Yosemite

We spent yesterday at Yosemite. Even though it's less than 2 hours from our house, we haven't been there since the Things were born. That's silly.

They're doing some road construction in the park, which meant at one point we had to stop the car and wait for nearly half hour. It wasn't torture, though, because this is what it looked like where we stopped:

The Things managed to amuse themselves for 30 minutes. Then we had a picnic on this beautiful beach, and Thing 1 attempted to throw every last rock back into the Merced River. Meanwhile, T2 practiced the art of log walking:

Later, T2 made John Muir's acquaintance:

And then we walked up to the bottom of Yosemite Falls.

It's a great time of year to visit. Highs temps were in the 60's, it wasn't too ungodly crowded, the falls are beautiful, and the trees are just leafing out.

More Pottery

I'll bet you're dying to see more of my ceramics masterpieces, right? Here ya go. This first one is a wall pocket. I think it looks kind of ogre-ish. One of my classmates said it reminds her of a character in The Goonies.

Next, we have a pair of little cups. I think they look like they need ice cream in them. Or maybe a frivolous liqueur. Once, on a hot, muggy day in Germany, I was served mango sorbet with a little champagne poured on top. These cups would do for that, too. This is as close to a matched set as I'm ever going to produce. I like how the glaze turned out.

My final item was made at Thing 1's special request. She wanted a mermaid to hang in her bathroom. I was skeptical about my abilities in this regard, but I have to tell you, I really am very pleased with the result. I think it's my favorite thing I've made so far. She's happy with it, too.

Quizzes

I got 7 out of 8 on this geography quiz. Oops. I misplaced Afghanistan. And I got 7 out of 10 on the Dead Quiz. I guess it's a good thing that I know more about geography than about horror movies.

Relativity of Time

Yesterday I spent just about two hours in a department chairs' meeting, and then almost exactly the same amount of time in my ceramics class. Guess which two hours lasted forever, and which just flew by. Too bad I can't play with clay during meetings.

Done Stuff

I feel buried in work so today I took a Mental Health Day and made a doll instead. Here's Princess Thing 2. I guess she likes cactuses (cacti?):

And I brought home several ceramics items this week. I'm working on an outerspace theme for a bathroom wall. Here's the rocket and a planet, which T2 has decided is Saturn:

These are just some miscellaneous little dishes, because you can never have too many places to collect broken toys, marbles, beads, spare change, keys, and other miscellaneous crap:

One of my classmates decided that the blob in the center of the larger bowl, which is actually just a random splotch of melted glass, looks like a Scottie dog:

What do you think? Hey--it's a Rorschach Bowl!

I haven't finished any knitting lately. I've been working on a scarf, which is exactly what I need, since it's in the 80's this weekend. We just watched the last few episodes of Season 5 of Buffy, which were too exciting to pay too much attention to the tricky parts of the scarf.

Tuesday

I was kinda having a crappy day. Nothing awful in particular, just one of those drudge-filled days where not enough gets accomplished and everybody seems discontented. And then I heard about Improv Everywhere, which "causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places." Basically, they pull pranks, but they're funny and often really good-hearted. They've had several no-pants days, and recently made some Little Leaguers really happy. They made me smile.

Also, late this afternoon I got an enigmatic email from my Dean asking whether I have a valid passport, and if so, whether I might be interested in going to Croatia for a week this summer. I'll have to wait for the morning to find out what that's all about, but it does sound promising. Or maybe she just wants to get rid of me for a while? ;-)

Saturday Fun

On Saturday, I spent a lovely day with a friend in Petaluma. We just just hung around downtown Petaluma, gabbing and shopping. There is a really good bookstore there, Copperfields, and also a very nice yarn store called Knitterly. I may have come home with some books and yarn. One of the things I like about that town is that, except for an inevitable Starbucks, all the stores and restaurants downtown are independent rather than chains. It's refreshing.

Meanwhile, Hubby took the Things up to the mountains. Thing 1 knows how to ski, but Hubby couldn't ski with her due to his still-healing broken foot. Instead, he signed her up for a snowboard lesson. She loved it.

And while T1 snowboarded, T2 and Hubby threw snowballs and made snowmen and sledded.

It was the last weekend of the season at that ski resort, and, as you can see, the snow is getting sparce. In fact, Hubby and T2 apparently spent an hour watching an event in which people on snow skis attempt to water ski:

So a good time was had by all.

One more...

