Saturday, February 01, 2003
My post today was going to be a bit of a rant about how badly my four day weekend is turning out, but it certainly seems insignificant in light of the news we got this morning about the Columbia. Life has been really kicking me in the pants lately, but at least everyone I love is alive and well tonight. If there's any small consolation to have at a time like this, it's that it reminds us of our blessings. Hug the people you love while you can. When I feel like I've reached the absolute limit with someone I love and I want to walk away, I often think of a passage I read in a Patricia Cornwall book. Someone important in the main character's life had died, and she's remembering how he used to drive her crazy with her untidieness, but now that he's gone, she'd bear any amount of mess to see him again. The reason I'm having such a miserable weekend is Mark, but at least he's alive, and he's here and that means there's another chance for us to be happy together. And today's disaster reminds me of that blessing. It's cold comfort to those who've lost their family members, and my heart goes out to them, but it's a small light in the darkness. With that said, I'll try to post some of the happier goings on in my life.
This was the scene at my parents' house on Thursday:
Yes, I'm now 23, but who says you can't have a SpongeBob party at that age? And here is a close up of the cake:
The past few years I've gotten fancy-schmancy expensive cakes with white chocolate frosting and raspberry puree filling or fondant and ganache, but every now and then, ya just gotta have the grocery store, cartoon character, whipped cream frosting cake (or at least I know I do!) The last culinary faux pas I committed for a birthday cake was a cake made to look like cookie monster's head, with mounds of bright blue icing and cookies where the mouth would be. Fancy-schmancy has its time and place, but so does SpongeBob! And this year was the time, my parents' house was the place! There were only three of us there for the party (dumb Mark) but we still had a good time. And look at this little goody that appeared in the pile of presents:
One of my great passions outside of fibers is vintage jewelry and this little gem is just the sort of thing I love. It was a tie pin in its former life, but was made into a sweet little pendant by my goddess of vintage jewelry, Gabrielle. She is the sweetest girl and works at a FABULOUS antique/vintage fine jewelry store and is a talented designer. And she knows my taste VERY well. She is the terrible jewelry temptress, and she is who I'm sending Mark to when it's time for that very special piece of jewelry. I know Gabby will help him pick the perfect piece, and then I can still be surprised, yet be assured that I'll love the ring I'll wear for the rest of my life. Also in the present pile was a printer that is very good for printing photos, so I'll have that set up soon and can finally print the pictures I've been taking since I got my camera for Christmas. Yea!
And in fibery news (for those of you who have made it this far LOL) I'm on the last row of the fifth repeat of lace on my shawl. So, if I had done things correctly, I'd nearly be done. But did I do things correctly? NoooOOOOOooooOOOO! Of course not :-) I thought that my yarn had fewer stitches to the inch than the yarn used by the book. So, my shawl would end up bigger than the books, which was ok by me. BUT I reversed the numbers in my head, so actually, my yarn was smaller and therefor my shawl is smaller than that in the book, which is not ok by me. So, I'll probably have to do a few extra lace rows. The book calls for six, I'll probably do eight, MAYBE nine. I have to measure. I'm probably up to about 58-60" across the top, and the shawl in the book was 74" so I have a bit to go. But, three more lace repeats and then the border ought to get me a lot closer to where I want to be, so that's good. Anyway, I finally managed to get what I think is a good picture of the lace pattern and you can see more than just the lace repeats. I'm learning that the flash takes away a lot of detail from my pictures, so I'm leaving it off most of the time, which saves batteries and gives better pictures, so hip hip hooray all around :-)
I had really hoped to have the shawl done by today, but it's not so oh well. I'll just keep chugging along. I hope to have it done soon, though, because today I ordered my Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted so that I could join in the felting fun of the Fuzzy Feet Felt Along. I won't be able to start on February 4th, but I'll get to at least start in the same week. I also ordered the pattern for "my constant companion" a felted bag that I'll use for my knitting bag and all the yarn I need for that. I had what I think is a very clever idea. I ordered the yarn for the bag in deep charcoal (I wanted onyx, but they were out and I couldn't wait for them to get more in!) and it calls for an accent color. There are two handles, a strip around the top, and a pocket all done in the accent color. Well, I ordered five accent colors and I'm going to do each accent piece in a different color, then needle felt bits of yarn to the bag after it's felted in crazy patterns like spirals, squiggles, curly-q's and stars. Then, I'm going to make my fuzzy feet out of the left over accent colors. I'm feeling in a very Caribbean type mood, so I got limeade, emerald fantasy, aztec turqoise, bright blue, and supreme purple. I'm also going to needle felt tiny dots of white roving on the bag. I am VERY excited about this project. And for my first pair of fuzzy feet (because I'm pretty sure I'll have enough extra accent colors to make two or three pairs) I think I'll make turquoise with limeade cuffs. And after that maybe emerald with supreme purple cuffs. And I'll needle felt little patterns on the fuzzy feet! And I'll... Ok going into project overload... must shut down system before overheats... goodniiiiii... clunk
# posted by Jenni @ 2/01/2003 11:36:00 PM
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