Creative Diva knits Blog

Whats new? A new grandbaby. Actually he is my 1st great grandma and he is adorable.

I spent months knitting him blankets , socks, its and a sweater. All turned out wonderful but anything that was fitted he has now out grown. Babies grow very quickly.

As for me, life continues to tick onward. Every day is the same as the previous day and the days and weekends all run together. Life has become very different for me since my triple bypass and abdominal aorta bifemoral bypass surgeries. The latest complication is a hernia which seems to be the course after having abdominal surgery. The best advice I can give anyone that is having heart surgery or abdominal surgery…..get a girdle and wear it 24/7.

Open heart surgery requires that you do not use your arms for a long period of weeks, months , as a means of getting yourself out of bed our out of a chair. This in turn requires you use your legs and stomach muscles to maneuver yourself around  which causes stress on your abdomen. Get a girdle, it may prevent you from getting a hernia later.

If you’re a female get a comfortable front closing sports bra to wear after having heart surgery. It will provide you with blob support which keeps the girls from weighing down your chest. Trust me it makes a big difference.

If you smoke , stop smoking. Take up knitting, crochet, golf, sewing, needle point, puzzles, anything just stop smoking.  If I can post photos I will post after surgery pics of how you look after a triple bypass and abdominal aorta bypass.

Sorry its been sometime since I have posted. My PC crashed via a virus so now I am doing this from my tablet. Ive been busy with life, medical issues and knitting. I received some exciting news, I am going to be a great grandmother. Baby is due in November, just before Thanksgiving. We found out this week that its a boy so now I can actually start knitting boy colors instead of knitting in multi colors. I was busy knitting for the holidays at the end of last year, 4 pairs of socks, scares, a couple of hats and a pair of fingerless mitts. Now its baby socks, blankets and sweaters for a baby boy. The other project that I want to get started is a prayer shawl. God has been good to me and blessed me in many ways, the prayer shawl will have my thoughts of thankfulness knitted into each stitch. For those if you who are on Facebook there are several FB knitting and crochet grips now for you to join. One of the newest ones is called ‘ yarn is cheaper than therapy ‘. I think at this time there are 5 of us in the group so please feel free to join us. As I said at the beginning if this post that I am using my tablet to post today. I love it! It has been so great for putting my knitting patterns on. I slip it in my knitting bag and I always have it with and my knitting. It does everything my laptop did. No, I did not buy a Kindle or a IPad, I purchase an ASUS for under 150.00, its a 7 inches tablet and it has 10 hours of battery life plus a 1 yer awesome warranty.I have had it since February and I am very pleased with it. It came with 16 gigs of internal storage and you can add another 32 via a SD card! I just discovered this week that it will read books to while I am knitting, how cool is that!!!! Now kettle me see if I can post a pic or 2 of my latest projects. By the way, Raverly.com has loads of free knitting patterns if your looking for knitting patterns.

So its Saturday afternoon and I am in Florida. Cold, cold Florida, but we have sunshine today….Yippee..!!! I was going to try to add a animated cartoon that I came across on Facebook today. It so describes my mornings with my kitty Khloe, minus the baseball bat but after inserting it here on the page I realized the animation did not work. 😦  So instead I am going to add this one instead, hope you get a giggle out of it.

 My Khloe does not only like yarn but for some reason she  likes , no ,loves, to chew on my wooden DPN’s….ugh!  I thought only dogs were chewers. To top it all off the past 2 mornings I have woke up to a flurry of white stuff all over my hall carpet…….Khloe snow! Yes, Khloe made it snow with the roll of toilet paper from the bathroom. She is very good at making a mess and it looks just like it has snowed in the house when she is done with the job. I am the owner of a bored cat and bored cats are not a good thing for the cat or the cat owner. If I could only teach her to walk on a leash we’d be good to go. Unfortunately she wants to lay on the ground once a halter and leash is put on her and if you want her to move you have to drag her …….not good,not good at all. Khloe, has to be a indoor kitty because she has no front claws and she’d never be able to defend herself if necessary. I vowed after having to put my last cat down because someone hurt him so badly the vet couldn’t put him back together , that I would never have another outdoor kitty. Cats love being outdoors, but there is no way to keep a kitty safe when she/he is outside. I think my Khloe might be happy in a 3 story house, thereby giving her plenty of room to run and wonder around in. Plus she would love all the exploring that would be available to her in all that square footage.  

