Not just a baby doll

I only remember having one doll as a kid.



She originally belonged to my cousin but my aunt gave her to me after I cried like a brat as we were getting ready to leave. I was probably four years old but I still remember the day I sat crying in the backseat, hugging the doll like it was the end of the world until my aunt said I could have her.

I never really gave it much thought that I had a non-white baby doll.  After all, I was a Hispanic kid in a Caucasian family, color just wasn't something I saw.

It turns out there's a bit of interesting history behind this doll.  She was created in 1972 by Shindana Toys, believed to be the first company to mass-produce ethnically correct African-American dolls.  After some research, it looks like her name is Zuri.

Shindana was a division of Operation Bootstrap, Inc., an offshoot of the civil rights movement founded two months after the Watts riots of 1965.  Based in South Central LA, Shindana's goal was to create black consciousness and positive self image among African-American children and foster love by producing dolls and board games that children of all colors could relate to. They eventually produced Asian, American-Indian, Caucasian and Hispanic dolls before operations were ceased in the early 1980's.

Thanks to Shindana's profitability, other spin-offs such as The Honeycomb Child Development Center were created, where children of the neighborhood were cared for and given an educational head start. Shindana played a significant role in Operation Bootstrap by spreading profits and The Dream throughout the community.

She's more than just a doll, she's more like a bit of civil rights history.

Thrilled.

That feeling you get when the stench of cat poop strikes your sinuses, then you realize your cat was running around the house because a turd was stuck on her and not because she was excited that she took a poop. No, you make a mental note, this is the wrong cat, this cat doesn't get excited about pooping.

And then you realize the poop is sitting right next to you on the carpet. As you clean up, you realize you have to check the rest of the house because you would rather not repeat the experience of a turd surprise when you wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.

Dyeing fiber with real acid dyes

After my recent foray into dying yarn with food coloring, I decided to take a yarn dyeing class with acid dyes at the Eugene Textile Center.  I can't believe I've never been to this place!  They have a large dyeing kitchen and tons of spinning wheels and looms.  I don't spin or weave but if I did, this is where I'd go.

By the way, if you're thinking, eek, acid dyes!  Acids!  Don't worry, it's not acid you see in the movies that eats through your glove, then your fingers and now you're stuck in a contaminated room that bursts into a billion degree fire just to clean up the contaminates that could kill all of earthkind. Nope, it's vinegar.  Sure, there's some chemicals involved and you should still use gloves, but it's not the mad scientist kind of thing.  Or is it? Hm.

I didn't take many photos or any notes because I was too excited and thrilled to be in an artsy atmosphere.  It made me feel like my old self again.  I'm thinking maybe I should start tapping into that.  Anyway, Janis gave us several fibers; some silk, yarn, roving, some sort of animal somethingorother, we picked a color, put it in a kettle and then on the burner for a while. That's the short version.



This is how mine turned out. The point of this experiment was to show us how each type of fiber takes up dye differently.  For example, the silk (as seen in the middle with a kind of seafoam coloration) didn't get to soak up as much dye as everything else.

The yarn turned out darker because it was a natural brown to begin with and the silk has a tinge of green because it was cream colored.  I'm sure the fact that the starting color affects the end color is a no-brainer but it's still interesting to see the end results for ourselves.



Everyone at my table chose some sort of blue.  We didn't realize that until we spread them all out.



Our roving and yarn spread out to dry. After a few minutes on the spin cycle in the washing machine, it only took about 5 minutes for it to dry in the sun.

Next we got two different types of roving and some sort of yarn. I'm pretty vague about these because I know nothing about roving and because this yarn didn't come with a label on it, I'm totally out of my element. I just now it came from a sheep.



Those are my three in the front on the right. My roving turned out darker than I expected, probably because I was a bit heavy on the dye. Interesting note, all our fibers were heat set in the same pot together and yet nothing was contaminated by another dye!



Anyway, this is how it turned out.  It was fun and I'm glad I took the class.  I don't want to spill the details on how we dyed everything because I'd like to encourage you to take the class. The Eugene Textile Center is a great place and deserves your business.

As always, the arts are the first to go when there are financial troubles and we all know how the economy is going.  If you're not in the Eugene area, check out your community and see what type of opportunities you  might have to support a local artisan.  If you're not into dyeing, I'm sure there's something out there you would enjoy.

And now I must go as there is a bit of a cat poop situation brewing.

