getting there

Friday morning, still tired from staying out too late Thursday night, I went to work like I should, and then, around 11am, was overcome by a serious need to hop in a car and go to visit my brother and his family, even if it was a 14 hour drive. (Yahoo Maps said 12 hrs 57 min. It lies. But I will forgive it, because it may have been the 12 that drew me in.) I called mom, and she was disbelieving, but totally on board if I was really going to leave work and get on the road. My office mate was checking rental car rates and telling me I had to go.

So it was decided.

I did what work I felt couldn't wait for Tuesday, tapping my foot and shaking my fist at the computer when it wouldn't work as fast as I wanted to.  I was outta there by 2pm.

Meanwhile, mom had booked the rental car, and we had both tried to enlist other road-trippers, with no luck. (I did, however, omit to invite my baby sister, totally by accident, which was really really sad, because she says she would have come along. That would have been triple the fun, and I feel bad that I forgot. (Forgive me?))

Somewhere in there I remembered I still hadn't done my laundry, which meant I had no clean undies to pack. Whatever.

I sped home and packed in about 15 minutes, and raced over to pick up mom. More toe-tapping at the rental car place (when I'm ready to go, nobody is fast enough for me), and then a quick detour to park my car in the driveway. (This is when I realized I hadn't packed pajamas and had to run inside for some. I was in and out in a heartbeat. Seriously.)

We hit the road by about 3:30, just in time to run into commuters in the Northern end of the state. (More toe-tapping.)

Mom and I like to stop and stretch when we travel by car, to keep us from getting "car leg". We stopped for dinner in Snowville, where we walked the short distance to the post office to deposit my Netflix I'd meant to send back from the office. (I can be forgetful.)

A couple hours later, we stopped at a rest stop, and gave an old water wheel a spin.

That thing spun for quite a while, once we got it going, which gave us a fit of the giggles, as it tended to spin one way for a while, hesitate, and then spin the other, due to the broken bits.

This rest stop also boasted some serious hand driers that made ripples in our skin, sending us off into laughter again.

We're easily entertained.

Later, we stopped for the night, in Meridian. It was apparently totally un-exciting, as the camera didn't make an appearance at all. We were on the road again by 6am.

Many Rest Stops and gas station fill-ups later, among them a slightly longer stop at a Fruit & Antique shop, the sign of which declared ANTIQUE FRUIT, where we saw these irresistible (but how would we get them home?) set of outdoor chairs:

we arrived in Kirkland and were greeted, a little shyly, by this little angel and her family.

Wearing Corn

Finally finished my corn-fiber socks last night.

I kept trying different bind-off techniques, and I just wasn't satisfied with the amount of stretch I was getting from any of them. So, basically, they've really been done, as far as the knitting goes, for a while now. It was just a matter of getting them off the needles and onto my feet.
So far, I think wearing corn is a good thing. We'll see if I feel any different at the end of the day, I suppose, but I think they'll get worn pretty often.

Pattern is Cornrows, worked toe-up with a modified Fleegle heel and a YO Bind-off.Yarn is Maizy in Iguana.

If I'm going to tell the story of the road trip to Seattle, I really have to start with Thursday

(To be honest, ever since I found out they were moving, before the birthday, I wanted to be there. It just didn't seem like the most responsible thing for me to do during a busy work month.)

It started when I was at the post office, standing in line to mail her birthday package. (Did it get there yet? It should have been there Saturday, but it wasn't. It seems to be lost.) I thought I'd better double check the address, just to be sure, so I called my brother. He sounded sorta homesick, like he was missing his mom and dad and siblings, and it just got to me. (Possibly, this was more me than him. Can't say for sure. Doesn't matter.) At that point, I mailed the package and called mom to suggest they might want to be sure they were on Skype that night (which they were). I knew I had a lot of work to do, and it wasn't at all practical to even think about taking off for the long holiday weekend. Not at all. So I returned to work, and attempted to put the idea out of my mind.

To further put the idea to rest, I distracted myself by taking my new shoes (and leggings) out on the town:

These shoes are actually incredibly comfortable (Vera Wang via Kohl's), and the leggings, despite being something I'd normally place in the they-really-shouldn't-make-them-in-size-16 category, seemed to flatter my figure. The top I wore covered my derriere, so I felt pretty good stepping out.

