My Backyard

As someone mentioned, I haven't posted pics of my backyard since it snowed last. Well, okay, I've posted them to Facebook but not here 'cause it's easier to get them on FB from my phone. So, here's the update:

We finally got patio furniture this year:

So this is the view from my outdoor knitting chair:

And this is where I put the knitting and coffee:

Chillin' with my Gnomies

The robins totally lied:

Those oddly-shaped white blobs on the far side of the pool would be the garden gnomes.

Pharoah of All He Surveys

My Hubby and I were doing a bit of pool maintenance this Sunday since the weather was so nice. Specifically, we cleaned the skimmer baskets, added chlorine, fished out the chlorine tablets from the bottom of the pool where the duck dumped them after breaking open, cleaned the filter basket and emptied Nessie's bag. Nessie (our pool cleaner) and the duck can be seen in this photo, taken September of 2008:

During all this, my Hubby had a moment my pagan friends will appreciate:

Yes, the Plano-ite version of the crook and flail. What more can you say.

Snow Pics from Texas

Snow.  In Texas.  'Nuff said.

 

  

 

These were taken from my front and back doors, respectively, 2/12/2010.

Lori’s Painting

This is a picture my older sister painted for me for my birthday many years ago:

Sadly, she gave up painting, and this might be the last one she ever completed. Mind you, nothing in particular happened to make her give it up, just life in general. I'm hopeful that one day when her children are older, she'll pick it back up.

I’ve always liked this painting. It’s like a snapshot of what she thought of me at the time: I’m at the top of my castle tower, workin’ my mojo in the sky, surrounded by flower gardens and sailing ships. There are some other telling details you can’t see in this scan: the sun has a smiley face she created by texturing the paint, the tops of the towers and the doors to the outer curtain wall are painted in gold, and those doors are guarded by two Ewoks (yes, Star Wars Ewoks).

The ringed planet visible inside the atmosphere at the upper left was a standard inclusion in her works, whether drawn or painted, serving almost as a second signature. I always marveled at her ability to paint skies, etc., as this is something I do not have the skill for. I do okay with miniatures, but creating my own compositions and putting them to canvas just intimidates the crap out of me, which is another reason I think it’s sad that my sister doesn’t paint anymore.

Note that she didn’t have any pictures of castles or sailing ships to work from, so she approximated both. The internet and World Wide Web barely existed at the time: this was 1989, after all, and getting to a web site, any web site, was a two step process involving dialing a phone number. Heavens to CrapCat, now I've done the math on how long it's been. Yikes.

Also note that the sails on the sailing ship are backwards. I teased her about that, of course, and ultimately we decided the ship was simply in reverse and backing out of the harbor. Didn’t know sailing ships had reverse, did you? Argh, matey: let’s back’er up and head fer the pub!

Lost at Sea

Well CrapCat has reminded me that it's been while since I was able to post or even read my email or the blogs I follow, due to working a lot of overtime and catching up at home as a result. However, I've nearly completed another project, so stay tuned and bear with me and I'll try to make it worth the wait :-)

Meanwhile, here's a random pic of the castle blanket I crocheted with a cute kitten named Jet and his friend, whom I think is a stuffed pokemon:

Birthday Cakes

My younger daughter had a birthday yesterday, so we managed to have her party actually on her birthday. As with all my kids, I wanted to make a couple of cakes based on something she likes. Currently, that thing is vampires, and has been for about a year or so. I wanted to make something like a 3-D crypt or coffin, so I started out with a 9x13" cake. It didn't pan out:

Ok, it's a Cake Fail: it just wouldn't come out of the pan whole. However, I managed to salvage enough pieces large enough to make a smaller version:

I also made a castle cake, and tried to make it look like a ruin, which was not difficult given that it also didn't come out of the pan whole. Fortunately, the green icing used to portray moss was also useful as an adhesive:

I had to make a third cake because the coffin was basically a 1-2 person cake, so I used an idea my Hubby found online, and made a basic white cake with an added vampire-related feature:

I put the same strawberry goo in the middle of the layers, which added flavor without adding too much sugar, since I made the filling myself.

So what happened to the coffin cake? As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Halloween Cookies - Late

So we're a week into November and I finally got the Halloween cookies made:

 

 

All the kids were at their grandmothers' so I managed to get the cookies iced before they were all eaten. Well, except the other two cauldron cookies - someone has to do quality testing, after all.

