March 24 - the Pirates of Radiator Springs
March 25 - Mayhem loves to vacuum
March 26 - Car racing outside
March 27 - the Island of Sodor today
March 28 - my laptop is under attack!
March 29 - The trains get in a little light reading
March 30 - Bubble fun
I've been busy at The Library Thing this past week. I've been adding books to my library & checking out groups. I have about 400 of my 2000+ books added so far. I no longer own that many books, but that is how many are in my booklist, which covers the books I owned in 1990 and that I have read or owned from then until 2003. Then there are the books I have owned or read since 2003, when the demands of small children made it difficult to buy books and impossible to keep track of them. My husband bought me a CueCat bar code scanner for the books I own. I've been scanning them in like crazy & have completed the shelves in our bedroom & the living room. I still have the ones in the office, which are the bulk of the books and the ones in the bathrooms to scan. Then I have to go through the booklist & see what is missing and add them, plus try & figure out what I have borrowed from the library in the past couple years.
I love the CueCat. It's my new favorite toy. I did a layout about it for a challenge at Sweet Shoppe a couple weeks ago.
If you look over on that sidebar -----} you'll see some random books from my library. If you are on the Library Thing too, I go by the same ID I use in the crochet & digi scrapping forums. Please add me to your friends.
March 17 - Construction in the gravel pit
March 18 - Percy busy shunting trucks
March 19 - The trains have taken to piracy
March 20 - Building a big big tower
March 21 - Gathering black walnuts from the yard
March 22 - Clearing small trees
March 23 - Pruning branches
In the scrapping sense, someday I will own a hybrid vehicle. There are 2 main reasons why I won't be making any hybrid projects anytime in the near future.
1. You have to cut things out. My issues with scissors go back to preschool. If it is a straight line, even with the help of a cutting tool & guide, there is only a 75% chance I will get it right. I'm better with fabric than I am with paper, it seems to slip less. If it is not a straight line there is a 75% chance that I will screw it up. If there is some sort of die cutting machine involved the odds go to 50%. That is why I am a digi scrapper. I can undo my mistakes without a waste of paper, ink & money
2. No one in my family would have any idea what to do with my little gift projects. We aren't 'photo gift' people. The gift would be honestly appreciated at the time & looked at then. But then it would be set on a shelf or in a drawer & become the worst type of dust collector. The worst type because it is a hand made item, made by a family member, giving a personalized gift to you. You can't just toss it when you realize 10 months down the road that you have never looked at the thing again & would like to declutter a bit. By & large they are not useful items, they are decorative & decorative just doesn't work well with my family.
I love the key plate & scallop albums Sweet Shoppe is selling. They havea birthday calendar premade set to go with the key plate & I can sort of see a use for it. But even if I had some reason for making them (all my just for the heck of it creativity is directed toward amigurumi at the moment) I would never be able to cut out the paper to fit on the album. The shape would defeat me & I'd waste a lot of paper trying to get it right. I have to reprint, at least once, the rectangular bookmarks that I make for my dad every Xmas. They are selling a Maya Road Calendar, that stands up. That is a possible. It's a rectangle and it's useful. But so far they have no albums to go with it, though I am sure some will be coming. It's a 5x7 so possibly some of the brag book sets would work with it.
The third, less influential reason I don't hybrid is I'd have to go buy stuff - things called Modge Podge & Kryron that are some sort of adhesives and a craft knife & probably some other stuff and knowing me I'd buy the wrong stuff. It just seems a bit complicated...
I've been making these the last few days
The white one looks like an egg, but the others...I'm not so sure. I think without context, like a bowl or basket, people will probably wonder what the hell they are.
I have 6 of them completed, but the boys like to kick them around & 2 have gone missing. I found the pattern in my "The World of Amigurumi" book. It also has half eggs, with chicks, but the boys preferred just decorated whole eggs. I'm hoping to have a dozen to put in the basket by Sunday. Then I am going to work on mushrooms
Ok, technically the equinox isn't until tomorrow but I thought it might be nice to be ahead of the game for the first time in weeks. Now i just need to go around & change my avatars & I will be done.
I did up my myspace page to match. Embarrassing story there. I haven't been there since maybe November & several people contacted me around Xmas and I am just now getting their messages. One of them is my cousin, who I have not seen since our Nan died. I am so embarrassed that months have gone by without me replying. When I rearranged my bookmarks & my links I lost the myspace link & got involved in other things & didn't even think about it until last night at bunco when a couple people were talking about their pages. I was like "Oh, yeah! I have a page there!" but then couldn't tell anyone what my user name was because I didn't remember. I think I am too old for myspace. I never know what to do on there. But I am exploring it again & have it tabbed so I check it regularly.
