A Little Bit More- October 25, 2009

Here is the giant plaid book. What a beast.
Our dog Dexter sleeps on my bed and one morning I woke up and this is what I saw.
I had some left over pumpkin and Rhodes rolls and fudged these pumpkin turnovers up with some maple glaze. They were super tasty! Not every experiment goes so well. I need to nail down the recipe and I'll post it here.

Wool fingering from Knit Picks for a sweater I want to make. I'm just not sure what exactly the sweater's going to look like yet. Any ideas?
Wool fingering from Knit Picks for a pair of fingerless mittens with snowflake color work on them. I'm very excited to make these!
The hat I made for the daughter of the friend with the mittens for Christmas this year. She looks very cute in it.
I made these for a friend of mine who loves Hello Kitty for Christmas this year so she could build snowmen with her daughter.
The second blanket I've finished. It's crocheted. I love how it turned out. I kept with the basic pattern and changed the colors and where they were placed.



Here are some more favorites : )

Cold Cereal:

1. Grape Nuts
   
2. Cinnamon Life
3. Wheat Chex
4. Shredded Wheat
5. Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds
6. Raisin Bran Crunch
7. Cocoa Crispies
8. Honey Corn Flakes
9. Kix

Movies

1. Wallace and Gromit
   
2. Studio Gibli
3. Scooby Doo
4. Planet Earth
   
5. Blue Planet
   
6. Ice Age 1
7. Madagascar 1
8. The Wild
   
9. Chicken Little
10. Over the Hedge

Foods

1. Ice Cream
   
2. Plain fudge brownies
3. Four cheese ravioli
   
4. My Soup
5. Cold cereal
6. Biscuits and honey
7. Cottage cheese and Doritos
8. Pizza
9. Hot cereal and toast
10. Cheese burgers

Miscellaneous Oddities

1. I love the show Wacked Out Sports (but lately I've been watching a British cold case show called New Tricks)
2. I would go bungee jumping and sky diving in a heart beat given that it was under the direction of a well qualified instructor with top notch equipment.
3. When my mom was having me, all that was out was my head and I was already screaming.
   
4. I was found as a toddler wandering around in the middle of traffic on University Dr.
5. The madder I am, the worse an idea it is for me to do any shopping of any kind.

24 cd's you may or may not find interesting to know I own

1. Kid Rock- (with half of his face on the cd)
2. Kid Rock- (black with just his name)
3. Linkin Park- [Hybrid Theory]
4. Queen's Greatest Hits
5. Ozomatli- Live at the Filmore
6. Metallica- Metallica
7. BB King and Eric Clapton- Riding with the King
8. Mama Mia soundtrack
9. Tokeya Inajin- Dream Catcher
10. Tokeya Inajin- Keeper of the Dream
11. Dolly Parton- Halos and Horns
12. Barry Manilow- Greatest Hits volume I
13. Best of John Denver
14. Johnny Lang- Long Time Coming
15. Gavin DeGraw- Chariot
16. Pavarotti's Opera Made Easy
17. Ladysmith Black Mambazo- Gift of the Tortoise
18. Veggie Tales- Silly Songs with Larry
19. Jonathan Elias- American River
20. Ottmar Liebert-Luna Negra
21. Holst- The Planets
22. Alejandro Fernandez- Mi Verdad
23. Mana- Suenos Liquidos
24. YoYo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

A Thought...

I have been looking for a job since May-June. It has been frustrating, yes, but I have had a lot of time to pay more attention to things and observe and take a few notes as well. Mostly about myself and my life.

One thing I have noticed is that I do not share myself with anyone. Not my friends. Not my family. It seems completely counter intuitive, I know, but it is the truth. I am not sure why. Nervous around people. Shy. I'm not sure. I recently read a book about knitting and knitters in which the author says that she has noticed that people tend to worry that if others really knew them, there is no way they could love them. That struck a mighty cord in me. I had never heard or read anyone saying what I had thought. I think the problem is that I worry excessively and inwardly. But I love something my dad has said that could apply here: it's not our problem to worry about what they think. Let them make their choice. I tend to constantly try to anticipate what others will do or think. I think this is a bad habit under certain circumstances and I have started trying to loose the concern.

I have recently started using Facebook. On the website they have a feature where you can create a quiz to see how well people who know you, know you. I gave answers to all the questions as truthful as possible with the exception of the one about taking only my yarn stash out of a burning building. I would probably grab my (hopefully finished) 72 hour kit. And that would have the scriptures, and the yarn, and the clothes, etc. in it. Anyway, there was one of my answers to one of the questions that at least two people didn't believe could be the truth. I was astonished and hurt. Then I was sad that this was the case because they only know about me what I choose to let them know. I felt selfish and out of touch with the people in my life. While I don't want to up and start pretending to be someone I'm not, because I truly love who I am when I step back, I don't want them to think that after thirteen to eighteen years of friendship and thirty years of family relationships- they have no idea who I am.