Figs

This last spring we went to the Saturday Market where I bought fresh figs.  For some reason, it never occurred to me we could get them fresh here.  To be honest, I didn't even know what a fig looked like.  I've only seen them in cookie format.

Intrigued, I did a little research. We all know figs are high in fiber, but did you know they can help control or lower blood pressure and cholesterol? They can also lower insulin for insulin injection dependent diabetics.  They're high in calcium, iron, vitamin C and antioxidants...this was enough to make me go out and buy my own fig tree.

I had several to choose from, so I picked the one that seemed would best fit someone who had no idea what she was doing:  the Lattarula, also known as the Italian Honey. The tree is only about six feet tall and since it's so young, I wasn't expecting it to produce anything.  But a few weeks ago we noticed little tiny figs growing on it.



With temperatures dipping into the 30's, I'm not sure if the seven baby figs on the tree will have a chance to ripen, but I sure hope so. Anyone know if these little guys have a chance?

Unscientific food coloring experiment

About a year ago, I bought a skein of now discontinued KnitPicks Bare Donegal yarn.  Most yarn sits in my stash for a while until I decide It Is Time and I sacrifice the yarn to a project, but I couldn't find the right project for this one.  And frankly, the longer I looked at it the more I didn't like it.  I didn't originally intend to dye this yarn but since I didn't like it naked, I decided to experiment and dye it.  But, what color?

Picking out a color was time consuming (I can't help myself) and I spent a couple weeks obsessing about the color choice.  After all, if I dyed it red, then the yellow and blue flecks would show and that didn't sound pretty.  Choose blue and the red and yellow flecks would be prominent.  Yellow and...well you know.  But then I thought, wait.  Green.  Green with red, yellow and blue...looks like a Christmas tree!  So there it was.  Phew, color obsessing out of the way.

Since I never dyed yarn, I did some research online about my dye options. Acid dyes are toxic and you have to wear gloves, a mask and can never cook with that pot again.  Food coloring is safe, it is something you eat. I am accident prone and lazy, I decided to go with food coloring.



I saw a picture online of someone's yarn soaking in a jar, so grabbed my yarn and stuffed it in a jar.  I didn't realize how big the skein really was!  It looked ridiculous but I decided it would still work, so I added some water, a shot of Dawn dish detergent and a glug of vinegar (to make the dye "stick") and let it soak overnight.  Then let it soak two more nights because remember I told you, I am lazy.



I finally got my act together and pulled the yarn out of the yarn and into a strainer to drain excess water.  It seemed a little slimy but I wasn't sure if that was just my imagination.  I decided that since I didn't see anything growing, it was fine. (I later learned that a little mold never hurt anyone's dye job, I forgot to ask about slime though.)



I started some water simmering in a pot, dumped in another glug of vinegar because that seemed like a good idea and dripped in some green food coloring. I also added a few drops of red to neutralize the green a bit and then some black because the green looked frighteningly Shrekish.  I didn't know if that was the right decision, but when I dipped a bit of paper towel in the water, it looked good to me.



It only took a couple minutes of simmering before the yarn had soaked up all the dye and the water ran clear.  I was shocked!  Unfortunately the yarn was still pretty light and I noticed a problem.  There were a lot of areas that were still white.  The next five minutes were spent with me alternating between adding more green and yellow and being shocked every time I realized the water was clear; consequently I ran out of green food color.  So I pulled the yarn aside with my whisk (hey, it was handy) and dripped in some blue and yellow.  (You can see this whole process was very unscientific.)  The yarn started to develop a lot of different tints of green, it was even better than I had hoped for!

I heard you can felt the yarn if you're not careful, so I gently moved the yarn around to check for light spots (most of them were around the ties that held the yarn in the hank, they were a bit tight) and dripped yellow right in those areas. Eventually everything had some color on it and it looked perfect.



I let it simmer a bit longer, turned off the heat and let it cool.  Then I carefully submerged it in a bowl and rinsed it out several times.  Once cool, I rolled it in a towel to squeeze out the water and then draped it over another towel to dry. I was a bit concerned it might be a mess of tangles (see above) but it only took me a few minutes to sort out a few obnoxious strands and it looked all organized once again.

I gave it a few days to make sure it was really dry before I twisted it up into a hank.  There's so many different color layers, I just love it!  And the areas where I dripped yellow showed as yellow/green, adding to the variety of green tints.



Finally, this yarn has the perfect project waiting for it - Christmas tree socks for Mom!

