My Grandmother.

My Grandmother passed away on October 30, 2009 and I just wanted to share some photos that I found in one of her many boxes that were given to me. There are so many refreshed memories in this box, these three photos are just a brief sampling of the woman that she was.

I miss her very much. I had the opportunity to say my goodbye last week and the following day she suffered another stroke and was left completely unresponsive. I am so Thankful for taking that hour just to sit with her and enjoy her brief moments of lucidity.

Love. Take a moment today and think of someone and do something, say something, just for them to let them know how you cherish their impact on your life.


Photo 1: My brother, myself, Grandma. (Guessing 1994?)
Photo 2: Myself, Grandma (1998)
Photo 3: My Grandma holding my brother, I am standing. (1983)

NaKnitMo

a.k.a. National Knit Month. NaKnitMo is a group that I belong to on Ravelry see group: NaKnitMo
which in the month of November, each member strives to meet their number of stitches knit goals. It is a knitter's version of the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo where novelists are striving for a 50,000 word goal.

Well, I am not a writer. Pretty obvious right??? Since I have fewer than 20 blog posts and only 6 (WONDERFUL) followers. I don't really have a lot to say and even less patience putting it down. But, I am quite fond of knitting. AND the Holidays are quickly approaching. I have some holiday knitting that I need to get cracking on. What better incentive?

If you feel like joining, GREAT! If not, feel free to cheer me on. I plan on updating my ravelry projects page with finished objects for this and hopefully this blog.

Happy Knitting!!

p.s. This is my first attempt at a ticker... please forgive me if this doesn't update.

Information for Swap Partners

Hi! I have seen so many other posts like this and always appreciated knowing that someone took the time for their partners to get this all down in one place for easy reference.

Allergies:

• Alpaca. This is a very serious allergy for me. I cannot have anything with any amount of alpaca fibers in it.
  
• Nickle. I am allergic to most metals but nickle being the usual trigger of reactions. I have been known to have problems with sterling silver and stainless steel too. Because of these allergies, I rarely wear jewelery even if it is beaded because I just never got into the routine of doing so.
  
• Not allergies but bothersome just the same: Cigarette smoke and synthetic fragrances. These can trigger migraines.

Colors:

• LOVE: Olive, eggplant, rust, mustard, jewel tones and I LOVE browns. I wear a lot of earth and rich jewel tones.
• PASS: I am not a fan of pastels. Especially pink. I like to say that I am allergic to pink. ;-)

Supplies:
Supplies are always a safe bet for me.

• I am currently obsessed with anything relating to felt. So, craft felt be it wool or synthetic, wool yarn for fulling, roving for needle felting would all be welcome with open arms.
• Yarn: I am a yarnie and will always be a yarnie. I find myself using more wool these days but would welcome almost any blend except fun fur types or alpaca blends of course.
• Sizzix dies: I recently purchased a sizzix bigkick machine and would love it if anyone has any dies to share.
  
• Paper: This ties in with the above information. Any scrapbooking paper.
  

Well, this is a start. I hope this helps someone. I will probably add a similar post sometime soon. Until then, Happy Swapping!

The Purple Potato Experiment

Last Tuesday, after work, I visited one of our local Farmer's Markets. It is a great time of year to do so as many of the vegetables are reaching their peak. I picked up some sweet corn, carrots, onions, an eggplant and something new... Purple Potatoes! These were a new sighting for me! Turns out not so new for other people. Well... I wondered what I would do with these. I wanted to try something that might highlight the purpleness of them. Purpleness? Like how I just made that word up?
Above: Washed and waiting to be peeled. Bellow: Peeled and waiting to be grated. Yes, they are purple throughout.
I wanted to show how pretty it looked as I grated them. Just one tip though. Don't wear a white shirt while doing this. The juices from the potato sprayed my white shirt while grating and now I have a purple polka dotted white shirt. Bummer.
I had 8 or so medium sized potatoes. I added 2 eggs, salt and pepper, and enough flour to create a pancake batter like consistency. It might have been a 1/2 c. or so. I just spooned it in until it seemed right.Naturally, I don't have any photos of the cooking phase but I heated a griddle on medium and then added some butter before spooning a bit of the mixture onto the hot pan. Fry them up, flip, press down and let other side crisp up a bit. I added onions in only some of these as I am the only one that likes onions. But they added so much flavor, I definitely recommend the addition. As you see, the purple fades to an unappetizing gray. Um, they look like meat pancakes. A bit disappointing. Oh well. They still tasted pretty darn good.

Christmas... #$@%&^^%#$@##$%#$$##

Yeah, so back in May when I was all confident that I would not procrastinate this year and maybe actually get something done early this year, I posted a countdown. I have periodically posted on Facebook and Twitter with reminders of '_ _ _ days left till Christmas' (119 days in case you were wondering) in hopes that I could motivate others and myself to accomplish some crafting early so we can all sit back, pound down the nog and hang out with the yule log.

Well, here we are, 119 days in case you missed it above, the kids are getting ready for school and this is the only thing that I have accomplished so far:A pattern that I purchased from etsy. A lovely flap mitten made with fingering weight yarn. Since taking this picture I am finished up to the knuckle and working on the thumb. I hope to CO the finger flap section soon... although when, I do not know since I need to work on some swap stuff. I really just need to stop swapping.

And just for fun. My bowl of felt fruit acumulated from the felt fruit swap I participated in. The cat has stolen the kiwi, lemon, grapes, peach slices and most of the strawberries. The bowl is looking pretty pathetic. Who would have known that cats would like to bat around felt so much? Wish I could catch her in the act and snap a picture of it.





(...119 days....)

Jurrasic Fight Club

I could survive for 1 minute, 3 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor


booyah. ;-)

Update: MP3 is victorious! (well, somewhat.)

So, I tried the whole, trying to dry up oil from inside of a MP3 player in a bag of rice thing... to no avail. Well, I take that back. I guess it kind of worked. Or maybe just worked a little? Whatever. It plays, doesn't seem to be getting too warm, holds a charge. The only signs that something happened to the device are slight oil marks on the screen itself. Whatever type of screen a 8GB Microsoft Zune has in the first place.


The light/ white spots you see are oil deposits/blobs or just what is still wet inside of the player. I have no idea. I was contemplating trying to figure out how to open up this bad boy but... um, yeah, I know I would never get it back together again.

So for the meantime, I have a working MP3 player. For how long? Who knows.