I think it is time I start learning how to knit some kitty toys to hopefully occupy her time.

Xmas stocking 2013

Okay, I feel old. In fact when I look at it is 2014 I think Wow, I am old. Okay so I’m only 55 but hey I remember thinking as a kid that if you were 55 you were OLD.

So, November and December were busy knitting months for me. I managed to knit 3 pairs of socks, 1 scarf, 1 hat, a pair of fingerless mitts and about 12 dish cloths, oh yes and a pair of newborn baby socks to give as a new baby gift. I felt like a knitting fool and probably looked like one as well. Every one who saw me would ask ok what are you knitting now?

I also knitted the Xmas stocking up from some area of my brain. I was quite happy how it turned out since it was my first attempt. But hey, how hard can it be its just a giant sock, right?

I am happy the holidays are over with. I am hoping that 2014 will be a far better year for me than 2013 was. My New Year resolution is to spend more time with family and friends and less time on Facebook and worrying over politics. So far the last two are working out pretty well for me. I think the only way to clean up Washington Politics is probably to shot them all and in my humble opinion, NONE of them are worth doing prison time for so I will just be sure to go to the polls on election day and cast my vote. For me, it is no longer about political party it is about Character, honesty, dedication and not trampling over the Constitution and our Laws. Socialism and Communism has not worked for any other country and why people think it will work for America is beyond me. We send our troops to foreign countries to stop / free them of communism and socialism and all the while our politicians are turning our country into the very thing our military are dying in other lands to free people from. It is time to stop the insanity.

I am hoping to learn how to post more photo’s of the things I knit and I am hoping to take on some interesting projects this new year. Perhaps some fancier sock patterns to begin with. 🙂

Happy New Year, everyone. May your year be a most excellent one.

Hi everyone. Its Thursday and it is cold here in Florida. Yesterday I believe with a little help it could have snowed. It sure looked like a northern winter day here in North Florida. Windy, cold and very overcast. I just set up my profile on Ravelry.com and I am not sure why I want a Ravelry account. (deblovestoknit) Perhaps someone can explain it all to me sometime. I have finished up all my works in progress except the one pair of socks that I started just before my heart attack in May 2013. AlI need to do is finish up binding off the toe and they will be completed. For whatever reason I just haven’t done it. I am currently working on a project of my own. I want to make a blanket but I want Arian cables and design incorporated into it. Currently I am not to well versed in knitting cables so this will diffently be a WIP.

With winter here my cat Khloe is feeling all to frisky for me and especially for my mom who is not really fond of cats to begin with. However for a mom who does not like cats, I can say I came into the living room the other night and mom was watching tv in the recliner and Khloe was asleep in mom’s lap!  I was shocked and also sort of miffed as Khloe does not even think about lying in my lap,where she does like to lay is on my books and papers of knitting patterns that I currently am working from. 

I have decided that I hate passwords. Every thing you do online now you need to have a password and from time to time you have to change them. I want 1 password for everything!!!!! Grrrrrr

Hope you all have a great weekend. 

Hi everyone or maybe I should just say Hi to myself. I don’t think I have a following of readers here so I am most likely writing to myself. In the past week I have finished up several WIP. The Xmas stocking, a pair of socks, a shawl for myself that I have enjoyed now that it is becoming fall here in Florida. I find that since my surgeries I tend to get chilly easily which is a huge change since I use to be hot all the time. I spend most of my days on Facebook, reading knitting blogs of other knitters and searching for knitting patterns that I may like to try and I knit a LOT. My current WIP is a sweater for me that I found on Knitty.com  in the Deep Fall 2013 issue it is the Agata cardigan and it is a wonderfully simple pattern but unfortunately I read the yarn requirements yardage wrong and I am out of yarn at the moment. I am using Caron Paints yarn and it is knitting up nicely exactly  to gauge which is surprising since the yarn is not the kind called for in the pattern. Since I am recuperating from 2 major surgeries I am o my also unfortunately unemployed, ( thank you to my former supervisor–saying this with sarcasm) I loved my job and miss it terribly. However if I am honest with myself this recuperation will take at least a year or more. Open heart surgery re- triple bypass and 8 weeks later a Abdominal Aorita bypass. I look like I have been gutted like a fish. UGH….There are days that I think Ah I feel good and get up and try to do a few simple things around the house to only discover I can’t do it or if I push myself and do it, I pay for it later at night and for days afterwards. 