I love tomatoes

Tomatoes are one of my favorite snacks and ingredient for winter recipes so every year I try to grow and can as many as possible.  I'm not an advanced gardener and though some people may think I have a green thumb, I figure it's as easy as fertilized dirt and plenty of water every day.  With that in mind, I always grow a cherry tomato plant for me, Apollo usually picks out a Big Beef tomato plant (which always fails miserably but he hasn't given up yet) for himself and any other type that catches my fancy for canning.

As an experiment, this summer I decided to grow a heap of Roma's just for canning.  When I say heap, I mean ten plants.  I had grand ambitions!  I had no idea they were such late producers and unfortunately, our summer was short and long in getting here.  So that means few ripe tomatoes with tons of green tomatoes on the bush and our summer days are drawing to an end.



We didn't even get to pick any of them until last week but when we  did, we got a nice basket full. Oh, and I kind of let the weeds take over this year.  One of my good friends is all about organic gardening and I kind of went with it.  In my book, organic = awesome! if you would rather do something like knit a sock, read a book or pet a kitty after you do your part by stepping on a few snails first.



Apollo even helped pick tomatoes, even though football was on.  He's a good man!  He's especially helpful since most of them will be going into meatloaf and chili.



Half way through canning my first batch, I realized I was using lime juice, not lemon.  Hopefully that won't be a problem.  (Note to self, if you're reading this in September 2013, do not use the "packed in own juices" method.  The solids separate and I don't like that, right?  I was much more successful with the "packed in water" method last year.)  I didn't get a lot but this is from my first night of canning so hopefully I'll get more before my plants give up.

When I was a kid, I was disgusted by canned tomatoes.  I don't think it helped that my toothless grandpa ate them like candy.  I knew they were slimy and the idea that he was gumming them down somehow turned me off. I still remember him looking at me with bug eyes, gumming his slimy canned tomato while his chin almost touched his nose with each bite.



I realized I'm not going to get a lot of tomatoes this year, so I this weekend I decided to just go for it and use what little we have at the moment to try canning tomato sauce.  There are several recipes in my canning book but after I got all the seeds separated from the flesh, I decided to wing it and throw in some herbs and garlic and call it good.

BTW, winging it is usually what gets people like me in trouble, so we'll see how this works out.  I figured you can't get in too much trouble with herbs and garlic though, right?  It's not like I decided to take a last minute diversion off Highway 101 to Highway 1 a couple hours before sunset so Aimee and I could watch the beautiful sunset, with less than half a tank, not realizing how foggy it would be in unknown territory and that six hours later I would have to drive 20 miles an hour all night due to lack of visibility and pee outside our car doors at 2AM because we were too afraid to go any further and would finally end up sleeping in the car outside a gas station somewhere north of San Francisco.  Nope, just herbs and garlic. Just herbs and garlic.




After cooking down the rather thin sauce, this is what I got.  Four pints!  Ha!  That's so cute, four pints!  Well, I'm sure it will be delicious and it seems to be pretty thick, so I'm happy with it.  If I get more tomatoes, I'll definitely make more.

Next year I'm thinking of making tomato paste but I'm pretty sure I'll need earlier producing tomatoes.  Or 20 Roma plants. We'll see.

Storm Watch 2011

Here we sit on the even of The Great Storm. Everyone is a flutter about the snow and freaking out. The city is on alert, plow schedules are published, schools ready to close at the sign of an inch of snow....we are ready.

Apollo bought a pizza from Costco in the event we're snowed in by a few inches of the regions worst, most horrifying white stuff. We have leftover spaghetti to last us through the weekend. Our tanks are full of gas and cell phones set to text each other at the first sign of school closure.

Apollo is ready to build a snow man, even if that means rolling each piece of the snowman up and down the street until he gets enough to build to his inner child's content.

Yep, you can tell we don't get much snow. Meanwhile, states like Louisiana and Texas are getting heaps of snow. We've felt robbed for quite a while. We want our snow! And if that means overpreparing and letting our working ourselves into a frenzy, we'll do it!

I gave her a knife sharpener for Christmas

*70s happy elevator music plays on my phone*

Me: Hi Mom, how's it going?

Mom: Well I just got done feeding the calf and he tried to buck me blah blah blah blah blah it has been so cold! I'm freezing my hiney off blah blahblah blah blah blah and that dumb red chicken got out again and I swear it is one step away from getting butchered and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah oh how was Aimee's first day of classes?

Me: *watching tv* She's here, she said everything went great.

