Pie Social and Bake Sale

The ladies group in our church is having a Pie Social and Bake Sale.  It's an annual event and a pretty good fund raiser.  Everyone makes a pie to be cut and served/sold and several other baked goods for sale.

This year these are my offerings....

A cherry pie.  I put all my efforts into looking pretty.  It's made from canned pie filling and a ready to use crust.  It'll still taste ok but I think it really is quite attractive!  (That's me patting myself on my back!)

This is a chocolate pudding pie on a graham cracker crust.  The pretty part comes from the white chocolate that I made into a lacy design. 

It was easy to do but I had to break off a few of the loops to make it fit on the pie.  So it's kinda just so so.

These are Combining Cookies.  Butter, sour cream, coconut, oatmeal, chocolate chips.  Yummy.  Nothing really pretty here but they are a family favorite.  Especially because the recipe came from this little lady.

Grandma Lora.  DH's paternal grandmother.  I've had her knitting on here before.  And now here are her cookies too. 

I mentioned before that she raised a big family and this recipe was made to fit that family I'm sure.  It calls for 12 cups of flour and yesterday when I made a 1/2 batch, it still made 6 dozen cookies.

I'm not taking all of them to the bake sale though...we love them too much to part with all of them!

Visiting cemetaries

Today was the day to visit cemetaries and put flowers out for Memorial Day. I go to 4 cemetaries but only took pictures at a couple of them.

My maternal grandparents and numerous other relatives are buried here. This picture doesn't show the whole thing but it is a small rural church and cemetary. Very quiet and on a seldom traveled gravel road.

This is the church. There are so few members that they can't sustain the church any longer so it is empty and unused. But here is where my mother attended church and was confirmed.

This is the cemetary at the town where I grew up. My parents are buried here with a few relatives both maternal and paternal.

When I was in high school, once or twice a summer a few friends and I would ride our bikes out to this cemetary and just enjoy the park-like atmosphere and the quiet. And having done that I am now not "creeped out" by cemetaries. They are peaceful, quiet and restful places to me.

I haven't taken a walk around for awhile but sometime I will. I enjoy reading the old stones with their various inscriptions and wonder why we don't still put sayings and Bible verses on the stones. Although if the trend towards cremation continues there won't be stones and cemetaries in the same way as now.

There is only one thing that kind of still blows my mind about this cemetary and that the picture above is the Lutheran side of the cemetary and...

this is the Catholic side. I never have been able to understand why they couldn't just mingle with each other! I wonder if other cemetaries are the same?

Scrambling

Why is it that you can go for months....yes literally months...without anything going on and then blam! everything happens at once. Augh!

I have

• a baby/bridal shower to attend [yes, one of those....teenager (great niece) with an unplanned baby]
• a bridesmaid dress to alter....wedding is the 1st weekend in June. Another great niece in another wedding.
• a wedding gown to alter for the expectant niece....wedding is 4th weekend in June
• plan the lunch for a funeral at our church
• work in the kitchen at the funeral next week

A diverse set of things, no? Some of these things are the same....some of them are different. (What is that from?? Sesame Street?)

It is spread out over a bit of time but it all piled on at once this morning. I'll be able to handle it but I just had to rant for a bit. Thanks for listening.

/I read this over and it is a bit spastic. Kind of like I feel right now. o.0

We've had wind and I'm kinda busy!

Yup, it's definitely been windy. The grill took a little trip. It was parked next to the bench facing the same way as the bench. 40 mph winds for about 3 days will do that I guess....

The grass is getting a hint of green. I have to keep reminding myself that this is unusually early for no snow and none in the forecast. We've had significant snow in May. So greening grass in April is an amazing event!

The farmers are getting ready to go though and the seed plant is hopping. I'm trying to clear off my desk now for the flood of paper that is headed my way shortly!

I've made progress on the Haruni (Ravelry link) shawl. The pattern is really easy so far. I'm about 1/2 done with Chart A. It's Chart B that I'm waiting for. It will probably be a bit of a challenge for me but I'm up for it.

