Posting Some Pictures

Here's my sister Janice, her husband Vern, and baby Cameron. Look how big he is at only three days old! When I talked to his mom, my niece Celia, she said he's already wearing 1 - 3 month's clothing. None of this newborn stuff for him! So I'm making things for 6 month sizes and getting it to him QUICK! The picture is a little fuzzy because it was taken on a phone camera. I'm just happpy to have it!

Did I ever share this little project? I wanted to make Carolyn's granddaughter something special when her baby brother Daxton arrived. This is what I came up with. It took me weeks to get it right but hopefully she's enjoying it. I give you the

PRINCESS SAVVY CROWN

This was really fun to create. I knitted two sets of "points" and sandwiched plastic canvas between them to hold the shape. The ornaments took me the longest to put together. I had to find just the right sizes and colors fit for a princess. I did take notes, in case I ever wanted to make another one. I just hope I can figure them out!

I had everything on but the bottom stars and I thought it was finished. But when I showed it to Jim, he thought it needed more "sparkle" so I added the last row of stars and he was right. It looked far more regal with them. Eventually I expect to see a picture of the little princess wearing it (hint, hint to some mimi if she's reading this).

Well, I was going to put up one last picture of the YI doing her job but blogger has decided I've put up enough pics so I'll save it for another time.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Games

I've been reading a book called "How to Become More Creative; 101 Rewarding Ways to Develop Your Potential Talent" by Alex F. Osborn, L.H.D. (whatever that stands for). It was written in 1952! Consequently, women get about two paragraphs going on about how running a house is really creative. Otherwise the book really focuses on those captains of industry, i.,e. men.

Even so, it's been an interesting read. He mentions - and remember this is in 1952 - only 52% of adults ever open a book afer they leave school, based on a survey by Columbia University.

Each chapter is a different type of creative endeavor. He covers sports, reading, exercise, children, writing, arts, hobbies, etc. But the one I found the most fun (and have been driving Jim crazy with) was the word game, Inky Pinky. Ever heard of it? I hadn't. Jim said growing up in Cleveland, OH, a DJ used to play the same game but called it Onesy, Twosey. Here's how it's played:

You think up the rhymed equivalent of a simple statement. Like "a five cent cucumber" would be "a nickel pickle" or an "obese anthropoid" would be "a chunky monkey." If you are a word person, this game quickly becomes almost obsessive. The rhyming words can be one syllable words or four syllables long. Here are a few more. See if you can figure them out. You can check the answers at the end of my post.

1. A motorcycle made of pennies
2. A fish doctor
3. Eat glue
4. Solidified fat
5. A profitable bedding plant

This game reminded me of another word game we used to play on car trips. It's called "Endless Chain." Each person has to come up with a noun (no proper nouns) that starts with the last letter of the last word, i.e. elephant, town, nut, tutu, umbrella, etc. The fun of this game is to try to think of a word with a really hard last letter. So far I haven't gotten Jim into this but we haven't gone on any long car trips either.

And the only other word game I remember from my youth was "I'm going on a picnic" where every person had to remember all the picnic items and add one of their own until the list was so long NO ONE could remember all the items. I really hated this game - I couldn't remember more than ten items (and I bet I couldn't remember that many now!).

So what word games do you or did you play? What games did you or do you play with your kids on long trips? And what Inky Pinky's have you thought up since you started reading about them?

The answers to the above Inky Pinky's
1. A copper chopper
2. A sturgeon surgeon
3. Paste taste
4. Hard lard
5. satisfactory matress factory

Have fun and post what you come up with!

Time to Post Again

Yes, it's been almost a month since I've posted anything. All I can say is August has turned into a very hard month but it appears to be getting better. September will certainly not be as bad.

That said, let's get on to more interesting things, like KNITTING! I've been working on several things. Finished a preemie layette; hat, booties, and blanket; (which went to guild on Sunday, though I wasn't able to go)

I also finished the first of several sleep sacks. This one is going to Tennessee with me at Thanksgiving. The picture doesn't do the colors justice. These are bright rainbow colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I have changed this pattern a little. I put a placket collar on because baby heads are so big and I use a crochet tie instead of a ribbon at the bottom.