Mom: So I talked to Rose and blah blah blah we made spaghetti sandwiches for dinner tonight blah blah blah blah blah blah blah my thyroid turned out to be normal! The doctor said I have high cholesterol! !! He wants me to lose weight AND exercise! Blah blah blah blah blah blah I don't know why I'm not losing weight blah blah blah.

Me: uh huh *whispering* hey Apollo, can you pause the movie?

Mom: Did I tell you about the yearling elk that got tangled in the fence? Blah blah blah I went to the dentist today. My molar hurt when you tapped it, you know like blah blah blah blah blah and then they cleaned my teeth and now I don't have any more pain! Did you KNOW you can get plaque between your gums and your teeth? Blah blah blah blah.

Me: You should try out one of those Sonicare toothbrushes like Aimee has. You would be amazed at how well it cleans your teeth. She got me one for Christmas, I don't think my teeth have ever been so clean with so little effort on my part.

Mom: SOME PEOPLE GET PLAQUE ON THEIR TEETH FASTER THAN OTHER PEOPLE!

Me: It's OK Mom! I'm just saying, it's a nice toothbrush! *wondering how many minutes I have left on my cell phone* Maybe your dentist can recommend something to you to help fight plaque?

Mom: Anyway blah blah blah and I told her, I use a butcher knife to get plaque off my teeth. She just looked at me and said, don't scratch your teeth too much!

Me: *stunned*

So you say

I have been sick lately. Actually, this cold is connected to the cold I got back before Halloween. So last week I finally went to the doctor and had a lung x-ray to find out that I only had a chest cold compounded by asthma. I always feel cheesey about going to a doctor for something as simple as a cold.

Yesterday I got a phone call from the doctor's office. "The radiologist found a high density mass in your lung x-ray. It could be a shadow or it could be a tumor." Why do I always get the people with crappy bedside manners? (Like the time my gyn told me I probably had cervical cancer, "the kind that's impossible to treat.")

So I went in right away and had a CT scan with iodine dye (which make you feel like you are peeing your pants) and I was inserted into what appeared to be a large donut.

"Good news," said the doctor. "You have pneumonia."

Nope, no tumor.

K!

I am a Knitter. A Knitter with a capital K. I am obsessed, neurotic and generally wear blinders when it comes to whether or not I have enough yarn or patterns (that’s just crazy talk anyway). I know some people think knitting is a grandmotherly art – those people obviously are obviously unaware of the not so recent advent of knitting popularity! (Look at Ravelry, a web based community for knitters and crocheters – it gained its 1 millionth member on November 13th. And just last month Ravelry beat Facebook and Twitter for .Net’s Community Site of the Year award.)

This year I had given myself the goal of knitting a pair of socks each month for my mom and aunt. Normally this would not be an amazing feat at all, especially for an unemployed person. But then I got a job where I was required to get up at a specific hour and go to bed at another specific hour. You know, Responsibility. And then I got overwhelmed with all my new duties and stressed about the pressures of these new assignments and I did my usual deer in headlights, knitting style. And my knitting slowed to almost nothing. I became a knitter with a small k.

Fast forward 6 months and I only have two more pair of socks to complete my yearly allotment for my aunt and oh, I think, five pair for my mom. Yes I am a little behind.

But then! In a frenzy that can only be described as plain ol’ totally out of control, Faythe style, on November 30th I decided, on a whim, to order enough yarn to make three large Christmas stockings and three pair of Christmas socks. I even paid for three day shipping! Me! A person who only buys yarn online if I can get free shipping! (This of course gets me into trouble because usually there is a minimum spending requirement.) To get the full impact of my situation, here are some of the projects I have lined up or am currently working on:

-one sample baby vest
-one baby sweater that needs a collar and to be seamed
-my Abracadabra socks
-Elaine’s OSU socks that need to be charted before I can continue past the cuff of sock 1
-Aimee’s slippers
-the Hazel Knits KAL socks
-the scarf for Elaine
-a bear that I have half finished and misplaced
-a Christmas baby sweater that I have swatched
-Mom's crazy clown vomit socks (they count towards her Socks of the Month)
-3 Christmas stockings
-minimum 3 pair of Christmas socks

As write this, I have just been informed by Apollo that a large package from Knitpicks has been delivered to our home. Clearly there will be a lot of knitting in my future. Faythe is “awaiting all your insane text messages” of “incoherent texts due to lack of sleep, frogging from lack of sleep and being in a rush, complaints of knitting injuries from knitting tightly and for too long.” I don’t know where she gets all her assumptions, unless it is from years of observation and such. Pooey I say!

