Favorite Color Swap

This swap need a little back story. Having moved into a new apartment I suggested to my spoiler that a home warming theme would be welcome. My bedroom is burgundy and pink and my bathroom shaded of tan and brown and both are finished. However, my kitchen is being revamped and when I signed up for this swap my living room was an empty room.

I picked turquoise as my favorite color because it works for both rooms and posted two photos for my spoiler.

 

 

Vintage Fire King dish that I received in the Retro swap. It's in my favorite blue turquoise color and I have plans for a vintage kitchen.

For the living room a swatch photo of the rug I bought and the pillow fabric I've knitted and woven. This is a more yellow based turquoise, leaning toward sea glass and teal. It's not a color I would wear but it looks really sharp with the yellow sand colored walls in a way the blue turquoise doesn't.

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Everyone gather around and look at the awesome things jamsticks spoiled me with!

First it’s worth noting that the box weighed over 15 pound! I had my 14 pound dog in one arm and this box in the other while walking up my apartment stairs. The box was much heaver than Joey. Look why.
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All packaged up fancy…

 

 with ribbons…

and sea glass. My little Midwestern heart melted at sea glass. We don’t have that here.

First there was the vintage Pyrex. I just love vintage Pyrex. I squeeeeed and clapped my hands when I pulled this out of the box. The color is exquisite and look at the gold scrolling on the lid but really it’s all about the color. This is beyond perfect!

Turquoise utensils! More squeeeing.

Polka dotted dish towels that reflects my kitchen inspiration photo! My other inspiration photo . The photo I'm using as my own inspiration. The polka dots are my color pallet. 

Handmade soap!

In the perfect color with gold shimmer! It smells great too.

 

Why, Yes, I am.
It’s post-its and a pin. Super cute.

Organic Chocolate bars and gluten free. jamsticks was extremely consequence about the yummies. I’m so very touched by that.

Locally made candy. I’ve never had soft saltwater taffy before. I’m eating the last piece right now and I love it.

Yarn. I love the yarn. It’s the color of sea glass and the sky and the ocean. All my favorite colors! I can’t wait to knit it …after I horde it in my stash for a good long while as Too-Special-to-Knit.
This all shows that jamsticks is a truly talented spoiler. But wait! There is more.

Now for the hand made.

A place mat of my “Junk Drawer” There is the nail polish, Tardis, a key, marbles, candy, buttons! I could tie each image to a swap I was in. Things I sent and things I received . That is some crazy scary super good stalking.

These place mats are painted with acrylic and then heat set to be washable. Look at the sweet robins eggs and feathers. I have a sweet story about robins eggs and the robins egg blue one of the shades of turquoise I like most.

Sea Glass!

Here’s a closer look.

And to finish the set, YARN!
Thank you, jamsticks! Everything is perfect and thoughtful and generous. Words just don’t do it justice. I love it ALL!

Excellent

I just had my first checkup ever. I decided that I was probably old enough that I should have my cholesterol checked and everything else that comes with the blood work. Also, I live off of eggs, vegetables, and candy. After just a few years of being good for us, this summer eggs are now rated with poison with all the cholesterol again. I was a little worried about the candy and maybe being diabetic since I've had sweaty awful blood sugar attacks this summer too. The vegetable I know I'm doing right.

I'm quite pleased I had it done. I was given a 3 page print out with graphs that all show pretty green with one large red spike at the end.

My cholesterol is excellent. I'm not diabetic. The doctor said that I'm probably Hypoglycemics and just to eat small meals through out the day. I already eat the small meals but it was nice to have the doctor brush the attacks off as unpleasant but not worrisome and that I should just pay attention. He said we could do a glucose test and when it came back positivist he would tell me to eat small meals and pay attention. Ok. So we will skip the test.

Finally, he told me my Vitamin D was extremely low and he wrote a prescription for a supplement. He told me I could expect my lethargicness and poor sleep to improve. I never told him about my poor sleep or my low energy. I thought it was my normal. If it improves my vitamin D deficiency might be the best news of all.

Another thing that pleases me is my Bento Box and my egg molds. They are small frivolous things that I would never allow myself to actually buy so they were the first thing I used my Amazon points to get.I really enjoy using them. I got them last April and have been using them all summer.

My egg timer in action. Very helpful for the egg molds since the eggs need to be cooked clear through. I really enjoy my egg timer. I get impatient and this allows me to be sure they are done.

Then quickly peel the hot egg, slap it in the mold, and place in the fridge.

