Friday, May 16, 2008

What do insomnia & slow internet connection have in common?

They both stink. Put them together, and you have my Friday night. I was in bed nearly three hours ago, but laid awake, so I finally got up to watch some Hulu. The connection is a little slow tonight, so it keeps hiccuping. A bit of a drag.

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind, so the blog was dropped first, with the swimsuit bootcamp closely following. The best part of the whole thing was that Jeff was home in the middle of it! I've also enjoyed my time cooking for a crowd, and going on a field trip with my niece's first grade class. I don't think I'd even heard of the Dallas World Aquarium before going -- the place is MAJORLY COOL! It did make me yearn to go diving again, especially when we saw a woman in the water feeding the manatees. It's been two years since my last dive. In addition to all of the aquatic life, there were many birds & other animals. Here are two of my favorite pictures:

Friday, May 9, 2008

Thursday's Flowers

The weather has been lovely, but there is a bit of that humidity sneaking in, and the temperatures are beginning to creep up. Blech. But, we know this is all part of living in north Texas. Spring is long and full of flowers, including some roses in my backyard. I miss the rose garden from our house in Grand Prairie: Jeff gave me half a dozen rose BUSHES one year. All heirloom varieties -- just gorgeous! He's quite a guy! My strawberry plants are also developing new flowers, so I suspect I still have many berries to come.


Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Makin' Whoopie!

Whaaaaaat! No, not THAT! Whoopie pies! Here they are, in all their yummy, gooey goodness!
It was a recipe from my Aunt Gail, and I made it for my nieces & nephews. I also made Chicken Tetrazzini. It was great to cook for a dozen people for a change, instead of just one. And I was finally able to photograph that second pair of felted clogs. They took a day and a half to knit, but sat unfelted for four months...
I'm very glad I tried the pattern again after my first pair came out warped. These are done in Paton's Classic Wool Merino.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Errands & Exhaustion

Not even a photo today. I do, however, have a lawnmower (unassembled, in the box), 40 pounds of sunflower seed, and two cubic feet of compost in my Beetle. What's in your car? Oh! And I forgot to mention yesterday the Danica scarf that is the current "keep it in the car" project in case I lose my sensibilities and forget to take a WIP with me when I run out the door. So that's keeping the lawnmower, sunflower seed, and compost company.

Unfortunately, Frank is apparently bored tonight and getting into everything. Okay, where is my Flip Video? I didn't even finish typing that sentence and he knocked over a table (with a glass top, mind you) and broke a lamp. All I could do was sit here and watched it go down in slow motion. I don't know how the glass survived. Yes, I had to change my mind and stop and take photos when I saw this:


Do you think he's trying to show me that the glass wasn't broken? I guess I'm adding super glue to my shopping list. This is the table he was under, and the reason he was under it and knocked it over is at the bottom of the picture.

Okay, now it is really time for bed.

Monday, May 5, 2008

A New Beginning

How exactly is one supposed to begin a new blog? I could easily have spent hours scouring the internet at the first post on hundreds of other blogs and stolen, ahem, borrowed a clever format or idea, but I spend more than enough time in cyberspace as it is. Aside from the usual email and the Ravelry dark hole, there is Sock Madness. Those crazy adventures deserve their own post, which will come in a couple of weeks when the Madness is complete. (And yes, I've already expressed interest to the moderators to include me for next year. Hence, the Madness.) This month, there is the Swimsuit Bootcamp over at SparkPeople. I've grown accustomed to navigating through the pages in Ravelry, and it is taking a little while to get my bearing over at SparkPeople so I can move through it quickly.

This blog is not yet formatted the way I would like it to look and function, but I'm battling the urges of that underlying disease of procrastifectionism and posting anyway. I mean seriously, if I waited until I had all my poop in a group there would never be a post. Life just kind of goes along that way.

Generally, there is something that needs to be finished before another thing can begin, so in that vein I'll reveal my current pile of UFOs. I also am aware that a post without pictures is very boring. Very boring indeed.

Nighttime photography under compact fluorescents does not lend itself to the best color representation, but hey, I'm doing my part to save the earth, right? Left to right starting with the red blob: the beginnings of two felted lobsters, a felted clam, a hat, Lucy's Diamonds scarf, Catherina Lace Seaman's scarf. Then there is a mouse that needs to be dressed & given facial features, Annetrelac socks, Something's Shady socks, an afghan square, the legs of another mouse, and the dark blob at the bottom is actually a forest green felted clog. One. It is lonely.

Full disclosure means I must also include this second photo. Traditionally, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but I think it can be used to describe a knitted finished object. "Almost" is when you bind off just a little too tightly and the project sits in the basket until you feel like you have nothing better to do that pick out the bind off on something where the stark contrast in the yarn completely obscures the lace pattern. (These socks have been worn on occasion, with the tail tucked in.) "Almost" is adequate to describe that pair of gift socks that cannot accommodate the recipient's high arch. (And of course they are done in a one-of-a-kind, made-just-for-her hand-dyed yarn that she LOVES, so the option of finding someone else they fit and knitting her a completely different pair is out.) "Almost" certainly must be appropriate for describing that bag that just didn't felt to expectations. And my husband's socks were finished, but now sit with the rest of them until I have the desire to duplicate stitch the soles while there are still soles left to reinforce. So nice to know the man loves his socks. So embarrassing to admit he still only has one pair.

That will wrap it up for tonight. Didn't come up with any grand and hopeful goals for when the pile will be complete, I just wanted to lay it out there. Perhaps there could be a common thread of "UFO Mondays?" Perhaps.