So now you know. You know why I haven’t been blogging. Because I am a Knitter! A Knitter with slightly unrealistic expectations!

Curses!

Mom has a large potluck at her house every year, one that involves hundreds of people (usually older folk), motorhomes, port-a-potties and the occasional banjo or fiddle, if we're lucky (and when I say lucky, I mean, awwww yeah!!). This year the potluck was considered a success, until about two weeks later when I got a phone call from my very distressed mother.

Mom: The chest freezer must have gotten unplugged when we were unplugging Bill's RV, the water cooler and whatever else!!!

Me: That's not good. (At this moment, I actually remembered unplugging one of the many extension cords, but I stayed silent. Very silent.)

Mom: * angrily and accusingly * Now I have to throw everything away. INCLUDING MY WEASELS!! AND MY ELK HEAD!

Me: Mom, I didn't know you had more than one weasel. Are you talking about weasels, plural, and not the one in the house freezer? Because when I was at your place last, I saw him there propped up against a bag of broccoli and he was still frozen solid.

Mom: Well yes, remember that one I found on the side of the road and brought home for you to see?

Me: Oh yes. Now I remember, with the blood dripping out of its still warm body?

Mom: Will, that one too. (She chronically misspells the word "well." I can hear the misspelling when she speaks.)

Me: !

Mom: Anyway, now I'm upset! Because I have to throw out the weasels, elk head, my pheasant, the rabbit furs....all of it is gone!! I AM SO UPSET!!! When are you going to come over and help me clean it out?

Me: As much as the idea of helping you throw out rotting animal carcases appeals to me, I'm just not sure if I'll be able to come over this weekend.

Mom: Sigh! MY WEASELS!!


Stay tuned for "Part II: Silence of the Lambs Mysterious Animal Parts"

Snowball Tree 2010

Our Snowball Tree gave us a nice treat this year with what seems like even more flowers than last year.



We'll definitely have to do some major pruning this year, especially since one branch is laying down so low (especially after a good rain) that it's touching the ground. The snowballs remind me of Hydrangeas but the plant is actually related to the Honeysuckle.



I just can't get enough. Sadly, now that it's getting warmer the petals are starting to fall like snowflakes.

Shamed into shaving

Since our men are gone on a job, Nicole and I have been hanging out a lot. Of course, when girls hang out, all sorts of interesting topics come up. It's even more fun when my sister, a nursing student, stops by and tells us stories about poop, slinging scrotum's, giant labia (it's not often you hear the words, "My hands got tired from holding back her giant labia."), misaligned vagina's and other really fun things we can all forward to in our senior years.

After talking about labia, this is all going to be very boring for you. I apologize. So anyway, the subject of shaving came up. It turns out we both are lazy shavers, especially since our guys don't complain about it. I then proudly told her that since there are no expectations that I should shave, I have hairy hippy legs. And then I laughed as if I had gotten away with something. (I am not happy that my spellchecker wants me to change hippy to hippo.) Nicole looked at me and quietly said, "I shave because I want to be sexy."

So this morning, I shaved my legs and pits. Which reminds me, I glanced at the shaving can and for a split second I could swear it said "shaving cream for whores." I was ready to battle it out when I looked closer and saw that it said "shaving cream for women." The can was probably right in the first place.

Potatoes gone wild

Apparently we don't open our pantry much these days.



What you see there in the bottom left corner of the photo is a basket of potatoes we had saved from last years harvest for this years garden. They're totally out of control! I'm hoping they're salvageable.*



These purple potatoes are kind of pretty, don't you think? It's potato art!

We're putting soil in the new bed I'm going to plant the potatoes in right now. (We = the guys. I know when to casually step away!) Last year we planted them in hills we created on top of concrete like soil. With all the extra room and a front row seat to the sprinkler, the potatoes should do a lot better this year than last.

*I just talked to Grandma (she has the final word on everything, as far as I'm concerned) and she said the potatoes should be fine as is.

Some whining and blueberries

I just realized I am only a couple years away from ten years away from 50. This is shocking. SHOCKING. I am just a kid!! When did this happen?? Where was I?

I wish I was one of those people who had a plan. You know, go to college (check), meet a great guy (oops), get a great job (er), buy a Craftsman house with a white picket fence (LOL), 2.5 kids (do cats count?) and so on. It just hasn't happened for me. I have always been one of those "follow the path less traveled" type of people and as a result have ended up with a degree in Art, can speak German but not Spanish (so stupid), and am dealing with a biological clock that is about to tick tock its way into oblivion. I know people say you can't compare one person's life with anothers but...50!

