My "No Skills Necessary" Medusa Scarf

In true bizarre Texas fashion, yesterday we had snow and sleet, and tomorrow's high is a projected 76!

While the snow came down I watched NY Ink and simply crocheted a simple chain using the majority of an extra ball of Wool-Ease. I slip-stiched it together and wrapped it up to form my new Medusa scarf that I think is nice and warm & playful! Today I wore it to school with a black long sleeved cardigan and a khaki ribbon tank I got at Ann Taylor last spring. Again, no skills necessary.

Winding Down

In one day, the busiest year of my life will have wound down just in time for the holidays. One day because I still have to get through a Winter Concert before I officially go into chill mode! :) 

I've been a busy crafting bee for a month or so; I just haven't had the time for documentation. The scarf to the left I made just in time for our trip to Seattle. It's super warm,  (more importantly) super easy scarf that I found the pattern online at Gardener's Rambling Blog. It's called the Ashlea Scarf, and it was seriously one of the fastest scarves I've ever made. 

The scarf above I finished last week. I put 2 pictures of it because you can see the sparkle yarn in the first and the detail in second. I actually made up my own pattern for this one. :) You totally can't tell based on the pictures, but the black sparkle scarf is about the same width as the one that is below. 

This is a scarf I'm currently working on. It's a skinny scarf only about 4 inches wide, if that much. I'm using a really light weight bamboo yarn that feels almost silky. Technically I started this scarf like 2 months ago, but maybe with the holiday break coming up I'll actually finish it. Again, this is a crazy easy pattern that I found at here.

Hopefully the upcoming break will provide me with some sleep catch up, late mornings, lots of coffee, ice skating (maybe!!!),  and crappy daytime tv with family and yarn. :) 

Anger is a gateway drug to scarves.

my new baby Olympiad rose bush

It's been a busy few days. This whole year has been  a period of discovering things about our legal and social climate that I think most Americans would be sad to know is true.

The process of phone calls actually began about a week ago, and I don't foresee the end anytime soon. I'm locked out of a lot of our accounts because I was not listed as the primary account holder... even though my name IS on the account. Even things that common sense should guide, like my husband not needing health insurance, are being held up in a sea of paperwork that I need a probate lawyer before handling. 

I actually cussed out loud at Roger yesterday. Anyone who has been around me for any length of time knows that I have a well-honed sailor's vocabulary  that has matured and gained ever-increasing freedom over the past 7 or 8 years. Whether or not Roger was out there listening to me use new and exciting combinations of words as I got off the phone with our bank, someone got an earful yesterday around noon, even if it was just the doglets. 

In between finding new people, organizations, and institutions toward which I can now harbor great hatred, I did manage to crochet a new scarf!  I got the pattern from Crochet Mama's page on the right.

It actually only took me about 3 hours to start and finish. I'm thinking about making a cloche hat to go with it since I bought one too many skeins of Vanna's Choice in Taupe Mist. :) I, of course, am standing in front of one of our much larger projects - the fireplace Dad and I built back in July of 2009. 

On Monday I took my first load of clothes to Goodwill. It was a pretty small load and only clothes that I never liked. I'm not quite sure what you do with things like undershirts and socks in cases like this. It seems wasteful to throw them all away, but my squeamish side finds the idea of other people wearing such intimate pieces of clothing a bit icky. That's when I accidentally happened upon a website that explained how to make yarn out of old t-shirts! The result is my first two balls of t-shirt yarn! I'm not sure what I'll do with them, but there are all sorts of neat crafts I found that require t-shirt yarn, and I'm thinking I could dye some of them with tea or coffee to give them some really organic coloring.

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I'm really quite taken by the trees as they resurrect from winter. Daily, sometimes several times a day, I've been inspecting each branch, looking for signs of life on the barky skeletons. On Saturday, the only tree presenting any vitals signs was the redbud in our back yard. When I awoke this morning, however, all of our crape myrtles had burst into baby leaves, in some cases hardly visible from a distance. The shumard oak is covered in very swollen buds that I know by the end of the week will erupt into salmon-colored, downy leaflets.  

Second in beauty only to the redbud is the ash trees between my and the neighbors' house. I don't know if I've ever noticed how beautiful those horrible wads of pollen can be, but yesterday while I was taking a shower, through our bathroom window, the brilliantly red pollen against the clear sky, framed by the spotted bark of the trees caught my attention. I don't mean to over-describe the view from my window, but it was enough to end my shower early (as opposed to my typical 40 minute bathing experience), throw on some clothes, and go outside, wet hair and all, to take a picture before the sky or light changed enough to lose the effect.

Thanks to Linda Davis and SOS for a laughter filled meeting last night. Laughter is good.

"I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry." - Cat Stevens