Things That Make Me Happy

I took pictures of things that make me happy yesterday. I recognize the irony of "things" making me happy, but since I can't take pictures of the moments that make me happy, I have to take pictures of the things that represent the moments. I am not so spiritual that I don't also love THINGS, too...but I hope that it is the quality of the THING that I love...a color, a shape, a smell...an esthetic quality?

These are my Joseph's Coat Roses. Joseph lives next to the garage. His flowers start off in little red buds and then change between red and yellow and orange as they go through their bloom cycle. I love these roses because they are pretty, they represent the beginning of summer, they have survived in my yard!

This is my Itty Bitty Buddha. I love him because he's so tiny and so cheerful. He regularly disappears behind piles of papers on my desk, but then reappears to remind me to stop and breathe and to find some joy.

This is a little book I bought from the tibetan monks at the Kenton County Library the other day. I like pretty books. I made paper for a while in my crafty life, and I like that this is made of handmade paper by Tibetan Refugees living in India. I hope that I was able to help someone with my measely contribution, and I hope the person who made it was happy to be doing something pretty.

These are the germs who live on my desk. The red one is Necrotizing Fasciitis, alias Flesh Eating Bacteria, alias Streptococcus pyogenes. He has a knife and fork. The little lavendar one is Epstein-Barr Virus, aka Mono. She has pretty eyelashes because she wants to kiss you and give you her disease. I love funny science jokes. We science geeks are some of the funniest people I know, but unfortunately we usually only understand each other.

I made this hat. I love making things. I love the repetitiveness of knitting and crocheting and sewing. I love spinning wool. I spun the wool in the purple and green stripes in this hat. I also love making stuff up as I go along. I don't know if anyone will ever actually wear that hat, but I had a good time making it. Wouldn't it be cool if lots of people loved my weird hats and wanted to pay me alot of money for them? Of course, then I would probalby hate to make them.

I love driving through the cut in the hill and across the river in the morning. I love living in Kentucky, and I love working in Cincinnati. I'm not so thrilled with my job right now, but I think that's more about me than the job. But that's another post. I love seeing the sunrise over the hills and the river. I think the river is cool because it represents a force of nature, a place for recreation, but also a place of commerce and industry.

I like coming to work in the morning. I like to listen to books on tape or WNKU. I feel like I am getting a fresh start every time I cross that river and swoop through the Lytle Tunnel and up Reading Road. It makes me feel like a grown-up, like I'm going out to DO SOMETHING.

I am sucking at my job right now, I can't seem to do any experiments right and I don't know why. So actually GETTING to work isnt' always such a great thing, but COMING here is good. And it will get better. I know this because I've been beating my head against the wall of science long enough that I know that there are portholes along the wall. Although if I get fired for spending all of my time on facebook and blogspot, the portholes might become fewer and farther between....

delayed gratification

Wow, I have REALLY been a blog slug lately! All this fresh spring air has kept me doing lots of other things. On the crafting front, I finally finished the quilt from hell! I am ready to send it back to California as soon as I know where to send it. And then I'm getting another one to work on, but in the meantime, I've had time to spin and knit and work on some other stuff. I actually finished a sweater (not a vest!)that I made of yarn that I spun all myself--and it fits! Its actually chilly enough today that I got to wear it to work before it has to be shoved into the sweater pile in the closet.

Let's see, what else? Well, the boys are busily with finals this week (finally!). Sometimes it's a close race to see if we will be in summer school or not! We will all be relieved to be done with school and take a break from carpooling and so forth for the next couple of months. Karen and Sam will be going to Camp Goodridge again this summer, a Boone County park program. Sam will actually be a "Counselor in Training" which means that he's a halfprice camper and full time counselor's assistant. This should be educational for all of us!

Karen has had a busy spring. Her class went to Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky a few weeks ago and then they had a 'state convention' which was a kind of a science fair thing where the kids did a research project on a specific state and then made a display and a 'food item' from their state for people to sample at the convention.

