From Rain to Hope

Since moving here, I’ve been looking around for different types of furniture for my 3rd floor area, which, of course, is my personal room full of books, my stereo and everything crafty.  The only seating up there has been my old office chair which isn’t really inviting for just hanging out and relaxing.  I’ve been tossing around different ideas of what I might like up there.  I’ve thought futon, daybed, pile of pillows, sleeper sofa, etc.  As you can probably see, most of those things provide an extra sleep surface, which is part of what I was wanting up there.  Not to mention, I prefer to lay down to read.  Sadly, most of those options were kind of expensive and I couldn’t bring myself to fork over that much money.  In my search for things, I found this great site though: Home Decorator’s Outlet.  It’s from Home Depot’s Home Decorator’s site, but is the stuff drastically reduced in price because of low stock or newer styles or whatever. And as something that would probably amuse only me and Stacy, its warehouse seems to be run out of Mexico, MO. I ended up purchasing a chair and a chaise lounge, both at around 70% off.  And what do they look like?

Bright Red Chair

Matching Chaise Lounge

I know, VERY RED and a lot more modern than what is normally “me”.  I thought they’d be fun and spice up the 3rd floor.  I’m not sure when I will receive them though.  Freight shipments always seem to take forever.

Obviously, they go against my plan to buy a “sleeping surface”.  The main reason for this?  I realized the likelihood of more than one person or a couple visiting me at any time is slim to none so I really don’t need extra beds.

Now that I’ve bought furniture for my room, Loops is getting ideas that his man room needs to be furnished.

Loops in the Wind

Yep, that’s right… Another day at the beach.  It was insanely windy today.  You can see the top layer of sand blowing in the picture above.  You can also see Loops (which he is not happy about) taking a photo.  Actually, I would guess he was taking about 100 photos since he was in that position for about 5 minutes.  We had a nice time though.  There were quite a few people parasurfing, which I had never seen before.  It was cool.  Nothing I’d ever do, of course, but it was fun to watch.

We didn’t get home until after dark.  I went straight for my supper before Loops could steal it.

Suppertime!

It’s Shepards Pie according to the recipe, but technically I think it’s Cottage Pie because it is using beef instead of lamb.  I varied the recipe this time by using peas instead of carrots.  Next time I’ll use both.  It’ll be all colorful and fun that way.  It was yummy.  In fact, it was so yummy I had it for supper last night, lunch today, and then finished it off tonight.

In knitting news, I started a scarf for myself.  I’m not sure about it yet, but once I knit a few more rows I’ll  know if it’s a keeper or not.  Also, it’s my first time to use a yarn lighter than worsted.  I think I like using the lighter stuff.

Chevron Started

Dottie was not impressed, though.

The biggest yawn ever!

There’s not much happening around here, but I’ll do my best to fill ya’ll in on everything since there were complaints about the lack of content in the last post.

The weather’s been great here in Charleston the past few days. It seems Fall is finally coming and I’m excited about it. I’ve had my fill of the super hot and humid. I just wish I had a yard to sit out and enjoy the weather. I guess I can’t complain though. I don’t have to mow grass and if I want to enjoy the outdoors, I can just go to the beach. In fact, Loops and I went to Folly Beach again Thursday evening for a couple of hours. While Loops took pictures of graffiti, I spent some time with the birds watching the waves come in.

Watching the Waves

It was very peaceful. I’m not sure about Loops, but I had a good time. After the beach, we went out to eat and to the bookstore. I picked up Getting Started Knitting Socks by Ann Budd.  I haven’t delved too deep into the book yet, but it looks informative so, hopefully, I’ll be knitting socks soon enough.

In other knitting news, I finished another dishcloth.  It was for Mom, and since she’s received it, I can post a picture.

Did I mention I love this pattern?

I’ve purchased more cotton yarn because Loops is demanding a new dishcloth of his very own so you will be seeing yet another dishcloth picture in the near future.  I’m still working on Stacy’s scarf.  I’ve adjusted the pattern more, given it thicker stripes.  The picture below shows both versions.

