hand eye crafts

Today would have been my husband's 70th birthday.  It's not clear which is harder to comprehend: that he'd be that age, or that he's been gone 20 years. "70" now isn't the "70" of when I was growing up, I know.  Still, that number just doesn't fit him. We miss him every day.  We talk about him, we laugh about him, we wonder what he'd be like now. We miss him every day.

Grant Hill has The Cutest Ears Ever. Marcus Mariota is A Close Second. Yes, I am a grown woman talking about the ears of two other adults. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kathy had some more  Monday questions  today.  A couple of them appealed to me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Have you knit with gradient yarn? Yup.  I'd never thought about the non-issue of weaving ends in, which Kathy brought up.  My eyes are almost always drawn to variegateds and gradients.  I'm not sure why, honestly.  I do find gradient yarns work fantastically well with welted patterns. Do you allow your cats on the table? I assume she means the kitchen table.  They've never shown any interest in getting up there, actually.  Dear, departed Lily never cared until there was 1) a jigsaw puzzle, or 2) blocked knits there. Yeah, she was pretty full of attitude.  I miss her and the sound of her collar bell. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ It turns out rice pudding does not freeze well. ...

Yesterday would have been my mother's 89th birthday.  She did not like, she did not approve of, in fact, she loathed boycotts, protests, walkouts.  Once, students at my middle school were going to protest something that involved the cafeteria.  (I do not remember this at all, but she told this story on a number  of occasions.)  Her message to me was, "If I find out that you ever did anything like that. . ."  Yes, she ended with that ominous mother trail-off. Still, I could not not  spend yesterday with the March For Our Lives.  Several hundred people --- lots of whom were high school, middle school, and elementary school students --- gathered at the UGA Arch to say that we cannot go on like this any longer. As a mother, I have taken my children to school in the days after school shootings elsewhere and watched them walk away with a lump in my throat, and a knot in my stomach. As a teacher, I have walked into a classroom on th...

The magnetic notepad on the refrigerator, where I write down things to get at the grocery store as I think of them, there are two items: Drano and cream cheese.  Judge me as you will. Hannah's kitten, featured in photos a couple of posts ago, is still nameless.  She maintains that "He will tell me what he should be named."  They've had him for several weeks.  Obviously, he isn't speaking yet. A friend of mine asked me to post pictures of my cowboy boots on Facebook as I wore them.  Sometimes, I try to get arty: I don't know if there are marches tomorrow where you are.  There are two near me;  I can take my choice.  We have got to make things change.

On my phone, there are lots of word games.  Daily, I play " 7 Little Words " and " Monkey Wrench . "  I used to play "Word Wall" and "Red Herring," but went through both of them.  On a curious whim (I was curious, and followed that curiosity, the whim itself was not curious) last week, I checked out  Covet Fashion .   This game has swallowed me whole. I can't stop. And, when you're putting together an outfit, the thought that goes through your head is, "Let me pick out some glasses to go with this."  The reality is, "I spent two hours   picking.  out.  a.  pair.  of.  glasses? "   There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of garments, shoes, glasses, accessories, socks/hosiery, swimwear from which to choose.  Honestly, it never would have occurred to me that I would give in to something like this, and I'm not sure what made me check the game out in the first place, but he...

A few days back,  Kathy  asked on her blog with whom we might like to knit.  Knitters' Hunk and Knitters' Chick may scratch part of that itch, but I'm sure she meant co-knitters closer to home, both literally and figuratively.  I suspect all of you would make for good company, so it would be difficult to choose from among you, though  Twinnie  would be certainly be way up there on a list.  Kathy and I were almost  headed for a knitting meet-up, as I was going to make a one day trip to Chicago and she offered to be a tour guide.  I came close to knitting with  Bridget  when I stopped in to visit her (and Dug the Doodle Dog!) at her LYS when I was in Philadelphia.  There's something extra-special about doing something you love with people you like, isn't there? Bridget answered some interesting questions on her blog the other day, and I thought I'd give them a whirl.  They're from  The Department of Nance . 1....

