Tina made me this awesome gorgeous jewelry case several months ago.  I thought I had pictures of the whole thing up on the blog somewhere, but I can’t find them now.  At the time, I was wearing (and making) truckloads of beaded necklaces & earring, but I wasn’t wearing very many rings.  My fingers were a little too large at the time to wear the rings I had, and I wasn’t ambitous enough to make my own!  But now… since we took that silversmithing class together, Tina’s been going gangbusters at making these awesome silver rings.  In theory, we’re going to start selling all the crafty stuff we each do, but we’re not there yet.  So for the time being, I am adopting all of her “practice” pieces.  LUCKY ME! 

I had been keeping rings in a special box that sits at the bottom of this jewelry case, but I was losing track of everything I had, and it was getting full!  So I requested a brilliant storage method for storing rings where I could see them alll.  I didn’t think I’d get a modification to my jewelry case, but I did!  She added in two of these sections to hold rings in, so now I can see everything I have, and I can wear a few fancy silver rings every day!  I made a couple of the rings you see in this picture, but most of those are Tina’s handiwork.  Nice, huh?!  Soooo cool.

As Aunt Jane has pointed out, I’ve been a big slacker blogger again!  What have I been up to?  Work.  And then some work, then a bit more work.  Whew!

I’ve been doing some more loom knitting, and need to take some pics of stuff.  I made a shawl out of this cool fuzzy blue yarn – if I wore shawls, it would be super awesome and useful!  I might need to update my wardrobe.  Now I’m working on a scarf that I found a free pattern for in Michael’s, and then converted to the loom.  I ended up taking it off and restarting it no fewer than 6 times, but now it’s going strong!  Woo!  I tried just following the instructions and translating those to the loom, but I kept confusing myself.  So… I put it in an Excel spreadsheet.  And then, I applied conditional formatting to color code the different stitches, so I could get a good view of how the pattern looked.  Technology and tradition, working together!!  That’s cooperation!!  (Yea, really no need for anyone to point out what a dork I am…)

I also upgraded my blogging software and changed my theme!  I’ve been needing to upgrade for oh, say, a couple of years now, but I was scared!  I thought it would be too hard to figure out!  Turned out, it was a click of a button.  So then I got all brave and crazy and changed the theme.  I feel all techy-geeky-smart now.

I made this!  I got to attend my second craft day at a friend’s house on Sunday.  This particular friend runs a fabulous online bead shop out of her house!  The problem with going to craft day at her house is that I tend to spend money on beads when I go there.  The bigger beads in this picture came from her – she had all these great shapes of mother of pearl beads, in all kinds of colors.  I wore this today with a brown dress.  The necklace is actually crazy long, but I doubled it up and made it more like 2 strands.  I picked up some new pretty beads on Sunday, along with some more gemstone cabochons for Tina to make silver stuff with.  I need to post some pics of the awesome jewelry she’s been making!  She took what we learned in our silversmithing class and is expanding on it at home!!

In other notes, today was a big day!!  I got to have dinner with Randy & Rhiannon on their way home from Denver, which was lots of fun!!!  Cliff from Grandma’s church called me, and I will be singing Offertory at her church on Sunday!  AND… Tina won her 2nd golf club championship of this season!  One from Highland Hills, and one from Boomerang Links.  Congratulations!!

Evans (the much more dog-friendly neighbor of Greeley) got a new fun dog park!  AND it’s way closer to our house than Greeley’s only dog park, and it’s way nicer.  It has two big grassy yards (with trees!) for big dogs – they are keeping one of them open at a time so that they can keep the grass nice.  It also has a big grassy yard (also with trees!) for small and timid dogs.  AND it has an agility course for dogs! 

Here are some more pictures of the pooches enjoying themselves.  Tillie, not surprisingly, took right to most of the agility toys.  She’s not crazy about the teeter-totter thing, though.  And we haven’t figured out how to teach her to do those weave-in-and-out-of-the-poles yet.  But she is smart and agile!!  Treats help, too.  Grover was totally unimpressed with the toys – we tried to get him on a couple (and by trying, I mean we picked him up and put him on them), and he scrunched down and held on as tight as his little schnauzer paws would let him.  But he was very happy just running around and sniffing all the smells. 

