IT IS ALIVE!!!

I always been a fit and spurt journaler and apparently for me at least online journals are the same.  Part of it is the time needed to draft an entry, another piece is that my job has me sitting at a computer for the entire time I'm there, I have a lot of unrelated hobbies but don't want to have to manage more than one space making content a bit spastic, and the final bit is I'd rather be doing than cataloging what I've done.  But as more and more sections of our lives go online I find I want to try again but keep them short, and see how long I can keep it up :)  Consider yourself warned this is a potpourri blog with no continuity of subject.

To keep in line with my new format I'm not going to do a catch-up-all-at-once post instead I'm going for intermittent retrospectives, and today's will be about the biggest change in my life in the last year.  My dogs.

In January of 2012 my mom found out her mini Australian Sheppard was pregnant & three days later these little fur sausages arrived.

Stuff happened and there was drama resulting in me ending up with two of the little monsters instead of one but I think it worked out for the best because Alice & Pepper can keep each other company while I'm at work.  This is what they look like now.

I now know why couples get puppies before they have kids, they get into everything even stuff you don't think they can or will, random acts of destruction are a way of life, you have to keep them entertained all the time, and you have to repeat yourself until you're sick of hearing the words come out of your own mouth before them seem to start to get it.  That all being said they're sweet dogs and great companions.

That's all for now ta ta

Meet the Babies

About 3 weeks ago these lovely little ones came to live with us.

The gray is a girl named Bonnie and the Siamese is a boy named Clyde, they are about 3 1/2 months old, very loving, and super active.  Meaning that they are into EVERYTHING, you can't turn your back on them for a second, it's like having a toddler.  One of their favorite things to do right now is jump up on the kitchen counters, I've taken to carrying a spray bottle around with me to make them get down which works better on Bonnie than it does Clyde.

Getting anything done with them around is quite the undertaking as they need to know what you're doing and get up close and personal with what ever you're working on, so I really haven't gotten much of anything done in the last few weeks.

I have however come out of the experience with a new resolve with regards to adopting kittens, never get just one.  My other two cats I got as kittens singly and years apart, the eldest is super skittish, never played even as a kitten, and runs off and hides at every little sound.  The other who is a couple years old, doesn't really play well with other cats and hisses at every little thing she doesn't like.  Also play is so very important in the kittens development and as someone who works full-time away from home I really can't fill that role.  Even if I didn't it's really not a fair fight.

Resurrecting the Crafty

Spring is approaching and I’m starting feel the reemergence of my crafty self.  The last year and a half was not very conducive to a sense of wellbeing, I was dealing with a death in the family, I’d taken a new position where the reality was completely the opposite of what they’d sold it to me as and I felt trapped and without voice, and finally due to necessary dental and automotive work I have been so broke that going camping was a strain.

As always time eases pain and offers the comfort of fond remembrance, unbearable bosses are replaced with fresh ones who posses empathy and are not statistically and technologically incapable, and there are only so many things you can do to a car or mouth before there’s nothing left but fully functional machinery and enamel.

This emotional spring has brought with it a flurry of crafty project planning and I’m hoping to get things finished and posted up soon, but for now here are my favorite pictures from the crazy snow storm that hit the NW two weeks ago today!

This was the back deck at about the time I was supposed to head into work, it’s a little hard to tell but we already had three inches of snow and there was no sign of it stopping, which it didn’t until we had a little over 6 inches.

This is the hazelnut tree in our neighbor’s pasture, the snow was so heavy it split right down the middle.

I’m not completely sure why but that the snow had piled up perfectly on the rim of this pot fascinated me.

Day two was even crazier this is what it looked like when I got up to try to go to work.  This is a different angle of the deck in the first picture.

We went from having a little over 4 inches (it’s warmed up the day before and we had quite a bit of melt-off)  

to having close to 16, totally abnormal weather for my little section of the Pacific NW.

Shelby looked like she was swimming in milk :P

It's a little late but here's my 2010 Photo Review!

In 2010 I...



crawled through Portland in search of delicious fiber and scrumptious eats.



became a Ravelympian



walked under the Sakura blossoms



spent a VERY cold weekend camping at Beverly Beach



said goodbye to my WONDERFUL Mamaw.