Can you guess which state Karen was assigned? No? Hint: there are a lot of weddings there (just in case you are wondering, that is a wedding cake there. We made it and decorated it ourselves).

Okay, here's a hint: the Bride and groom on the top of the cake could have been Elvis and a Stripper.

TaDA! It's NEVADA!

And then next, her class performed the play "Blame it on the Wolf" for parents and the younger students. Karen plays the part of TurkeyLurkey along with her friends Chloe and Audrey, who are Chicken Little and Henny Penny. I think they were a kind of a Greek chorus, because they would run out periodically and sing a little song and then run back offstage. Very excellent choreography. Camp has opened and we only had to move the trailer once because of flooding---what a pain--for Tom. I held down the fort here.

next installment, hopefully before the end of the summer, will be about camp and the new Goodyear Store!

Vest Day

It's Friday! I get to spend the weekend with my boys at the KJCL convention...that's the Kentucky Junion Classical League...basically a meeting of Latin Clubs. I'm so proud to be the mom of language nerds! Granted, if they had their druthers, they'd have choses to learn German or Swahili or something. But one thing about being a Latin nerd, you get to go to parent-sanctioned Toga parties! The meeting is in Lexinton and involves activities such as Certamen (I think that's Jeopardy in Latin, not sure how you spell "Alex Trebek" in Latin) and a chess tournament. I am bringing a good book and some crocheting.

This is me at my desk at work. I had to do the long armed self portrait thing because I don't have the timer on my camera figured out and there is noone else here yet. I can see that it is time for a haircut and some sun on that fishbelly white skin. Spring, anyone?

I've decided to do something with Granny Squares. I've always kind of turned up my nose at the GS...it seems so...Granny-ish. Not interesting or sophistocated. Recently, however, I've seen some interesting things made with GS's...maybe it's the colors that make the squares less...square. At any rate, I've gathered up my purple, teal and variegated acrylic yarn and a crochet hook to bring to Lexington this weekend. A nice, mindless project that can become something small or something bigger...we'll just see!



This is the vest I made of wool that I dyed and spun myself. I'm so proud of it! I modified a pattern from the Berroco website...I think I might have made it a tad bit longer, but I was so afraid I would run out of yarn. Besides, my boss assures me that with my new slenderer figure, a shorter top is okay. This was knit from the bottom up and I had to divide the stitches at the neck to make two sides (duh)...If I had used one ball of yarn all the way to the divide, the neck would have looked really weird with two different yarns, so I decided to do a kind of a landscape deal with the yarn...make one side be a little bit behind the other. I think this gives it a bit of a wrapped look. Anyway, I like it.



I was almost out of yarn for the back, so I added some commercial yarn (Lion Brand worsted wool) that I dyed with some of the same colors I used for the wool I spun. I guess it works, I don't know. I wear a sweater, jacket or lab coat over this most of the time, anyway, so the back doesn't show all that much...at least not to me, since I can't see it from here!

Friday's here!

Okay, it's finally Friday...I know, this was a short week, so next week is probably going to be hell, having to work all five days. Maybe it will snow and I'll have to stay home with the kids! I did hear a rumor that it's going to warm up a bit here in sunny Cincinnati...so no snow, but that's okay if it's going to be warm!


I'm posting pictures of the 'basket' that I knitted and felted and spun...my friend Linda in Hamilton gave me a big old bag of carded wool that she'd had prepped from several years of leftovers from spinning. She calls it the Beast. I spun it thickly and knitted a big giant hat, sort of, to make my bowl shape, crocheted some handles and tossed it in the washer on the hot/cold cycle for a couple of trips. Then I tossed it in the dryer for a while, put it on top of the dryer wrapped around a real basket for a few days. I think it could be firmer if I sent it through the wash/dry thing again, so I might try that this weekend. But for now, I love my Beast Basket, and it's holding some yarn implements next to my spinning wheel.