Speaking of getting older (there is a lot of inward cussing going on right now), I have a new plan to eat at least just as many fruit and vegies as I do anything else on my plate. Because I am concerned about my health!! ARGH!

Hopefully our six blueberry plants will help out. I bought them a year ago and then later read it takes several years for them to start producing berries. I was bitter.





Happily, this one plant is attempting to prove that theory incorrect. I'm really looking forward to all the blueberries, even though I have been told I'll get more than I can handle. I doubt it. Maybe blueberries will become the new prune and help us old geezers out.

This year's garlic

A couple days ago Faythe asked me how my garden was doing. This is what my garlic bed full of hard and soft necks looks like so far.



In February I decided to experiment, so I added some red onions to the bed (they're in the back corner, you can see how that area looks thicker) and they're doing great. This is the same bed I used for lettuce last year, so a few lettuce plants have sprouted up too. Looking at the bed now, I think I could plant the garlic a little closer next year.

You can see the other beds in the background. One of them has a leftover broccoli plant that somehow made it through the winter. It's going crazy blooming all over the place, but it doesn't look like it's going to produce anything. I'm curious so I've decided to let it go. I also have a rosemary plant that and a couple raspberry plants that have decided to take root. I think they may give me a little trouble.

Our last frost date is May 21 and then I can finally start going crazy planting things in the garden. Now, to plan what all I'm going to grow...

Finally!

OMG. So I just checked my archives for reference and it appears I first started working on our bedroom in May 2009! And we're just now finishing it! To be fair, we took a 10 month hiatus so it's not like we were working on it this enitre time. Seriously, paint, caulking, wood filler, spackling, more paint to cover paint and metal transfer to the ceiling caused by a certain persons caulking gun and floor finish takes a lot longer than I expected!

We were grateful when a friend helped us put up the molding, but then we were confronted with huge gaps between it and the ceiling and obnoxious gaps between the molding and the existing quarter round framing the closet. And then there were the excessive nails we had to use to put up the molding and the not so straight joins. (The house is so old that nothing is straight, so the molding went up as straight as we could get it.)

To be frank, we were overwhelmed and disgusted with the work we had before us so we gave up. I know, I know. It was sheer laziness, I admit it! But a few weeks ago, my grandma asked if she could come stay with us for a week after her knee surgery and the thought of her sleeping in a room that is filled with paint cans, tools, ladders and boxes of yarn (yes) just didn't sound right. We knew it was time to get back to work.



After almost two weeks of work (you'd be surprised how much time it takes when you're standing on a ladder and working on something above your head with various tools, spackling and caulking), we just finished putting on the third and last coat of oil based Varathane on the floor. It looks glossy because it's wet but it's really satin based.

We set up a small heater to keep the room around 75 degree's and are waiting for the floor to dry. Since it's humid out (from rain and hail), I'm guessing it will be slightly tacky but we'll be able to walk on it in 24 hours. We should be able to move our furniture into the room in about four days, but since we're paranoid, we're going to give it a week. Yay! I'm so excited!

I'll have yet to show you my favorite part of the room. I sculpted two .5 - 1 inch gaps between the molding and the closet. There literally was a gap where the molding ended and the quarter round began. With some spackling, I built up and sculpted what looks like molding. I was pretty annoyed at the ugly gap our friend insisted would be OK (I was surprised because he is just as neurotic as I am). But now I won't have to look at it! I'll get photos of my handy work when I can get back in the room. Finally, my art degree came in handy!

Signs of spring

I love spring. New plants and flowers are popping up everywhere. I even saw a bumble bee flying around some clover. Hummingbirds are starting to buzz past us and bugs are appearing. It's great seeing everything come back to life after winter.

Dory's first booties*

My cousin's baby shower is tomorrow. Though someone told me about it a few weeks ago, I totally forgot until today. I knit up one bootie tonight and hope to have another, plus a hat and maybe a sweater to match before the baby is born by the end of the month.

Also, my cousin has decided to name the baby Udora. That's my grandma's name. I'll be calling her Dory.



*Updated to include new photo of both booties

RIP Old Girl

Mom's alpaca died last week. We don't know why, our assumption is old age. Because the weather was so bad, Mom couldn't investigate much and she was buried there in the field.



I never did get to pet her. She was never very trusting and always had that, "step any closer and I will spit on you" expression. Even Apollo was afraid of her. She was a quirky little animal and she will be missed.