Friday is Quote Day

JP surprised me yesterday with a copy of the book Coraline - which I devoured immediately. When he handed it over to me he said, "You know this is a kids book don't you?"
"Yes," I replied, "but the story is still going to be good."
And it was.
What the heck, adults read Harry Potter. Adults made this into a movie, nothing wrong with me reading a kids book is there?

One of my favourite quotes from the book:
Coraline opened the box of chocolates. The dog looked at them longingly.
'Would you like one?' she asked the little dog.
'Yes, please,' whispered the dog, 'Only not the toffee ones. They make me drool."
'I thought chocolates weren't very good for dogs,' she said, remembering something Miss Forcible had once told her.
'Maybe where you come from, ' whispered the little dog, 'Here it's all we eat."



And another quote this week that I liked from a completed difference source - TV! You may have to be a Scrubs fan to like it too:
"I grew up on the street, no not the hood - Sesame Street"
- Dr. Dorian- Scrubs, Episode: My ABCs

I grew up on the Street too. Sesame Street. Oh yes (casting my eyes to the sky) when life was easy, simple and good. When all we wanted to do was grow up!

Poladroid?

For all my friends who love photography:

Snap To It
When Polaroid announced last year it would stop producing their
instant film, we started to weep, well, instantly. Documenting road trips would
no longer have that certain retro je ne sais quoi.

That was, until we stumbled upon a simple-to-use
free software called Poladroid, which makes our modern day digital
memories look exactly like the cool, classic snaps—no film required.
Download and open the program (cleverly made to look and sound like a
Polaroid camera), drag and drop your photos into it and poof, a little
white-rimmed Polaroid appears on your desktop. Just like the real thing, you
wait and watch the photo faintly appear as it develops. The end result even
mimics the saturation and soft contrast of the old school original.

Go ahead, shake it like a Polaroid picture.

Watch a demo of the program here. Download for free at www.poladroid.net

Source of quote: VitaminV. And let me know if you use the progam, 'kay?

Kntting Pattern Updates

To all my knitting friends - by now I'm sure you've seen the Winter edition of Knitty, but did you know the Winter collections were out for Twist Collective and Popknit? "Check it, check it, check it out"(Fogell/McLovin' in Superbad). And also The Inside Loop - which has very nice patterns and a good article on photographing your knit projects.

Twist has some gorgeous sweater patterns - I've very tempted to start one or two or 10 (but I must finish my cross stitch first). They also have beautiful photographs and showcase some items "worn" by watercoloured animals which is a very nice presentation.

This morning we woke up to a light blanket of snow which is very beautiful but I just hope that the snow doesn't cripple the city like it did at Christmas time. But snow means lots of knitting/crafting time and that's all right by me.

And can you believe that February starts on Sunday? Where did this month go?

Word Verification Fun

For those of you reading and commenting on Blogger blogs - have you noticed their word verifications have changed from random letters to almost words. Some of the words were kinda funny to me so I asked Jp to give them definitions.

Here are some of the fun ones:

• ongle - your aunt's husband
• duckpus - an avian secretion for which you'll receive a bill
• unksomed (unk-so-med) - cream that your aunt puts on your ongle's rash
• popshupl - mott's brother
• ences - Toonces brother (remember the cat from SNL that drove?)
• pockrylo - some sort of greek pastry

Have you seen any word verifications that were funny words to you?

The Top Eight at 8

1. Yesterday we went to the Vancouver Motorcycle Show - it was packed! We parked in the Overflow Lot- we didn't even know the Tradex had an overflow parking lot. Good thing Jp pre-bought the tickets on the internets so we didn't have to stand in line waiting to get in. I saw lots of bikes I want and some I didn't. I sat on my old favourite - the Kawasaki ZX-6R - it felt so right. But when I got off, Jp questioned whether my days of sport bike riding were over. I suppose he's right. Maybe I'll have to return my thoughts to my other old favourite - the Honda Shadow. Here's my dream book:

2. And what did I buy at the show - well stickers of course! What did you think - a motorcycle? a leather jacket? I know, I'm weird that way.

3. On the way home, we stopped at the butchers and bought some meats and some yummy soup which we drank in the car. (It's quite windy and cold). Last night's dinner was rib eye steaks with mashed yams (cooked in butter, cream and sugar) and garlic bread. Everyone seemed pretty happy with that. They also liked the tapioca I had made before I started to cook dinner so it was all cooled and ready to go by the time they had eaten. Three happy tummies. (no photos - I was too busy to remember my camera)

4. Also on the way home, Jp stopped at Woolaroo (the yarn store) and bought me the yarn swift I wanted for Christmas ( but he couldn't find at the time) and a new ball winder. In the car after we had bought them, I suggested he was an enabler to my habit. He asked if my habit was bad. I said it wasn't. He asked me what my problem was. I said 'Nothing'. He turned the corner.

Thank you for the umbrella yarn swift and new ball winder!
(photos of swift and winder borrowed from: http://www.numei.com/)

5. And what else have I been doing? Well some crafty things - I felt in the mood for something Valentines-y and I felt like crocheting and so I made this book mark: It's a little larger than I think a bookmark should be (2 1/4" x 8 1/4"), but didn't turn out that badly. Halfway through the project I had my doubts about it; sometimes it's best to wait until you're done to judge the project. Don't you think?
(pattern found here)

6. I've also been working on my MAP (millennium angel project) cross-stitch:
But if you go here, you'll see that my progress from Jan. 13 to the 25th wasn't all that great. Sometimes life gets in the way.

7. Jazz is still the same. I can't touch her except for on her head and maybe at the top of her hips - every where else she yelps if I touch her. She only gets up when I make her go to the bathroom and twice to eat. See the photo I posted earlier? Well that's the way she still looks - she just lays either on her left side or her right side. No energy in her. She looks worried every time I pet her because I might hurt her again. X-rays show nothing wrong with her heart or any of the organs, blood tests indicate nothing is wrong with her levels or her organ functions - but my eyes say some thing is wrong with my dog! They think there may have been a drug reaction so we may just have to wait it out - for how long, I don't know.

It's very frustrating not knowing what's wrong with her. And if I go to another vet for a second opinion, then I'll have to pay all those tests again. I'm sorry, but it's very expensive - I hate to say it, but it's a reality. Does anyone know a millionaire out there who'd like to find out why my dog is sick and how to make her better?

8. While at Woolaroo, I found out that the Abbotsford Fibrefest is most likely going to be canceled and we'll only have the Sewing & Craft Expo this spring. This disappoints me greatly as I believe there are a lot more crafters out there - but why aren't they going to the show? In the US there are fibrefests several times a year and people travel from all over to attend them. But in the Vancouver area, we can't keep one going? Why? What's wrong with it? Maybe the promoters aren't promoting in the right places? Look at this schedule, why can't we have one like that, why is the show failing in the Greater Vancouver Area?

I'm looking forward to...

the movie Coraline. This really looks like a good movie - it's all filmed in stop action and it's so crafty I think I'll be as mesmerized by the sets and filming as I will be the story line.

Yay, something in February to look forward to - besides longer days!

The Good News

Thank you everyone for your kind words of support. Jazz and I have been to the vet 3 days in a row. Today they ran blood tests and x-rays. The good news: they can't find anything wrong. The bad news: they can't find anything wrong.

The vet can see a bit of bloating in her tummy and perhaps that caused her to act the way she did. It's possible there was a bit of a drug reaction so she'll take a break from chemo this week. It's a wee bit frustrating but it's also an answer you hope to get really, isn't it?

I haven't done much else the last couple of days but run back and forth to the vet, so I'll be catching up on all sorts of stuff this weekend and I hope to have a more interesting post for you then.

Have a good weekend - I hope it's sunny and warm were you are!

PS - Jazz thanks you too!

oh my!

Yesterday was a busy day - first some police action on the street and then later I was petting Jazz when she yelped - she was all balled up and so I called the vet. They were busy but said I could drop her off and they'd look at her when they could.

I go out to start my car and nothing. I have lights so I know it's not the battery but that's it. I cancel the vet. Call the tow truck. Call the repair shop to let them know my car's coming and then wait.
In an hour the tow truck guy comes and within a few minutes discovers a plug to my starter has fallen out - he plugs it back in and ta da -everything works again.

I head straight to the vet and drop off Jazz, a couple hours later they phone me and tell me she's being her usual self and showing now signs of pain at all. When we arrived the girls at the front notices how stiff she was but by the time she was in the clinic - she acted fine.

I pick her up and feed her dinner and she seems okay. I pet her and she yelps again. After this happens twice, she leaves the room obviously not wanting me to pet her any more.

This morning, for the first time in 4 months she did not wake me up at 4:30 am wanting food. For the first time in ages my alarm woke me up; the sound was so foreign to me, Jp had to poke me several times because I didn't wake up. I go to Jazz's room and she's still laying down, I tell her to go out side and she slowly hobbles out the door, she barely eats her food and returns to her bed, shivering ( which by the way, I think she does that for my benefit because when she thinks I'm not watchin her, she stops) .

She's on two kinds of pain killers right now and is due back at the vet tomorrow for her chemotherapy so I guess we'll just wait and see. If you don't hear from me in the next day or so, you know where I'll be.

Run for the Border

Yesterday after work Jp and I took a trip "across the line" to Bellingham, Washington for a cruise through Bellis Fair Mall. First stop, Auntie Anne's for some pretzel dogs - oh so yummy and buttery (oh and fatty and bad for you, but still yum!) And then once our energy was revved up - on to some clothes shopping - a peak at shoes and dresses for me, and shoes, pants, sweaters for him.

I picked up a couple scoop neck tees in black, white and brown - always a good staple for the wardrobe. And then I spied the cutest dresses; the photo doesn't do it justice but it's got pin tucks down the front and a flouncy hem. I bought one in navy and one in brown with wasabi coloured polka dots and matching ribbon:

Detail of the pattern:

I'm very excited about wearing this dress this spring and have been dreaming of the perfect shoes and cardigan to go with it. On my way to pay for my finds, I spotted a short, double breasted red wool/cashmere winter coat. I tried it on and it fit very nicely, so I added that to my collection. Jp found some pants at a great sale price too.

Many of the stores seemed to be cleaned out of stock, I guess there was some heavy after-Christmas sales - but that's probably a good thing for our wallets. Still there were some amazing prizes.

Next we hit Wal-mart for some of those items like laundry soap and other household things (including embroidery needles and yarn) and there I found these cute little note pads, oh and some heart shaped paperclips - just in time for Valentines:


And then we picked up some groceries - you know the things most Canadians cross the border for - milk, cheese and things we can't get - like this jar of cheese (?) I haven't tried it yet, but I will very soon. We found a very interesting grape juice/white tea combination - First Blush Juice, no alcohol but all the flavours were named after the grapes used - chardonnay, merlot, syrah, cabernet, etc. Oh it's very yummy - I feel all yogalishis! If you're a cold tea drinker, I'm sure you will love it.
We always try something interesting including many of the Mexican/Hispanic foods - so many are so yummy, our family favourite - La Lechera - the squeeze product as well as the cereal - La Lechera Flakes. Although we haven't seen the cereal for several months - if you know where to find it, please let me know. Read this blogger's comments here.

We did have to pay duty(on the clothes) and taxes (on just about everything else) at the border, but really even adding that cost, we still came out ahead.

On the way home, Jp stopped for gas and came back to the car with this little treat for me, isn't it cute? Even the company it came from is cute - AmuseMints - cute name and check out their website for all the adorable tins.

We got home later so we're a bit tired but everything went smoothly and it was great to get out and have some fun. And that's how we take our minds off the fog and the cold, now back to life as we know it - work, laundry, cleaning, cooking.....

But I'm okay with it

Okay, so I didn't save the world or fight off evil, but I do think I got a fair bit done this weekend.

Meals (all from scratch-no boxes or kits):

• Friday: scalloped potatoes with port tenderloin medallions
• Saturday: slow roasted beef with fried rice, with custard for dessert
• Sunday: lasagna

oh and I baked Snickerdoodle cookies - but I prefer my brother's recipe better - he makes them all fluffy and soft.....

And then we cleaned out a closet - so now I can make 2 trips to the thrift store and 1 trip to the dump. At first I didn't want Jp to help, but when he did - he helped me get rid of more things that I wouldn't have - and that's a good thing. I'm very happy he helped me. Some of the boxes hadn't been opened for a very long time. A very long time.

And I worked out - 2x and walked The Jazz (although she's been a bit stiff ever since, despite some pain killing arthritis medicine, so we'll have to take it easier next time)

And I worked on the Angel cross-stitch and I knitted - yay, I got something creative done.

And now it's time to get back to work, but I'm okay with that. I hope you had a good weekend too.

The worst present of Christmas '08

Okay, I'm ready to talk about this now - this turned out to be the worst present given or received in our house this Christmas. It's a Golliwog. Those with an English background will be familiar with him. I think he's cute, but I bought him for my husband. He hates it and has rejected it like " a red-headed step child" (is that also not politically correct?)

As a collector of antique things, I thought he'd appreciate it - but he does not. To me he is a fictional character that came to life in stories and in children's minds, like the beloved Teddy Bear. But alas, he is not wanted. He was once a hero, but now he is banished. This is not a story of racism, people - or is it? What do you think?

Zippity-doo-dah, Zippity-day!

I just managed to snap these two photos before the fog started to roll in again. Yesterday I got to see the sunrise and then the fog took over until late in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, without taking a long walk I couldn't avoid the overhead powerlines - but otherwise I think the sunrise was captured pretty successfully.

Did you have a gorgeous sunrise this morning too?

MAP - progress shot

Here's where I got to last night -finally something to show you; all those little leaves take 5 stitches of this and 10 stitches of that, so updates would be really boring:

The whole project so far can be found here.

Digging in the Garden

The Vancouver area had a record breaking snow this Christmas and it was said that we hadn't had this much snow since 1964.... well my mum just found this cartoon:

It reads" Dear Aunt Betty: Sorry to hear of your horrible winter weather back east. Here we haven't had our usual rain and George is out digging in the garden..." .

Sun Cartoonist Len Norris illustrates his view of a similar snowy Vancouver an December 23,
1964.

Published Thursday, January 10, 1991

Toronto's not having a great winter either this year, so once again... it's very fitting isn't it?
(Thanks for sending it mom)

How to Eat Pizza at Flying Wedge

So we were at Flying Wedge Pizza in Langley this afternoon and JP, me and The Kid were the only customers there. Flying Wedge has little TVs at the tables and so we were quietly noshing our yummy slices and watching TV when a herd of people - 2 families together, come barrelling in - that's 4 kids under the age of 6 and 4 adults. They plop down at the booth behind us and two of the kids proceed to hang over the edge of our booth breathing down my neck and watch our TV as theirs was broken. The jumped, they screeched, they yelled - they acted like it was "monkey hour".

I was trying to find my happy place while eating but The Kid, who was sitting across from me and could see the whole room, kept giving me a play by play of how close the kids behind me were and what they were doing. Finally, I asked him to stop as I just could not fight it any more. The parents had gone up to get the food and just left the kids rolling around in the booth, occasionally turning around and putting a finger to their lip which is supposed to mean 'be quiet'.

When I felt in control again and things seemed to quiet down a bit, I looked around the room to see who belonged to whom and then I had an idea - let's start watching something that isn't so kid friendly! Ah ha! We changed the channel and withing minutes it worked! The kids got moved across the restaurant and all circled around a TV showing the channel TreeHouse. Oh they were still a little wild, but they were at a level that was a bit more publicly acceptable.

If I was a celebrity and the scene was captured on camera and shown on Perez Hilton's blog, he would have drawn little white devil's horns on my head.

And that's how I eat pizza at Flying Wedge.

The End.

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June”

Things are just ticking along out here, I'm meeting my goal of cross-stitching an hour a day and I'm even getting some knitting in. What I haven't worked on is exercise - it's been so rainy that I just don't like taking Jazz in the rain - even with her raincoat, she still gets wet and dirty and stinky and it's just not so easy washing a 50 pound dog - knowwhatImean? I know, they are just excuses and I'd better just start doing it.

I'll just read some poems and pretend I got some exercise, will that work? hee hee (see title)

While doing my regular trolling through the creative websites , I came across this - it's a very tiny needlework sampler. For those who thought the work I'm doing on the angel cross-stitch was small, this is even smaller! Wow. I just don't think I'll be trying that.

When I'm stitching, I'm doing one of two things - either listening to podcasts or listening to Blue Collar Radio - I loves me some comedy! Although I have watched some movies - like Casino Royale (why hadn't I seen this yet?) and If Lucy Fell (which I must have seen about 10 times).

We did buy a new down duvet and a new cover (with matching shams). Oooh, it's so warm and fluffy. Our old one shed feathers so much I swear there was a whole chicken's worth inside the old cover! We'll keep it for the summer as I think it'll be fine for that. But this one is so nice. Hmm, it's hard to get out of bed now.

Pretty normal January behaviour isn't it? I think we're all waiting for the sun to come out and for our bank accounts to fill up again. How about you?

** quote by Jean-Paul Sartre

SackBoy knitting pattern

Okay, I don't have a PlayStation3 and I've never seen LittleBIGPlanet in real life -but I know what cute is, and it's SackBoy!

So for all my knitting friends, here's a pattern!!

Even the pattern is cute!

How have you been?

This is Jazz last weekend - I made her wear Maxx's winter vest (he was about 10 pounds bigger than her) because he belly fur still hasn't grown back from being shaved in October (for the ultrasound and xrays) and to keep the falling snow on her back. She didn't seem to mind it all that much. It's pretty funky isn't it? It's from Old Navy and it's silver with reflective piping. Here's she's picked up some scent in the snow.

It was so wet here yesterday that EVERY surface outside was wet - it didnt' matter if it was under cover - even the ceiling in my car port was covered with condensation. My family in the prairies just can't fathom that much humidity!

Now the snow is almost gone from the streets, the weather's warmed up and it appears things are almost back to "normal". Today, I'll take Jazz for a chemo treatment - she's missed two and I'm worried all the ground we gained has been lost, but there wasn't much I could do when the clinic was closed or the vet was away, or there was a power outage or the snow was just too much for me to risk the drive - especially when getting to the vet involves some steep hills. So we'll just soldier on and hope for the best - don't have much choice do we?

MAP update - I've been putting in the hours for the cross stitch and things are progressing - although sometimes it's harder to see what I've done - 3 cross stitch here, 5 over there - it all takes time but doesn't look like much. I've written down the dates you've estimated and we'll see who get's to win the prize - I haven't figured out what you get just yet, but I'll make it something good fo sho!

On Wednesday we had a computer technician at our house for 8 hours! Jp had a nasty virus called "Antivirus 2009" on his computer - watch out folks, we suspect it came from a recipe site just before Christmas - apparently it can take 3 weeks before it starts up and each time you turn your computer off and on, it gets worse! And yup, you heard me - recipes! She had some other work to do for my computer as well and was fixing another persons computer remotely too but basically she spend that long cleaning his computer! To the people who create computer viruses for the fun of it - ptooey on you! (And all you Mac user can stop laughing at us!)

I don't know about you but this week flew by so fast - I hope the rest of the year isn't going to be like that! It was a bit scary to wake up and look at my watch and have it confirmed that it was already Friday. Maybe that's normal after the time off during the holidays?

It's all a bit mundane right now - sorry about that chief. But if I had to choose between chaotic and mundane, I think I'd stay right here - wouldn't you?

Wha???

Knitting for the Wii?

I don't quite get it, but check it out here.

The Millennium Angel Project

Although I use this blog to show my crafty adventures, I've also allowed myself to discuss other topics here as well, so I've created a photo stream in Flickr to share the progress of what I'm calling The Millennium Angel Project. This way my non- or less-crafty friends won't be bored with the mundane progress of a super slow cross stitch project.

Here's the background: as best as I can recall about 10 years ago, my mum asked me if I'd stitch something for her and I agreed. She sent me a counted cross stitch kit as a Millennium Project (you know, to welcome in the next millennium, starting with the year 2000?)- and I'm sorry to say I still haven't finished it. The project has been sidelined many times - one of the first two reasons had to do with lighting - the colour changes were very subtle especially on the angel's dress and I had trouble seeing the colours well. The second had to do with my lifelong battle with eczema on my hands - this stopped me from working on it because I either couldn't bend my fingers or my skin would snag the thread and cause it to fray or continuously pull the thread from the needle. My mom resolved the lighting issue by giving me 2 Ott lights.

Another problem I've had is that my arm goes numb depending on how I hold the hoop and more realistically, I've also let myself get sidelined with other projects namely knitting and crochet, gardening and life in general. The biggest excuse is that I just didn't do it at all.

So now that all the Christmas projects are done, I have decided that I will finish this project and I will no longer keep it to myself - I will share my progress and make myself accountable, this must be done in 2009! I also realized that this project is not named for the new Millennium. No - in fact it's called a "Millennium Angel" because it's taken me a millennium of hours and a millennium of stitches! And by the time I've finally finished this project...... I sure hope my mum still wants it!

What it's supposed to look like:
see more details and photos on Flickr (link here). Maybe we should have a little contest to see who can guess which month I'll finish it in? What's your guess - name the month and date.......

Well there you have it folks, the holidays are over. Time to clap your hands together and face the new year. I have never written New Year's Resolutions as I am always working on a goal list. But, here are some changes I would like for the new year - not just for me, but others too.

Words/phrases I would like to see less of:

• having said that
• moving forward/going forward
• definitely (when used in reply, to agree)
• clearly (when used in reply, to agree)
• global warming

Words/phrases I would like to hear more of:

• Here's a present for you...
• You're getting a raise! (along with a promotion)
• Your metabolism has sped up and you're losing weight easily and healthily (I can dream can't I?)
• All the children(and animals) have been saved, don't send a donation.
• Humans are not ruining the Earth, in fact the planet has been improved (another dream, I know)

Things I want to do less of:

• watch less TV/waste time
• worry less about others
• wash fewer dishes
• buy fewer magazines

Things I want to do more of:

• expand creatively (design my own patterns maybe)
• more nature walks
• laugh
• read more books

Wishing you a safe, healthy and prosperous 2009. Happy New Year's, friends. Any changes you'd like to see or share?