Dana

Dana was here. Yay! Unfortunately she is now back in Arizona. But we had a great time while she was here. Well, I know I did.

Thursday involved me picking her up at the airport, doing some shopping and going to Stitch and Bitch. Thank you Justin for taking this (my favorite picture) even if it was with my crappy camera. On Friday, she dragged me into work so she could talk to students about finding a job. Then we went and worked out (yay for motivation), then we went home and sat on the couch for a while. Here Dana tries to out adorable Heidi. A pretty close competition I would say. Then we went to the Pumpkin Festival and undid all that working out.

I was very much looking forward to Saturday. Lot of knitting/spinning/fiber people time. The Kanawha City Yarn Company in Charleston was having a Spin In. So we traveled en masse to help take over the shop. I stole this picture from Haley.

Speaking of Haley, we had a sneaky project going on. After Dana left (last November) we decided we wanted to make her something to remember us by. And no comments about how it took us nearly a year to complete. She got a blanket for goodness sakes. But Haley did a ton of work in the past week or so getting all of the blocks sewn together. Of course we waited until the last minute. Haley was sewing it up in the car when we got to the Spin In. But Haley's Blog has a great account of the blanket giving. I think Dana was pleased. I hope it keeps her warm in Arizona. What? They have airconditioning there.

Sunday, I relaxed and got some knititng in because Dana has other friends in Huntington besides me and it is only fair she should get to see them.

Monday she went to the airport :( Her flight was delayed, which meant I didn't have to drop her off at 5 am. But I was still sad to see her go. I miss my knitting buddy, but it was great to see her. And it is good to know that she is happy in Arizona.

Julia turns one

Julia turned one-year-old last weekend. It was great to go up and celebrate such a special day with everyone. That little girl has quite the fan base. And I got to hold her a little bit, even though both sets of Grandparents were there.

I stole a few pictures of the big day from Lauren's sister's facebook. Katie takes wonderful pictures. As evidenced below.

Blowing out her first candle with a little help from her parents. I am ded from teh cute. She also had that very serious look on her face for the entire weekend.

She started out very lady like, using her hands to demolish her cake. But then she started using her face. Yup, that is her about to go face first into cake (which was delicious, but don't worry everyone else shared a different cake, this one was just Julia's).

I was teaching her a healthy love of yarn. I had finished with it, I promise.

Julia's present was a little labor intensive. It involved a lot of felt, embroidery and sewing. But I definitely think it was worth it. I made her a Color Book. I'm not sure if the pages are in the order they actually are in the book, except for the first and last pages.

I did sketches for each page and cut out the felt based on those sketches. I tried to get a more cartoony basic shape for each animal. And I cut pieces so that I could layer them and they would have dimension.

Then I embroidered the felt onto the larger pages of felt. I used stuffing for some of the pieces to add more dimension.

I also embroidered details on the pages to make them more interesting and cute.

To do the lettering, I used water soluble interfacing. I slowly and neatly wrote the words on the interfacing. I pinned it into place and embroidered through it. Then I used water to dissolve the interfacing. Yay for perfect handwriting I couldn't do freehand.

Then I sewed the finished pages right sides together with my sewing machine. Then I turned them right sides out and Blanket stitched around the outside.
Then I sewed them all together at the spine and covered that edge with a ribbon. And Voila! All done.

Country Living Fair

Last weekend (well, the 24th of September, it was last weekend when I started writing this post) was a wonderful trip to Columbus. I have family that lives there and it was high time I got around to visiting them. They invited me to the Country Living Craft Fair. It was loads of fun. I forgot to carry my camera around though so I didn't really get any pictures of craft stuff or of us doing fun things. But I did get pictures of what was apparently important to me. Eating food that I can't get in Huntington.

We will start with Jeni's. I had long heard of Jeni's from other knitter's blogs when they would go to Columbus for TNNA or Knitter's Connection. I had heard great things. Jeni's did not let me down. I had a scoop of Salty Caramel and a scoop of Dark Chocolate. Best ice cream ever. Ever. I have discovered that I can get Jeni's ice cream in Huntington. It is $10 a pint. At first I thought that was crazy for a pint of ice cream. After trying it, yeah, kind of worth it. I might arrange some sort of Jeni's party. Get a bunch of people together and we each buy a different flavor.

Chipotle. yum. Yeah nothing really close here in Huntington. Besides Taco Bell. But if you have ever eaten at a Chipotle, you know what sort of comparison that is. I think it is all in the rice.

