ROFLOL!!!

Please laugh with me and not at me. Even on my PC I kept making this same dumb mistake...of course the computer won't recognize your camera....IF YOU DON'T TURN IT ON!!!! What an idiot! Actually, it's the story of my life: failure to learn from previous mistakes. So with no further ado, here are pics of my one and only foray into crazy quilting. Oh, and back then my last initial was a "J" not an "H".

P.S. Can you believe those itty bitty boullion roses? How on earth did I do that?

Piffle!!!!!

Wouldn't you think by now I would know better than to plan anything? I got up this morning and began my photo shoot with a framed crazy quilted piece I did in 1983 that I was going to share on the Yahoo group I was just accepted to called stitchMAP. I got some lovely shots of it on my really nice digital camera and guess what? I don't have anyway of reading the card on my laptop nor do I have the cord for it (that must be in my storage unit). So, I dig out my newer simple digital and re-take the photos and guess what? I have the cord for it, but the PC has gone up on me and the laptop won't recognize the camera and I don't have the disc for the camera to load in the laptop (that must be in the storage unit also). So I have squat for you in photos...I'm so sorry.

How about this? Here's something from my Flickr account just so you can have something to look at. I was on a roll one year with ballband dishcloths and had all these little tiny bits left from every skein of cotton I used. So I took some plain ecru cotton and made what I call a stash-bustin' dishcloth by using up a different leftover in each stripe.

Stay tuned-I'm gonna get this camera thing figured out yet...I don't want to resort to using my cell phone for the pics cuz it takes awful pictures.

TTYL

Check It Out!

Woohoo! I adore this new background and header from "Cute n Cool". I'm amazed at how simple it was to put it here...I am so lame when it comes to bloggie html stuffs. I'd still like to figure out how to put my blog title back in an appropriate size and font.

I think today will be picture day. Gonna break out the digital cameras, go outdoors, and take some pics just to prove to my readers that I really do knit, crochet, spin, tat, cross stitch and quilt. The down side will be my utter embarrassment at the number of UFO's I have accumulated as well as the number of finished objects I've never done anything with. The up side will be that I will have blog fodder enough for many future blog posts.

Great News! After seven months of having no wheels, I will finally be able to get the transmission replaced in my Dodge Grand Caravan sometime in the next couple of weeks. Yes, peeps, this means I can finally get a life. I know my son will be thrilled as well, cuz this means I won't be underfoot all the time.

More good news! One of my coworkers recently got an iPhone. Now he doesn't need his iTouch anymore and is selling it to me cheap. I have it this weekend to try it out and OMG am I having fun with this new toy. I already have an older model shuffle and a fifth gen 80G iPod, but this iTouch is just a bundle of awesomeness-I can plurk, twitter and facebook from it.

Well, gonna stop blabbing and get on with the photo session-stay tuned for the embarrassment of riches in the form of a zillion fibery UFO's.

So....I Lied :P

Okay, so no swatch last Sunday. It's the whole camera thing-I have always been a lousy photographer. I use my digital cameras so seldom that I have to get the manual out to figure out how to use it every time.

Okay, so I missed my PlurkBuds and signed back up again. Mine is a big lonely world and I need my cyber buddies to help keep me sane. Oh, and I restored my Twitter account too-mostly I just read, not post.

So here's the deal-sometime today I'm gonna dig out the digital camera and take a picture of the swatch I'm doing for the Ravelry Symbol Crochet Mystery CAL and maybe the Cold Mountain Shawl KAL (I love Kieran Foley's designs-this one is really lovely).

And if I get real ambitious I'll do a shot of the SAL of the Quaker sampler by Mary Wigham from Needleprint.com. I'm not very far on the sampler so it'll just be a shot of the floss and the fabric and the fifty or so stitches I've managed to do. It's been a long time since I did any cross stitch and geez are my eyes getting old-gonna have to find some young person to thread my needles for me LOL.

I think the deep blue funk has finally lifted. Ever since April I've been spiralling downward-delayed reaction to all the chaos in December I guess. But thankfully, the blues seem to have passed (good riddance to bad rubbish, I say).

Well, it's too beautiful a day here to sit and blog all day. TTYL.

Swatchkeeper Sundays

Swatch is not a dirty word...swatch is not a dirty word...swatch is not a dirty word.

Intellectually, I know that swatching is crucial to the success of any knitted or crocheted article that must FIT something as opposed to scarves, afghans, and various other projects that will forgive the lack of swatching. I tend to stick to the non-swatch requiring sort of item myself. But I also know that swatching is a great way to create a stitch library as well.

As an exercise in discipline and in an effort to create my own swatch encyclopedia, I'm establishing Swatchkeeper Sundays on my blog (not that it really matters-there's no one reading my blog at present). Every Sunday, I will select a yarn from my stash and a stitch pattern that intrigues me and I will swatch. Do you hear me? I WILL swatch.

The procrastinator in me must tell you that Swatchkeeper Sunday entries will begin next week (or possibly later today, depending on whether my lazy a** gets a swatch done and whether the sun comes out so I can take a decent picture).

Off Topic Blathering: If you happen to go to Target(pronounced Tar-zhay of course) anytime soon you must check out the Soap and Glory Clean on Me Shower stuff and the Mist You Madly body spray-they smell absolutely gorgeous!!!

Returning to the Real World

I've made a decision with regard to the concept of "re-inventing" myself. I need to reduce my internet presence and my total reliance on the internet (i.e. Plurk and Twitter) for social interaction. I've closed both my Twitter and my Plurk accounts so I won't be tempted to return to them. I'll still hang out on Ravelry, Intatters and GoodReads. I've kept my Facebook account to keep in touch my family and old high school friends...and of course I'll keep my blog-it's not as if I spend much time blogging anyway, right?

I've come to realize that I spend so much time sitting at the computer that I'm not moving forward with my life. The last year's events have left me traumatized and have sucked any self-confidence I ever had right out of me. It's time to move on and be part of the world around me instead of just the world within me.

I'm behind in everything, yet the only thing I "have" to do each week is work eight hours a day Monday through Friday. Go figure!

To this point I've lived my life as if it were a daily dress rehearsal...just waiting for opening night...Well, today is opening night! So, to the one or two people who might actually read my blog, wish me luck (or "break a leg" if you want to keep with the theater simile).

Thanks for your kind attention.

Where's My ZZZZZ's???

One AM...and I can't sleep!!! So, I'll blog about some random stuff:
First-my yarn from the March CJKopeccreations Spinalong:

Check out that boat anchor masquerading as a bottom whorl spindle-five ounces...feels more like five pounds!


Then, there's my vintage spinning wheel I've had for three years and still haven't gotten the damaged leather bits replaced-maybe this year.






And while I'm at it, I'll include one picture of the freshly groomed doggeh from last summer-he's pitifully shaggy right now (note the large plastic bag chock full of tatted bits and bobs-see, I really do tat).





I'm currently participating in a Ravelry hansigurumi swap (I have 2 partners-what was I thinking?), the CJKopec April spinalong, beginning April 13 a Todos scarf Plurkalong, and I'll get my swapbot dotee doll swap partner on April 15...overcommitted much? Oh...and today I got my Martha Ess Tea is for Tatting book and I want to tat everything in it. And then of course, my copy of Hansi Singh's new book full of her amazing hansigurumi creatures is slated to arrive from Amazon on my doorstep on Tuesday (my birthday-perfect timing). All of that on top of a minimum of 20 UFO's. So if it's a long time before I blog again you'll know exactly why.