The bunny face is my favorite since the bears ears never fill in well.While taking the time to mold smiley animal faces into eggs is a bit silly, it brings a smile to my face. It also is the only thing that makes me take time to peel the eggs at home and that makes eating them on my break at work more enjoyable too.

The vegetables and the candy. I use a bunny cookie cutter to keep them from mingling.

My first break I eat an egg and the fresh vegetables. My lunch I eat an egg, the vegetable main dish and the warped candy over to the right. My last break I'm not hungry but the day is wearing on me and I need a pick-me-up to sooth me and to get my brain going again. The trail mix with chocolate does the trick.

And it all fits into a container about the size of a pop can. This is just the coolest thing ever.

It's also not terribly well made so I use the thick rubber band off of the broccoli to seal it. It will never hold soup or do well upside down holding something juicy.

Speaking of juicy. It's the end of our dry streak with 36 hours of rain this weekend. There had been cracks in the dirt so wide that Joey would loose a whole leg down one. He would be toddling along and his chin would hit the ground because his legs just fell out from under him.

If it's too hard to imagine Joey legs, the cracks were large enough that a match box car would be lost in them and deep enough that fingers wouldn't reach and they would need to be retrieved with a stick. About halfway through the first day of rain the water started bubbling out of the cracks and not long after they filled with oozing mud.

Delusional

No, not about the apartment. It has a few faults but the reality is so much better than I ever hoped. I love it. It's about this meme. No wonder people have burned out at D.

Post I've mentally written and Discarded

Dead Birds
Divorce
Dating
Dentists

It's all so very Depressing. I wanted a happy post. I finally came up with a happy D word

DISHWASHER

This place has a dishwasher. The ability to wash 3 days of dirty dishes with only 8 minutes of work rather than 45 makes me giddy.

And now this post is Done. Moving on.

Clouds in My Coffee

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air 
and feather crayons everywhere I've looked at clouds that way

I'm on my way to pick up the keys to my apartment. This is it.The cusp. The sweet spot. The last moment when dreams about the apartment end and the reality begins.

I despise white walls and yet again I'm renting an apartment so I can't paint. I've grown and moved on from the paintings I made in college. I want to hang new work in the living room.  I want to paint a triptych mural of clouds and hang my black and white cloud photos between.

I've thought of several ways to make and move a mural size painting. Some of them even good ways but with my career and the running of the Midwestern Weaving Convention 2013 I don't see any of them actually getting done.

Throw in that I've dedicated 2012 to using what I have I've come up with a more realistic plan. I have all the squares left from my woodcut printing. I needed 4 for class but I had to buy a sheet of teak paneling so I have at least 10 left. I'll paint clouds on them or even just pain them solid colors in shades of the sky and hang them among photos. This way I can add color photos too.

None of my living room furniture is in any shape to make the move. So I'm going with the Japanese styling for right now. Not things from Japan but the empty rooms with a few great pieces and the use of floor seating. But with brighter colors and maybe a little of 60 kitsch. This photo sums up what I'm going for

I'll knit great lush floor pillows and puffs. Maybe even crochet granny squares. Or I'll finally pull my sewing machine out of the box and sew some seating pads. I'll even weave the fabric from plastic grocery bags. I felt some at KAWS and it's wonderful. I'll pick up a chair and recover it like the photo. Maybe even knitting a slip cover! and I'LL DO IT ALL FOR $15!


It's clouds illusions I recall

I leave in 20 min. The dream has 45 min to go and then it's over and reality sets in.
 

Cotton yarn- in this year of using what I have I went to deep stash. I've been hoarding this yarn as too special to knit. It's Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, the original spinning. Like all nice cotton knitting yarn it's more expensive than gold. I wasn't able to buy anymore that one baby sweater worth until it discontinued. Once it hit the sale bins I snatched up what balls I could find.

Because of that, I have random balls of random colors. I'm finally allowing myself to knit it up. This is the only yarn I haven't packed and I don't know how long it will take me to get everything arranged and unpacked. This might be my only knitting for a while.

Well, except for my knitting in my desk at work.... oh, and my car knitting.... right, and the project in my purse... and my other purse.

05.13.1923 to 05.25.2012

I'm back from Grandma Jay's memorial. It was perfect funeral weather, freezing cold with drizzling rain. We huddled together at the graveside under the awning for warmth.The service was lovely detailing her life dedicated to service to her church, community, and the Temperance Union.

