kitty cam

My best friend Jodi got me a kitty cam for christmas. (Plus a spa bundle!) I did a trial run today to see if it works, for about 3 hours. I had it set to take a picture every fifteen minutes and these are the results.

Blurry view of something.

my closet (she was on my bed pretty much the whole time)
my curtains


closet?
her own bum?
Not sure

clear view of my clock

My room door

Pretty nice, huh? HA! I am going to charge it up and put it on her before bed. :)

Thanks Jodi!
Next step- try it on kids! HA!

Anne

gifts

I can't believe it- I didn't take any close up pics of Sen's doll. No one guessed what it was anyways, so that is okay. Basically it is a doll with two heads- one is tucked under the skirt, which you can flip over to expose the other doll. It is kinda creepy looking, but that was okay cuz Loy likes stuff a bit "off".

This is Sen's name frame. I made it for her because she shares a room with her brother- and it is basically decorated in hunting/hockey/toy explosion. I wanted a bit of girly in there for her.
The letters are sparkle glitter chipboard. I liked it so much I purchased a pile of chipboard letters and might make them for all the niblings birthday gifts. What kid doesn't like their own name? Julie loved it and made one for her sister. Hers came out really elegant- I would love a picture if you took one Julie!

Have a great week,
Anne

gift card holder

Loy called me yesterday and said she needed three gift card holders by today. I remembered I had seen a cute tutorial that make holders that looked like purses, and they were for girls, so I figured it would work. I did have to modify the tutorial tho- it was much wider, to hold up to four cards, and I only wanted to hold one, so I did it only 1/4 inch wide. Very easy to make, and could be fancied up if you had more warning and didn't have a sinus infection. :)

Mom thought Loy should actually pay for these, but, of course, she never does! HA!

The gift card tucks into the holder like so.

Open with no card. I used velcro dots on the back of the ornament to hold it closed.
Two had patterned paper inside.

Click here to see the site I got this from.

Have a great week,

Anne

Book of the Month and also DVD

The book of the month is:

mennonite in a little black dress
by Rhoda Janzen

I just liked this book. I enjoy books about peoples' lives, especially their upbringing, and especially when they were raised in a cultish church. Rhoda has left home, left the church, married a bipolar man who eventually leaves her for Bob, whom he met on gay.com. Nope, these are not spoilers, the info is given right up front. So she goes home for a while- back to her parents. I enjoyed reading about their relationship, the memories of her childhood, and about how her siblings all grew up to be such different people from each other.

DVD of the month:

Letting Go of God
by Julia Sweeney

I actually saw this on (free for 3 months) Showtime, but when I looked up her name on the lib website, it is available on DVD. Julia was raised Catholic (see, fitting all my likes as written above!) and she talks a lot about her childhood and her drawing away from the church. She had a lot of the same questions I have had, so I really enjoyed watching. Plus she is funny.

One story that I liked was after she was taking a Bible study at her church, which raised a lot of questions. (Like me, she was raised in a church were actually reading the Bible wasn't encouraged.) She asked her mom what she did about the things in the Bible that didn't make sense and her mom said "oh, I just don't think about those things." I laughed and laughed, mostly because it rang so true to so many people I have known....

Have a great week,
Anne

Mom's double knit hat

Julie wanted to see the process for double knit hats, so I took some pics as I did Mom's. I pry should take them as I do Julie's too, her colors have greater contrast and might show up better. :)

First you crochet a long chain, then cast on the stitches using the chain as a base. This is so you can pick them out later and use them as "live" stitches for the inside layer. You do 3 rows of the inside color, then 3 rows outside, then undo the chain to get the starting stitches, fold it inside of the other live stitches, and stitch a row that puts both layers on one needle. (this is the point where I ended up twisted on Julie's hat- took an hour and a half to get to that point, had to rip it all out, so I am taking a break and blogging instead of knitting!)

Edited to add: I did finally (after 3 tries) get Julie's hat started so the first pictures are of her hat.

This is picking up the gray stitches from the red crochet chain.

Finished picking up stitches.

After finishing 3 rows of gray (inside) and 3 rows of white (outside), ready to take the red crochet off and free the other end of the gray stitches so I can fold it up to join the white on the needles.

Close up of rows.

Undoing the red crochet and collecting the gray stitches.

All stitches off of crochet chain, still on separate needles:

close up of working with FOUR needles at a time to join on one set of needles.
The arrow shows where the two layers are on one needle. The dark is the outside layer, the light is the inside layer.
Now half the stitches are joined on one needle. I flipped the layer so you can see the inside is all solid light blue.

When the stitches are all on one needle, you knit the front layer stitch, then purl the back layer stitch. You hold both colors of yarn together, and follow a chart to work the pattern.

Close up view:
After one repeat. The dark blue majority is the outside layer, the light is the inside, I flipped it so you could see.

