It is so cool. I got a compliment on my pin and I have shown off my bracelet to anyone I pass by.
Talk to you soon
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Sunday, January 29, 2006
quick picture post
I just wanted to show you all the new crafts I have been making.
The first is a felted wool bracelet (I made it all myself including the felted beads)
The second is the "secret project" it is a bowl made of hand made papers. I want to work at another one so I can make it keep it's shape better... It is made to be a fruit bowl. It is pretty hard and after four weeks of "curing" it will be able to be washed with a damp soapy cloth.
More pictures coming...
Siobhan's skirt is coming up soon~
The first is a felted wool bracelet (I made it all myself including the felted beads)
The second is the "secret project" it is a bowl made of hand made papers. I want to work at another one so I can make it keep it's shape better... It is made to be a fruit bowl. It is pretty hard and after four weeks of "curing" it will be able to be washed with a damp soapy cloth.
More pictures coming...
Siobhan's skirt is coming up soon~
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Oooh yeah, oooh yeah
I am almost done!
With a craft I haven't told you about... Why you ask? Because (like all my crafts) it was something I made up in my head. But this one I wasn't sure would succeed. YAY it looks like it has... I have another 30 minutes or so worth of work on it and then you all can see my latest creation. I will be making a few of these if people like them. And if you are one of those people I will give you one too...
My mom loved this first one so it goes to her. Then I am planning on a different type of one for Jim and lastly one for my friend Diana who just got married...
Jim will love it (as he has watched me sweat over this one...
When I finish this it is back to Jim's scarf and a toy for Bekah
Hope your day is happy
With a craft I haven't told you about... Why you ask? Because (like all my crafts) it was something I made up in my head. But this one I wasn't sure would succeed. YAY it looks like it has... I have another 30 minutes or so worth of work on it and then you all can see my latest creation. I will be making a few of these if people like them. And if you are one of those people I will give you one too...
My mom loved this first one so it goes to her. Then I am planning on a different type of one for Jim and lastly one for my friend Diana who just got married...
Jim will love it (as he has watched me sweat over this one...
When I finish this it is back to Jim's scarf and a toy for Bekah
Hope your day is happy
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
This has nothing to do with crafting but part of me always being Joy
I read this on Boston.com and it looked like a book I will have to read...
WHICH REMINDS ME! I read a really cute book (well I am not sure that cute is the word) it is called Heroes, hooks, and Heirlooms and if anyone wants to borrow it I will happily share :-D
What makes a marriage work?
Frank essays from female writers
By Diana Brown, Globe Correspondent January 24, 2006
TEWKSBURY -- For 18 months, Jean Trounstine and Karen Propp met in cafes, deliberated via e-mail, and chatted by phone as they co-edited a collection of moving, honest essays about marriage by a roster of heavy-hitting writers. Along the way, they discovered their collaboration itself mirrored a marriage.
''I found myself getting angry at you for the same thing that I get angry at my husband," Propp, who lives in Cambridge, said as the two friends talked in Trounstine's Tewksbury living room. Trounstine knew instantly: Propp became upset whenever she felt controlled or infringed upon.
That professional bond helped fuel the creative process for their book, ''Why I'm Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes," due in bookstores today.
The book evolved from a discovery they made in 2004 after first meeting at a reading in Providence. Having coffee afterward, they realized they both had written essays titled ''Why I'm Still Married." The title stuck because it resonated and made people chuckle.
''In working on this book; I felt less alone in my marriage," said Propp, 48, who has taught writing at Boston College, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of New Hampshire. She has been married for 10 years and has an 8-year-old son. ''People will be able to find themselves in these essays."
''The book allows you to feel that your own marriage is OK," said Trounstine, 59, a writer and playwright who teaches at Middlesex Community College in Lowell. She has been married for 18 years and has no children. ''As long as you have more happy days than not, then you feel you're in the right place with the right person. But it's a range, and we give people permission to have a range."
Reading the book is like listening to a chorus of women's voices, peeling away layers on individual marriages. It's an introspective look inside a private, richly nuanced part of life. It's confessional, but it also reads like a collection of philosophies about how an eclectic group of women navigates the bumpy, circuitous, steep, joyous, frightening, dark, and, ultimately, triumphant road into intimate partnerships.
