Changes to our Backyard & Fingerless Gloves & Elton John

I'm almost finished with my first Evangeline Glove. Just have the thumb to work on. The pattern, unfortunately, is not quite available yet free online, but should be again soon at the Ravelry site. I'm finding this to be a very quick and easy project to do. It's just finding time to work on it that's the problem. I've been waking up very tired in the mornings and wishing I could sleep just a little longer. Hmmmm.....maybe if I try to go to bed a little earlier I'll be less tired. Funny, that actually works, so not too many late nights knitting, at least until schools out in 2 weeks. Loving the color of the yarn I'm using. Plus, it's surprising soft. I'm using the Cascade 220 Superwash in color #870. Definitely will buy some more soon.


We're getting ready to make a lot of changes here at our little home, first of which was to get more light in our backyard. The home was built in 1964-1965, right after the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake

, and for some reason the original owners decided to plant 3 rows of Spruce trees in the yard rather than do any sort of landscaping or gardening. Bud has seen an early aerial photograph of our neighborhood that confirms such. When we first moved in, in 1997, the previous owners had cut down 2 trees from the center row. The stumps were still there, so we worked hard the following year and dug, tugged them out. 3-4 years later, we decided to remove a few more. Ended up removing just 2 more in the far corner. Was better, but still not enough light. It's taken us until now to finally decided which trees really need to go, without losing some of the privacy we enjoy, despite being surrounded by neighbors. So, we cut down 4 more trees last week. A little sad, a little nervous, at first, but we're both very happy with our decision.








We counted the rings on one of the trees and it matched our estimate on the age of these trees. Pretty cool!

So you might be looking at that really cool play set we've put in our yard and thinking "Wow, maybe we should do the same thing." Well, my boys hardly ever play with it now and their only 8 and 10 years old. So, really think hard about the time and money you might spend to do this and how much your kids really honestly love to play in the back yard. My guys are currently down the street playing basketball with the neighbor boys.

Thought I'd mention that Elton John is actually coming to Anchorage and Fairbanks. Wow! We rarely get performers of his caliber up here. To give you an idea how excited we all are up here, the tickets sold out in less than one hour and despite quick redialing on my cell phone and then 10 minutes into it, trying online, I was unable to get any tickets. Luckily, he's decided to perform a second night here in Anchorage. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, again. This time I'm hoping to be better prepared. Plus, some friends of mine who did get tickets last time, but have decided they'd rather go the second night are going to try and pick up tickets for me also. So, I may end up with 4 extra tickets that I will sell at exactly what I paid for them. I'll post about them, if I end up with extra tickets. I've heard about people trying to sell tickets for $400.00/piece.