Finally... Another Blog Post!- Summer Happenings

I know it has been quite a while since I last wrote on my blog.  Life has been quite busy though so this post will just bring you up to date with all that has been going in my life recently.

Taiki and I

At the end of July my family was busy getting our 4-H projects ready for the county fair and about that time also our summer Japanese exchange student arrived.  Load on my job as well as getting prepared for classes and then this last week actually starting classes and you have a very busy Lois.   Most of it was fun though and though my summer was hectic, it was enjoyable as well.
My favorite part was definitely having Taiki, our exchange student stay.  The little 14 year old boy fit in perfectly with my family.  By the time he left he had learned and even mastered many of my family's favorite games.
My second favorite part of the summer was probably the county fair.  I was smart enough to not do too much but I still entered a few items.  I found time to bake a couple pies to take (peach and pecan), which turned out pretty tasty.  However, Taiki was quite dissapointed they were going to the fair and not to his stomach so I ended up making a peach pie (his favorite) for him again before he left.
Of course I spent lots of time with my family this summer, which was good.  We managed to watch all but one of the Star Wars movies and played multiple games together.
Recently I became addicted to online Dominion (see earlier post about Dominion), which was probably not good.  However, when you are feeling a need for Dominion and your family isn't available to play what other options are there?
All in all, a good summer and hopefully this fall semester will be bearable too.  God bless. :)

Lois Johnson, avid writer, tea drinker, and reader but first and foremost, avid Christian.

My Newest Crochet Projects

     This last weekend was the 4-H Fashion Revue competition for my county where we displayed many different items including our crochet patterns.  Like the great procrastinator I am, I didn't start working on my planned four projects until a week prior.   However, I ended up with two hats, a little doll satchel for my sister's doll, and a pair of earrings.  I had another pair of earrings as well but I could only enter four items, not five (as somehow my brain convinced me was so).  I learned several new things with these projects such as, don't leave everything to last minute or else you have to crochet several hours straight and hurt your poor wrists, which probably is going to give me arthritis later on in my life.  I did have lots of fun though.  Several of my patterns I found via Crochet Pattern Central, a favorite website of mine when it comes to finding crochet patterns.  I also was blessed to find one of my hat patterns from a book I chanced upon while working at the library.  All in all it was a good year for crochet and while I am in the crochet mood I had better get started for next year as it promises to be more busy then this one.

My sister's doll with the little satchel I crocheted for it.

One of the hats I crocheted.
The brim on this one had a unique stitch called a linked treble crochet.

My crocheted earrings.
I have crocheted several earrings before but they all used crochet thread.
This pattern used three strands of sewing thread, which was interesting to work with (by interesting I mean difficult).

My other crocheted hat.
I am sorry you can only see the front of it in this picture but you can get the drift.

Lois Johnson, avid writer, tea drinker, and reader but first and foremost, avid Christian.