New vs. Old

I’ve completed about a foot of scarf, which is a little over twice as much as pictured above.  I should be finished with it by now, but I haven’t been working on it as much as I should.  I’ll try to do better.  I promise.

To finish off for the night, I leave you with my half-eaten dessert.

Tiramisu, or as it likes to be called, TIRAM'SU

I got this at Publix tonight.  I got a kick out of opening it and seeing they’d “labeled” it.  It was pretty good for store bakery dessert.

In a total and shameless ploy to get ya’ll to buy me stuff, I give you the widget I just noticed on Amazon:

Cool, huh?

I’ve managed to edit a few of the photos I’ve been taking.  I didn’t get to the ones from Magnolia Gardens or ones I took earlier in the year at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens, but I did do a couple from Folly Beach the other day.

Folly Island

Graffiti and the Morris Island Lighthouse

I also editted a couple of random flower pictures. The first is from a few months ago, back in Alabama:

A little bit of home

The second is from some pretty flowers Loops bought for me.  Sadly it’s the only picture I got of the flowers because I waited to take pictures until they were past their prime.

The Gift

That’s it for now.  I know I didn’t have much to say.  Maybe next time.

My new Centro

It’s great… and totally more phone than I need, but it was just to cool to ignore.   Lewis got the extact same phone, but it’s white, with green buttons where mine are white.  His is almost as cool as mine.  Almost.

What do these things have in common?  Nothing other than me and what I was up to yesterday.  I started off my day by driving out to Folly Beach.

Folly Beach

Unlike a lot of people, I wouldn’t step foot in the water and sitting in the sand holds no appeal for me.  I mostly go for the solitude and to commune with nature, if you will.  Luckily, there weren’t many people there yesterday.  I managed to get a good walk, take a few pictures, and collect a few shells.  It was nice.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay very long because it was HOT.  With the sun shining, it didn’t take long for me to feel like I was cooking so I headed home after an hour.

After I got home, I decided to tackle a problem on the third floor, which is my room, by the way.  It is home for all my craft stuff, my music, and books.

Book Addict

Did I mention it was a huge problem?  I have piles of books all over the floor.  I’m not sure how many there are, but I’m trying to organize them and figure it out.  Sadly, I don’t have bookshelves for them yet.  I need to get some soon.  As for the organizing, I’m just trying to sort them and catalog what I have.  I’ve decided to use weRead to catalog everything.  I’m not sure how much I like it, but it’s online so I’ll always have access and there may be improvements made to the site in the future.  Right now I’m up to 225 books.  I’m not finished taking inventory though.  The sad thing is that I’ve only been collecting books for a few years.  I used to hate to read, but at about the age of 25, I started up.  By the time I’m old, no telling how many books I’ll own!

Diagonal Stripe Scarf

Lastly, I started a scarf.  It’s the Diagonal Striped Scarf.  It’s a nice pattern, but I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing when I started it.  With all the stockinette stitch action, I really should’ve used something natural that would block, but I had some cheap acrylic and thought I’d use it.  The colors are pretty though and were selected with my sister in mind.  Hi Stacy!   I ended up binding off not long after the picture above was taken and I will test it to see if I can get the thing to lay flat.  If so, I will recast on and maybe make the bands of color thicker.  I haven’t decided yet.

This past weekend Lewis and I visited Magnolia Plantation and Garden.

Magnolia Gardens Bridge

We went early, but it was still very humid.  It took about 30 minutes for our cameras to adjust to the environment.  We decided to just tour the grounds and leave off the house tour.  The gardens were very nice and I got lots of flower pictures.  I have yet to process them, but hopefully some will turn out nicely.  There were several cute wooden bridges on the property.  Unfortunately, the one above was the only one that photographed decently.  All the others were over water that was covered in a very unattractive green scum.

In other news from the weekend, I finally finished the Chinese Wave Dishcloth.  It turned out nicely.

Chinese Waves Dishcloth is finally finished!

I love the different textures on the two sides!