playing catch up

we had big plans for last weekend --- shopping for fabrics to make a Halloween costume, maybe a trip up the foothills from my daughter's either to Estes Park or Lyons

instead it rained -- and rained -- and flooded all around us

my daughter's house is safe -- they live in a place that didn't have a creek near enough to put them in the line of fire (so to speak)

but those two places we planned to go -- not so much

it will be hard to get to Estes Park for a long time as the Big Thompson Creek that ran along the highway to there tore up much of the road

and the folks in Lyons right now can not drink the water as the water purification plant has been damaged by the flooding and they are asking even residents to just stay away

my daughter and son in law have how returned to work, but length of their trips to work every day have been doubled -- or worse -- it's going to be a long winter

since we had to stay inside, I spent some time with Mr Cute

we played with PlayDoh  --  the little boy that lives next door to them now came over for a while and the boys painted at the kitchen table while their mom's made a trip to the grocery store during a lull in the downpours

Mr Cute even got to watch some TV -- to his parent's credit, he doesn't do a lot of that, but they do have a "stash" of recorded TV programs for this kind of occasion

I love the picture of him and the little dog that lives at their house hanging out on the couch

all that time indoors away from my house along with the trip up and back meant more than the usual number of afghan squares got knit up

as I was taking the picture and then putting them in the box to ship off to Close Knit Hugs, the DH asked me if some of them would be returned to Colorado as afghans for the flooded area -- my guess is they might

since we returned home, I have been working on projects 

this one, for instance --- I finished this bracelet yesterday --- and now I'm working on a pair of earrings to go with it

this was fun to make -- I learned a lot about making three dimensional shapes with Delica beads that might be useful for some future projects

and I finished this knitting project last night -- it was fun working with two strands of yarn and the beads -- I have dubbed this one the Eggplant Hat because it is made of purple and green yarn and beads

and then there is this little Rube Goldberg arrangement

when I sat down at the sewing machine Tuesday afternoon, the light bulb burned out

I made a trip to the nearest store and got a replacement bulb, but it did not work -- there may be something more serious wrong with the machine than a burned out light bulb, but for now I need to be able to get some things done

the best idea I could come up with was the little LED light on an elastic band that I have used like a Miner's light to knit or work on projects in the car

yesterday I was able to spend over an hour working on some stitching using this arrangement

eventually I'll have to deal with this issue on a more serious level, but for now I'm at least getting things done

and it's time now for me to get to that!