I started my yogurt. I'm using a freeze dried starter this time.Instead of keeping it at a level temp in my gas oven, I'm using a water bath in my kitchen sink. If it works out well, I'll post the results and the how for all of you who might not have old gas ovens with pilot lights.
Let's see.. other than that? I made a pattern this morning I still need to get posted, worked on a ring some.
E told me just to use the rest of the milk for the yogurt. A couple hours later she went to get herself a bowl of cereal and I said "Um.. all the milk is yogurting." (we make up words pretty regularly in my family) and she said "OH! D'OH!" I did not reply yo go. I thought it though.
oh,d'oh,yo, go, though. I'm so easily verbally amused.
So we got dressed to head up to the convenience store. She wore a yellow teeshirt, purple pants, a necktie and a blue vest. (and her red Whoian converse sneaks of course) While we were walking back, Amber (a girl about her age in the neighborhood) stopped to say hi and told her she looked cute. E said thanks, then asked me "I look cute?" It completely baffled her. I guess she didn't want to look cute, but she really did.

Tomorrow is the Solstice fair, Saturday is the pride parade and fair, and it's rainy. Really damp. I'll have to cane it tomorrow. Hopefully Saturday is better.

I like roses. I took a picture of a wild rose while I was walking to the gym yesterday, and used it as a model to draw a rose to put on this box.

The gym was well.. the gym. I felt very strong because all the other girls were lifting a lot less than I was. Funny thing is, I'm not really lifting much. But in one case? I was benching more than one woman was leg pressing. Go me.

Off to go bead! *edit* or you know.. make a beading pattern. You can see that here

A while ago, I found a package of plastic gitd butterflies, the sort that come with a mini-uv charger and a little bit of gum to affix them to your wall? I saw them and thought "OOH! GITD necklaces!"
( first one I made )
I made it last night with gitd mini-plastic pony beads and sterling silver wire,beads and chain and Turkish silver beads.

Other than that? I strung the beads for a beaded bun cover and did a lot of reading. It was a fairly kicked back day. Too much to do today!

( Dinner, tourist style )
Today, Mike's got to do some coffee related research, so I'm going with him to do that. Apparently his boss asked the execs "Which of you is the coffee fiend?" and Mike said "My wife." I was a little taken aback by that. I don't do 5 dollar cups of coffee often. So when he explained this to Dad and I, I said "I'm not a coffee fiend." and dad said "Yes, you are." and Mike just laughed out loud and said "Uh huh.. why won't you drink Starbucks?" We have a bunch of GOOD local coffee roasters who don't burn the beans. I don't think this makes me a coffee fiend. But good coffee is like good beer or good wine. You can taste notes and flavors in it, but when the beans are burnt, the overwhelming flavor is that burn. You lose the complexity that inherent in a good cup of coffee. Coffee can taste bright, or creamy, have chocolate-y or berry notes, burnt is not the flavor I'm looking for.
But I'm not a *fiend* about it. I've never even gone to a coffee tasting or done any research on it. I just know what I prefer. Fair trade, shade grown, beans drum roasted dark. I like French, Espresso, and Turkish roasts, but I want the beans to be drum roasted to a uniform dark, and still oily to the touch. A good dark roast IS shiny and oily and not dark, matte and dry. Drum roasting helps keep the beans from scorching. Dark roasts also have less caffeine then light roasts so they make good after dinner coffees.
I think today I'm also going to work some on beading, and I wrote a book review for Beaded Chain Mail Jewelry by Dyson Whyte, it's a great book if you have any interest in small scale mail for jewelry.

Instructions for making your own earring wires and I finally finished putting together my sweets earring pattern set and posted it to Etsy.
Now.. it's so very time for bed.

Using Jump Rings With Seed Beads
Plus there is a picture of my new fake diamond necklace there.

( shiny shiny )
I made these so I can write up how to do the chain drops for Beadwork at BellaOnline, still need to write them up.

I'm in a lot of pain today so it's sort of hard to focus on what I meant to get done.
Updated Beadwork at BellaOnline with a sort of silly thing, instructions for converting a peyote pattern to a regular graph. It's a joke, since people keep asking how to like there is this quick and easy way to convert graphs.
School Needlework at Vintage Sewing Info, a ton of information on hand sewing and darning. (Darning socks, not the kind of darn that takes you straight to heck.)
Build a table top loom, which is very nifty, but fairly involved. (pdf)
More fun and something you can set up to do with younger kids, or have older kids help you build?
Thread Banger has this great weaving project.(youtube) It's a great use for scraps and such and the technique would work well with selvages.

Well.. more later. Time to go try to be productive.
I hope you all had a day with a lot of laughter.

And oh yeah.. me? Without coffee?? I think my family would start sneaking it into fruit juice or something.. too scary to contemplate.