Tim Hortons- Parkersburg had several while I was in High School. I love TimBits. They are perfect. I often find a whole doughnut overwhelming in sweetness (except for white angels and a McHappy's doughnut that is split like a hot dog bun and filled with white cream and topped with coconut. Yum). Also they are much less messy and more portable. Of course it means I end up eating more than I would with regular doughnuts. Oh and I love their vanilla cappuccinos.


And my family was nice enough to send me home with a can of pumpkin after I complained about my difficulty finding some here. I believe it was a combination of the stores not wanting to put out a lot of stock in case there was another shortage this year and now that there isn't a shortage, Pumpkin festival is October 9th so it is all being snatched up for the cooking contests.
So thank you Cindi, Rachel, Ashley and Davey. It was great to spend time with you. I need to do it more often.

Paw Paw Festival

We went to the Paw Paw festival last weekend in Athens, OH. We are very fortunate that Bill and Lauren live there so we can go to all the fun stuff they have there. As it turns out, I'm not a huge fan of paw paws. They taste good, sort of like a mango-y peach-y thing, but the texture is a bit custardy for my taste. So while I didn't actually like the paw paws themselves, the paw paw ice cream was delicious. Beyond the food, There were lots of things to do that were fun.

I apparently missed my calling as a champion Atlatler. That is me in the black and white celabrating (I also stole this picture from either my SIL or her sister). I hit the target animal on the first time out. It is essentially spear throwing with a wooden thrower.

They had a tent with snakes. Honestly surprised I got this close. The tower had three snakes on it and one that had crawled off onto the table. I liked the rattlesnake the best because it was the most secure in its cage. It was creepy the way they stared everyone down.

There were sheep. A merino, two shetland, a coopworth, a romney and a border leicester. I wanted to take them all home. But Bill did express interest in how many sheep he could keep on an acre. Might have to nudge that idea along. But the sheep were all there for a sheep to shawl demonstration. More of a "here are the sheep, this is what we do next, this is what we turn it into" rather than the normal competition you see at most wool festivals. It was great. I really enjoyed the natural dyeing portion of the teaching. I hadn't seen an indigo dye vat in action before. Such pretty colors and the color change is cool.

There was also lots of Julia time. Gotta love the Julia time. With two aunts and an uncle present she got lots of love. In addition to all the people Bill and Lauren know who also wanted a bit of the Julia love. She is just adorable. Who could resist?

I think she had a good time. She was a bit tuckered out by the end of the second day. I can't blame her, I was too.

I take pretty pictures

Our neighbor has a butterly bush and one day it was beautiful out and there were tons of butterlies so I started snapping pictures.
This one is currently my computer background.
Then I found a very red ladybug on my tomato plant. I hadn't seen a red one in a while (mostly the orange ones). I really like how it looks against the green.

And then some proof that I can make things grow. The itty bitty beginnings of a pepper. I think it might be a bell pepper. I can't remember what kind I bought.

Another episode of "Heidi the adorable"

I feel I am a bit overdue on a blog post about how cute my dog is. I'm sorry I have to do this, but if I was a mom this would be about my kid.

First up we have proof that Charles Shultz had beagles. Heidi does a very good impression of Snoopy. Don't you think? She was pouting at me sitting at the computer and not playing with her.
This is her pathetic face. As in "No one loves me or gives me food or pettin's or anything. Everyone is so mean to me." In actuality I had stopped petting her to take a picture.
But it was closely followed by crazy dog face. This is what happened when I tried to resume petting her. ZOMG! Couch Beagle Shark! Look out, Zach!

And I think my favorite picture of them all. Here is Heidi dancing and singing along to "Thriller". I giggled for about 10 minutes when I thought that up. :)

Dames For Dogs

So through Justin Brock, I have gotten involved in a great organization: Dames for Dogs. It is an organization that raises funds to help shelters in Eastern Kentucky. I haven't moved, it is just close enough for me to help. You can donate on the website.

But their big fundraiser, which is where I got involved is their pinup calendar. Justin is shooting pin up photos of a bunch of Dames with their Dogs. Lots of people have been doing photos so I'm not sure if I'll make it into the calendar.

They have a facebook page and have some of the outtake photos (the ones that are good, but not the best) up there. Including mine. Yay!

My pinup name is Betty Baker, because I knew the only way to keep Heidi's attention was to have food so I baked dog biscuits.