Two more DW dishCLOTHs. I am to the DW as sockknitters are to socks. I always carry one with me and can almost finish one in the time I was waiting for a dr to show up. But blogger won't let me upload the picture :-(

And BEADING: I made myself a purple glass bead bracelet. This is a close up of the focal bead and the little charms I added.

BABIES - The first of the three due between August and October has arrived. Cameron weighted in at 9 lbs, 3 oz and was 22" long. He arrived on Thursday August 24th. This is my neice Celia's baby. Well blogger has decided I've uploaded enough pictures and won't let put up Cameron. Take my word for it - he's a cutie! But I'm going to have to upsize what I was planning to make him.

MORE KNITTING. I had the pleasure of getting to spend quality knitting time with both Polly G. and Tracy T. this week. It is such fun to visit and knit! Tracy and I even went to a couple of yard sales (okay, they were two houses away from my house, not like I had to walk very far).

AND KC was on Saturday. Nice turnout, about 18 people showed up plus a brand new knitter. I got to see a "Charm Quilt" that Laura had hand pieced together (something like 400 little hexigons). I had never heard of charm quilts before, so for those of you who are as ignorant as I am about quilts, a charm quilt means there are no two fabrics alike! Those 400 or so little pieces were ALL different! It was just gorgeous and what a lot of work! I hope whoever the receipent of that quilt is, they really appreciate it!

SUGAR. She has a new little quirk. She now sleeps between my legs on her back with all four paws in the air. I swear she looks like a dead beetle, except every so often she kind of waves one of her front paws...and she SNORES!

Do You Like Popcorn?

YESTERDAY'S KNIT IN
The Gourmet Yarn Knit In was it's normal, spectacular, rowdy event. Large turnout and I saw several people taking pictures so check the other blogs for those. This is such a high energy, electric group. I love going even though it wears me out and I can only handle about two hours (well, I can only handle about two hours of anything with more two people involved). And it was so nice to see friends I hadn't seen since the Harlot's visit.

TATTOOS
Both Theresa and Rachel asked me about my next tattoo (skip to the next paragraph if you are anti-tattoo. I have a nice sized one on my left leg above my ankle and plan on getting at least one more.)

I found a picture of a three dimensional monarch butterfly tatooed on a woman's foot. It is very realistic and gorgeous. I plan to have a set of three butterflies tattooed on my thigh, just above my knee, like they just landed there. They will be mostly Oklahoman butterflies in as close to their true colors and sizes as possible.

I'm planning on a yellow and black swallowtail, a blue and black Melissa Blue or Reakirt's Blue, and a small violet copper (we have coppers but I don't think any of there are violet - but violet ones do exist in other parts of the world). So that's my plan. I should have done this four or five years ago. Now I'll have to wait at least two years but in the meantime I'm working on my design.

POPCORN
Finally! Are you a popcorn lover? Do you use your microwave as your primary or only popcorn maker? Want to find a better way to make popcorn for pennies compared to buying those packets? Do I sound like I'm trying to sell you something?

Here is my popcorn journey. Back in 1995, during one of my parent's visits, my Dad came into the kitchen carrying a little flat lunch bag and said "Where's your popcorn maker?" I pulled the hot air pop corn popper out of the cupboard and he said "No, no, I mean your popcorn maker." He was looking for a microwave oven. We didn't have one. Silly me, I thought we had no need for one.

Well, to make a long story only slightly shorter, they ended up buying us a nice microwave and Dad taught me how to make popcorn. The hot air popper went into a yard sale and we have made popcorn in the microwave ever since. But now I can't eat commercial popcorn. Whatever is put on it, it just doesn't taste good. So I haven't had popcorn in over a year.