Relayed for life with my team.



Hung out with pretty much the ENTIRE Gardner clan, and welcomed my brother back from his deployment in Afghanistan.



was one of the last people to tour Berry Botanic Gardens before it closed.



Spent a day in the rain in Astoria with good friends.



and made the best haul ever of Woobu at the BMFA Stash Sale.

It was a year full of adventure and fun with friends and family, tempered by great loss.  Mamaw was a person who remained vital and had a great zest for life, she loved to travel, always had a new art or craft project in the works, and was an avid reader.  I fulling intend to take after her.

Kaput!

Well I've been trying to deny it, have switched 2 times, and have done everything I could to avoid it, but I am now forced to,go to the computer repair shop.  There just aren't any other options unless I want to by a computer.

Awhile back my brother let me have his laptop when he upgraded and I come to use it more than my desktop, so when the desktop went kaput it was really easy to put off having it fixed for months and months because I didn't really need it.  I was even less inclined to get it fixed my little bro upgraded again and I got and even newer laptop :D.

Unfortunately a few weeks ago my brilliant strategy of not repairing things started to develop a fatal flaw, the new old laptop starts up fine but will only display gibberish, my brother thinks it's because it got killed by a virus.  Since I was still fully engaged in the whole moving on instead of fixing computing strategy I went back to using the old old laptop.  The strategy was working perfectly until about two weeks ago when all of a sudden for no reason that I can understand the computer decided that there was a program that was too big for it to startup, so now I just get the blue screen of death and it wont even startup in safe mode so I can trouble shoot the issue.

So now I'm having to borrow time on computers just to keep up w/Facebook & Ravelry and I'll be dragging all 3 computers in to the repair place at once which I'm imagining will garner me a few odd looks and possibly a scolding, but oh well.

It's sad when a good strategy falls apart.

Ghettogria!

So one of my friends and her husband just bought their first home, and were having their house warming that was BYOB.  One of my favorite things to take is sangria, but it's so expensive to buy all the fruit for it, so I had this idea to use a fruit smoothie like Odwalla or Naked instead of fresh fruit.

Unfortunately when I looked at the ingredient label I discovered that they use emulsifiers in them and I didn't want that in the gria so I ended up hitting the organic juice section to get what I wanted.  I also picted up a pint of fresh mixed berries so there'd still be a bit of fruit floating about, and a decent bottle of locally produced red wine.


Now for the mixing!  When I got home I put all the ingredients together and this is what I had.



From the Left: Santa Cruz Berry Nectar, Cayalla 2005, from the Edgefield Distillery Brandy, Pear Brandy, and Longshot Brandy, and down in front a pint of mixed berries.

I used 2 c. of the juice, all the wine, a 1/2 c. of all three brandies mixed together in fairly close to equal parts, and the whole container of berries sliced up.  Mix it all up taste it to see if it needs more juice or brandy, let it sit in the fridge overnight to mellow out, and Voila you have nice strong sangria that only cost you about $6 in fruit & juice instead of closer to $30 (yes I have spent that much before and it was some darn fine gria).

Leap into Insanity

Well it's been quite awhile since I last posted anything, I just wasn't in a real creative mood; but now one of my favorite seasons is in full swing and so likewise I too should get back into the swing of things.

So I'm kicking it off by digging out the baby blanket I was supposed to have done in September, I'm calling it the Quilt of Insanity because it's slowly eating away at mine.  The fault lies with me though the pattern New Traditions Baby Blanket is clearly written, it's just very repetitious and I have attention issues.  This is where I am right now.



I decided to knit all the squares for each design at the same time, which while more efficient because I only have o carry one or two balls of yarn with me, and after the first square or so I no longer have to think about what I'm doing.  It also means that I'm doing the exact same thing 4 or 8 times per square times 6 all at once, this has the rather off effect of making it seem like you're not making much progress even though you've been knitting quite diligently.

But I've had a nice break from it now and as the mother of the intended recipient will be back at work in a couple more months it's time to pick it back up and finish, hopefully.