( What we did yesterday )
Well.. still working on new earring patterns with an eye towards a slim volume of brick stitched earrings. I'll need to find beaders to bead up samples of some of them.
Music- Did you know that Miracle Laurie has a ukulele cover band? If you like ukulele covers, it's worth a listen. Uke Box Heroes Myspace.
Also for NIN or Jane's Addiction fans out there.. you can get an ep of unreleased material here, 2 NIN songs, 2 by Jane's Addiction, and 2 by Street Sweeper.

I wound up going out to meet Miss Teri for coffee last night as planned, and as usual, seeing her was very calming and nice. She's just that way. We discussed a lot of things. The lack of good inexpensive earring collection books and if I should do one. Since you know.. I've got lots of earring patterns, I showed her my kindle 2 and all the niftiness of it. Of course, one of the drawing points for me seems to be a down point for everyone else. The screen is not backlit. I like that. It means for the way I read, no fatiguing eyeglare.
She gave me a little coffin shaped keyring flask to bead, which absolutely wants a little bat on it, and some new thread to try. *happiness*
We talked for a couple hours. About vampire books and tv shows, and sci-fi from the 70s. Emma Peel and Dollhouse. I took a flexeril shortly after getting there, and she was sufficiently distracting to help me forget how much I'd been hurting all day.

After we got home, I fixed cod for dinner with melon. It was a low fat way of doing the cod. I covered it with key lime juice and then mixed in some seasoned cornflake crumbs and baked it until nice and flaky, then we all had a lot of melon as a side dish which kept it nice and easy for me. Not a lot of standing time. Everyone liked it. Even E who thinks unless it's beer battered halibut, fish should be stick shaped.
Other then baking and spending time with Miss Teri, I didn't do anything yesterday. That's part of why I was so frustrated. I feel like I should get something accomplished each day, and it just wasn't happening yesterday. Today looks to be a bit better.
Part of what Mike, Teri and I talked about yesterday was the possibility of me doing print copies of the greyscale bead instruction book I'm working on and selling it with a cd with a collection of my patterns on it.

Are craft related. Like gyotaku, which is the art of fish printing. It was used as a way to record trophy catches by inking them and placing paper over the top and creating a print of the fish.
Which is just really cool. Other then the whole catching the fish, rinsing it clean of sea gunk, patting it dry, and well.. generally working with a dead fish.

Of course, there are some replicas that can be used the same way. To make monoprints of fish. Yay! And not just fish, but seahorses, star fish, and geckos.
E and I were talking about it last night, and we decided the doing some teeshirts and dresses using the crystal wash method in blues and greens to simulate water, then doing fish prints on the dyed shirts/dresses would be lots of fun this summer.

( some jolly roger earring patterns for beaders )

Not sure what I have planned yet for today.

Tubular Horizontal Netting
The word horizontal is just giving me fits today. I keep typoing it. Like my fingers are going faster than my spelling ability.

The icon is the back of a Death amulet bag I made myself. So it relates.
( our button necklaces )

Yesterday in bead chat, someone said "You're always so busy." Which isn't really true, but it was true yesterday.
Today E and I went to the Make It and Take It at Michaels, Jolee's Boutique sponsored it, and it was making a small charm with a heart shaped dangle, beading cable, and pink swars. Supposedly, it taught how to use crimp beads, and I didn't tell E there and then that's not how I use them. I think we will have to restring them, because smushed single crimp beads that aren't strung back through a couple beads aren't as secure as double crimp beads with the wire strung through a couple beads and crimped with crimping pliers. But they are definitely cute!
( see them here )
We were planning to see Coraline, but time got away from us. So we are going tomorrow. Which is actually kind of a good thing, it means E and I have time to make button necklaces to wear to it.

I had planned on posting the puppet/wild yak pattern today, but.. like the rest of the stuff in that book, the scanned text just doesn't look good. So I'll have to transcribe it.

Mike has decided that blueberry muffins with Nutella are a good thing.
I've decided that I must find a way to secretly record him singing along with the Dr. Horrible soundtrack. Because he does it in an Elmer Fudd voice, and Brand New Day in an Elmer Fudd voice???? "She may cwy, but her teaws will dwy when I hand her the keys to a shiny new Austawlia".. It's hysterical. Now.. I wonder if he can sing Steve's Song that way? Combining the lisping and the Elmer Fudd voice?