I have several topics to cover, which is so highly unusual for me --- generally there has to be an intense fishing expedition for blog material. Firstly, a belated birthday present from the Always Glorious Camille: Outlander stitch markers!  And, as if that weren't enough, a second set --- a clue to which you can see there on the right. Dr.  Who!  They were all made by an artisan in Australia, whose etsy shop is  here .  She has amazing things;  the Harry Potter markers are as wonderful as these. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hannah, Briton and I met for late lunch/early dinner yesterday.  On the subject of birthdays, the two things I asked for this year were a cake and a picture of the three of us together.  I didn't get either.  I was determined to at least get a photo yesterday, but Hannah was unhappy with how she looked (it was at the end of her Starbucks shift) and shut the thing down. The two of t...

Heel-less, tube-y socks finished.  I'm very glad Second Sock Syndrome has never been an issue for me.  As bored as I was with the first sock, finally finishing the second wasn't hard.  It just needed to be over. It's Spring Break week here, as evidenced by the virtually empty parking lot I found when I went to pick Hannah up the other night: The headaches have kept me homebound for most of the week, so I can't speak for traffic in general, but this looks like an Athens parking lot late on a Sunday night, not dinner time mid-week. Reading, knitting, napping --- those are the elements of my life just now.  I hope all is well with you and in your world.

For the last two days, I've been in bed with a headache that defies my describing it.  If you look at the "Types of Headaches" charts online, it would be a Cluster Sinus Tension Migraine.  I'm almost beyond trying to explain these things anymore;  just know that if I say I have a "headache," it's a HEADACHE. How staying in bed for two days can leave one completely wrung-out is my chief question today.  I'm just exhausted.  So, it's been a careful and quiet day, punctuated by  Twinnie  tea and time with Rupert this afternoon. (Yes, Twinnie --- blended in your honor.)

A couple of days ago, I went to Bojangles for some biscuits and sweet potato pies.  The sweet potato pies (and, frankly, the macaroni and cheese) are the actual reason I go to Bojangles.  Plausible deniability, however, requires that I get some chicken, or something else, too.  Hence, the country ham biscuit for me and the sausage biscuit for Rupert. At any rate, when I got home with my order, there was but one sweet potato pie in the sack, when I had ordered two.  (Go ahead, you can judge me.  I get it.)  There was a little confusion about my order when I made it, so I put the one-pie-instead-of-two down to a simple drive-thru speaker misunderstanding. And I didn't think any more about it. Today, I went to the grocery store, and put my bags in the passenger seat for the ride home.  Guess what I saw when I opened the passenger side door. I'm not too proud nor vain to admit that I'm wondering whether that little sucker is still edible.

Well, if you're a bit sensitive, you might want to turn away now. One of my choices to try from  Chew y was Fussie Cat dry food: Since Madeleine is on a restricted diet, only Erin and Riley tried this.  And one, or both, of them developed --- how should I put this --- lower intestinal tract issues.  I don't know which it was (or, again, if it was both) because everyone has free access to every litter box.  Still, things were messy. I believe this is the first product for the cats that I've had to truly negatively rate.  Sorry, Chewy. As a Chewy Influencer, I am allowed to choose products to test --- for free --- each month.  There is no financial transaction of any kind.

. . . You know how socks sound like a good idea, and you're enjoying the small yarn and small needles, and then all of a sudden you are BORED? That.

No, I haven't heard from Hannah again since her sloth adventure.  She'll be back Sunday, so there should be a full de-brief next week.   Twinnie , I will be sure to post any other photos that there are.  On the subject of Dear Twinster, it has long been well-known that she received all the Cable Talent in the family.  If you have ever visited her blog and looked at her work, cables are a running (!) theme.  I tend to flip right past patterns with cables, while she'll stop and deeply consider them.  That said, here's the sweater my cousin sent me;  I'm binding off the back shoulders: First of all, it's a dark navy with bright red ribbing, not purple and pink.  Second, notice that there's cabling, and that I'm carrying it on.  It's a nice design, actually.  The marker on the right side is where I started;  I'm going to mark it somehow so the girls will know how far their mother's work went.  I wasn't sent any of the...

"I've reached the peak of my life and everything else that happens means nothing."