After you get to the end of the chart, you need to divide the layers again so you can decrease them quickly and tie off the hat. So as you knit the outside layer, you slip the inside layer to a separate set of needles, tucking them inside the hat.

All the inside layer stitches, getting tucked inside so I can close the outside layer.

After the outside layer is done, flipped inside out, ready to finish the inside layer. The center is all dark blue because it is the underside of the outside layer and is finished.
Finished decreasing, ready to tie off inside layer.

Hopes this helps explain the process. Basically, you are knitting two hats, that are joined at the very bottom edge, at the same time. Makes following the chart a bit difficult.

Note: I do NOT go back and look for mistakes in the finished hats. HA!

Have a good week,

Anne

Dr. Phil

I was thinking maybe I should use this blog to vent about things. Barely anyone reads it anyways, so why not amuse myself? HA!

I watch Dr. Phil about every day, even tho I usually end up crabby about something. Here are my top three complaints about his show.

1. There are MORE commercials, or at least they play more often. Plus he says "After the break, we will have..." and whatever it is is NOT after the break but usually a half hour later. So if you don't switch channels cuz you want to see it, you end up wasting a bunch of time.

2. He never actually tells anyone anything. He says he is going to "put verbs in his sentences" (after the break!) but never actually does.

3. (This is today's complaint.) He NEVER asks the questions I want the answer to. Usually I am hollering "where is the baby's father???" or something, and he never ever addresses that point. Today he was doing frivolous lawsuits, a topic I usually enjoy. He wanted to know how well breathalyzers work, so he had someone (actually, a lawyer) swill alcohol based mouthwash and then do the test. It was like five times the limit. Then a lady sprayed breathe spray, and was way over the limit. BUT he never went back and tested them 5 or 10 minutes later. If you are swilling mouthwash as you drive, you deserve to be pulled over. And the only reason I know of for you to be spraying breathe spray as you get pulled over is... you have been drinking and want to cover it up. What if you do the mouthwash at home, get pulled over ten minutes later?? Do you come up drunk?
HUH???? This is the info that would actually help. :)

Those are my Dr. Phil complaints. :)

Have a great week,
Anne

wrong side of the fence

Yesterday Mom, Dad and I were babysitting Ethie and Greggie. Ethie is no problem, make a paper doll, do some stamping, otherwise he can entertain himself. Greggie, however, is a bit... wild. When his father Andrew was a kid, the most common thing heard in our house was "Where's Andrew?" and now it is "Where's Geggie??" He is into everything, with eat anything he can find on the floor, plus he is allergic to a million things, so you have to have someone with him at all times. For most of the day, we let him go where he wanted and just had someone with him. After many hours tho, we get weak. Then we start blocking stuff so he is stuck on the main level.

Greggie also loves throwing stuff over the fence overlooking the basement, so Dad has to get out his reacher/grabber tool and pull things (like Greggie's pacifier and socks) out from behind the computer desk. He let Ethie try it last night and they were picking up all the toys with it and putting them away in the basement. Greggie was standing at the fence, watching them, trying to jam a leg thru the posts as if that would help him get down there to be with them. He has been standing at that fence many times in his life, watching others doing stuff downstairs, and I got a little sad watching him.

I commented to Mom that Greggie was often "on the wrong side of the fence" cuz there are so many things he can't do because of his multiple illnesses. Mom looked at me, kinda surprised, and said that must be why Greggie and I love each other so much- I am always on the wrong side of the fence- watching people do things I can't (like go outside! eat mint ice cream cake!) just like him.

I had never thought of that before. I am on the wrong side of the fence pretty often. Being sad for Greggie means being sad for myself too.

Have a good week,
Anne

Barb's card

Just to prove my point, I used two paper dolls today. I did a pirate one for my Halloween scrapbook, and a nurse for a birthday card for my cousin Barb. She is a nurse, and I gave her cute print scrubs. I did a tiny bit of die cut piecing, making the cross on the hat red and doing a paper/clipboard layer also.

Have a good weekend,
Anne

paperdolls

The niblings had a long session in the beadroom making paperdolls Sunday, and I wanted to share Moo's. I think you could use these to make fabulous cards, or to enhance scrapbooks- especially since I have so many choices for costumes!

This is the Princess Fairy. By Moo.



I have some other stuff to post that has to wait until after Christmas. Only one guess on my contest- and it was wrong- so I am trying again:

This is a project I am making for a xmas gift. Be the first one to guess what it is and win a prize! Just comment with your guess.
Good luck with your guesses!

Have a good week!
Here's hoping my head quits hurting and my eyes quit spinning-
Anne

book of the month

I read a book lately I really enjoyed. (I also liked Quiverfull, but perhaps not enough to recommend it, lol.)

Dating Jesus : a story of fundamentalism, feminism, and the American girl / by Susan Campbell.