There I learned a few things about her that I didn't know. That the pamphlets about the evil of drinking that came in my birthday cards every year instead of money- she wrote them. I knew that she got published everywhere, anyhow she could. Magazine articles, original recipes in cookbooks, children stories, but it never occurred to me that those were her work too. An over sight on the part of a child looking for cash among the Don't Do Drugs leaflets.

The service was lovely but didn't cover much of her life as I knew it so I'll share a few things here.

She was interested in fairness. So much so that at Christmas we grandchildren all received the same present. Age 5 or 20 it didn't matter. That's how at age 10 I received an AirBake cookie sheet, oven mitts, and a recipe box full of blank cards. This is from the grandma that can't cook. It wasn't so much that she couldn't cook but that she was inventing new recipes to submit to the next contest to possibly win and to have another recipe published. To do that she was inventive and would serve her trials no matter how they turned out. Some were spectacular, so I've been told, but I don't remember them.

It's because of her one size fits all presents that I received a stamp collecting book the next year. One of my cousins wanted it. I enjoyed the soaking of exotic stamps off of letters sent to my parents and the clear sticky tabs. Grandma bought the 50 state bird stamps for each of us and mailed them one at a time on a letter or card. That's something else about her. She liked birding and kept a life birding list.

My brother and I spent a week with her and Grandpa every summer. She didn't play with us but she did tell great stories. The Tumble Fairy and her antics was my favorite. She had a roll of paper attached to a wall. I think it was to feed through her manual typewriter so she never had to stop to put in a new page but to me it was drawing heaven.

She couldn't throw paper away. She had piles and stacks of papers and books next to her favorite chair. The stacks reached as high as the TV tray she kept at her elbow to hold her drink, pens, and highlighters.

The pastor and his intern spoke with awe about her bible and how every passage was marked with highlighter. They called it a work of art and dedication. A cousin and I snicked at this. She did read her bible every day and not only was every passage highlighted it was color coded with a key in the front. This book was very important to her.

That's not what made us laugh but that Grandma highlighted everything! The rules of a game? Highlighted. Giving the game as a gift? It would be unwrapped and the rules highlighted before being given to us in case we were to miss the important parts. The cookbook that she gave me and every woman in her family- All highlighted. Words were important to her.

I was given a packet of her photos after the service. I had hoped to get a photo of her. Instead they were all of me. Photos where she had written captions in a journalistic style and even if they had other people in the photo the captions were all about me. She had done this with everyone.

There is so much more to say but words are beginning to fail me. I'll wrap this up with the words she used most of all. "I appreciate you and I love you."

Bento

It's pretty obvious I started this meme only because I wanted to do A is for Apartment so badly. But lets see if i can keep it going. Maybe I can space it so I have M is for Moving.

My lunch box went missing. Not surprising since it was exactly the same as the other 30 employee appreciation insulated lunch bags in the wall of refrigerators at work. 

I was ready for something different. Something smaller and neater and easier to transport. And most importantly easier to pick out from the crowd on my breaks.

I ordered a bento box with my Amazon points. This is my first free purchase. I'm very pleased with it and this is the first time I've ever cashed in points. I'm going to like my Amazon card.

Buffy and Big Bang Theory are the DVDs my brother gave me for Christmas.

He had hand surgery this spring and has been driving out to KU Med 2 times a month for checkups. He scheduled his last appointment for my birthday. I took the day off and he, my dad and I spent the day together.

We ate Indian food and did a little shopping along with the few hours spent at KU Med. At our stop at Half Priced Books my Brother found me season two of Buffy. I'm super excited to watch it although I packed it away today. It will have to wait a bit longer.

Apartment

A is for Apartment.

I've signed a lease! I'm packing and moving. It's a small little place with the second smallest kitchen I've ever seen. The smallest didn't have a stove. This one has a stove and a dishwasher.

It has a bathtub and the bedroom should fit my queen size bed with ease. Most importantly it's close to work. It's the cheapest place I looked at and the neighborhood looks safe enough.

It was a struggle to find this place. I either make too much or too little to rent to. The places that didn't care I didn't care to make an appointment to look at. When the bars on the windows show in the ad photo it doesn't inspire confidence.

I finally found this place when yet another apartment turned me down because of my income amount (this time too high) and I asked them to recommended a place. This one was the suggestion. I kept looking after seeing this kitchen but I came back. Nowhere else was as right.

Aqua nails- an ombre mani. It appears that I now own 5 colors of aqua polish.Enjoy the chips and the polish on the cuticles because I'm cool like that.