Wow! 3 posts in one day. But Thing 1 worked all day making her very first Dotee doll (an astronaut), and she wanted me to post a picture of it. So here's T1 (post-bath) and her doll:

Another Doll

Can you stand looking at one more doll? This one's for a Swap-Bot mermaid doll swap.

I've been enjoying Spring Break. :-)

purrrrrrrr

Furgie has gone mostly deaf. This doesn't bother her at all, and it has an advantage for me: it means I can easily sneak up on her and take pictures like this one.

7th Sin

So here's the final sin. I'm proud of this one. ;-)

FOs: Socks and Six Sins

Entire civilizations have risen up and then crumbled to dust while I worked on these socks, but I finally finished them last night:

The yarn is Socks That Rock in the Raven colorway, and the pattern is Lenore. Perfect when I'm feeling a little gothy. BTW, that's Thing 1 doing the modeling, and she happened to be wearing those stockings today.

I've also completed 3 more sins, leaving only 1 to go:

I'm not sure which is my favorite, but I am quite fond of Lust. I made her hearts, and the letters and thorny things for Wrath, out of polymer clay.

Back from the Desert

Thank you all for the birthday wishes! I'm now another year older and wiser, right?

We're back after a really nice (but too short) vacation in Palm Desert. This picture is specially for Knatolee:

That's the outdoor temp as we arrived in Palm Desert on Friday. But we experienced snow, too:

That pic is from the top of the Palm Springs aerial tramway, about 8500 feet up Mt. San Jacinto. It was in the 50's up there. And the tramway is a great trip, although perhaps not for those who aren't fond of heights.

We also visited Shields Date Garden in Indio, and the Things got to try a date shake:

Mmmm!

We visited the Living Desert, too, and the Things got to pretend to be birds:

The drive to Palm Desert and back was long (over 400 miles each way), but the desert is really pretty this time of year. Here's a crappy picture I took from the car outside Palm Springs:

And here's another crappy car shot from the Mojave Desert:

All the Joshua Trees are in bloom right now. Along with everything else in the desert. Our allergies sure noticed!

Oh, and on the way to Palm Desert we stopped at a Mini dealership (there are none by our house) and I test drove one. What fun little cars! I want one! Well, I really want a Smart, but they're 2 seaters, so I'll settle for a Mini.

You Say It's My Birthday

Actually, my birthday is tomorrow, but early tomorrow we'll be hitting the road for a long weekend in Palm Desert. It should be fun but internetless.

So today I received a package in the mail containing this:

Not the fairies. Those belong to Thing 2. They just wanted to admire my present, which was made my Raquel's Mosaics, and I believe most likely comes to me courtesy of my sister. Nancy knows how much I like cobalt glass.

I like having a birthday. I'm not traumatized about getting older, even though last week Thing 2 asked me, in all seriousness, whether there were dinosaurs when I was a kid (I think that was the same day she asked me, "What did they make people for"--a question I was unable to answer).

I am making painfully slow progress on that pair of socks. I may be able to turn the heel on the second one tonight. So in lieu of an FO, here are a couple fun bits:

• Spring Knitty is up
• After reading this, I will no longer complain about Ruthie's recent vet bills
• I share a birthday with Matthew Broderick, Rosie O'Donnell, Gary Oldman, Florenz Ziegfeld, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Regretably, I missed Fred Rogers and BF Skinner by a day.

Haircut

Thing 2 got a haircut. She's never had hair this short, but I think it suits her.

Lotsa FO's

No new knitting to show off. I'm working slowly on a pair of goth socks. I only knit them during my free evening hours, while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD (we just began Season 4). And I haven't had many free evening hours. But I've made some more dolls:

I signed up for a 7 Deadly Sins Dotee Swap. You only have to make 1 sin, but I've gotten carried away. I'm hoping to make all 7. But some of the remaining 4 may be more challenging than Sloth, Avarice, and Gluttony.

I also brought home some pottery FO's last night. The moon and stars are components of a celestial thing I'm planning for a bathroom wall. I glazed a rocket ship and planet last night, too. The wonky bowl on the right was An Experiment. And do you dig the lavender color on the squishy bowl? That was a surprise.

Birthday Girl!

Furgie turned 19 yesterday! Here she is on my bed this morning, looking mighty good for a cat who's a year beyond legal voting age.

I Am a Sunflower

I am a Sunflower What Flower Are You?

I stole this from Eve's blog. :-)

Princess Doll

The Things suggested this one, and made some of the fabric choices. I like her scepter the best. And I was happy to find some trim in my stash that was perfect for her crown. I also enjoyed doing the beading on her apron. I think she looks a little smug.

These little guys are kinda addictive.

Little Mermaid Doll

Today's doll may seem less dangerous than yesterday's vampire witch, but I don't know. She looks like she's up to something.

My favorite part of this mermaid is her face, but Thing 2 is enamored of her belly button. Which, T2 insists, ought to be yellow, because everyone knows mermaids have yellow belly buttons.

Haunted Dotee Doll

Suddenly, everyone seems to be making Dotee dolls. They looked like fun to make, and a good way to use up some of the fabric scraps, beads, and so on that I have stockpiled. So I signed up for the Haunted Dotee swap on Swap-Bot, and voila...my first Dotee doll.

She is...a vampire witch, I guess. Anyway, I'm happy with her, and somewhat tempted to keep her for myself. Some of her beads glow in the dark. And look! A good use for purple Fun Fur yarn! But my favorite part of her is her beady (literally!) silver eyes.

This week

So this is my week....

Yesterday I took Thing 1 to karate class, in which she's about to advance from white belt to yellow. As soon as that class ended, I whisked her across town to Girl Scouts, where I was recruited to help the girls assemble tangram puzzles.

Today I'll pick her up right after school and whisk her across town again, this time for Gymnastics.

Tomorrow night I have ceramics.

Thursday night, Thing 1 has a Kool Kats Poetry Night at school, wherein she will be reciting a Shel Silverstein poem about being eaten by a boa constrictor (she chose the poem herself). Meanwhile, on the opposite side of town, Thing 2 will be in Gymnastics class.

Friday, Ruthie has an acupuncture appointment.

I know I have nobody to blame for this schedule but myself. Sigh.

Spring FOs

I realize what we have barely qualifies as Winter, but still, I love when Spring arrives. If I walk one block north of my house right now, I can look at an almond orchard in full bloom, and the crabapple trees in the parking lot at work smelled so perfumey today you could just about pass out. A pair of mourning doves has been all, well, lovey-dovey in our backyard lately, and this morning a mockingbird in the next door neighbors' tree was ribbeting like a frog. I was distracted at work this morning, too, as a handsome boy crow did his very best to impress a girl crow in the tree outside my window. She was mostly ignoring him. He kept sidling up to her all casual-like, bowing his head deeply in front of her, and posing like that until she flapped away to the next tree limb. She mostly seemed interested in eating bugs or something--he's going to have to try harder.

And I have an FO! I sewed on the buttons last night. This is the Small Origami bag from Folk Bags. It was 14" of seed stitch followed by a mile of i-cord, but I like it. That book has a lot of cute patterns.

I've been making some ATCs lately as well. Here are some I made for a butterfly-themed swap on Swap-Bot:

The dog in the upper right-hand ATC was named Scipio, and he belonged to Orville Wright. According to some links I saw online, Orville acquired him in March 1917. I got the photo from the Library of Congress, which has several nice pictures of this dog. He looks like a happy creature.

On Saturday, Thing 2 saw me making ATCs and decided she wanted to create some of her own:

She planned and made these almost all by herself, which just a tiny bit of help from me. Of course, the kid who comes home from school with her pockets full of rocks was especially impressed with my mica tiles, which you can see she used in two of her cards.

This 'n' That

• I saw a mention of a great t-shirt today: "If yarn were meth, I'd have no teeth"
• When we were on the cruise, I had a manicure (and later a massage) and let the spa people talk me into buying this stuff. It's horrendously expensive--I think I paid $55 on board, and I see it's $52 (plus shipping, I'm sure) on the website, just for one little bottle. And the smell isn't all that spectacular, unless you adore menthol/camphor. But it takes just a pea-sized bit to massage into your neck and shoulders, and then you get a really lovely, intense menthol tingle for over an hour. It's wonderful.
• Hubby scored us a Wii console a few weeks ago. I'm usually not much into video games, but this thing is fun. Of course, Thing 1 is totally addicted, and I don't feel too awful about it because at least she moves around a lot while she plays. It's a good thing on a gloomy, rainy weekend like this one. Tennis is one of her faves, and she jumps high in the air and swings her arms so much I have to make her take long breaks, otherwise she ends up sore the next day. This weekend she borrowed a Hannah Montana game from someone, which is driving me insane. You have to copy all sorts of dance moves, and then you get to go shopping in various countries. Of course she loves it, and I've caught Hubby playing a couple times, too. But you us poor bystanders have to listen to the same intensely annoying Hannah Montana songs over and over and over again.

Stitches West

Sorry for the lack of postings lately. As usual, too much is going on. But yesterday I managed to get to Santa Clara, where I spent the day at Stitches West. Because, you know, I have such a severe yarn shortage. Ahem.

Anyway, here are my favorite things I brought home:

On the left is some Silkie Socks that Rock. Love the colorway. At the top is my find that excited me the most: Kureyon sock yarn! I didn't know such a thing existed. The vendors told me it came out about 6 weeks ago. In the middle is some Malabrigo laceweight baby merino. Soft soft soft. Did I ever mention that I have reason to believe the owners of Malabrigo are distant relatives of mine? I should get a family discount! And the bottom item is glow in the dark yarn. It's pretty scratchy, so I'd only use it as an accent, but it glows a very bright green. And I do love GID stuff.

I was sorely tempted by some yak yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch. The guy there was pointing out pictures of various yaks, telling me their names, and talking about whether they like getting brushed or not. They're pretty animals, and the yarn is really nice. Knatolee, I think you need some yaks. But since we've just racked up nearly $3000 in vet bills for Ruthie (who's doing quite well now) I tried to exercise restraint.

Thing 1 didn't get to go this year because she had school. But Hubby's aunt is visiting, and she's a knitter, so we went together. It was great fun!

I wanna start knitting right this second, but Thing 2 has a birthday party today.

Finally, a new (almost) FO

It seems like forever since I finished a knitted project. This one's done, other than blocking. The yarn is Handmaiden's Sea Silk. I've been wanting to try that stuff for some time, and it really is wonderful. This generous-sized scarf took just one skein. I love the colorway, too. Click on the pic for an up close view, and to tsk tsk at all the debris that blew into the pool during a windstorm the other day. And the weeds that need pulling.

I mentioned the other day that Ruthie was sick. She ended up with pancreatitis. Luckily, the kennel staff caught it early, and she seems to be slowly recovering. At least she's home, which makes everyone happy. The trick now is to get her to eat, and hope her liver functions improve. She had acupuncture and a massage on Thursday, and that helped. But here she is enjoying the best medicine of all: cuddling with Thing 2.

Tuesday Miscellany

Instead of more cruise pictures today, I have several miscellaneous items to share.

Remember that tea I was searching for? Emily in France sent me a different brand in the same delicious flavor, and now Jette has unearthed the original brand. She sent me 3 boxes (along with some other nice goodies, including a lavender sachet from her garden). So I'm set on peche-cassis tea for a little while. Yay! It smells so delicious!

Right before our cruise I took a glass fusing mini workshop with some friends. I received the finished pieces yesterday. I just have to attach some findings to the earrings:

The large blue thing is a suncatcher with a thin pocket for a single flower stem. The red star thing is also a suncatcher. The rectangle with the bumpy dichroic glass is a pendant; the glass matches a pair of earrings I bought a few years ago.

Glass fusing was really, really fun. I intend to learn more soon.

And today is Thing 2's 5th birthday. Here she is modeling some of the princess gear she received. She is definitely princess material.

Back and Blogging

We are tanned and relaxed and now we are returned to sunny California. Other than a health crisis for Ruthie while we were gone (she seems to be recovering now), it was a wonderful vacation. I can definitely recommend Disney cruises. The cabin was very nice, the crew were great, and the entertainment was top-notch. Also, Disney's private island in the Bahamas is beautiful. Nothing beats falling asleep in a gently rocking boat, with the smell of sunscreen and the blissfully silent sounds of conked-out children.

I experienced a moment of perfect bliss one afternoon. We were docked in St. Thomas, and had spent the morning ashore but returned to the ship for the afternoon. The Things were in the kids' clubs, Hubby was off doing something or other, and I was on the top deck with a book and an iced tea. The weather was perfect, warm and a little breezy, and I was watching the sailboats in the harbor. I didn't have to be anywhere or do anything for hours. Perfect.

I may post several pix over the next few days, but here are some of my favorites.

Thing 2 enjoys a chocolate Mickey ice cream bar.
Rainbow at St. Thomas.
Our ship and the Flying Dutchman at Castaway Cay.
Island girl.
Thing 1 and Hubby watching us sail away.