More mojo

I also used to buy yarn or crafting supplies because I liked them and then would later figure out what to do with them. Big mistake now I have stashes of monumental proportions and they almost scare me. I've slowly been trying to destash.

I've finally admitted to myself that since I've started using "luxury" yarns the old cheap acrylics that I grew up with just will NOT do. Who knew that wool could be so soft, I always thought that wool was scratchy, and yes some of it is but then some of it...Oh so soft. The difference between quality and cheap. Also what I always thought of as nice cotton. Not so nice. I've found some that has been cleaned out better and there are no little pieces of the plant to snag and stick. Again the difference between quality and cheap.

I put all the stuff I didn't know what I wanted to do with in a bag and took it to my LYS where it was donated to a local church group who were making shawls. I don't think they realized just how much I was talking about when I said I'd bring them some. Now I just have to teach my husband that just because I like it, does not mean that I need to buy it now. Sometimes I'll decide that I just have no real use for something even if it is the most beautiful or softest yarn I've ever felt.

I have found the same thing with my paper crafts. I have Boxes and boxes of paper, ribbons, and assorted treasures all to be added to projects with no clear project in mind. Just stuff I had to have. Well I'm going to clean that out too. Just have to decide who would like snow themed papers, etc.

Then hubby started getting me cigar boxes. I have about half a dozen and don't know what to do with them. I'll have to figure something out cause I really like them. I've seen purses and stuff made out of them but usually the beautiful finish on the box itself is messed up. Hate for that to happen. Maybe I'll just have to make them into trinket boxes for me.

What is this thing anyway?

I think I've decided to use this more like a journal. Discuss the projects I have going and just put my thoughts down.

I've been thinking about my creative mojo lately. Wondering where it came from. I never used to create like this, I used to search through patterns until I found one I liked then make it. Wow! what a change. Now I think about what I want and find something similar (just so I don't have to reinvent the wheel) and I change it until it is what I want.

I think I can pin point the beginning of the change. I was given a cookbook for Christmas one year by my BFF. It was actually two books in one and I can't remember what the first part of the book is but the second half (I should say section since it don't think it is half) is called the Baker's Bible. It changed my baking. It gave me permission to change the spices, change the amount of sugar, flour, kind of fat. The entire section goes through and the author breaks down different baked goods, comparing and contrasting different changes. Things like 3 eggs will make a richer cake, using cornstarch instead of flour for thickening doesn't take as much cooking. Then they give a basic recipe and make suggestions to make it your own. Add Amaretto to your whipped cream to give it a richer flavor.

Since I embraced that book, I have looked at recipes and patterns in a new way. I'm more willing to make changes, I'm less afraid of failure and in the process I enjoy my creations a lot more. If it is something I've never tried before I'll follow the recipe or pattern the first time. Then I change it and make it my own. For Christmas I found a scarf pattern that I loved. So I made a hat with the same stitch and mittens too. LOVE the results.

Now I'm working on a hooded baby towel, I found a pattern but I don't like the stitch they use, simple, I just use one I like. Kept the pattern because it uses a bind off that I've never tried, and I like the construction that they used. So I'll use their basic instructions (making it bigger cause 20" from point to point is just too small), my stitch and their bind off. I bought a book (e-book actually) of wash cloth patterns, since I don't want to reinvent the wheel and they were exactly what I was wanting to make. Now I'll just make them into burp cloths too.

SNOW?

I moved to Florida in 1988. For Christmas of 1989 temperatures got down to almost 0. I told my sister that day that if it snows I'd go back to Wisconsin so at least when I froze to death, I'd be with family. It didn't snow that time and has not threatened to snow in central Florida since, until yesterday. I understand that Winter Haven had "small hail" that some thought might have been snow but from the description, I'd say it was actually sleet. Glad I did not see it cause I might have had to move back up north. At least we have sun today. Temp has warmed up to 41 by 2:00. But this morning when I got up this is what my frog pond looked like, didn't find my thermometer until it was above freezing, so I don't know how cold it did get last night, but it was still 37 at noon.





Florida frogs are not smart enough to bury themselves to hibernate. I've found at least 5 frozen frogs and I don't think they'll be able to thaw out for a while. Some of them were found by predators. Who ever found them just took their heads and didn't bother with the rest of the body. I won't take pics of those because I think they are gross.

This could possibly be the culprit but he was fishing in the pond that was too big to freeze.

Winter Blahs

Well fall is really and truely here. We haven't had the A/C on for a full week (ok maybe more), but the gloomy weather is starting to get to me. I miss the sun. We've had rain off and on for about a week. Usually when fall/winter comes it rains one day and gets cold (below 60 at night) the next, maybe the cold will last for a couple days but the sun usually comes back out. Nope not this year. clouds, clouds and more clouds. But every time I feel like this I check out the weather in WI. Guess what, they are in the middle of a blizzard, the temp yesterday was 79 here, so shut up Sue and be happy. You aren't trying to drive in that crap, and you don't have to shovel it, and your heavy winter coat is sitting in the closet just taking up space.

And to those of you up there in it. I'm so sorry for you.


If you want to see what I'm missing click here.

Becca's Scrapbook

Wow where did October go?


I promised some people that I'd post pictures of the scrap book I sent my cousin for her wedding. Hope this is ok with you Becca. It was a very easy project using Stampin' Up! supplies. so here are the pics. I sent her lots of embellishments because they were part of the kits that I bought but I wasn't sure what pictures she would use and if she'd prefer that it was busy or simple. I went with simple cause it is easy to add, but hard to remove. Well here are some of the pics.

Cheese Heads in the surf!

My Brother and his family came to visit from Wisconsin, this week. They spent the week at Disney World but Wednesday, we went to Vero Beach. Two weeks ago Hurricane Fred was spinning out in the Atlantic. One week ago Fred was downgraded to a tropical depression. This week he wasn’t a tropical system of any sort but the remnants of him were churning off the East coast of Florida.

You can see the size of the waves behind L (Blue suit).

This is E’s happy face.


N was having a good time too.


The spray off to the left was from N.

Here is a close up of E.



We were all a little pink by the end of the day but oh so happy. I’m so glad we were able to get together for our day at the beach.

Getting Lost

Have you ever had an adventure in your life that you really did not think was so great? You were sure that everyone there had just as bad a time as you did. Then many years later you talk to some of the people who were with you and you see a VERY different account of the event although you still recognize it as the one you lived through.
One day my cousins and I were playing in the woods. My parents lived on the back side of a game preserve so we treated the preserve like our own back yard. Well we’d gone a bit further than usual and on a new trail. Now when I say trail I mean more like a deer trail than an actual path that someone has carved out of the landscape. There were several of both in these woods. But we had gone farther and not paid much attention to where we were going as we were picking flowers or gathering berries or pinecones or some such thing. We had been walking for quite some time, when we decided that we were hungry so maybe we should go home. Which way is home? We kept walking until we found a fence. Someone I think it was DB said that if you follow a fence you will always wind up at a house or barn. So that sounded like good advice. Then the fence went through a swamp, now how do you follow a fence through a swamp? So we left the fence. We walked for hours finally we got to the old railroad bed. Oh great, this goes into town. We’ll just follow it until we get there and then call Mom and tell her where we are. (To this day I don't know where in town the railroad bed comes out but we were always told it came out in town. The railroad bed probably goes to the fair grounds since everything else goes there but I'm not sure.)
We followed that for about 20 minutes when the caretaker of the game preserve found us. He was out working in the woods so he took us home.
Now my memory of that day is cloudy and dark as though there is a storm coming, I remember being scared and hungry we finally got home around 2 in the afternoon we’d left probably around 10.

I don’t remember Mom being particularly worried about us. When I spoke to one of the other kids that were there they don’t remember that we were lost. And the caretaker finding us was just a good excuse to have a ride on the wagon. We had found the spring where they had a cup to drink from so we weren’t particularly thirsty and berries to eat so we weren’t too hungry either. My main memory of that day is that I was scared. I was afraid that we were lost and would never get home. I know I was not the oldest one there but I was probably between 8 and 10 so the oldest one who might have been there would have been no older than 12. We’d been gone for 4 hours and Mom just said that we should have stayed close enough so that we could have heard the horn when she honked it. We missed lunch so, oh well, we could wait for supper since we didn’t stay close enough, and that would teach us to not go so far.
I think about that now and how if my niece and nephew who live there now were gone for four hours that the police probably would be called. And a search conducted. Sex offenders in the area would be chased down and the pond would be searched. Just cause some kids got turned around in the woods.

But it truly amazes me that to this day; I am the only one that remembers that we were lost. No one remembers the idea to follow the fence because it would take us to a home; no one remembers the plan to follow the railroad tracks to town, or even trying to remember which side of the tree the moss grows on. My memory was that we were just guessing which way to follow the railroad bed but who knew where else it might go if town was behind us. Now I know that as long as we walked in a straight line we would have had to walk no more than a mile or two in any one direction before we would have come to a road. The road would have led to a house and we would have been “saved.” But at the time I didn’t understand that, I was scared.