We took them into the small/timid yard after doing the agility stuff, and they got to smell more stuff and run around some more.  They played well with a couple of funny little corgies and an adorable little terrier mix girl. 

After they were completely worn out, we left the play yards and let them get a drink from the drinking fountain.  Oh yes, they have a doggy drinking fountain!!  Can you imagine anything more awesome???

OK.  Before we all get too impressed with what smart and clever dogs I have… I just watched Tillie TEARING across the room, with speed she normally reserves for chasing tennis balls at the park, or chasing the cat across the room.  What could have driven her to such speed, you ask?  Probably the cat.  At least that was my guess, especially when I saw a blur of light color running along with her.  But no.  Not the cat.  My smart little dog managed to get my library book bag (freshly full of new library books!) to hang around her neck, which scared her into running away from it, but the bag around her neck was just too fast to get away from!!! 

Dork.

What I learned from the online harassment prevention training at work (yea, it’s a rare work-related post):

• “Just because you’d say it or do it at home, doesn’t mean you can say it or do it at work.”  Well, yea.  They expect me to work at work.  Plus there’s no TV or recliners there.
• “When in doubt, before you say or do something just ask yourself, ‘What would my mother think?’”  Well… my poor mother probably realizes I’m far more obnoxious around her than I am at work, so I think I’m safe.
• “But your workplace isn’t TV or CDs or movies.”  Um… obviously.  If it were we’d all be much thinner and richer and better-looking.

More stuff I made!

I would tell you that this is my first attempt at tatting, but that would be a lie.  This is probably attempt number 23 at tatting, after tossing 22 other attempts before I could figure it out.  Thank goodness for YouTube videos and books and the internet.  It took me forever to figure out how to get my stitch to “move”.  Once I did, then I figured out how to make a circle and make picots and join things together.  Now I have lots more to figure out.  It will be a LONG time before this girl ever makes one of those gorgeous tatted angels for anyone’s Christmas tree.  But for now, I have this lovely 1.5 inch diameter doily.  I’m nothing if not practical.

I just read a great book, Twinkie, Deconstructed (My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats), by Steve Ettinger.  I found it by searching my library’s index for Wyoming.  It’s all about the ingredient list on a Twinkie, and what goes into making all of those ingredients. 

I liked this book a lot better than some of the books I’ve read about the “shocking and horrible” things that go on in the food industry.  I tried reading Fast Food Nation once, and it really just annoyed me.  Some of the things that book described as shocking and horrible just really aren’t.  I’m supposed to be offended and hurt and shocked by the fact that fast food restaurants employ high school students and don’t offer good pay or benefits??  Please.  (That part of the book actually talked about the high school where Tina went to school – at least that was interesting.)

The Twinkie book was interesting and informative, but also humorous and fun.  I mean, let’s face facts.  I’m not going to cut processed foods out of my diet anytime soon (I’m not a big fan of Twinkies, but I love those Swiss Cake Rolls!).  It was fun to find out just what goes into making those processed foods.  And equally fun to find out that even when I bake something “from scratch” at home, there’s still boatloads of chemicals that go into that!  I’m not much of a science person, but it’s just fascinating to read about how they can take all these chemicals that are INCREDIBLY dangerous in minute quantities on their own, mix them all up with some other stuff, and come out with something like flour or artificial flavor or food coloring!  And the author didn’t write it from a perspective meant to get us all flipped out and scared – more from a perspective of “Wow, that is interesting!!  I had no idea!”  Did you know there’s only one actual preservative in Twinkies?? 

The coolest thing about the book?  There is a whole chapter pretty much dedicated to FMC Wyoming!!  That was the chapter all about baking soda (surprise).  In fact, here is an excerpt.  It was awesome to read about a place I’ve been, where I’ve worked (although it didn’t mention my powerhouse), and where my family members have worked for years.  Thanks, Dad and Papa for doing your part to nourish my need for junk food.  (And glass and detergent and homebaked food and cat litter and all the other awesome things you do!)

I made these!

OK, they are not super impressive.  But – I made them!  It was really sort of an experiment with my fun new Knifty Knitters to see what different stitches and techniques and stuff looked like, so I could try to figure out what I’m doing before I try out a “real” project.  (Hope everyone likes washcloths, since that’s pretty much what I know how to make so far!)  I have some other stuff made too (hats and a scarf), but I need a model so I can take some pics of them.  I still think I should learn “real” knitting someday, but it just seems so complicated! 