To tell the stories, Propp and Trounstine assembled a collection of 24 writers with impressive oeuvres, including Marge Piercy, Ann Bernays, Erica Jong, Susan Cheever, Diana Abu-Jaber, Julia Alvarez, ZZ Packer, and Bharati Mukherjee. They are Fulbright fellows, National Book Critics Circle Award winners, PEN award winners, Pushcart Prize and O. Henry winners. Nearly half live in New England. ''We asked to hear about the longings, losses, and betrayals in conjugal life that had tested their commitment," Propp and Trounstine wrote in the book's introduction.
They questioned why women still marry. ''We know the dismal statistics: more than 50 percent of contemporary marriages end in divorce; married women are more depressed than married men and significantly more depressed than single women; married women with young children are the most depressed population.
''We wanted to know about the real marriages that survive, despite obstacles and struggles. We wanted people who were smart, articulate, funny, brave, and, above all, honest," they wrote.
In some cases, the authors are wrenchingly honest. Propp dissects her husband's rages in her essay, ''Matching Luggage." ''This is not an essay about healthy anger, the cleansing honesty that comes when both people trust each other enough to let their feelings rip . . . This is a story about an anger that's as bewildering as it is shameful -- a hidden emotional spring in which I almost drowned."
Susan Dworkin wrote about being married to a man who is estranged from his father: ''It was my very first encounter with the wages of divorce and the rage of abandoned kids. A bitter lesson, it lived on in my mind." She and her husband endured separation and reconciliation. ''You think everything was perfect after that? No way. Perfect is for kids, and we were -- finally -- grown-ups."
In the mix, there are children of divorce, lesbians, women who have been married once or three times, and women who have open marriages in which affairs are tolerated and celebrated. They endure cancer, strokes, heart attacks, and other health crises that can bring partners closer.
''Marriage is primal stuff -- two people confronting their own mortality," Jong wrote in her essay. ''It is not for the faint of heart. It is not for beginners."
Propp and Trounstine embarked on this literary expedition shortly after May 17, 2004, the day same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts -- a topic that is covered in the book by writers Elizabeth Graver and Helen Fremont. ''We fill the gaps for each other; growing into the holes left behind. We double up and increase our resistance; we are twice as brave," Fremont wrote.
Interspersed in the book, which is much more literary in tone than a ''how-to" manual, are words of advice. ''It's the angry silences that torpedo [marriages]," Jong wrote. ''Good marriages are noisy."
And the writers tried to grapple with the notion of why they stay together. ''Maybe what keeps us married is the hand that reaches across the abyss to comfort, a moment in darkness that outlasts all the fleeting brilliance of daylight," wrote Trounstine in her essay, ''The Finish Line." ''It takes us through the tough spots -- illness, job loss, our broken hearts."
Packer offered: ''We got married for love, yet we remain married for the times when love is as apparent and as obvious as the sun rising yet another day, and for all the times when our love seems so distant that we wonder why we bother with each other at all."
WHICH REMINDS ME! I read a really cute book (well I am not sure that cute is the word) it is called Heroes, hooks, and Heirlooms and if anyone wants to borrow it I will happily share :-D
What makes a marriage work?
Frank essays from female writers
By Diana Brown, Globe Correspondent January 24, 2006
TEWKSBURY -- For 18 months, Jean Trounstine and Karen Propp met in cafes, deliberated via e-mail, and chatted by phone as they co-edited a collection of moving, honest essays about marriage by a roster of heavy-hitting writers. Along the way, they discovered their collaboration itself mirrored a marriage.
''I found myself getting angry at you for the same thing that I get angry at my husband," Propp, who lives in Cambridge, said as the two friends talked in Trounstine's Tewksbury living room. Trounstine knew instantly: Propp became upset whenever she felt controlled or infringed upon.
That professional bond helped fuel the creative process for their book, ''Why I'm Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes," due in bookstores today.
The book evolved from a discovery they made in 2004 after first meeting at a reading in Providence. Having coffee afterward, they realized they both had written essays titled ''Why I'm Still Married." The title stuck because it resonated and made people chuckle.