Meanwhile, it was beautiful outside this morning, despite the cloud cover, so I got these two pictures of my front yard:

 

Normally I'm not big into the color orange, but it was really pretty, and I was quite pleased to have captured this year's fall colors before they disappeared. The time when the trees are colorful is very short: they go almost directly from full and green to brown and bare. It makes one wonder how I managed the autumn leaf cookies earlier this year:

 

A friend told me I done pretty good for a southern gal. Oh well, now that the cookies are made (and, no doubt, soon to be eaten), back to the dragon dice bag. If it comes out right, I may have to knit CrapCat a new hat.

Creative Reminiscing Part 1: Knitting

I find it interesting that regardless of the number or variety of thoughts that pass through my mind while I’m knitting, painting or baking, I generally end up reminiscing about how I learned to do whatever I’m doing, and about those who taught, influenced or encouraged me as I was learning to do it. Certain things have come to be a part of who I am – for instance, people know I knit. They know that if someone at work or my Hubby’s work announces a pregnancy, I’m going to make baby stuff. They also know that if they don’t tell me color preferences or at least gender, I’m going to pick something myself, but either way there’s no getting out of the knitting thing. My obsession with making stuff out of yarn, however, is not what this blog entry is about. I suppose, now that it’s the harvest season, I’m of a mind to give thanks to those who have, at least in some way, helped me get where I am.

First, there’s my mother, rest her soul. When I was very young and she was a housewife, she made bread by hand (there were no home bread machines), sewed some of the clothes we wore to school, embroidered, used a small plastic loom to make Barbie clothes, etc. We always had bead crafting kits and other generally creative stuff available. Later when she had to work outside the home, we still always had paints, colored pencils and craft kits at the very least. I learned to crochet while I was in early elementary school, though no one actually sat down and taught me. I picked up the basics by watching my grandmother, rest her soul, who taught my older sister, and my aunt, who can crochet doilies without patterns, much the way I can churn out a sock. I consider doilies to be far more complicated than socks. My grandmother could crochet a huge bedspread with thin crochet cotton, probably without a pattern, but even with a pattern, I consider that impressive. I recall crocheting small bags to give as gifts as far back as 6th grade, which, as my children frequently remind me, was a very long time ago. When I was a senior in high school, my mother and I found a pattern we both wanted to make, and which I am now unable to locate, at least on the web. Fortunately, I have it memorized: it’s just a basic circle-in-square pattern using a puffy stitch, and I had to make hundreds of them to make the first blanket, which was a full-size comforter. I ended up having to give it away a few months after I made it. Naturally, I decided to make another shortly thereafter, but was tired of making blue circles with eggshell squares around them, so I made this instead:

These days, my biggest inspiration (enabler, really) is my hubby. Despite all the creative or crafty things I’ve learned to do over my lifetime, it wasn’t until he came along that I saw it as something other than a greedy little hobby. Before him, I thought of it all as impractical, selfish and expensive. Even knitting was just something I did in semi-secret: I didn’t have a lot of money, so making a sweater that cost more than simply purchasing one seemed, well, impractical, selfish and expensive. I did it anyway, and for the longest time, all I really worked on was a series of wavy blankets in RedHeart worsted weight. I could rationalize buying RedHeart: it’s not expensive at all. I could rationalize Susan Bates circular needles: also not expensive. I would never have been able to rationalize Skacel or Brittany needles, nor the more expensive yarns, and certainly not Vera, a wool winder or a swift. A blog about my secret passion would have been right out. What I did not realize at the time is that knitting provides a great deal more than an object. It’s not just a pair of socks or a blanket or sweater. For the recipient, it’s something that says someone cares enough to spend both time and money to make something special and personal. For me, knitting provides time to sort out my thoughts without sitting in my easy chair just drooling and staring at the walls. I’ve never been good at just sitting and doing nothing.

In being grateful for my hubby, I have to give kudos to his mom as well. I know that she encouraged him in many ways and that she is in part responsible for how wonderful he is. With that in mind, when my hubby asks me to make a blankie (or anything) for his mom, it’s an honor; the knowledge that he considers the product of my selfish little hobby to be something he wants to give his mother is incredibly gratifying. In fact, I just recently finished this one for her birthday:

It’s a bit simple, but it’s big and I wanted to get it to her sometime this century. The main body was knitted on Vera, and the border is made of cording that was hand-knitted directly onto the main body using DPN’s. Naturally, you can’t see the border in the photo because I didn’t have time to wash and block it before the birthday party. After all, I had two cakes to make: