Orange ya glad to see me?

Howdy there, my handful of readers! Sorry about the lapse. Things have continued to be hectic, and will likely continue in this vein for some time (Halloween pun HEARTILY intended!).

M's school Halloween carnival was Friday night, and it was wonderful. Games, bounce-houses, the teacher's traditional Mystery-Theatre (which Mr. AV man recorded with the help of his friend Mr. Channel 12-guy) and home-made baked goodies at the cakewalk. The silent auction, raffle and carnival en toto raised over $17,000 for the school! Yay us! And it was fun. I'll swipe photos from my FIL soon and you'll see our fairy-girl and her bee-mum.

Saturday night our neighbors had pumpkin-carving party. Here are the results:




Can you see the ghost? SPOOKY!

And since pumpkins were eviscerated, you know there were seeds.....




Bowl o'joy.

Some decorations were applied to the house this evening, and more will befall it on the morrow. This is kind of our house-anniversary--we moved in 8 years ago! Still love this place.

I may be biting off more than I can chew, but I'm taking on a part-time job that I can do in the evenings, at home, after the girlie's abed. I'm going to give it a two-week trial and see how it goes, so it may be quiet around here (as it has been of late), but don't give up on me! There's still crafting going on, and you may get to see evidence of it now and again.

I'll tell you more as we go along.

In the meantime, BOO! to you and yours. Go eat some candy. And make it good, for heaven's sake, don't waste calories on hard candy or Smarties! We're talking CHOCOLATE!!!

Off-day

It was a hectic day at work today. We are really short-handed and having problems finding qualified people to work with us. There were people coming in with complicated problems. I was late leaving work (always a bad thing) and then the worst of all, there was a little bird on the ground just outside the front doors of the office.

It was a little verdin, one of my favorites. It was so tiny and perfect and still. I wasn't sure for a while if it was in shock or dead, but it was so limp and still that I guess if must've crashed hard into the glass doors. I just stood and held it in my hand for a while. It was so delicate, so small and light and beautiful; it's feathers and wings placed just so. It made me wish I had better drawing skills so that I could capture the elegance if it's lines, the absolute perfection of it's form.

There are so many beautiful things all around us and I hate that we (myself included) take them so for granted. I was going to post these last night, but I made one wrong keystroke and the whole thing vaporized. Now that I think about it, I think they were meant to wait until today.

Seth made this birdbath for me years ago, and I still love it. And so do my backyard friends. I present to you:

BIRDS GONE WILD!







And here is the square for Grandma Purl. I really love the stitch.



And at the end of the day, I get to come home to a wonderful man and a splendiferous child and a wacky Welshie, and things get better. And I make omelets and we all chat, and I feel a bit better still. Then I spend time reading "Rascal" to my girlie (God Bless Sterling North) and tuck her into bed and check my e-mail and find three wonderful notes from three wonderful people and to top it all off (in fine run-on sentence style) find delightful comments and questions awaiting me on the blog and all's I can say is, "Thanks everyone."

It's with a big grin that I answer my friends:

soozs: The boxes are done in garter stitch, side-bottom-side and then stitches are picked up on both sides of the bottom to make the 3rd and 4th sides, then single-crocheted up to fuse the sides. The Mason-Dixon book is oh, so holy, and if you can't put your hands on it in the library, let me know. These boxes are addicting, and I may have to bid on them myself to be sure they go to good home.

Barb: Thanks, firstly, for all the nice words! We had a computer guy come in and look over my little laptop a while back, and he recommended Opera as an alternative to Internet Explorer. I have found that it'll post my Blogger photos lickety-split, then I can save as a draft and go back to IE to put in verbiage. Works for me!

Thanks for popping in, folks. You helped re-make my day.

Hiya kids!

Long time, no type. Been busy of late with this and that. Tried to put together a post last weekend and the machine ate it. I'm finding that I can post the photos quite easily using Opera, saving as a draft, and then hopping over to IE for adding the verbage. It's a bit slower than doing it all at once, but hey, I'm not spending any cash!

For those of you eager to know, my softball team is 4-1. We have two more games before the playoffs. I played catcher last Sunday and actually got a runner out at home! Woot!

Here is my latest round of crafty stuff:

A Mason-Dixon cotton bib for a sweet new baby.





More Mason-Dixon goodness in the form of the felted boxes--
these will be auctioned off at my girlie's school Halloween Carnival.





Here they are nested.






My Recycle Pincushion Challenge entry and
it's inspiration.






Not my doing, but funny nonetheless.


Hope everyone has had a lovely weekend and is readying for Halloween! I have finished my square for Grandma Purl's blanket and am off to block it. I shamelessly utilized the lovely pattern from La Harlot's scarf (see 10/12/06 post) (sorry, not sure how to permalink), and with the green yarn I used, it bears an awfully strong resemblance to this! Perfect for a square from Arizona, methinks. Will post it apres blocking.

I think this (see 06/06/06 post) will be next on my scarf list.....

I have my Pincushion Challenge swap-partner's info and am planning out her pincushion as we speak. I haven't yet introduced myself to her, but I think I will do that sometime this week. She's in the Netherlands and has 3 English Springer Spaniels! This was meant to be!

I'll blabber more at you all later.

Welcome October!

It's been a busy time around here. Work, as usual, keeps getting in the way and I'll happily blame it for my lack of posting.

I've hit my limit for my free Flickr account, and have to figure out if I want to just let them cold-storage my older photos or if I can justify the cost of getting an upgraded account. I like Flickr, don't get me wrong--I just hate to pay for anything. Otherwise I'd have scurried over to Typepad long ago!

Here's a few key snippets of what's up with me:

1. I entered the Pincushion Challenge in the Recycle category (see if you can guess which one is mine). What a blast! On to the Swap!

2. My softball team won it's third straight game tonight! I admit that I had little to do with the victory this evening, but watch out for me next week!

3. Have begun the square for Grandma Purl. I sure do get a kick reading her oh-so-talented and not-just-a-smidgen-sarcastic granddaughter's blog! Doesn't everyone?

4. Today, my MIL handed me a magazine clipping which I really applaud. If anyone has some yarn and a tiny bit of time (as most of you are speedier knitters than I), please go check this out and contribute.

5. I'm also hoping to get a couple of hats done up for KnitYoga's Cancer Charities Craft Fair next month. Better get cracking as they have to cross the pond!

That's my full plate. Looks appetizing to me, and we'll see how much of it gets done!