My usual Thursday knitting plans had been preempted, so instead, I joined up with the Fab Fibers crowd for afters. Our resident Roller Derby gal - Molly Stormin' - was meeting us at Sammy's, and I especially wanted to show off the shoes to her. Make her a little jealous. Because I wish I was doing Roller Derby, and I'm not. Also, they seemed like her kind of shoe. (They are.)

Hanging out at Sammy's seemed to do the job, because I didn't think about Seattle, not really.

It was the next morning that got me.

It was a fun-filled weekend in Seattle

but I'll have to tell you all about it later.

As with any vacation, there is a mammoth amount of work waiting for me at the office.

Drop Dead Diva

Are you watching this? It's my new favorite!

I was getting into Mad Men, watching the first seasons on DVD, but then I was at mom's, and she was watching Diva, and all of a sudden, I don't care what's wrong with Betty, because Jane is just so....amazing.

(I find Mad Men to be just a tad depressing, frankly, though I love the clothes.)

Drop Dead Diva? totally uplifting. How cute is Jane? And smart, too. It just goes to show, attitude is everything.
I wanna be like Jane.*

*I have to say, though, if she's a size 16, how short is she? Because, I'm pretty sure I don't look quite that...curvy.

All My Chickens, Week 25, Blue Hen Chicken

The second part of our two-part project, from the same source as last week.

Martha's State Bird Embroidery Patterns, this time, the Blue Hen Chicken (Delaware).

I'm doing this one in blue. Which makes it bluework, right?

Make sure you do yours the same size as last week, whatever that is. Next week we'll put them together (which, I guess, makes this more of a 3-part project) into a fun little accent pillow. Or not so little, depending on how big you decided to make your bird. Either way, it will work, and it will be cute.

*pic of my own creation added after-the-fact*

Bad Baby Adventure

There is apparently a conspiracy against good brie this weekend. I had to go to three stores, starting at 7:30 AM, just to find something I could use to concoct a good Bad Baby Pie.

Day's only had President, in an herb variety. Totally unacceptable.

Macey's had none at all. Except maybe some of those little individual triangles, which isn't going to work.

At Smith's I found they had imported Irish Butter. I wondered just what recipe you might need to justify buying expensive, imported butter. They also had the same herb President. I asked at the deli, and she pointed out that there was some other kind in a round box. I'd only seen the Camembert, but she was right - there was Alloute Baby Brie. I wasn't sure what the difference might be between "baby" and the usual, but I wasn't going to try another store.*

It's acceptable. In fact, it's pretty good.

Pie is in the oven, nearly done. And then it's off to SLC for Miss P's birthday party. I think we're going to be late.

*Costco carries Margaux, but they don't open until 10 AM.

HP7P2

SO. GOOD.

SERIOUSLY.

I didn't get the camera out. We got there only an hour before the movie, so we had to split up and take whatever seats we could find (it was either that, or sit right down in the very front), so it would have made for odd pictures anyway.

The effects are so good, I didn't find myself questioning anything, or wondering how they achieved the effect. I just believed everything I saw.

(Dragons are real, right? And trolls?)

Speaking of effects, I have a buddy from my high school years (hey, Rich!) that has worked on most of the HP movies (and lots of others) with a company called Double Negative out in London. This time, I actually found his name in the credits! It was so seriously cool to be able to point at the screen and say "I know that guy!", even if it is one of the many many names that appear way down at the end. It's just...cool.

Also? If you didn't already love Snape, you will after this one. Even if you're not just seeing these movies for your Alan Rickman fix. Which I'm not. Really.

Thursday, I don't care about you

1. I'm still in a crafting funk. I look around at my many projects, and I just don't wanna.

2. Apparently, I'm so against doing anything creative, I was driven to mending.

3. I mended a velvet & satin bean-bag frog.

4. He'd been in the mending pile for at least 5 years. Maybe 10.

5. It took about 20 minutes to sew up the 1/2" hole and reinforce a couple of other frayed portions.

6. I have no idea who this elegant bean-bag frog belongs to.

7. Apparently, the funk is now extending into the kitchen.

8. I made cookies Monday evening.

9. It wasn't fun.

10. The cookies are...not quite up to my usual standard.

11. I'm supposed to make a dessert for a funeral, but I'm concerned that whatever I prepare will bear the mark of my current funk, and possibly spread the malaise to anyone who consumes it.

12. Considering the intended recipients, this seems like something I should try to avoid.

13. I need chocolate.

Rooster #1 finally finished

Remember the Papercut Rooster? My first project for All My Chickens? No?

I didn't forget about it. I just had trouble with the finishing.