But I just became hooked on Alton Brown and the Good Eats program (I don't really cook and have never been interested but I've been sucked in big time. I'm thinking about buying a cast iron skillet, for Pete's Sake!). In the process of all finding "All Things Alton", I ran across his book "I'm Just Here For the Food" (checked it out of the library) and came across an astonishing (to me, anyway) way to make popcorn. Some of you may already be doing this but if you're not, you need to try it.

Homemade Microwave Popcorn
Pour 1/4 - 1/3 cup of regular cheap Jolly Time popcorn into a regular 50-bags-for-a-buck lunch sack. Fold the sack edges over twice with about a half inch fold both times. And get this - STAPLE each corner!!! It turns out the staples are shorter than the microwave waves and are not even detected if they are in each corner! So use only TWO staples at least three inches apart.

(And since I am really lazy and didn't want to walk clear across the house to get the office stapler, I bought a KITCHEN stapler at Dollar Tree. Who would have thought THAT would be a neccesary piece of kitchen equipment!)

Put the bag in the microwave and cook on high for 2 - 3 minutes or until the pops are about 5 seconds apart. Take out the bag, open it (watch out for the steam) and pour your own amount of butter on. Alton, my food hero, also suggests putting a tablespoon of brown sugar in the bag once in a while. As soon as I can eat sugar, you know I'm going to try this.

We did go though two or three bags before getting it right, but at this price you don't even flinch when the whole bag goes in the garbage (we did take a batch outside for the birds but they were singularly unimpressed).

I can not believe how well this works and how cheap it is. I figure we are paying less than five cents a bag for popcorn and I CAN EAT IT! This is about the coolest thing I've run across in ages. Anyway, give it a try. It took us a couple of times to get the cooking time right for our microwave and to get the amount of popcorn right for the lunch bag. Cheap GOOD EATS!

My Sister's Visit

This is my sister Janice. I haven't seen her in over ten years! The last time she came to Oklahoma, she got a tattoo. I got one shortly after she left. I would have got mine at the same time but didn't have my sketch completed. We went to Derby, Kansas for our tattoos so I'm really glad it's finally legal in OK. I plan to get another one to celebrate getting through all this big C stuff.

As you can see, she has made a couple of dishclothes (boy, I had to keep reminding her "When you knit them they are NOT dish RAGS!!!) And can you believe it's 5:30 am! I tell you, I didn't look this good!

She hasn't knitted in years but wanted to try it again. So I started her out on an easy dishcloth - which she finished in record time. Next she tried a DW dishcloth. She wasn't as taken with it as some of us are.

And I finally found someone to take the enterlac bag off my hands. She actually like the colors and was thrilled to take it home. The other thing she really wanted was a felted purse. So we made a run to GY and she picked up some Cascade 220 so I could knit and felt her a clutch type purse. I'll be adapting the Lopi bag and the purse from the front of the enterlack bag book, kind of morphing them into a single purse. She picked some nice colors, a light sage green and a darker green for the contrasting stripe. It should look very nice.

But after the second dishCLOTH, she decided she really wanted to knit a scarf. I had shown her my Emily scarf and she just loved it. So back to GY, where she told me she was allergic to wool. So what is as soft as wool but not wool? ALPACA!

She found some gorgeous, tweedy looking alpaca and decided that was what she wanted. We found her some size 13 needles and started trying stitch swatches. She was still working out the stitch when she called to let me know she made it home okay. There is nothing like having another family member who knits!

And the steroid reduction plan kind of hit a snag. Last Thursday my dr dropped me down to 1/2 a prednesone tablet (10 mg) and I was fine for about one day. Then on Saturday I started having some really unusual symptoms - all I wanted to do was sleep, I wasn't one bit hungry (I liked this one), and my knees were really giving me fits when I did get up. Jim did some checking on the internet and it appeared I was having some pretty strong indicators of adreanal instability. So I took another 1/2 of a prednesone and within half an hour felt fine.

I see my dr tomorrow and will see what he says. It's extremely frustrating sometimes. But I have hair long enough to actually feel. GI's still have hair longer than mine but at least you can kind of see it. I seem to have a bald spot right up front and since I'm not looking forward to wearing a toupe the rest of my life, that spot better fill in!