I have downloaded a new photo program and as soon as I learn how to operate it I will post some pics of some of my knitted items.

The current WIP Agata sweater is on hold until I can get some money to buy additional yarn.

While I do not normally use this media to speak of politics I am going to brake that habit today.

I went on the new Healthcare.org website and requested a quote for Obama care insurance for myself. This is the info I entered……

 year old Female, Non tobacco user, Income $0 ( I have no income) No dependents.State living in Florida nd my zip code

This is what I got as a reply……yearly premium 6774.00 , No tax subsidy or credit, Cannot get Medicaid, Silver policy and 6000.00 yrly deductible.  So to date I am worse off with Obama Care then without it because Now I have to figure out how to come up with 6774.00 a year when I have literally no income.

How is Obama Care working out for you?

It seems like only yesterday that  internet became a part of our homes and lives. I remember my first pc, a desktop of course. My mom bought it for me, it came straight from Wal-Mart in a nice big box and I remember thinking please God don’t let me break it. Windows 3.1 was the OS and it had no internet connection but heck I didn’t even know the internet existed. Perhaps  it did exist  just not in the rural community that I lived in.

These days  I am lost without my pc., I am one of those who refuses to learn how to and refuses to buy a new fangled cell phone that lets me do anything with and from my cell phone. I am a creature of habit, I like my laptop. I also like the fact that I can make the fonts on my pc as large as I need them to be in order to read. Can’t do that on a 3 inch cell phone screen.

With the invention of the internet I have become one of those people who surf the web in search of information ranging from health, bible, knitting and politics and many things in between. 

I have taught myself to knit fairly well using the computer, the internet, and Youtube,  It only took my 2 years and the correct Youtube video to finally learn how to knit socks via the toe up method. Facebook was around for  a number of years before I ventured into becoming a Facebook addy. I try to keep my political rants on my Facebook page only. These days we all have varied opinions of who things should or should not be running in Washington and for the most part all I can say is Washington DC is in one big cluster muck. I use to do spring cleaning each spring and I think it may be overdue for a good spring cleaning in the capital.  Maybe it should be a requirement for all Senators, and Congressmen to be able to knit while working and maybe they’d have a clearer vision of what our country is in need of. Oh well it will never happen but its fun to think about……Mr Speaker……ah yes, give me just a moment Sir, while i finish counting my cast ons……lol

I would like to say THANK YOU to all of you who have passed on your patterns and knowledge to those of us who are learning the craft of knitting. I have learned much from many of you and I have passed on your wisdom and knowledge to others who are wanting to learn. 

I have learned to be a fearless FROGGER – RIPPER. My mother shudders when she see’s me doing that. Yes, no one can see the mistake, but I can and I know its there, therefore I frog.  Currently I have 4 skeins of yarn that I cannot for the life of me figure out what to knit it into. I have knit it and I have ripped it out. Its yarn that is just not speaking to me. Perhaps in time it will tell me what it wants to be. Until then I sit and look at it as if willing it to say something, anything other than just sitting there all in a nice neat skein. Maybe tomorrow it will speak.

October is a great month, at least it is here in Florida. Its not winter and we no longer have the hot days of summer, we are in the in-between state of weather. October is also my birth month, I am a Libra. This year has been full of changes and I am still pondering if they were good ones or bad ones. I’ve survived 2 major surgeries which is good. I am still recuperating from them and I have discovered that my life will change drastically. I’ve gone through two break ups in relationships and I find that the 1st one still hurts, the second one I have no feelings about at all. It hurts when you put your all into a relationship and then discover that person is cheating on you. It took a long time for me to open up my heart to love and unfortunately my heart was broken again.  I am not a kid , I am a grown woman and I just do not play games when it comes to matters of the heart and love.  Here is to this new year, I have turned 55 and I am going to be a fabulous 55 year old woman.