This tells the story of growing up female in a fundamentalist christian church. The church mirrors the one I grew up attending in many ways, and Susan had many of the same struggles- especially with the fact that women are second class citizens in bible-based churches. If you get tired of her life, I highly recommend the last two chapters.

Have a great week,
Anne

card class

Jodi took me to a xmas card class for my birthday. We had a blast, even tho the lady tried to control us and make us sit at separate tables. Pretty sure it was less than five minutes before I was sitting next to Jodi, and we did the cards together. She also told us to "stamp only" and "not assemble" cuz she was worried that we wouldn't be out of the room by 9:30. (She also showed this by holding up random cards and checking if everyone had made that card so she could put the supplies away. Kinda irritating.) We assembled anyways and finished all our cards by 8 pm, so there lady! :)

The cards were nice, but some of the paper was cut too short. (Some was too long, but I just trimmed those off when I got home. You can't fix too short!) Plus, some of the paper she used were really poor choices for card design. Some pieces we were supposed to use had random cut off words, or not any complete designs, just cut off bits of some swirl. So some of the papers I DID NOT use on the cards, I just dumped them. Overall tho, the cards were nice designs.

Julie asked to see some, so here you go:


This one I liked. It is more "winter" theme, so I can use if for birthdays or something besides xmas. (I already have all the paper cut for mine and Mother's cards, so I am not using these for that.)
I did have to pull it out of the scanner to see what was at the top- apparently I got an extra pearl up there somehow. (I also shot one down my shirt trying to use the tweezers she gave with the pearl sheet, and resorted to fingers after that.)

I just thought this one was cheery.
Actually loved this card. It is strangely reminiscent of the cards I am making for myself...

This was my fave. Loved the snowflake/whatever the design is.

This was an example of badly cut paper. See the arrows to see how short it was- we just ended up centering the piece. Also, the ornament paper got a bit boring after the billionth (felt like) time we had to use it...

Overall, good fun, nice cards. Of course I did list my concerns on the evaluation sheet she forced us to fill out. :) We did 50 cards, 2 of each design. I have divided them up into "winter" and "christmas" so I can use the winter ones anytime all winter.

If anyone needs a couple christmas cards and likes these samples, come on over and see the rest!

Have a good night,

Anne

feeling ugly

So, I made myself what I thought was the coolest hat in the world. I worked hard, even did a bunch of hand sewing, which I hate, and was very pleased with the finished project. Until I tried it on and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. My face is just too fat. The hat is too fitted and just is too pretty for my face. Have you ever felt too ugly to wear something?

If I hadn't looked in the mirror, I could have went on quite happily and wore it daily. Big mistake, one that I usually avoid by never looking in the mirror!
Sigh.

I still think the hat is pretty tho....

Here is a close up of the fringe.
Here is a close up of the pattern on the top.


(Please don't email me and say I am not ugly. I am fat. It is true. In America, fat=ugly. Open any magazine, turn on the tv.)

FUN NEW GAME:

This is a project I am making for a xmas gift. Be the first one to guess what it is and win a prize! Just comment with your guess. Note: I will NOT announce the winner if there is one, cuz I don't want the intended recipient or their family to know what it is. :)

Good luck with your guesses!

Have a good week!

Anne

"new" math

I have been discussing the "new" math with Jodi for a while. We both are totally math-brained, but don't understand why the normal way to do math is banned.

Last night between trick or treaters, I had my nieces explain some of it to me. We did double digit multiplication. They showed me one way where you draw a box, put the numbers on adjacent edges, draw diagonal lines, then multiply the individual digits, write the answers in the correct half-box, then add them up on the diagonal. They did get the right answer, but when I did the same problem the normal way, it took me about as long as it took them to draw the diagram. The second way involves setting it up like a normal problem, but then only multiplying individual digits, adding varying numbers of zeros, and giving each their own line. You end up with four lines of numbers to add.

I understood their ways, but they completely were lost at mine. I think if you are going to teach multiple methods, why can't you teach the normal way too?

So, if you come across any notes with cryptic diagrams, they may not be secret spy notes but just some kid's homework.

Catching up:

Here is the hard project I have been working on. It is a double knit hat for Ethie. Basically you knit the inside fabric and the outside fabric at the same time, using two colors of yarn, reversing the pattern from side to side. It is designed to be worn either way out, with the bottom folded up to the reverse.

I took a picture during the beginning when you fold the fabric in half to form the two sides. (It was on my phone, sorry.)

Here is the finished product- I thought I had close-up pics but can't find any.
This is the 2nd hat I made Senj, with the super expensive ribbon yarn. Pretty cool, and I got a deal on the yarn so I can make a bigger one when she grows more.

Here is the finished UPS costume. Can't see the badge, but you can see the box with the "official" mailing labels I made for O!

Have a great week,

Anne