While looking for apartments I did have a DE-ja-vou moment. Let me back track to before I was even thinking of looking at apartments.

 The night after we found the french bulldog taking a nap in the street- I dreamed of walking a bulldog and finding the PERFECT apartment. A good friend said I must rent it. That this is The Place. It had colonial styling and patios and a bistro. I wanted to rent it so badly but it was too expensive. End of dream.

When I was driving around looking at apartments I took a wrong turn and ended on another road also full of apartment buildings. I chose an entrance as my turn around spot. Driving in I recognized it from my dream. It had colonial styling and patios and bistro chairs in the quad. The day was a stunningly beautiful day so the sky sparkled and the whole place just glowed. It was also too expensive.

The smallest tiniest studio was a little more than my budget. I thought on it a while since in my dream it was The Place. Maybe it was a sign. But my dream wasn't about the smallest studio and my budget is too tight as it is. Besides, I didn't rent it in my dream.

I'm glad I kept looking since the apartment I leased is bigger and comes in under my budget amount. The other place isn't going anywhere I could rent it later and I dream new dreams every night.

Mmmmmmmm Yarn

I'm joining the blog ABC Saying that out loud maybe the kiss of death. The blogs I read all lost their thread around C. I feel that I can do better than that and it looks like fun. Before I start posting the alphabet I need to give my thank yous for my birthday presents.

Look YARN! I was given yarn! No need to worry about running out. I still haven't bought yarn this year but that is four months of knitting right there. I love yarn.

And books and candy and gift cards for more yarn.

Thank you! It was a really great Birthday month.

Coffee!

I just had to post today. Look what they installed in the break room at work! We have coffee! Gone is the coffee vending machine dispenser from the 80's that dispensed dirty water for .25 And when I saw dirty water I mean it. The vender didn't keep the powder stocked so coffee ran from tan to clear. They didn't do much business. This new one we buy the packet of grounds for .75 and brew it to order. It even takes bank cards. Sweet.

Fairy Tale Swap

More swappy goodness. This time from bamagr1!

The packages just kept coming from the box. No photos were takes as paper sheds went flying and Ooooo and aaaaaaaah over the contents.

Group shot

A lovely bag that's sewn in such a way that the diagonals makes pockets inside and out. Brilliant! I love it! and the strap is just the right length so that it hangs nicely when I wear it. I super love it!

A flower garden travel mug with coffee and chai tea. One of the tea bags is Spiced Apple Chai. The bag is spiced apple ginger candy. Both cute tie in's to Snow White. I was expecting the regal ginger candy but the apple combination is beyond amazing. The caramel corn is a cleaver way to ship caramel in the heat we've been having. I ate the whole bag in one sitting. That's unlike me but it was sooooo good.

A crochet washcloth and a sheepy magnet. Both are too cute.

Fairy Tale nail polish. I love it!

Mmmmmmmmm malabrigo. In the shade.

In the sun. So tasty I had to show it twice.And after all there are two skeins.

 

Honey!  A hedgehog Hans from Hans-My-Hedgehog !!! and a stone covered basket? Why do I have a stone covered basket? Ok so it could be a wishing well but neither The Six Swans or The Widow's Son has a wishing well... Is it a candle holder?... No, it's flammable. Bamagr1 obviously put a lot of time into it cutting the pcv pipe and it still has the faint scent of industrial strength epoxy glue. Maybe I could fill it with violets as a sweet little bud vase for pixies..... OMG it's for a FAIRY GARDEN!

I'm going to catch a fairy!

I rummaged around my home and gathered the supplies. An aquarium, a bag of potting soil, sand, polished rocks, a few handmade marbles as playthings.

I grab a friend and we go into the back yard where the fairies live and dug up plants, made a sand path, lines it with polished stones, added a bench, the well, marbles to play with.

The trap is ready and baited with the sparkly stones and the pot of honey. It's sitting on the driveway now but a few hours in the arbor should do it.

The trap is set.

What fairy wouldn't want to visit this garden?

It took a few hours but before the rain the trap was sprung. I caught one of the invisible brownies.

After a night inside the brownie decimated the left hand corner with the Queen Anne's Lace, killing it dead. The marbles have been moved around clearly played with and possible thrown in anger. However the violets, woodsorral, and bed of moss is intact.When it's time to clean it's cage I'll plant more woodsorral.

Thank you Bamagr1. The package was an epic win! I love it!