I don't know anything about Kingdom Hearts, 'k? Well.. I know a bit more than I used to. I know
sora means sky, and riku means land.kairi is short for kairiku, which means land and sea.. But I know that because a friend speaks Japanese and told me after she found out how much E liked it.
Anyway.. this is Roxas.
( and this is E's version of his bracelet/rings )
And pictures of my record cuffs after I drilled them. I did NOT mark my drill holes, and they came out a bit uneven. So I'm going to make a template for drilling and cutting next time, and write it up for Beadwork at BellaOnline.
( you spin me round like a record baby )
Yesterday, there were all sorts of things I wanted to do, but life being what it is, I waited all day for Dad to call so we could do one part of it. He never called. Then it was suddenly 5 pm and too late to do anything.
This post is going to be followed pretty quickly with another post with a couple vintage patterns.
Hmm.. I graphed out a straight cross stitch, no back stitches or half/quarter stitches pattern of the St. Trinian's crest from the most recent movie, and the lyric that goes
"We are the best, so screw the rest
We do as we damn well please
Until the end
St Trinian’s
Defenders of anarchy"
You can download that in PDF format here.

I keep saving empty hot sauce bottles planning to bead them at some point, but lately I've been accumulating them a lot quicker then usual. E has taken to using hot sauce as though it's ketchup.
I decided I should thinking about beading a poison bottle. Not really like the vintage poison bottles I like so much, but kind of like that. Poison though, to my generation, isn't a skull and crossbones. It's Mr. Yuk.
( so I had to graph some Mr. Yuk patterns )
I was going to write a bit about Mike, but.. it started getting pretty personal. About who he was 13 years ago, and all the changes he's been through, and who he's become. Plus I was getting sappy. He's saved people's lives, and had people die while he was trying to save them. I can't even imagine that, and that's been while we've been together. That changes someone, so does having access to all the books I have. *grins* The right book at the right time can change anyone. But mostly, 13 years of shared experiences, and how much they've changed both of us. I don't really understand why he's not closer to his family, because of the connection I have with mine. But I'm not willing to try to pressure him to change that. First, pressure wouldn't work, and it would just cause friction between us, and it doesn't matter enough to me to do that, and secondly, I respect him too much. Truly. And I believe there is a reason for the distance.

Working on some tawashi for trade for pads for E, but I messed the first one up and made it too small. So now I've got to remake it, but I'll include the small one with the other two when I mail them. The base chain is (x·4)+3*, and the big one, I used 83**, stitches for the base chain, then I made a smaller one for doing dishes with 63***, stitches. Then when I started the ones for the swap, I accidentally made the first one with the 63 chain base. I am however, changing the leaf for one that's simpler to write out, since I do have vague plans of selling the pattern on Ravelry.



* Ideally, since most roses have petals in a multiple of 5, it would be (x·4)·5 +3 or to simplify, (x·20)+3, where x= number of sets of petals. So 4x20 be 4 sets of 5 petals, or 20 petals. The first formula though, (x·4)+3, x=number of petals. So it still works if you want to figure a multiple of 5 petals, and I'm just playing with myself. Because it's fun. Just for the record, when I do write the pattern out.. 43 works just fine for a smaller rose. I did one that size just to see how it looked. (43-3)/4=10 petals.
**(83-3)/4=20 petals
***(63-3)/4=15 petals

( the bat amulet bag )
Pattern is up at Beadwork at BellaOnline.com.

Today is the spinning class E and I are taking together, I asked Kim if she wanted to go, and at first she thought I meant spinning like the exercise, and was thrilled, then she found out I meant making yarn, and decided against it.
I'm excited about it though. This is something I've been wanting to learn to do for awhile.