I wanted to either sandwich it between two panes of glass, or put it on a black background. Both options turned out to be more involved than you'd think, so there it sat, unframed.

I finally just decided to go with "good enough" and get it framed and on the wall, in whatever way I was able. If I find that "just right" piece of black paper, or another sort of frame that seems to want to be used with only glass, I might change things. (The frame I got, the things that hold the back in place were attached to the backing, so I would have had to get all kinds of clever to figure out how to keep everything in place without them. I wasn't up to it.)

IF I ever update it, I'll be sure and put it out here for you to see. In the meantime, I think it'll do.

If you were at my office right now...

I'd let you have one of my Cowboy Cookies:

But you might have to fight my plant for it.

(caring for a Peace Lily can be very rewarding)

recently completed

I've sort of been in a bit of a funk where sewing and crafting is concerned, (did you notice?) and I'm trying everything I can to pull myself out of it.

Saturday, Jul 2, between dinner and fireworks, I rebuilt my scarecrow:

something's not-quite-right with his head here...

He'd been whacked pretty good a few months back and had his backbone (dowel) broken. I had no choice but to totally rebuild, and it was obvious to anyone that his clothes were totally falling to bits. (The coveralls were the same pair he started with, a decade or so ago, but he'd had his shirt changed once.)

When I went to DI for the clothes, I had a choice of 18 mo or 3-4 yr sizes, both in coveralls and plaid shirts, so I went with the smaller set. Not sure that was the right decision, considering how much raffia hangs out from his sleeves. I might have to go back for something slightly larger. If I recall, the last ones were 2T.
I was working from the old body - the book with instructions having been stored in the attic - so I'm not sure I remembered to do everything right.

I finished this seasonally appropriate appliqued dishtowel the next day:

I had already stitched down all the pieces, I just needed to add the embroidery and buttons. (Note to self: when stitching with white or cream floss, use an extra strand - it's practically invisible otherwise.)
This comes as a kit, with buttons, and fabric pieces cut and ready to iron on. You add your own dishtowel (or whatever) and the thread/embroidery. I pick them up at local craft fairs.

Check that one off the list.

Looked around the sewing room for anything else in a "summer" sort of vein, but didn't see anything within arms reach (boy, that sounds incredibly lazy). Instead, I picked up this forever UFO Gingerbread Garland:

I'd sewn up the dolls and dressed the boys, but had yet to sew up the dresses or string them all together.

I managed, somehow, to get both dresses sewn up (in two sessions) and then wasted a bit of time looking for buttons to put on the straps at the back. I wanted them to be just so, but finally went with good enough.
Took me a few to figure out how I wanted to string them together, but I think this worked pretty well.
It may not be seasonally appropriate, but hey, it's out of the sewing room forever, so that's a good thing.

Still sorta feeling the funk. Hoping to break through soon.

All My Chickens, Week 24, Rhode Island Red

This week and next are a two-part project. I thought it might be cool to make a pillow using the two different chickens from Martha's State Bird Embroidery Patterns. (from this link, click on "old fashioned line drawings")

This week, we'll do the Rhode Island Red chicken (uh, Rhode Island, of course)

in redwork (which just means embroidery in only one color, red, using whatever stitches you need to complete the work, mostly back-stitch, chain stitch, or other outline stitch of choice).

The download has all the state birds, so print what you need, and re-size if you want. I'm excited.

*pic of my own creation added after-the-fact*

Prepare to be refreshed...

All My Chickens, Week 23, Momma Chicken

From Lion Brand, a cute little Momma Chicken to crochet.

I might alter the assembly a little to cut down on sewing. But you probably guessed that.

*pic of my own creation added after-the-fact*

Come on over!

Hey, all! I just wanted to throw this out there, in case there was anyone that I didn't talk to, or who doesn't already know:

Everybody is welcome to come watch the fireworks from Stadium of Fire on my front lawn, Sat, Jul 2.

We're having a BBQ at 6pm (come if you want to - potluck - there should be plenty to eat - I'm providing burgers, hot dogs, and the fixin's), on the lovely patio:

photo from last year - after the party

and then we'll gather out on the front lawn (whenever they start the show, after dark, or whenever it is) for snow cones and such, while we watch the fireworks.

You may think it's odd for me to throw the invite out into the world, but that's how we roll for this one. Anyone and everyone is always welcome, and there's always someone new at the party. So come on over - we have a GREAT view!

Need the address? email, leave a comment, or call. I'm here.