''In working on this book; I felt less alone in my marriage," said Propp, 48, who has taught writing at Boston College, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of New Hampshire. She has been married for 10 years and has an 8-year-old son. ''People will be able to find themselves in these essays."
''The book allows you to feel that your own marriage is OK," said Trounstine, 59, a writer and playwright who teaches at Middlesex Community College in Lowell. She has been married for 18 years and has no children. ''As long as you have more happy days than not, then you feel you're in the right place with the right person. But it's a range, and we give people permission to have a range."
Reading the book is like listening to a chorus of women's voices, peeling away layers on individual marriages. It's an introspective look inside a private, richly nuanced part of life. It's confessional, but it also reads like a collection of philosophies about how an eclectic group of women navigates the bumpy, circuitous, steep, joyous, frightening, dark, and, ultimately, triumphant road into intimate partnerships.
To tell the stories, Propp and Trounstine assembled a collection of 24 writers with impressive oeuvres, including Marge Piercy, Ann Bernays, Erica Jong, Susan Cheever, Diana Abu-Jaber, Julia Alvarez, ZZ Packer, and Bharati Mukherjee. They are Fulbright fellows, National Book Critics Circle Award winners, PEN award winners, Pushcart Prize and O. Henry winners. Nearly half live in New England. ''We asked to hear about the longings, losses, and betrayals in conjugal life that had tested their commitment," Propp and Trounstine wrote in the book's introduction.
They questioned why women still marry. ''We know the dismal statistics: more than 50 percent of contemporary marriages end in divorce; married women are more depressed than married men and significantly more depressed than single women; married women with young children are the most depressed population.
''We wanted to know about the real marriages that survive, despite obstacles and struggles. We wanted people who were smart, articulate, funny, brave, and, above all, honest," they wrote.
In some cases, the authors are wrenchingly honest. Propp dissects her husband's rages in her essay, ''Matching Luggage." ''This is not an essay about healthy anger, the cleansing honesty that comes when both people trust each other enough to let their feelings rip . . . This is a story about an anger that's as bewildering as it is shameful -- a hidden emotional spring in which I almost drowned."
Susan Dworkin wrote about being married to a man who is estranged from his father: ''It was my very first encounter with the wages of divorce and the rage of abandoned kids. A bitter lesson, it lived on in my mind." She and her husband endured separation and reconciliation. ''You think everything was perfect after that? No way. Perfect is for kids, and we were -- finally -- grown-ups."
In the mix, there are children of divorce, lesbians, women who have been married once or three times, and women who have open marriages in which affairs are tolerated and celebrated. They endure cancer, strokes, heart attacks, and other health crises that can bring partners closer.
''Marriage is primal stuff -- two people confronting their own mortality," Jong wrote in her essay. ''It is not for the faint of heart. It is not for beginners."
Propp and Trounstine embarked on this literary expedition shortly after May 17, 2004, the day same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts -- a topic that is covered in the book by writers Elizabeth Graver and Helen Fremont. ''We fill the gaps for each other; growing into the holes left behind. We double up and increase our resistance; we are twice as brave," Fremont wrote.
Interspersed in the book, which is much more literary in tone than a ''how-to" manual, are words of advice. ''It's the angry silences that torpedo [marriages]," Jong wrote. ''Good marriages are noisy."
And the writers tried to grapple with the notion of why they stay together. ''Maybe what keeps us married is the hand that reaches across the abyss to comfort, a moment in darkness that outlasts all the fleeting brilliance of daylight," wrote Trounstine in her essay, ''The Finish Line." ''It takes us through the tough spots -- illness, job loss, our broken hearts."
Packer offered: ''We got married for love, yet we remain married for the times when love is as apparent and as obvious as the sun rising yet another day, and for all the times when our love seems so distant that we wonder why we bother with each other at all."
Monday, January 23, 2006
There are so many things going on
Friday night I was too sick to go on date night! All I wanted was bread pudding and a bed... I got both :-D The only other thing I did was start a blanket for Baby Tyler. I love love love the yarn I bought. It is chunky and beautiful...
Saturday we were LOVING the almost 60 degree weather. What fabulous temperatures for January! Best thing ever...