Last night, Mike decided he wanted to take me out. I'm not sure where or what I was thinking. I knew we had to go to a bead store, and we did that. And I was dressed completely informally. Black skirt, cute teeshirt that said "Go Away, Get off my planet!" (which is what I'm wearing today too. I only had it on for a couple hours yesterday, and I need to get laundry done. Don't judge me. You've done it before too.), my alien necklace from Gina, and my gitd alien bracelet and my alien earrings.There was definitely a theme going. At the beadstore, Cat said she thought the alien earrings would look cute in the size 15 delicas, but for some reason, I didn't register she meant *my* alien earrings, so I asked her which ones. She said "Didn't you make alien earrings?" then noticed I was wearing them. I felt.. umm.. really really stupid?
After though.. Mike wanted to go out to a grown up restaurant without the kids together. We stopped by the Bear's Tooth, but they were, of course, SLAMMED. An hour wait for a table. Then we decided on Italian, and he took me to Villa Nova.
Oh wow.. it was so good. He asked me what kind of appetizer I wanted, he was looking at a few things on the regular menu, but on the specials for the day was an artichoke/crab/gruyere dip. So we ordered that. It was so rich, it was foreplay. The meal was the foodgasm. I tend too often to just eat for fuel, and not indulge often. This whole meal was an indulgence. Dessert was something like a chocolate cream puff. Fresh, handmade puff pastry filled with chocolate mousse,topped with a chocolate ganache, served in a puddle of chocolate sauce with bits of chocolate in it. All high quality chocolate. We shared. It was so good. I did wind up ordering one to go at the same time for E. I felt a little guilty, since my leftovers from dinner are going to be given to W. I wondered if E would be able to eat the whole thing. I know at Nordstroms she can't not eat a whole slice of chocolate cake because it's so rich and dark, but I guess since the mousse wasn't dark, and with the puff pastry to cut the total chocolateness of it, she had no issues and ate the whole thing happily.
Dinner? ( Cut to spare the vegetarians, vegans and anyone anti-meat )
It was lovely, and the waitress complimented my earrings and teeshirt, which made Mike all smug because I'd snarled at him "If I'd known we were going someplace nice to eat, I'd have dressed for it." But Alaska being what Alaska is, honestly, I can't think of any restaurant in town you can't get away with casual clothes. We tend to be fairly casual people, even when we go out. He knew what he had planned, and wore a long sleeved Metallica teeshirt.
Well.. my opinions aside.. what did the guy who went to high school in Italy think? He liked it. The chef hasn't Americanized the dishes, or given in the "more garlic means more authenticity" habit. He does wish that more restaurants in the US had parking like in Italy. Where you park someplace 4 or 5 blocks away and have a nice walk before and after the slow take your time meal. He was thrilled with the chocolate dessert. Which I picked. They recite the dessert menu there, and it was hard to keep up with. Usually I *don't* order chocolate desserts. I'm picky. But their cream sauces were so perfect, I figured the chocolate would be good too. The only disappointment for Mike and I was the bread. It was plain, white, boring and predictable rather then the artisan breads we've been getting used to in those sorts of places. Mike likes bread with texture and bits of grain. I really wish I could understand why the big chains like Outback and Chili's are so popular when for pretty close to the same amount, you can go to a local place with amazing food. And wow.. I'm absolutely sure that right at this moment, the other Cat.. the one in California? Is seriously seriously wishing she were in Alaska.
E of course, thought Mc Donald's (which we also picked up for her on the way home) and a fancy dessert make nearly the perfect meal.
Tonight I'm making chicken teriyaki for dinner I think. With a ton of veggies to help make up for the total indulgence last night. Plus I think when I get to the gym, I'll do a half hour extra cardio.
But.. it was a lovely evening!

Mike is absolutely my hero. And a few other people's of course as well. Last night he was late coming home because he was helping out a stranger. There are worse reasons.
Got comics. They've started pulling more then just what's our list. Looking at what we buy, and pulling more. I don't mind.
Vs? well.. lately they've not been good. This week is quake vs halo. Can't tell you how much I don't care.

After that, we went and bought me a new printer. It was time to admit the amount of fiddling I was doing to make mine work was just frustrating me. Hopefully, Mike can take it apart later and figure out why it doesn't work, it's mechanical. He's clever.
Then we met Dad for dinner. He was only 20 minutes late, and we all had dinner, it was mostly nice.

Today E and I are making homemade cream soda.

Let's see.. ortho appointment was *great*. A lot of the damage in my knees has gotten better, and they think they know what's causing the pain. If it's what they think, it's *repairable*. I'm so many kinds of thrilled. I'm going in for MRI next month, I did do the sensible thing and ask for the sedatives this time. Last time was horrible. The orthopedist told me I should wear braces on my knees more often.
( sneak peak at an upcoming project )
Well.. must get busy.

Yesterday was a lot of fun, and a LOT of walking, but I found 3 things I have to brag about. Links and pictures of all but one of them will follow later.
The one I'm not taking a picture of by request of the artist, is my favorite. And I'll post her email link later when I find her card. It was a pretty hinged stained glass necklace with two layers. The first layer was a scrap of glass, and under that, a layer of metal with embossed foil tape with one of my favorite John Lennon quotes on it. Yay for quote necklaces, double yay for John Lennon quote necklaces.
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."
At the bead show, Karen had magpies. Well.. 2, and I bought one. Because I *heart* magpies. It's a pretty little pin with a very canny looking magpie.
AND one of the artists at the bead show had lampwork eyeball beads! I only found blue in a matching pair, but I'm so making myself a pair of eyeball earrings.
Other then that.. lots of soap of course. I'm not sure if I ever reviewed Gladheart Acres soap, but the other I did. So I'll link back to that review, and add in the now working link to her site, and the Gladheart Acres is an old favorite of my whole family. I got W 2 bars from them.
I considered a diamond willow cane, but I know I don't really have the money right now, plus it would require my admitting it really is a part of my life that isn't going to change, and I'm not willing to do that yet.

Well.. time to get to the gym. I did a lot of walking this week and haven't been to the gym almost all week. It's time to get back into the lifting thing.