In my last blog post, I mentioned the giant plaid book of my happy things. I also started a much smaller book of things I like, don't like, personality traits, quirks, fears, and things I think about. Let me tell you, it has been interesting to say the least. It is the little book of me. I have thoroughly enjoyed observing myself, so to speak. I am definitely going to keep writing in the little book. Here a some key points:

• I am shy and very quiet. I love to watch people. This is also a lot easier than interacting with them. I would also rather my actions speak for me rather than my words.
  
• Just because I haven't said anything, doesn't mean I was thinking it or didn't notice. There's a fifty-fifty chance that I was, and that I did.
  
• I am a lot more relaxed in writing than in person. Writing is a lot less intimidating than being faced with someone watching and waiting for me compose my thoughts.
  
• While I am shy and major homebody, I do have a rather sizable bold streak that sits back and watches... and occasionally turns my comfortable world upside down. This streak is not applied, however, to trying new foods in front of other people. Accept octopus buried in spaghetti, on my mission. I ate that, when faced with it unexpectedly, so I could write home about it. It was quite a thrill!
  
• Here's a top ten list: My Favorite Ice Creams
  

1. plain chocolate
2. fudge brownie
3. chocolate chip cookie dough
4. cookies and cream
5. caramel cone- a flavor from Hagendaz
6. vanilla ice cream, chocolate swirl, and chocolate covered butter toffee pieces
7. berry sauce swirled in cheesecake flavored ice cream
8. s'mores or chocolate marshmallow swirl
9. raspberry sherbet
10. mint chip or mint cookie

I hope that this has been useful and enjoyable. It is good for me so I don't feel like such a swirling black vortex into the unknown. : )

Michele

A Little Sunshine

Ok, so I love books. I love to read them, check them out, buy them, give them, fill them up, and I also love to make them. A blank book makes me giddy. It is pure potential for what ever you want to put in it. A while back I made this book, coptic bound, and covered it with blue and green plaid flannel. At first I wasn't sure how many signatures to put in it so I started to stitch it together and then my sister kept saying, "Add more signatures!!!" On I went until I found myself with the blue and green plaid monstrosity. This thing is massive with 38 five sheet signatures. I had no idea what in the world to do with it until recently. I decided to make it a sort of happiness/gratitude journal. My aunt started one and I thought this could be very beneficial for me. Here is a little of what makes me happy!

• blank paper
• new pens and pencils
• a ball of yarn
• seeds
• new books
• crayons
• dirt- open a bag of fresh potting soil. It smells like heaven :)
• fall and winter
• chocolate ice cream
• plain fudge brownies
• the four cheese ravioli from Costco- w/out sauce. Good ravioli doesn't need it.
• time to myself
• seeing my friends
• finishing a project; any project, no matter how long ago I started it
• singing a solo in church with out my knees buckling or throwing up or crying out of sheer terror
• the mountains and streams and waterfalls
• progressing through a linear process. Step 1, step 2, step 3... this explains my love for things like knitting, reading, cooking, baking, and sewing.
• list making
• libraries
• walks in the park or the foothills
• camping
• the gumption to keep knitting even though the sleeves on this stupid sweater are going to give me an ulcer.
• putting my Heavenly Father first
• knitting, knitting, reading, knitting, reading, reading, reading, knitting, gardening and growing seeds, knitting...I see a pattern here...
• Art in the Park- some people are just way too talented for their own good.
• a really great story
• having a good place to live, rent free, with parents who are gracious and kind.
  
• being able to find things to be happy about even when I'm not feeling very happy.
• finding it is ok to do the things I love even with out a hope of ever doing them well- trust me, there are some people out there so good at knitting it would make you, ok maybe just me, cry like a baby.
• discovering that the obvious answer, though still an answer, may not be the best one. Sometimes the way that should not work, upon closer examination and trial, will prove to be the perfect choice.
• good friends that know way more about you than any one person should but like you anyway.
• being silly, humor, laughing
• listening to thunder and walking in the rain
• knowing that my mother, within the span of a year: survived breast cancer, a complete hysterectomy, menopause, no hormones, and the deaths of her mother, father, and her best friend's husband all around the time of my senior year of high school.
• me- the quiet, shy, people watcher... surviving those moments in my life when my (very large) bold streak (that sits in the back of my mind...observing), starts acting up. There are definitely times that I think about now that make me want to find out if it's possible for a person to spontaneously turn themselves inside out.

As you can see, I have a lot to be happy about!! I will post more happy things in the future, along with a photo of the giant plaid book.

Later,

Michele