On Saturday I got up and LAZILY went for a run... Got a few miles in! Then I picked up Christy and her girls and we all stayed ver my sister Cheryl's house for a day of fun and food. At 6:30 I got my mom to a wedding in no time flat. (she had the wrong date and didn't want to miss the wedding) The great thing about this is that I got to have a DATE NIGHT with my husband... YAY ~ Love you Jim!
Sunday was a little cleaning and a lot of meeting with Joey and Kurt to plan their wedding
Fun times all around.
Saturday we were LOVING the almost 60 degree weather. What fabulous temperatures for January! Best thing ever...
On Saturday I got up and LAZILY went for a run... Got a few miles in! Then I picked up Christy and her girls and we all stayed ver my sister Cheryl's house for a day of fun and food. At 6:30 I got my mom to a wedding in no time flat. (she had the wrong date and didn't want to miss the wedding) The great thing about this is that I got to have a DATE NIGHT with my husband... YAY ~ Love you Jim!
Sunday was a little cleaning and a lot of meeting with Joey and Kurt to plan their wedding
Fun times all around.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Make it up as you go along
That is how I craft and how I live...
I figured that out this weekend while I was crafting with some friends of mine... I decided Siobhan needed a skirt. I know one stitch, that's enough for a skirt, right? Well I figured that it would be if I just winged it! So I did... I think it is coming out JUST as I wanted it and I am certain she will love it! But that is how I live life too I just make it up as I go along... What more can you do? There are no patterns on living and loving happily, are there? And what happens if you miss a line of the directions? Are you just screwed? I dunno but I figure I will just stick with my just wing it attitude!
So I think that both my life and my skirt are just what is needed
Talk to you soon
I figured that out this weekend while I was crafting with some friends of mine... I decided Siobhan needed a skirt. I know one stitch, that's enough for a skirt, right? Well I figured that it would be if I just winged it! So I did... I think it is coming out JUST as I wanted it and I am certain she will love it! But that is how I live life too I just make it up as I go along... What more can you do? There are no patterns on living and loving happily, are there? And what happens if you miss a line of the directions? Are you just screwed? I dunno but I figure I will just stick with my just wing it attitude!
So I think that both my life and my skirt are just what is needed
Talk to you soon
Friday, January 13, 2006
A balancing act
I have been balncing my life between all my loves...
First and foremost my husband (the world's cutest man)
Then working out
and
lastly crafting...
So my time crafting has been less this week than it was in the past few weeks but I am enjoying it rather than rushing it... I did manage to finish a belt and start another, paint some of the world's ugliest maracas head, start a bowl that I want to make, and make some paper. The only thing I didn't get done was working on Jim's scarf AND Siobhan's skirt BUT I will work on both of those this weekend... My lofty dreams for the weekend? Finish the belt I am on and one more, get a good chunk of Jim's scarf done (think until I run out of yarn type of chunk) and Siobhan's skirt...
I am having a HUGE (great big) dilemma with this one. I have decided that I am going to crochet a sort of skirt onto a tee shirt for her... This shouts (yells and screams) Siobhan to me. My question is whether I should make scallops or free design long lengths.
I guess it depends on which yarn I choose. I am going to pick a yarn that I have already... Hopefully it speaks to me :-)
And if on the VERY odd chance I finish all that I am going to start my first ever belt for ME!!!
YAY. I bought the yarn the other day and I loved it right away (didn't hurt it was 50% off)
But my favorite part of my WHOLE weekend?
DATE night with the hubby tonight and I think I know where we are going, I'll let you know on Monday if I was right!
First and foremost my husband (the world's cutest man)
Then working out
and
lastly crafting...
So my time crafting has been less this week than it was in the past few weeks but I am enjoying it rather than rushing it... I did manage to finish a belt and start another, paint some of the world's ugliest maracas head, start a bowl that I want to make, and make some paper. The only thing I didn't get done was working on Jim's scarf AND Siobhan's skirt BUT I will work on both of those this weekend... My lofty dreams for the weekend? Finish the belt I am on and one more, get a good chunk of Jim's scarf done (think until I run out of yarn type of chunk) and Siobhan's skirt...