Oh, I also made some legwarmers.  (Feel free to insert snarky laughter here.)  I got the set of looms just before the Snowmass trip this year, and was trying to learn how to do stuff during that trip.  Well, the first night we were there, the house was COLD!  Like in the 50s.  Even at night during one of the coolest summers ever, it seemed warmer outside than in!  And I really hadn’t brought any cool weather (or cool house!) clothes.  I know, it’s the mountains, in Colorado, and you should always pack for every possible temperature.  But I didn’t.  So I’m sitting there with my knitting looms and my library books about loom knitting and my yarn, and I thought, “Some warm socks would be so awesome right now.”  But socks seemed way too hard.  And the books had patterns for legwarmers (easy, since you’re knitting in a circle anyway).  So I decided to make some legwarmers, with the full intention not to wear them ever in front of people.  Now they’re in a drawer under my bed.  We’ll just call it good practice.

We went to the county fair over the weekend! 

Our county fair is kinda small and quiet and relaxed, especially after the big spectacle of the Stampede – no carnival or concerts or craziness.  A LOT of 4-H stuff though.  But I like to go and check out some of the animals and the crafty stuff.  At the county fair a couple of years ago, I fell totally in love with the pygmy goats, and have wanted one as a pet ever since!  They are ridiculously cute and adorable.  And I think it would be fun for Tillie to have an actual livestock animal (other than Grover and Dog) to herd.  So far, I don’t have one.  But it’s on my list of stuff I seriously need.  This year, I didn’t see ANY pygmies!  It was a bummer.  But the big goats were still super entertaining.  They were funny – we saw so many of them stealing food from their neighbors, begging me to come play with them, and one was even trying to escape – he had his mouth around the door latch, and I seriously think he was going to figure it out.  One poor guy had an itchy head, and was rubbing his head on his enclosure, the way Dog rubs her head on walls. 

We looked at all the domestic arts stuff next – pictures, baked goods, veggies, quilts, all kinds of stuff.  Some of my favorites – Cookie Monster cupcakes, a quilt that looks like a doll house, a quilt with crooked seams (I wasn’t being judgmental, I swear – I was just glad to see some imperfections – makes me feel better about my own projects!), and hand spun yarn.  After we got home, I checked out the rules for entering the fair – there are approximately 5 kazillion different categories in my age class, so I totally think I should enter something next year.  Maybe I could get a ribbon!  Some of the 5 kazillion categories did not appear to be very well-represented – if I pick one of those, and I’m the only entry, then I could totally get a ribbon!  Yes, I am completely okay competing only against myself.  How else will I win?!

I don’t know how the 4-H animal kids do it.  I am a big huge crybaby, and would never be able to raise a baby animal and then sell it, for food or otherwise. 

The loser standing small…

And the loser is me! 

I usually stay pretty even at card games – win some, lose some.  Depends on the game of course, but I do okay.  And I always always always win at Trivial Pursuit.  If I lose at that, it’s because someone is cheating - I won’t mention names, but sometimes people with the initials T.G. are big cheaterheads who “take liberties” with their rolls.

Lately, I am LOSING everything!  I lost at least 4 games in a row of Trivial Pursuit (not counting the games that are customized for the newly 5 year old Maddie – when she’s on my team, I usually win).  And I don’t think any cheating was involved!  Tonight, I got completely destroyed at Nerts.  AND, my performance on Jeopardy (yes, from my sofa) has been really slow and pathetic lately!  How am I ever going to exchange witty repartee with Alex Trebek if my brain is too slow to answer any questions??  So the question is, where has my brain gone, and when do I get it back? 

I found out this week that I am kinda anemic, so I have to start taking an iron supplement.  I did a little research (at least I remember how to use Google), and found that anemia can go along with things like RA, and can cause fatigue, weakness, lightheadedness, along with more stuff.  I’m blaming the missing brain function on the anemia and the lessened oxygen flow to my brain.  That’s my story anyway.  I’m competitive enough at games that I’m totally ok with blaming my poor performance on faulty body chemistry.