#2: Working on my driver's tan

The fly-in at the Arlington Airport started today, so traffic getting out to the freeway after work sucked. Had time to take this picture though ;-)

And so it begins...

Today I decided to start a photo journal. The basic idea is to take a picture every single day of something I find interesting and share it with the world. I'm not sure how long I'll actually keep this up, but the idea intreagues me. I love taking pictures and I have my camera with my 90% of the time. What do you think? Can I keep it up? Might as well start with Day 1, huh?


#1: My Favorite View from Everett

This is a shot of Hat Island from Howarth Park, my favorite place in the world. As much as I've traveled, no place has ever given me the feeling of peace that Howarth always does. Howarth never lets me down. I love spending warm summer evenings laying on the beach, reading, and watching the sun set.

Firefly Swap!

I came home to the most amazing Firefly swap box EVER from magicatt!!!


Everything came wrapped up in my favorite colors with quotes on the outside of all the packages. There was a beautiful card with the theme song over the Serenity logo (seriously considering framing this cuz ti's amazing) and everything was packed in a super cool "Browncoats defending the 'verse" bag!




My cat was super thrilled with the tissue paper :-)




"You can't stop the signal"

A CD of Songs From the Black - Music inspired by Firefly and Serenity




"Two by two, hands of blue" - Blue hands button covers

River: "This food is problematic" Jayne: "Girl's a mind-readin' genius, can't even figure out how to eat an ice planet" - Hot Cocoa




"I don't believe there's a power in the 'verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful. Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month." - Bag made from similar fabric to Kaylee's Jacket, cocktail umbrellas for Kaylee's parasol, jacks for those long nights in space, shiny [dinosaur stitch markers][1] and a row counter on a lanyard (I can't tell you how much I love these!)




"Every well-bred petty crook knows - the small concealable weapons always go to the far left of the place setting" - Tissues that say my daily agenda is simple: get up, dress impeccably, be fabulous and repeat

"How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don'tchya think?" - Jayne hat lip balm cozy w/ Hershey's lip balm

"Time for some thrilling heroics" - Super cool journal. She even added the first two entries: 1) Dear Diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. 2) Today we were kidnapped by hill folk never to be seen again. It was the best day ever.




"Yes. Yes, this is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... This Land."

"I think we should call it... your grave!"

"Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" - Plastic dinosaurs as well as growing dinosaurs :-) Rwar!




Last but not least...

"Every planet has its own weird customs. About a year before we met, I spent six weeks on a moon where the principal form of recreation was juggling geese. My hand to God. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled." - A set of 3 crocheted baby geese. Yes, I attempted to juggle with them. I obviously still need more practice.

Knitting is fun?

Never thought I'd hear that phrase come out of my mouth, but it's the truth. I just had fun while knitting. I just finished my Kool-Aid Twisty Twigs earflap hat and I had so much fun knitting it. I'm pretty sure this is my first knitted project EVER where swearing wasn't involved. In fact, I didn't complain about this project once. I even finished in less than a week!

Last Thursday I was having a bad day. Life got in the way and my crafting mojo was pretty much non-existant. I dyed some yarn which was pretty awesome, but I just wasn't feeling anything else. My brain wasn't exactly functioning. I have a montain of projects that need to be worked on, but I just couldn't get in the groove. I was in a bad mood and I wanted something that would cheer me up. Deciding it was time to say "screw it" to the have-tos, I grabbed my first skein of Kool-Aid yarn and got to work on the hat. It was a simple enough pattern, but also added some challenge and I could think about the hat and not life - something that I really needed. I was only going to give myself that evening to work on the hat then I'd go back to my regularly scheduled crafts.

It was so much fun showing off the way the yarn knitted up while I was at work on Friday, that I decided to keep knitting on it at lunch time. I just didn't want to put it down because with each stitch I got to see the way the colors played out. This hat was just so much fun to work on that I decided the rest could wait. I'm really glad I continued with it. I'm ready to get back to the have-tos and I don't feel nearly as burnt out. This will most likely be a Christmas present, but I still felt like I was making it for me. I should do that more often. I spend so much time making things for others, it's nice to spoil myself ;-)

actual color of the hat and detail of cables

full hat with braided ties :-)

The rainbow turtle of awesomeness

A couple of weeks ago my craft group got together at The Ceramic Place in Silver Lake. This was the beginning of the end. It's been a while since I've gone painting, and I've avoided the local place for years. I'm a die hard fan of Glazed & Amazed in Edmonds, but it was nice that I'd have to drive a ways, and make a day of it if I wanted to paint. Easier for me to not spend all my money on ceramics that way. But now I've been to the one 10 minutes from my house. This can't be good.

The first night I started painting a mermaid box for my water-themed swap box due to ship out at the end of the month. I figured this would be something unique and different for my "large item" and would be fun to paint. Of course, since I'm such a perfectionist and I usually only paint with tiny brushes, I didn't finish the box by the end of the evening. Oh darn, I suppose this means I would just have to go back and finish painting. Later in the week Valeta and I went back to finish our boxes. While I was there I decided that I knew I'd want to keep coming back so it would be good if I had a big project to work on so I didn't have to keep spending money. That's when I found the turtle. He was more than I wanted to spend, but I love turtles and he was seriously awesome and I had a vision of how cool he'd be with a rainbow shell, and now he's mine... all mine!!! Bwahahahahaha!

When I started painting the turtle, I knew it was going to take several trips, but I didn't realize just how long it really would take. Last night was the third time I've worked on him. I'm now at 7.25 hours. I've only finished the purple. Still have lots more shell to paint. I'm so happy that I have a new color to work on though. The better part of those 7 hours were with purple and only purple. I should probably point out, for those not in the know, that to get bright solid colors you need 3 layers of paint. I used a tiny brush because these lines are pretty small. It takes a long time to paint. At least next time I get to start on the blue!

the beginning of the evening - 4 hours of previous painting time

end of the evening - 7.25 hours total and I'm done with purple!