I am having a HUGE (great big) dilemma with this one. I have decided that I am going to crochet a sort of skirt onto a tee shirt for her... This shouts (yells and screams) Siobhan to me. My question is whether I should make scallops or free design long lengths.
I guess it depends on which yarn I choose. I am going to pick a yarn that I have already... Hopefully it speaks to me :-)
And if on the VERY odd chance I finish all that I am going to start my first ever belt for ME!!!
YAY. I bought the yarn the other day and I loved it right away (didn't hurt it was 50% off)
But my favorite part of my WHOLE weekend?
DATE night with the hubby tonight and I think I know where we are going, I'll let you know on Monday if I was right!
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
What a weekend~
This weekend I got A LOT done!
I went to a craft day with some ladies... Always a great time and I worked a little on Jim's scarf, a little on Kat's shawl, a little on a belt for Kristin...
Not a whole lot of progress but a lot of fun.
Also after that I found out that Christy is in pre term labor so I hoping to hurry and finish the projects I have going on. I want to start a baby blanket (how hard is a baby blanket when you only know 1 stitch? I am thinking a fluffy yarn and a large crochet hook will be my answer...)
Yesterday I started to make paper. I have decided I need to make some paper crafts (I need to stop watching HGTV)
I went to a craft day with some ladies... Always a great time and I worked a little on Jim's scarf, a little on Kat's shawl, a little on a belt for Kristin...
Not a whole lot of progress but a lot of fun.
Also after that I found out that Christy is in pre term labor so I hoping to hurry and finish the projects I have going on. I want to start a baby blanket (how hard is a baby blanket when you only know 1 stitch? I am thinking a fluffy yarn and a large crochet hook will be my answer...)
Yesterday I started to make paper. I have decided I need to make some paper crafts (I need to stop watching HGTV)
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Ohhh what a night?!?
Last night I had a Three Apples meeting. At 7:00? Which is such an inconvenient time to have a meeting... It means you have to decide if you are going home from from work for 1/2 an hour and then driving right by your work to get where you are going OR you can opt to go to a quick dinner alone and find something else to kill the 2 hours between leaving work and the meeting beginning.
I opted for a great dinner at Panera.
Great dinner you ask?
Heck yeah! Black Bean Soup in a bread bowl sitting by the fire crocheting a scarf for your soul mate. Does it get ANY better? Nope not at all unless you want to add in that I found the most beautiful icelandic wool yarn at Fabric Place (across the hall from Panera) and so I bought some and a crochet hook and started away... two bites of soup, a row of scarf, etc. etc. It was great and I was shocked how soom it was time to head to the meeting! I think this is my new favorite project. The yarn is good and I am getting better so that there aren't any too obvious mistakes
I opted for a great dinner at Panera.
Great dinner you ask?
Heck yeah! Black Bean Soup in a bread bowl sitting by the fire crocheting a scarf for your soul mate. Does it get ANY better? Nope not at all unless you want to add in that I found the most beautiful icelandic wool yarn at Fabric Place (across the hall from Panera) and so I bought some and a crochet hook and started away... two bites of soup, a row of scarf, etc. etc. It was great and I was shocked how soom it was time to head to the meeting! I think this is my new favorite project. The yarn is good and I am getting better so that there aren't any too obvious mistakes
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Life at a slower pace
Well now that Christmas is over (so sad) and I don't "need" to get any done I have really been having fun crafting. I am making maracas, and another belt (love this one best ever), working on scallops for Kat's shawl, and that is about it!
The maracas are TOO cute for words. I saw them at Homegoods, fell in love but they were all chipped up so they really couldn't be given as gifts... I bought the two they had on clearance and am now making a few of them from the start to finish. When I finish the HG ones and make 1 or 2 of my own I will take pictures of them and you can tell me which you like better...
What are your newest crafts
The maracas are TOO cute for words. I saw them at Homegoods, fell in love but they were all chipped up so they really couldn't be given as gifts... I bought the two they had on clearance and am now making a few of them from the start to finish. When I finish the HG ones and make 1 or 2 of my own I will take pictures of them and you can tell me which you like better...
What are your newest crafts
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