Looking Back, Looking Ahead
1. A, 2. The Sun, 3. Wall O' Fists, 4. Chapstick, 5. Ballroom, 6. Hairs Cut, 7. A is for Ace, 8. Tristan + Cake, 9. Sonata and Stool, 10. Laser Tag in the EMU :: Tristan, 11. Resting, 12. Dancing Guy, 13. Cat in Harness, 14. Cake, 15. Dancing in the Dark, 16. Lincoln, 17. Judith MacKenzie McCuin, 18. 18 pounds, 19. Farmer John, 20. Sea Otter, 21. First Kiss, 22. Geyser, 23. Little Car in a Big Tree, 24. Bride, 25. Scott and Elizabeth, 26. Crab Cat, 27. Caramel Apple Cheesecake, 28. Vanilla Extract, 29. Kitty Toes, 30. Plan
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
January: Celebrated Anthony's birthday (belatedly) with an eggroll party at their home. Saw snow on the sun, at least the scale model here in town.
February: emuLAN3.0 for which I got to do the branding and collateral design. Chopped my hair off.
March: Went to Portland to see Cirque du Soleil, stayed at the Ace Hotel. Celebrated Tristan's 21st birthday. Left graduate school.
April: Husband turned 29. Bought a new spinning wheel.
May: Laser tag in the EMU. Brought home Pica, who is the best cat we ever could have gotten. Willamette Valley MusicFest, on a blazing hot weekend. Started to harness train the cat.
June: Turned 27. Celebrated our 1-year anniversary. Black Sheep Gathering and workshops with Judith McKenzie-McCuin. Filed paperwork for my own business after leaving my beloved student position at the EMU Marketing Dept.
July: Cherry picking, which turned into crazy jam making. Farm visit to our CSA farm. Trip to California for Mike and Lynette's wedding. Saw redwoods, a geyser, a friend, drove through a tree.
August: Wedding of Scott and Elizabeth, husband was a groomsman.
September: Nothing of note, I guess. We did wrangle a 200 pound shelving unit home from Portland in our tiny car. That was an adventure.
October: Pica turned 2, Nanie's house sold. Much rejoicing!
November: Paid off our credit cards. Started making my own vanilla extract. Knit. A lot. Blogged every day.
December: Snowpocalpyse. Did a large amount of baking. Merry Christmas. Signed a rental agreement for a new place, gave notice at long outgrown apartment.
2009 is full of hope for us. I'm not big on resolutions but I do have some plans. I wish for all of you the best year possible, full of joy and love and hope.
Merry Happy Crazy Wonderful Holidays!
Christmas Tree
Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate (or don't) I hope you are surrounded by love and happiness. I'll be back in the next few days with a finished object and a mess of cookies to show you.
Nostalgia
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!
Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…
...in New England. We got 4" of snow on Sunday night. Snow and cold is a little abnormal, we trend towards wet, melting, slushy snow that only sticks around a day or so, falling when temperatures are above freezing. Instead, tonight we're sitting at 12 degrees Fahrenheit at 10pm (they keep lowering the predicted low, and these are record breaking lows for us). I can feel the cold air seeping through the big glass doors out to the balcony, curse the late-60's construction of our office building when aluminum was thought to be the best material for door and window frames! They're predicting more snow mixed with rain tomorrow, but also temps above freezing which should start to melt this off so we can get back to normal. Because this happens so infrequently, the city/state just doesn't have the equipment to handle this and it's also too cold for the chemical deicers they favor to work.
Señorita Fluffenstuff was quite distraught by the snow on Monday morning, the blanket of white that covered everything so quickly. She paced back and forth between the balcony and the office window, meowing at the world outside until we buckled her into her harness and leash and took her out on the balcony to sniff and touch the snow. Now? She's okay with it, spending her days curled in a ball on our bed having determined it to be the softest, warmest spot in the house. And me? I got this great shot of her fluffy white toes in the snow:
Christmas Craft: Tiny Mittens
I've been having some issues with large knitting projects, which means I had to abandon 3 pieces of Christmas knitting. I was knitting for too many hours a day trying to finish two large projects for gifts and ended up with very sore shoulders, elbows and wrists. I knew I wanted to make some ornaments for my family this year, and these Mini Mittens (Ravelry link) which were featured on the cover of the WEBS Holiday 2007 catalog seemed like a great option.
They were a delight to knit. I knit eleven pairs, or twenty-two tiny mittens. These are all knitted in scrap quantities of worsted weight yarn (10 yards or so for each pair) and they were easy. Each mitten took 20-30 minutes to knit on size 5 needles. And after big projects? The instant gratification of tiny things is fabulous. Each mitten is about 2 1/4" long and about 1" wide, and they just fill me with glee to look at them all like this.