Friday, February 26, 2010

Bubble Jingle Teether

I am NOT going to be one of those bloggers that gives you a big list of reasons why I haven't been blogging.  Lets just leave it at "life got in the way" and move on from here.  I am back now and have returned with a new pattern to share.

I have promised my wonderful husband to start using my yarn stash and eliminate some of it before I go out to buy new yarn for new projects.  I know, what was I thinking!!  Still, a promise is a promise.  I decided to start by using up the misc. balls of yarn I have floating around.  So I gathered them all together and put them in a basket beside my chair.  I have made several baby booties and I have shared in a previous post using these, but I was aching to start designing again.  Problem was that I only had bits and pieces to design with and I didn't want something with a lot of ends to weave in and I have every weight of yarn in this basket from sock yarn to bulky.

After some time I came across a pattern for a little caterpillar that I thought was cute and it sparked something.  Next thing you know I had this pattern wrote up.  I will say it has met with Baby A's approval as it seems that every one I make finds it's way out of my basket and into her mouth.  I had hoped it would have enough texture to give an interesting mouth feel for the babies and apparently it does.  So here is the newest free Sunflower Original
 

You can download the PDF version of this on Ravelry or  by clicking above.  Hopefully this is the first of many new patterns this year!

Also, for those of you who remember from earlier this month that we were looking for a new vehicle since the truck had a major oil leak and my van was quickly becoming unsafe to drive, just want to share how God has blessed us.  This past Wednesday we bought this:
  
Our new 2004 Montana.  We have been shopping the local ad bulletin for 3 weeks now trying to find something in our price range.  Hubby wanted an AWD van due to the steep hill leading into our subdivision.  It is hard to find an AWD van.  We were supposed to drive about 1 1/2 hours from our house to look at a Sienna that day.  At the last minute God made it very apparent that the Sienna was NOT the vehicle for us (talked to the woman who owned it rather than the man and she said it had been sitting for over a year and had never been started during that time!)  So we made plans to drive and look at a truck that was 2 1/2 hours away instead.  This was on Tuesday night.  I went to bed and hubby stayed up.  He looked through the ad bulletin again and found this van listed in the wrong section (4 wheel drives rather than vans) and after looking it up realized that they were asking several thousand dollars less than the blue book value.  Wednesday morning we called hoping that we would be able to look at it that morning and God opened the door.  The gentleman had an hour and a half window that had just opened up that morning and we could check it out then. 
We really expected for there to be something wrong with it.  We discovered, however, that the man selling it was a Christian.  He buys vehicles, cleans them up and resells them in an attempt to supplement his income from the Christian School he works at so he can buy his wife her dream car.  This van had had one owner, a clean carfax report and was loaded.  Leather seats, 4 captains chairs, power everything (and it all works), dvd player, wireless headphones for the dvd player, and on and on.  Not only did we buy the van, but this gentleman has offered to take us to a dealers only auction to look for a truck for my husband as well!  God has so blessed us!  Just wanted to share with you.

Love,