The yarn isn't blue. It's teal green. This was taken in the sunlight and it still looks blue. Maybe an incandescent bulb would make it the right color. Frustrating.

This week is full of church related things. Church council tonight. Planning the lunch for a funeral tomorrow morning and a hotdish to make for that and on Saturday it's our spring fundraiser. A Pie Social and Bake Sale. Gotta make a homemade pie and 3 items for the bake sale and I'm on to make coffee and lemonade all afternoon. I'd like to take the easy way out and just donate the $30 but if no one participates it'll be a bust and so being the "good girl" that I'm purported to be I'll be baking! Now if someone would just tell me when I should be doing this I'll be all set! o.0

It's a learning process.....

So I've learned a few things while knitting on this shawl. The main one is that I really should have been alternating every couple rows between 2 skeins of yarn. It has some pooling issues and it's really a bit disappointing. But if I can pass it off as something that you want....more to myself than the recipient....maybe it'll work.

This picture is miserable colorwise, but shows the swirliness (if it isn't a word, it should be) of the colors.





This is a better picture as far as the colors go but is out of focus. The camera & I aren't friends today. The color is a bit darker and more bricky but this is pretty close.

The other thing I've got to learn about is how much things grow when blocked. This is supposed to have only 1 repeat left and the pattern says it'll be 55" when it's blocked and done. I don't think so. I can't imagine that it will grow that much. It's 31" right now and I've done 9 repeats. At the rate I'm going it'll be about 34.5" when I'm done. That means it'll have to stretch 20.5". In my book, that's a lot. But like I say it's a learning process.

Actually I don't think 55" is long enough to start with so I'll be doing more repeats anyway. Also I had planned on doing one of these for each DDIL. By the looks of this one I might be "giving" it to myself and starting another one for one of the DDILs and something else for the other one. I don't think I could handle doing 3 of these in a row. o.O

Tomorrow is a break from knitting. Not that I really want a break but am required to work at our church's fall fundraising dinner. Pork roast, mashed potatoes, really excellent gravy, corn, cole slaw and a huge assortment of desserts. I'm roasting 2 of the roasts. Lipton's onion soup mix and a roasting bag for a few hours.

I'm also on to make coffee. I don't drink coffee and the gal I'm on with to make the coffee doesn't either. So how do you think that will turn out?? Two non coffee drinkers making the coffee in a Scandinavian/German community that loves it's coffee. Uff. (Yes, I'm Norwegian. I just don't drink the stuff!) If I could get canned from a job it would be the coffee making at the church dinner. They never can anyone though!

Odds & Ends

So here is as far as I am on DGS's Christmas sweater. That's the back. It is done now and then some. I was knitting along and knitting along and first it was stuck at 5 1/2" then it was stuck at 6" and now it appears that I have shot right past the 6 1/2" that I was aiming for & am at 7". Uff. Well, I think I'll remeasure but no matter what, call it good. If it is a bit long, that's okay, he'll be growing this winter. Don'tcha love the stripes it's making? I think it looks exceptional but I'm not crazy about the way it seems to want to stretch. It's James C. Brett, Marble. DK weight.

I ordered 3 skeins of Georgia Rose from Peace Fleece yesterday morning. I hope it arrives in time for posting on the 6th for the BlizzKAL on Ravelry. We will be knitting hats and I don't have anything else that I want to use as much as that Peace Fleece. I'm crossing my fingers that I comes as quickly as my last order. That came in just 2 days. Super service!

We had a funeral at church today and so we did the lunch yet again. Just cake & coffee this time though. Much easier than the usual full meal. There were 6 of us ladies there to handle it. It worked out since it wasn't a large funeral.

I need to start supper. I have a roast beef but it's to late to get it done in time so I'm thinking pork chops and maybe some leftover sweet potatoes and cranberries. Sounds good to me but I don't know if DH will be thrilled. Oh well, sometimes that how it goes....

It is starting to snow and it turned quite cold today.