, to have absolutely everything, wouldn't it? She had a huge bridal shower so I am sure her baby shower will be the same. I know that my dd bought her a sling and some kind of towel and a sterling silver rattle from Thomas. He is really excited about the baby. I got the baby a bouncy seat and made the sweater, hat, blanket combo then am getting this sign language for mom and baby that she wants.

I am all excited as I am going to my very first red hat luncheon on Saturday. I am looking forward to it. It is a Christmas exchange and I wish I had time to knit something like pot holders, etc or something, but gonna have to just buy something. They are also having an auction to raise money for the chapter with a few fun things and some door prizes so it will be fun.

Well, need to get going and start some work. Why does housecleaning keep coming back needing to be redone?

Faye