~A Little Bit of This.... and That~

I would like to thank you all for your kind, sympathetic and thoughtful messages regarding my "cursed month", I can't tell you how much I appreciate it!!!! You "bloggers" are the best! A quick update and then on to knitting news and other "fun" stuff: When I left you on Wednesday "the van" was here at home in my garage and I was heading for the hot shower - well, most of my muscles have returned to normal - mouth is still killing me (return trip to dentist on Monday) - -- on Thursday morning the girls and I got into the "fixed" van to head off to school and as I started it, Nic asked me why the van was "shaking". It was like one of those old exercise machines our Mom's had (dating myself I'm sure) that put a strap around you and shook the fat off! In any event, in addition to it shaking the "check engine" light was flashing wildly! Needless to say, I shut it off and the girls took the bus. On Friday morning, DH decided to drive my car back to the garage for them to look at again, since it was obviously NOT fixed. I offered to follow him there on Thursday night, but he declined. In any event, he left here a little after 6:00 a.m. ~~~ at 8:30 a.m. THIS ~ ~is what I saw, not 5 miles from my house on my way to work ~that would be my van being hooked up. He had a co-worker pick him up shortly after it passed away! My youngest came to work with me on Friday (she had the intestinal "bug", and I HAD to go in, so she kept me company in my new office). That wraps up the two weeks from H.E.L.L. On to other, more pleasant things... I have knit some more on my artist gloves, although most of my "spare" time the last couple of days has been spent doing paperwork for the Softball League. My youngest warmed my heart when she came home from shopping with her sisters the other day and had purchased yarn to make a scarf for her friend's Mom. I LOVE it that she is into knitting for others as well as herself - right after Christmas, she took some yarn that she had been saving for herself and made a scarf out of it for one of her friends! Speaking of scarves, there is a great project going on for orphaned college students called The Red Scarf Project. The Orphan Foundation of America is collecting Red Scarves for Valentine's Day Care Packages, you can check it out here. I think maybe Nic and I will each whip one up before we finish our other projects, as the deadline is the 31st of January. I also came across these Knitted Boots on the Blue Blog that were evidently featured on Knitty Gritty. I haven't watched at all, so I missed them. I can just picture the girls loving them! They look like fun, especially since there are power tools involved, and my using them makes DH VERY nervous! lol I also came across another gem that you bloggers might be interested in....There is a great freeware program by Jim Tucek that will encrypt your e-mail address to prevent spam. You can visit his site at the above link and check it out. I'm also going to move the recipes that I have posted, to one of the sidebars under their own heading, for those of you that are interested. I figure it will be easier to locate them for future reference. I'm sorry there are no knitting pictures to share today, but I haven't made enough progress on anything that would be worth posting, and the digital camera has no charged batteries at the moment - my bad! I will leave you with the last picture taken before the batteries died..... (there were two dogs walking up the street) When you all tire of what I consider "cute animal" pictures, just let me know and I'll try to stop ;) I wish you all a very pleasant Sunday!