In a few hours I'm headed to Madison, WI for the last show of the year, but first I want to post this beautiful sample of the Two Ballerinas sent by Lost Coaster, Hanne, of Norway.


Linda

It's a SOCK! My very first!!
My friend, Karen came over from Marysville a couple of weeks ago for a Girls' Weekend. She was staying at Tina's house (yup, count 'em, I have TWO friends LOL), and we decided it would be a good time to introduce me to knitting socks. So we swung by the yarn shop and picked up all essentials. Tina truely is the Sock Queen. Her work is exquisite. Well, she said that I'd get bored with a simple sock, and picked out one with a lace pattern. After about 3 hours of her endlessly having to fix my errors, she seemed to have developed a bit of a twich in one eyelid. I know that the book said it was an easy pattern, but it had a bunch of YO (that's yarn over's to those of you out of the knitting loop -- excuse the pun), and purls, and I just couldn't seem to get the yarn on the correct side of the needle. Each needle was *supposed* to have 18 stitches, but sometimes mine had 17 and sometimes 19. Eventually Tina would say "yes, Linda, just add a stitch" or "yes, Linda it's OK to purl those two together"....so it is a bit of a mutant sock....and I'm pretty sure I turned it around and knitted the wrong direction for awhile, too, which explains the odd cuff in the middle. Regardless, I figure that no one is going to get close enough to my ankle to see the flaws.
Now for the heel :-O

Linda

Welded Chicken

Chestnuts Roasting on a Open Fire....da-da-de-de-da...was the plan, so we harvested the chestnuts in the backyard using everyone's favorite harvesting tools, the rake and snow shovel. Had planned on a bounty of walnuts, too, but the squirrels left us only five nuts.

So I Googled "roasting chestnuts" and carfully followed directions to make an "X" in each so the steam could escape. It's too early for a fire, so we thought we were substituting "Chestnuts Roasting in Westinghouse", but it should have been "Chestnuts Exploding in a Westinghouse".


I guess I didn't make the "Xs" deep enough. Google had not been that specific. The rest of the inner bits will have to be scraped off the walls of the oven next time I have a Domestic Moment and want to bake something. With any luck, it will all have disintegrated by then. LOL

Linda

We're back from Art & Soul. It rained most of the weekend, so, aside from the show evening, we huddled in the Scotty and watched DVDs on my laptop. Cosmos picked out his spot. He doesn't get much blog time because he usually doesn't photograph as well as Batman -- in most pics he's just a big dark outline with glowing alien eyes -- so I'm glad to have something of him to post. What a pretty dog!

The wierd black stuff on the window behind Cos's head is duct tape and a towel to stop a drip -- and very successfully, I must say!
We usully drive conservatively because the car just gulps gas when pulling the Scotty, but on the way home a truck with the biggest pumpkin I've ever seen passed us. I was determined to get a pic of it, but he was going much faster than we, so for about 5 miles we had the poor Escape/Scotty both going faster than they'd ever gone...but success was ours! And fortunately, we didn't get caught!! LOL

There was a last-minute cancelation at the Adventures in Stamping show outside Cleveland next weekend, so you Ohioans will be seeing me there on Saturday.

Linda

We're headed to Art & Soul in Portland tomorrow morning. It's a drive show, so everyone -- C and the boys -- are all going, and it's be a camping weekend. Creighton took time this week to get the Scotty ready for the trip. I thought he was going to do some refurbishing of the interior, but he had other plans. This is from yesterday, when he was about half through stripping the blue paint from the interior.

Not what I was expecting, but it's his project....and it all had to be done in 7-minute intervals to coincide with the vuncanizer cycles. LOL
Hope to see some of you Saturday night at the show.

Linda

It was yet another show this past weekend, but it was right here in Spokane. Crieghton was also around to help with the booth, so it was quite an easy and short show -- No travel on Friday and Monday, AND home in the evenings :-)) I'm really enjoying this week at home. Yesterday I made a dozen altered journals from old children's books (they'll be going to Art & Soul in Portland on Friday), and today I finished up three felted bowls. I bought a humongous roll-top desk on Craig's list,
so everything from the old desk is in the middle of the living room, but I'm slowly cleaning the debris field that's accumulated in the last two hectic months.
I found this Barbie head in a Goodwill store. I already have several and wasn't planning to buy any more, but none of the others have rotating hands, so she had to, of course, come home with me.

And here she is after Step One.

OK, after swearing off anymore Barbie heads, I also bought a big plastic My Little Pony head, but I'll save it for another post.

Linda

I'm back home from the Rhinebeck show. I took a great pic while I was there, but of course, I can't find the SC card. I'm sure it will surface on the landfill eventually. In the meantime, here's Niagra Falls. I had a late flight after the Hamburg show a few weeks ago, so made a quick trip to the Falls just in case I never get back. There was only time for one tour, so I did the Cave of the Winds. The "cave" was just a short tunnel at the bottom of an elevator that dumped us out at the base of the American Falls (not the big horseshoe-ride-the-barrel-over falls). Everyone got a yellow condom to wear (one size fits most).

There was no wind in the cave, but the noise and wind at the bottom of the Falls was impressive. It really did get very wet and windy by the time we got up under the Falls, and everything outside of the condom was soaked. I was headed directly to the airport afterwards, so was glad to have it. I brought mine home for the next time we want to play Dress Up with the medical skeleton. We got spiffy sandals, too, but I pronate so badly that only my toes were in the sandals, so I donated them to a bin routed to some developing shoeless country of non-pronaters.

Linda

AND it was a middle seat :-(

This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the trip, but at least I got home.
Packing today for Mekka in Germany. Will be back here next week.

Linda

Welcome back, dear readers. It's been a long time since my last rant, and I think this morning is just about the right time. I'm sitting on the floor of the Greenville Spartenburg airport at 5:am, and it's already been a Long Day. I've been on the road for 4 weeks and still have two more trips, so admittedly, I just might be a tad cranky. I was ticketed for a flight home late this afternoon, but I'm eager to get there and pack for Germany, so I called the Premier Executive "special" phone number (the one dedicated to their more "valued customers" (yeah, right). Well, they tell me that there are multiple flights connecting to Spokane, starting at 6am, and there are many seats available, so head on down. I'll be brief about the alarm that didnpt ring, so Mary Kay and I were out the door in 15 minutes WITH MAKEUP, and then how we got lost on the way to the airport, but still got there in time. Sounds pretty good, right? I haven't yet gotte all the trying details of MK's jaunt through security Xrayed four times. (like she'll cleverly and subversally sneak dangerous liquids in between each screening). My first big bump in the road was that I wanted a three-et trip, when the original ticket was for a two-leg trip. The ticket people said that the Prem Exec people had to give authorization, and the Prem Exec people said that the airport ticket people had to do this. What a quandry!! Two increasingly hostile phone calls later, they finally give me my standby boarding tickets, but they have the debilatating "SSSS". Those in the know will recognize this -- I'm immediately funneled into the "in-depth" security check. I haven't ben so throughly groped in years!...and EVERYTHING in my carry-ons had to be removed, examined, and screened. Of course, by this time, the plane was gone.
YIKES! Gate change. gotta run.

Linda