In other news, the boys finally dropped a Wiimote often enough to break it. It is still fine for pointing & clicking, but not for anything that requires swinging your arm around - bowling, baseball, tennis, etc... I have a repair ticket with Nintendo & they are sending me a mailing label to send it to them. DH complained when I asked him to register the Wii "Why do we need to do that?" "Because we will lose the receipt." and sure enough.....
I am making one of my Irish grandfather's favorite meals.
Muller's spaghetti with Ragu sauce.
Yeah, my family has never been much into 'cultural identity'. Pap, born in 1912, was the child of Irish immigrants & his job was to assimilate, which he did & never looked back. He married the granddaughter of German immigrants & together they went through the Depression & alone she went through WWII rationing & together they went into the canned & frozen food nirvana of the 50's. Nan's opinion was that she'd made enough food from scratch in her life, meals in boxes were a wonder to be enjoyed!
Oh cabbage appeared (though not corned beef) and shephard's pie, with mutton & turnips, and of course lots and lots of potatoes, but Pap's favorite meals were packaged versions of Italian food & if I am supposed to be honoring my Irishness, well.... Ragu & spaghetti it is!
I admit I am delighted to have the excuse to avoid that disgusting bane of my existence - cabbage. I cannot stand cabbage in any form. The smell of cabbage cooking send me fleeing from the building, hopefully before I start gagging. I have a strong, immediate, reflexive reaction to the smell of cooked cabbage.. When I was pregnant I have to leave work for the day whenever the cafeteria was serving it. One quarter German, one quarter Irish and I despise cabbage. Don't like onions either. I do love Italian food though. I blame my ancestors personally.
March 10 - Some kids only have a sandbox. Ours have a 14'x14' gravel pit
March 11 - Diggers at work
March 12 - Off roading with your 4x4
March 13 - This backhoe has a lot of work ahead of it
March 14 - Train parade
March 15 - The Island of Sodor today (you didn't think we'd manage a whole week without it did you?)
March 16 - We colored eggs for Ostara. These are the ones that didn't crack too much.
I crocheted a market bag, from a Lion Brand pattern (must be logged into Lion Brand to see pattern). Somewhere along the line I screwed up. Somewhere between round 9 & 14 I duplicated a round & then early on in round 15-28 I added a couple more stitches. This ended up a full 18 stitches per round wider at the widest part. Which explains why I had insufficient yarn to finish it. I didn't discover I was off by 18 stitches until I was on round 29 & decreasing and I wasn't going to unravel back 20 rows to figure it out. Not when there were only 4 rounds left.
So this is my market bag. Not the most attractive thing I have ever done. I also changed the straps. I need 2 short straps for groceries, over the shoulder doesn't work for me.
On the plus side this thing can hold 4 gallons of milk at once!
I'm making it again. This time in ecru & I'm checking the stitch count more often.
March 3 - "Big Paints!"
March 4 - sickness keeps everyone home and getting lots of rest while watching movies
March 5 - even the loader isn't feeling up to working
March 6 - a day spend reading books - over and over again
March 7 - Sodor is back in business
March 8 - reading a new Thomas book
March 9 - gale force winds cause trouble on Sodor
I made this guy this week
He is from a Lion Brand pattern & all told took me about 3 hours to make. Those 3 hours were spread out over 4 days because the kids have been sick & I haven't had much time to just sit & crochet.
In scrapping news I did manage to get a layout done. It was for the Sweet Shoppe inspiration challenge; the theme being to redo an old layout.
This is one of my earliest layouts, donei n my first month of digi scrapping. Everything was my own creation
This is the redone layout. Credit can be found in my DST gallery, link in the sidebar.
Feb 25 - Henry delivers yogurt raisins for snacktime
Feb 26 - The trains are having an off track adventure
Feb 27 - Monster truck racing track
Feb 28 - Havoc playing the punching game
Feb 29 - The Island of Sodor today
Mar 1 - Soft block tower building
Mar 2 - New homes on Sodor
We've been passing a cold around the house for 4-5 weeks now so this little set of questions is timely
1. How often do you get sick with a cold? The flu? Something else?
In general I get 3-4 colds a year, rarely the flu. I usually end up with some sort of stomach bug a couple times a year as well
2. Are you the sort of person who goes to work or school no matter how sick you are or are you willing to stay at home when it gets bad?
There is a point where I will stay home. Just a cough or sneezing I'll go to work. But fever, aches & chills will keep me home. So will most stomach bugs but only because I have to remain near the bathroom
3. How do you like to treat a cold? What remedies do you like and why? Do you go to the doctor willingly?
Rest, fluids and the occasional dose of Tylenol cold or Robitussin. At a certain point of non-recovery I will willing go to the doctor. I had chronic bronchitis & recurring sinus infections for 9 months in 2004. I am now very familiar with when I need professional care
4. What do you do to keep from getting sick in the winter?
Eat healthy, exercise, use hand sanitizer, drink a lot of water
5. What is your favorite thing to do when you stay home from work or school?
Lay in bed & read
