Dear Universe, Could you lay the heck off me for a couple of weeks? I'm not sure how much more frustration and stress I can take. xoxo Bon

Then I gathered myself together, took some time, scooped the cats' litter boxes and went to bed. When I woke up this morning and checked in on my stream, I had received the following @reply from the user: The_UN1VERSE:

I'll See What I Can Do. But You're Doing Fine So Far.

This may sound dumb, but it was really actually helpful. Just that little piece of random encouragement set me up for a great and productive day. I have no idea if it's a real person or a bot behind the account. If it's a real person, they dealt me a huge measure of kindness with this one silly post, and for that I thank them. I'll try to pay that kindness forward.

Knit for an online friend whose family is going through some major upheaval and shake-up, I enlisted the help of Lisa and a double fistful of other knitters and crocheters to help me create enough blocks for a big Blanket of Love.

The squares came from as far away from Japan, all carefully stitched with love and good wishes for speedy resolution of the family's sadness and stresses. Lisa and I seamed all of the squares together, zip-zip-zip, edged the whole thing with a black crocheted edging and sent it to it's new home in the Midwest where we hear it created quite a stir of joy.

We live in an amazing time, where people who are scattered all over can create such strong, amazing bonds and make a real difference in each others lives. I am proud of being able to corral a little bit of this to support someone who needed a little bit of reaffirmation that there is good in the world. I am proud of every person who set aside their own worries, cares, wants and projects to take the time to help with this (one woman squeezed a square in the week before her wedding!) It's a great thing sometimes, this crazy internet.

Perhaps my Christmas knitting would go faster if I had some Doozers to help me out. Man I love Fraggle Rock.

Embedding courtesy of Dintillion

I miss my family most at birthdays and holidays. This year I am missing my family something fierce and today I started thinking about this commercial for a local bank. It ran for a long, long time although comments on another version of this video say it has been axed now (is this true Mom? Dad?) Apparently it took the guy hours to get these 30 seconds of the cats playing. Thank to youtube, I can still watch it, even all the way across the country. Thank you youtube!

For anyone who wants to play along: Go to the sixth page of your Flickr photostream and post the sixth picture on that page.

Mine happened to be this Stellar Jay. One of the things that threw me a little when I moved here was that the blue jays did not look the same. Growing up, I saw jays that were a mixture of blue and white. They're so beautiful in the winter against the snow. Here though, we get these angry-sounding black and blue Stellar Jays. I took this photo at a rest stop in northern California, on our way back to Oregon. Just before the jay landed for a little visit, I'd been taking photos of this guy:

A super cute little chipmunk sitting amongst some seeds someone had put out for him.

New ornaments for our sparkle tree.

And we're done with NaBloPoMo, folks. Not sure what kind of posting schedule I'm going to go to now that November is over but I think that it will probably be more frequently than it was before. I've been enjoying it again, which was what I hoped would happen.

Teeny Tomte, knit from an Alan Dart pattern now lives with one miss Ren of Ren Knits. Knit on size 3 double pointed needles, he was knit from a combination of Berroco Pure Merino DK, Jo Sharp Silk Road Tweed and Sirdar Foxy (which I had to order from eBay UK because it has been discontinued).

These are a cute and easy knit project, although they are a little fiddly. I did as much as I could in the round to avoid having to sew as many seams which worked out really well for me. The Silk Road is a pretty soft yarn, not the best for seaming, so it helped on that front too. I kind of want to knit an entire army of these gnomes, they are so cute with their curly hats and bushy beards.

His tiny friend is a salt shaker, part of a set of tiny shakers given to us as a wedding gift. They were purchased at the MoMA Store in NYC, but I don't see them on the website anymore.

I took some tips from Smitten Kitchen this year, but with the notable exception of using my food processor.

I pulsed 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt in my food processor. Then I cut 2 sticks of butter into big cubes, then tossed those in the processor and pulsed twice. I dumped in a half cup of ice water [no cubes] and pulsed three times more. I do live in a very humid climate, so someone in a more dry climate might need more water. Everything should be pretty well mixed at this point, but there should still be large chunks of butter visible. I split the dough in half, tossed it in ziploc bags and put it in the fridge for 12 hours.

When it came time to make the pie, I mixed 3.5 pounds of peeled, cored and sliced apples with some sugar, some cinnamon, some lemon juice and a quarter cup of flour. I set the oven to preheat to 500 degrees and then assembled the pie. I handled the crusts one at a time and put the pieces back in the fridge when I wasn't using them. (I rolled the bottom crust and put it in the pie plate, then put it in the fridge while I rolled and cut the top crust. Then I put the top crust in the freezer while I filled the pie plate with the filling). Once I had sealed the pie up, I brushed some milk on top and sprinkled on some large crystal sugar.

I made sure I lined my oven rack with tin foil, in case of bubbling over and turned the oven down to 450 degrees and slid the pie in [I aim for the top of the pie to be around the middle of the oven, vertically]. Bake for twenty minutes until nice and golden, then turn the oven down to 375 degrees and baked it for another 30 minutes. [If I was using a metal or glass plate I might have baked it another 5-10 minutes on top of that, but this heavy ceramic plate continues to cook for awhile after it was taken out.] Remove from oven and cool, then enjoy! I think the heat stages in the cooking really helped the butter chunks to melt quickly and make flaky, crispy layers without burning the edges to a crisp.

I am thankful for what I think is going to be delicious pie. Thankful for good friends, old and new and for family, who I wish was a little bit closer than they are. Thankful for the best husband I ever could have imagined. Thankful for generally good health. Thankful for having a snug roof over our heads and enough food to eat. Thankful that we have paid off 100% of our credit card debt. Thankful for a reliable car and the current cheap gas prices. Thankful for our cat who keeps me company. Thankful for everything I've learned throughout this year and thankful for the ways in which I've grown. Thankful for my ability to make warm clothing for myself and my loved ones.

I hope all those of you who celebrate have a lovely holiday. And for those of you who don't, I hope you have a wonderful Thursday.

This week's WIP Wednesday is actually a Finished Object Wednesday, a follow up to last week's WIP Wednesday post. My supplies for this overhaul included:

1 can gloss black spray paint
1 can gloss dark grey spray paint
epoxy
silver star shaped brads
1 g.i. joe doll with kung-fu grip
2 round toothpicks
craft felt
tacky glue

I also needed pliers, scissors, a crappy paintbrush and toothpicks for epoxy mixing and spreading. Nothing tricky here. As I talked about last week, I dismantled an old, falling apart trophy and painted all of the pieces either gloss black or gloss grey with spray paint. Then I reassembled. My husband spent some time digging the screw out from the bottom of the old figurine and then I used pliers to tighten all of the tension roads back together. I epoxied the GI Joe's stand on top, then the GI Joe to the stand, and a star over the Cobra logo on his chest. Then I made the flags, using craft felt and tacky glue. I sprayed some black paint into a paper plate and brushed it on the flags to distress them, as well as using it to touch up the scuffs I had made reassembling the pieces. All told, it cost about $25, the bulk of which were the spray paint and the trophy. A side-by-side comparison, I think it looks way way better now.

Sadly UO was beaten in tournaments at the Civil War LAN so this guy will be living at OSU until UO gets a chance at a rematch.